Writer Unboxed

Therese here. Today’s guest blogger is one of WU’s favorite urban fantasy/gritty romance authors, Ann Aguirre. If you missed our interview with Ann, check it HERE, otherwise enjoy the post!

How Blue Diablo Became a Book: or, a N00b’s journal

My best ideas come out of nowhere. With the Jax books, I just sat down and started writing. With the Corine books, it was almost that simple. I knew I wanted to write urban fantasy, of course, and it seemed natural to make use of information available to me via life in Mexico. I also knew I wanted to do something different: no fairies, no vampires, no werewolves. So humans it would be, gifted humans, and a world full of dark and secret magic. Beyond that, I had no real plan.

Those tidbits in mind, I started writing. The first 25,000 words came like a lightning storm. But in other ways, things weren’t going so well. Over the holidays (2006, going into 2007), I parted company with my first agent, after receiving a number of disheartening rejections. That left me to start the search all over again. I had a complete SFR manuscript to pitch, and I found myself lacking the drive to write. The agent search got me down (one agent called Grimspace unsellable).

Thus, the holidays came and went, and the new year began. I queried. I got rejected. Oh, did I ever. To boost my faltering resolve, I sent a partial of the urban fantasy to an editor who accepted unagented submissions. Little did she know, the book wasn’t finished. (This is a bonehead move, by the way. Do not emulate me. I was a n00b.) But my spirits were low, and I told myself (a) she’ll probably reject it, and (b) it will take forever to hear back anyway. By the time I heard, I’d have another finished book that she wouldn’t want. However, maybe with this as motivation, I’d get on the ball and finish the book?

Imagine my surprise when, six weeks later, she asked to see the full. Well, holy crap. I hadn’t made much progress. The book had been sitting in limbo while I hoarded agent rejections like a crazy cat lady and gorged on self-pity. It was a “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I might as well go out and eat worms” point in my career.

So anyway, I had a request for full … on a book I hadn’t finished. I told the editor that I needed to “polish” said manuscript, and could I send it as soon as it was ready? She said ‘of course.’ In retrospect, I do not recommend this strategy; however, that kicked my sorry ass into overdrive and I wrote the rest in 10 days. I was pretty sure it was terrible, but it was done at least. My husband did an emergency read for me that weekend, I tweaked, and sent the full by Sunday evening. After that insane rush, I suffered random aphasia, as if I’d used up more than my daily allotment of words, and it shorted out my brain. I went around sounding like Ralph Wiggum for two weeks thereafter. I also settled in to await the big R.

On a brighter note, I received some interest in the unsellable SFR, and in March, I signed with Laura Bradford. She promptly sold Grimspace to Anne Sowards of Ace. Perhaps two months after that, I received an offer on the urban fantasy. Talk about an embarrassment of riches. But this house didn’t pay much in the way of an advance, and Laura had concerns about their distribution. It’s an up-and-coming press, but she said, “I suggest you turn this down. I’m going to give you notes for revision, and then I think we can do better.”

There’s nothing more terrifying than refusing an offer. It nauseated me, but I did it. Then I revised the book according to my agent’s suggestions, which included totally rewriting the end. In all, I added 10K of new material. In late summer of 2007, we pitched it to my editor at Penguin. Anne bought the project on pre-empt. And then I got revision notes from her. In addressing her concerns, I added another 10K of new material, plus I rewrote the end again.

To date, this book sets my record for length added in revisions. It started out as a bare bones little thing, barely 75,000 words, and now it’s a sexy 95,000. Blue Diablo has a special place in my heart because I wrote it when I had no hope of ever selling anything. It reminds me that anything is possible, as long we have faith.

Readers, you can purchase Blue Diablo at a variety of online retailers (check Ann’s site for a listing HERE), or at an indie bookstore near you.

Please see the first and last graphs of each guest post to learn more about the author, visit their website, and follow them on social media. Gravatar courtesy ©iStockphoto.com/automatika

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