Tag: Hurricane Baby

Query Letters

As i said last week, I am pitching Hurricane Baby to independent presses, and I got another full request last week! I thought today I would share my query letter and see if looking at what I have done in it might help other writers craft their queries as well. About half of the presses I have sent to, I went ahead and sent full manuscripts to because they called for them. But I think this query may help answer questions about how to put one together. Mine is going to read differently than yours because I write like I write, and you write like you write. But here it is, with the final paragraph with contact information removed:

Hurricane Baby: Stories (69,820 words) is the first fictional treatment of Hurricane Katrina to approach its subject–the suffering of those who endured the hurricane and its aftermath–through a trauma-focused lens. The characters in this short-story collection face extreme circumstances with only their inner resources to count on–and in many cases. that proves to not be enough to deal with the mental challenges of living through a weather event of this magnitude. Although many of the characters do not experience the typical physical losses of family members or property, they persist in living lives that have become psychological nightmares.

Wendy Magnum of Hattiesburg, Mississippi suffers guilt and remorse after betraying her husband, Ray. by having an intimate encounter with Judd McKay, a friend Ray had trusted to help protect his family during the storm. Tommy Hebert turns to alcohol to help him handle the trauma of what he saw aiding in search-and-rescue in Metairie, Louisiana. Mike Seabrook’s relationships with his God and his wife, Dinah, are sorely tested after he loses a patient in his emergency room; he responds by quitting his nursing job and working in hurricane relief while attempting to rebuild both his home in Slidell, Louisiana and his faith. James and Lori King suffer dual devastating losses –Lori goes into premature labor as a result of the storm, and James discovers on his return to their home in Kenner, Louisiana that his best friend died trying to protect the Kings’ home from looters.

I currently work as a reporter for the Mississippi Center for investigative Reporting, covering stories on mental health, mental health advocacy, and mental health education. My fiction has appeared in China Grove Press, The Esthetic Apostle, and Swamp Ape Review, among others, including the Running Wild Press Novella anthology in 2019 with the story Looking for Home. In 2021, I graduated with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Mississippi University for Women. A full-length play based on an early version of Hurricane Baby won an award from the Eudora Welty New Plays Festival in 2010 and is slated to be produced by Mississippi Repertory Theatre in 2023.  I have a social media presence of WordPress, Facebook. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. and Pinterest, for a total of about 2,000 followers.

The stories’ common themes touch on the fragility of morality in a life-or-death situation, the impossibility of chasing normalcy for the psyche after severe trauma, and the reverberations of the characters’ choices on how to deal with their trauma that go far beyond mere survival of the immediate storm. I hope these themes resonate with you as they should other readers who are interested in the study of trauma, the effects of climate change on our communities, and the importance of memorializing the past in a way that honors and enlarges it, all told in the Southern Gothic tradition.

Sincerely,

Julie Whitehead

Hope this helps!

Indie Publishing

So I have been scouting out small presses, university presses, and independent publishers for Hurricane Baby: Stories. You know what? The US has LOTS of them–and many take submissions directly from authors without need for an agent. So what criteria am I using in selecting the people I send my manuscript to?

Number 1) I am looking for established presses. Presses that have been around for a while. Presses that know what they are doing. Presses that have a process for what they do. I do not want a press that is a flying by the seat of its pants publishing my work. So I look at the history and mission of the press.

Number 2) I am looking for someone who is buying what I am selling. Not many presses deal in short-story collections. I am looking for information that says explicitly that they publish short-story collections.

Number 3) I am looking at presses that are located in my geographic area. Since I write Southern stories and characters, I look for Southern presses. I have sent to a few presses that are located outside of the American South, but not many. I want someone who can read in a Southern accent because that’s how I write.

Number 4) I look at presses that deal only in electric submissions. A few presses and prizes out there still require sending a paper copy of the manuscript. I judge them for this–it means, quite frankly, that they aren’t evolving with the times. It’s the 21st-century. Electronic submission is where it’s at.

Number 5) I am not ruling out presses that may require a submission fee, especially for contests. Lots of people won’t pay those fees out of principle, citing that the money is supposed to flow to the writer, not the press. I’m not doing it often, and there is a limit to what I plan to spend. But let’s not act like writers have never spent money to send off their manuscripts– postage and printing costs for sending in a finished paper manuscript was expensive, too.

Number 6) If I’m really on the fence about a particular publishing house, I look for something intangible that says, “We take your work seriously.” One press I have really been considering published two books by a professor of mine–but I just don’t like the tone of their website. I want a press that means business–in every sense of the word. So I’m not sending there.

Bottom line–publishing is a business. And I want a press that has an established track record publishing what I am offering that ultimately understands my work and has the means and the vision to do so. So far, so good. Thanks for reading!

Professional Milestone

I experienced an important professional milestone this week—I got my first rejection of Hurricane Baby: Stories on Friday.

Why do I phrase it that way? Let me explain.

The rejection was from the same group that included my novella, Looking For Home, in their 2018 novella anthology. I enjoyed working with them and felt like they should get a crack at this project as well as other presses that I have not worked with before. I pitched it to them as a novel-in-stories (which may be a misnomer for this project, but I thought it was worth a try). They sent a very nice note saying it wasn’t a fit for them and wishing me the best of luck with it.

So what did I do?

I got back online and found another strong, independent press to send the manuscript to, checked over my list of further places I want to send it as they open up for submissions, and kept typing away at whatever I wanted to work on.

Back when I was pitching my first novel to New York publishers in 2006 (when there were more than the Big Five), I was just that sanguine about those rejections, too. But as the rejections kept coming, I sank into a depression. At first I was saying, “I’ve been rejected by X of the finest publishing houses in New York.” But as the time wore on, I started to seriously doubt myself and my work.

I’m not doing that this time.

I have set a date for when I will stop sending it out. I am the only one that knows that date. And I have a plan for what I will do if everyone I have already sent to and plan to send to rejects it. What I know now that I didn’t know then is that rejection letters are not grades. The world will not end every time I receive a rejection. I need to act with grace and humility for my own sanity. Grace for myself and humility about my work.

One of my MFA mentors said one time in class “Not everyone gets an agent and a New York publisher.” I have to trust that the work will find its audience when the time is right and the audience is ready.

Different writers handle rejection differently. One of my MFA mates sends her work to two more outlets every time she gets a rejection. Others delete the rejection from their email and never think about it again. Others say they wallpaper their office with their rejections. Still others shoot for 100 rejections in a year—and say that if they experience only a five percent acceptance rate, that’s five places their work appears during that year.

The journey doesn’t end with one rejection. That’s the takeaway. 

Asking For Help

I recently sent Hurricane Baby as an entry in to an open call for manuscripts and one of the items requested in the call was a list of published authors who might support the book’s publication with a book blurb. I thought it was awfully early in the process to be asking that question, but I sat down and thought: whom should I ask?

It’s a question that can come up at any point at the manuscript selling/publishing process, and it’s a way for the publisher or press to get an answer to another question about you as a writer–who do you know that supports your work so unreservedly that they would be willing to lend their name to its publication?

I immediately had an answer to the question because I had workshopped and read parts of Hurricane Baby in my MFA program, and I emailed three of my instructors to ask if they would be willing for me to put their names down for that list. Each one has their own relationships with the writing community and have published books in their respective fields, and each one is intimately familiar with my work due to having served on the thesis committee for my degree. I also wrote down a couple of other names in case any one of those three felt they could not help me support the book.

It’s a good idea to develop relationships throughout your literary community (whoever might be included in that catch-all term) because so much of this business depends on your ability to form good relationships. You need to be able to form relationships with those editing your work. reading your work, and marketing your work. You need to be able to trust that every part of your team wants the same thing you do–for your work to succeed.

But we writers are often a crochety lot. We have assorted hangups, opinions, and neuroses about our work and about other people’s work. (Roxane Gay is famous for cultivating nemeses as well as supporters). It can often feel impossible to communicate with other writers–we may feel left out of the club for any number of reasons. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying to have relationships because every writer needs a supportive community of other writers–be they mentors, classmates, internet buddies. or simply friendly faces in your particular crowd.

How did I go about asking? I emailed all three and simply explained what the press wanted, and would they be willing for me to list their names as possible blurbers for the work? Within forty-eight hours, each one had returned an email expressing their support. One even said he appreciated being asked! So that was good. I will also email the other three on my list who are a little less familiar with the story to see if they could also be resources if when the time comes for blurbs, any one of those three had to back out.

Other more established writers may have different ideas about asking for support. But my main message is this–it is easier to ask people you already have relationships with to support you than to try to invite people you barely know into your fold. Just my two-cents worth.

So How Do You Do It?

How do you take on a long project and stick with it to completion? Good question.

One way to NOT do it is to talk about it too much. I try to reserve my initial enthusiasm for the project by keeping it under wraps. I actually started revising Hurricane Baby in January of this year but didn’t blog about it until much later. Why? Because I was afraid that I would lose enthusiasm for it if I talked it out too much, exposed too many of my ideas to scrutiny before they were fully formed.

Another way to keep the enthusiasm strong is to think about it in terms of craft and process instead of results. I used to find myself so carried away with the future of a project that I lost sight of the project itself. This phenomenon happened to me with this manuscript as well, which is why I abandoned it for a bit in April and May–I thought too much about where I wanted it to publish and who I wanted to pitch it to that I forgot I needed to spare my creativity for finishing it first.

Another way to keep the enthusiasm is to limit the project to something achievable. If you set out to write the Great American Novel, I guarantee that somewhere along the line you will freeze up because you will realize that the project is not living up to the hype you have put on it in your mind. I set out to write a series of short stories that were linked by Hurricane Katrina. I limited it to twelve stories. Only after finishing that initial plan of those twelve did I allow myself to think about how I could make it longer and bigger and more extensive.

As you get further into the story and the initial enthusiasm begins to wane, then it’s time to think about enlisting an accountability partner. For me, having a deadline is a blessing because it means I cannot take off too many days from writing or dawdle too long over any one particular story problem. And having someone eagerly waiting to read what you’ve written can be a boost to your productivity in that the audience is no longer just you–it’s someone else whom you are now accountable.

Just a few suggestions that have helped me sustain energy to stick with this project and finish it.

And Just Like That

I. FINISHED. THE. BOOK.

I got on a writing roll the Saturday before Labor Day and did not stop until I finished midweek last week. I wrote like a crazy person. (Which I am, but that’s another blog.) I revised both storylines until the tension was white-hot in each one and the knife was buried up to the hilt in my insides with not being sure what the characters were going to do next. But as all stories do, they ended and my eighth revision of Hurricane Baby is in the books.

And I decided I had enough. I ran it through spell-and-grammar-check a few more times as I refined certain passages and finally found a search-and-replace that fixed the worst of the mistakes I had introduced accidentally. I bit the bullet on some things that my reader said needed to be changed that I had resisted changing when I was rewriting new passages, but I finally broke down and took out some dialogue tags that had been near and dear to my heart. I searched for words that were used too often and found replacements.

And now I am going to start sending it out to small publishers and university presses. I’m entering three contests for short-story collections and sending to someone who already published a novella of mine just for a try to market it as a novel-in-stories. And I picked out two others to send to because they are known to be open to Southern writing. So that’s six so far. Then I will wait and send to others if none of those work out.

It’s an exhilarating feeling to be done with this round. I’m certain that anyone who is interested in publishing it will require more. Because perfection is not of this world. But I think I have taken it pretty far and done some pretty honest work in telling these stories I have carried around in my head and on my hard drive for far too long. (I also finally saved it into the cloud!) That’s all I meant to do–tell some honest stories.

So now we wait. I hope I can have some good news in the coming weeks. I’ll keep you posted!

Surprise, Surprise.

I had another real gut check moment this week. Two, actually. I got into my revisions and suddenly realized I have to rewrite almost every bit of Tommy and Cindi’s storyline. The first story is fine–now. I have to totally rewrite the second for it to be from Tommy’s point of view, then that means that every other story in that arc has to be rewritten, too.

So I resigned myself to doing that. Scared I would mess it up by doing it, so popped out all five stories into their own document to revise on in case it’s too hard and I have to give it up.

Then Saturday I realized that once that one is beefed up the way I want it to be, that James and Lori’s story arc was terribly weak compared to the others. I needed more juice for it too. I started fussing to my writing friends. It was so demoralizing for about a day to think that just when I thought I was done, that those characters were crying for more development as well. But since I had already decided on one set of revisions, it seemed deciding on another set wasn’t as hard.

But oh, I fussed about it to my writing friend for this project. She listened so patiently over Facebook Messenger as I went “Augh!” over and over talking about how I knew it all needed to be done. She first advised me to not do it at all if it was going to drive me this crazy. Send it out as it was and see what happened.

I realized I’d rather not send it out at all than do that.

And then I thought of a book that just got published recently. By someone I knew. Who isn’t even a writer by profession–he was an accounting professor at my alma mater. By a press that had rejected Hurricane Baby when I first was sending it out.

So. I thought “Boy howdy, if he can get a book published in this environment, SO CAN I.”

So I am making the changes. Started last night during a rain delay of the football game I had been planning to watch. And I went in hot on it and am now on my way. I am going to succeed with Hurricane Baby as far as it remains in my power. I’m going to write something I am proud of, even if it never gets published. And I’m enjoying ever second.

Plans For Revision

So I heard back from Laurie Marshall, my workshop mate that read Hurricane Baby. We swapped manuscripts–I read her fiction chapbook and read mine. She did a wonderful job with feedback–giving me notes in the manuscript, then writing me a document that noted big trends and suggestions for throughout the manuscript.

It was all very positive and uplifting with a lot of practical advice sandwiched in that I agree with. A few things are issues I always struggle with, like descriptions of settings and characters. I try every manuscript to get better at that and am glad when someone can push me to get even better at it because I know I struggle with it.

But the cast of characters is set, the plot is set, and the form is set. So that represents a huge advance in the process. She only judged one story as being much weaker than the others, and it was among one of the last I wrote, so I’m not surprised. It’s the last section of Tommy Hebert and Cindi Delafosse’s story, the new arc I added in this revision.

Tommy’s Hurricane Katrina story opens with him doing rescue work throughout the parish, and the subsequent drinking problem he develops after seeing a scene that scars him for life. I plan to plant the seeds for the resolution that is in that story earlier in the timeline throughout the other stories in that arc and plan to put in as much work as possible to bring that arc up to the standards of the others. I’m looking forward to starting Monday on the revisions!

Editing Slowly

I am still doing edits to Hurricane Baby, making comma and quotation mark changes throughout the document. I’ve discovered the limits of search-and-replace edits–you can insert as many errors as you fix this way. Now I am down to the reading the entire document again stage of proofreading. Finding all the periods that need to be commas and vice-versa. Correcting the backwards quotation marks throughout. Trying to make sure the right character names are attached to the correct dialogue.

I hope next week to be able to report on the newest revision direction once I get feedback from another beta reader, someone who can tell me what is working on a deeper level than maybe the ones who’ve read it so far. I think the next edit will not involve huge revisions but probably smaller, sentence-level deepening of character motivations and making areas that I feel are clear and understandable even more so.

It’s all important when it comes to getting the attention of an editor–characters, plot, story, grammar, arcs, climaxes, denouments, endings–they all fit together to make or break a book, and what I need to know is what more needs to be done. Hopefully I will find out this week. Wish me well on my journey!

Proofing

So now I am at the nitpicking stage of writing–correcting commas, passive voice, etc. etc. One of my readers said I used passive voice too often. So I did a daring exercise–I ran a total find-and-replace that deleted all instances of the word “HAD”.

It worked.

I’m putting all my sentences into active voice with that one deletion. Often it came out cleanly without needing to change the sentence at all. Other times I had to work out the new tense of the action verb that it preceded. But I will be on the lookout for this in manuscripts from now on.

So in checking all my prose I am correcting grammar and rewriting sentences and doing all those tiny, tiny tasks that make a manuscript look professional and polished. I work on one chapter a day, passing the time until my last reader gets back with me with feedback on the story as a whole.

After I hear back, I will hopefully pull the manuscript apart again and make improvements and make it even better. And I think it can be better. I’m under no illusions that what I’ve done is the best I can do. But I may have done the best I can do for this story now without more input. So I am looking forward to that.