Smokin' Hot New Trends in the Christian Fiction Market

As promised, our esteemed friend Sally Stuart, compiler of The Christian Writers' Market Guide, is here as a guest blogger today. In one of her Q&A responses, she tells below how to get the attention of an agent and/or editor. We here at NovelMatters remind you of our now-running contest, Audience With an Agent. Six winning entries will be read by Wendy Lawton of Book & Such Literary Agency. Submission details under the "promotions" tab. So get those manuscripts polished until they shine, and listen to the wisdom of Sally Stuart as she tells us what impressions and data she gleaned from the new edition of the Guide which just went to press.....

Question: What are the most significant changes you've seen in this upcoming Christian Writers' Market Guide, as compared to the previous one?

Sally Stuart: It seems that most of the changes this year are somehow connected to the advancement of technology. For years I have stressed the importance of submitting material to an editor by name, but every year it seems like more and more publishers are not naming editors in the guide and are asking that submissions be sent by e-mail to a generic e-mail address, or not even supplying an e-mail address but requiring the use of an online submission form.

Of course, one of the most significant changes is the drop in the number of markets. Although there are 18 new book publishers for 2010, the total number is 384--34 less than last year. There are just under 600 periodicals listed (35 new), but 54 fewer than last year. I am hearing of more publications going out of business every week now.

Question: You have your finger on the pulse of Christian publishing. What's hot in book-length Christian fiction right now?

Sally Stuart: Although Amish books seem to be all the buzz these days, I checked to see which genres increased in interest based on publishers' responses in the topical listings in the next edition. The Teen/YA category actually went up the most with 14 new publishers. The next batch tied at 13 new publishers apiece: biblical, frontier, and novellas. Frontier/romance was up 11; followed by historical, mystery/suspense, and historical/romance up 9. The rest ranged from 1-6. Science fiction was the only one not to gain any, and a new genre this year is cozy mysteries with 24 publishers showing interest.

Question: The Christian book industry, like all book industries right now, is suffering. Are editors willing to take chances on first-time novelists?

Sally Stuart: I think publishers are always on the look-out for the next great novelist. But they want really great fiction. Your best chance for making that agent or editor connection is to attend conferences where there are a lot of them present. That's where they're out there looking.

Question: What's the most important thing you would convey to aspiring Christian novelists?

Sally Stuart: The best thing a novelist can do is work on polishing his/her craft. Strive to be exceptional--to stand out in the crowd. Be sure the book is not only well written but well edited. Publishers these days are short-handed and they want books that will require little or no editing. But if an editor sends the book back for rewrites, do it. I'm amazed at how many authors just ignore those requests and just drop it or try another publisher. If a publisher is willing to invest their time to make you a success, you owe them your best.

Sally E. Stuart
Christian Writers' Market Guide
www.stuartmarket.com (order the market guide here)
www.stuartmarket.blogspot.com (marketing info here)

Opening Paragraphs I Have Loved

Patti's post on Monday reminded me how much I love that delicious moment when I spot a new novel in a bookstore, pick it up, and turn to the first page. Will this story fascinate/frighten/enchant me? Will I find something transcendent?

I loved the excerpt Patti gave us from Elizabeth Berg's The Promises We Keep. You too? Did you want -yes, oh yes!- to keep reading?

Today I searched among my favorite novels to find examples of Les Edgerton's ten components of a great opening. The result is a longish post largely made up of other people's brilliance - indented so you can tell their words from mine.

1) The Inciting Incident

My friendship with Sharon K. Souza began with the opening paragraphs of her novel, Every Good and Perfect Gift. You may have read that we became friends at a fiction critique clinic at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. Before the clinic began, while we were reading each other's manuscripts in preparation, Sharon sent me an email. But before she did that, I'd already read the following, and knew she had both my respect and my friendship:

“Gabby, I want a baby.”

I choked on my soda, grabbed the tissue DeeDee offered as I coughed up the liquid I’d inhaled, then looked to see if she was as serious as she sounded. She was.

“I want a baby,” she said again, looking for all the world as if she’d uttered nothing more than, “Look at that, a hangnail."

2) The Story-worthy Problem

I met Debbie Fuller Thomas while she was writing Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon. When she told me the concept, I thought it sounded like a good story. Then I read her intriguing first paragraph, and knew that it was much better than good:

We weren't strangers to this courtroom. The first time we came, it was to petition to have Ginger's hospital birth records opened. When you lose a child to a genetic disease that doesn't haunt your family, you want to know why.

3) The Initial Surface Problem

Ever find a passage so good you have to read it aloud to someone else? When I shared the opening lines of Bonnie Grove's Talking to the Dead, my husband said, "I like her already."

Kevin was dead and the people in my house wouldn't go home. They mingled after the funeral, eating sandwiches, drinking tea, and spoke in muffled tones. I didn't feel grateful for their presence. I felt exactly nothing.

Funerals exist so we can close doors we'd rather leave open. But where did we get the idea that the best approach to facing death is to eat Bundt cake?

4) The Setup

One of those delicious bookstore moments happened when I picked up The Book of Fred, a novel about a young girl raised in a religious cult, by Abby Bardi:

When Little Freddie took sick, I knew things would change, and change fast. We sat next to his bed all day, laying our hands on him and saying the Beautiful Prayer, but he just got hotter to the touch and more shivery. His skin looked yellow, like he was turning into old paper. I laid my hand on his forehead and said "Get thee hence" a bunch of times, but it didn't help. That night I had a dream that the Archangel Willie came to me and said, "Lo, Mary Fred, thou wilt be traveling down the road. Thou wilt be somewheres else when the Big Cat comes. So look to yourself and say Ho."

When I woke up, I said Ho a bunch of times. Then I went to see Little Freddie, but he was already gone.

5) Backstory

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells is all about backstory, about the way our past plays with our present.

Sidda is a girl again in the hot heart of Louisiana, the bayou world of Catholic saints and voodoo queens. It is Labor Day, 1959, at Pecan Grove Plantation, on the day of her daddy's annual dove hunt. While the men sweat and shoot, Sidda's gorgeous mother, Vivi, and her gang of girlfriends, the Ya-Yas, play bourrée, a cut-throat Louisiana poker, inside the air-conditioned house. On the kitchen blackboard is scrawled: SMOKE, DRINK, NEVER THINK--borrowed from Billie Holiday. When the ladies take a break, they feed the Petites Ya-Yas (as Ya-Ya offspring are called) sickly sweet maraschino cherries from the fridge in the wet bar.

6) A Stellar Opening Sentence

The first sentence in Walter Wangerin's The Book of Sorrows is wonderful, as are all of his sentences, especially in this novel, and in its companion (which should be read first), The Book of the Dun Cow:

Two Hens, white in a yellow field, walking with that thrust of the head which suggests that they are going secretly, on tiptoe, as spies, or comic exaggerations of spies, placing their claws with infinite care.

7) Language

The thing about Latayne Scott's suspense novel, Latter Day Cipher is that it is more than suspenseful. It is also thoughtful and graceful. Witness the eerily beautiful scene of the crime that begins the story:

There on the damp pine needles, Kirsten Young lay on her back, a serene Ophelia in her dusky pond of blood. The dark irises of her bloodshot eyes stared unseeing into the branches above her. The sun had burst through the clouds after the sudden downpour and now blazed above the canopy of conifers and aspens in Provo Canyon. Deep in its recesses, the light filtered down in vertical sheets of champagne dust that played across the body.

8) Character

I think it's Patti Hill's instinct for humor that allows her to create such wonderfully dimensional characters as we find in The Queen of Sleepy Eye. She knows what makes people simultaneously funny and poignant, what makes them real:

I was no bigger than a bug in my mother’s womb when the two of us drove away from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, toward our lives as a duet.

Mom had no destination in mind. The Kaskaskia River wound through the trees like a silver ribbon. The scene reminded her of a photograph that had hung over her parents’ bed, so she parked the Pontiac and slept for the first time in three days. Months later I was born at St. Margaret’s Hospital within a stone’s throw of that parking space.

9) Setting

Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy won my heart forever on the first page, not because I had any idea what might take place in the novel, but because, whatever the story, I wanted to spend time in this world where the sentences ticked away the moments like the quiet swing of a pendulum:

Upstate New York.

August 1906.

Half-moon and a wrack of gray clouds.

Church windows and thirty nuns singing the Night Office in Gregorian chant. Matins. Lauds. And then silence.

Wind, and a nighthawk teetering on it and yawing away into woods.

Wallowing beetles in green pond water.

Toads.

Cattails sway and unsway.

Grape leaves rattle and settle again.

Workhorses sleeping in horse manes of pasture.

Wooden reaper. Walking plow. Hayrick.

Limestone pebbles on the paths in the garth. Jasmine. Lilac. Narcissus.

Mother Céline gracefully walking, head down.

Crickets.

Mooncreep and spire.

10) Foreshadowing

Gilead may be my favorite novel of all time. In her first paragraph, Marilynne Robinson lets you taste the gentle wisdom, the affection, the tender story to come.

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren't very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you've had with me and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don't laugh! because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.

Yes, yes Patti. We must keep reading.

Your turn, dear readers. Tell us the opening paragraphs that made you fall in love with your favorite novels. I can't wait to read your comments.

Hooked?

Just a reminder that a wonderful novel, Zora and Nicky by Claudia Mair Burney, is our May giveaway. To be eligible, make your first-ever comment to one of our blogs, mentioning this is your maiden voyage, so to speak. We'll send a copy of Claudia's book to you and to one of your friends. Instant book club! The drawing will be May 29th, so--ahem--speak up!

Back when Melville started his epic novel, Moby Dick, with "Call me Ishmael," his readers knew they were in for a ride. Most would have been familiar with the implications of such a name. Ishmael was an outcast, second rate, a bit of an embarrassment, and he was the chosen narrator. The reader was hooked.

How do you decide which book to read? I read the first sentence. If that tickles my imagination, I continue on through the first paragraph, and I may read through the first couple pages. That's when the smokin' credit card comes out.

It turns out that most people choose novels this way. That makes beginnings crucial. Beginnings must sell the story within the first sentence, a paragraph, or scene--first to an agent or editor and then to a reader.

Enter a whole book on writing the irresistible opening scene, Hooked by Les Edgerton, who identifies ten core components of an effective opening: (1) the inciting incident; (2) the story-worthy problem; (3) the initial surface problem; (4) the setup; (5) backstory; (6) a stellar opening sentence; (7) language; (8) character; (9) setting; and (10) foreshadowing. Edgerton claims the first four are the most important with the others vary by degree, depending on the story.

Egads! That's quite a balancing act!

Knowing the components of a strong beginning is one thing, constructing them artfully and effectively is another. So what gold nugget can I extract from Hooked for you today?

Beyond the components mentioned, Edgerton reveals the true need for a hook-through-the-lip beginning: Novel readers are following the same trend as the rest of society. Groan. Their attention spans have shrunk. It's up to the writer to jump into the story in such a way that the reader feels the story's current and surrenders to the ride. I'm not necessarily talking about Class V rapids, but the writer must respect the reader's intelligence, their ability to catch up to the characters and the story without tons of backstory. And by the way, no fair leaving your reader confused either. It's all a delicate dance, to be sure.

For our discussion today: Readers, what makes you commit to a novel? Writers, what components of a strong beginning shall we open for discussion and questions? Anyone, toss the title of a novel with a strong beginning out for us to snatch up.

Pardon me this indulgence. This is one of my favorite openings from The Things We Keep by Elizabeth Berg:

Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still--"Folks," he just said, "we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look." I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake.

Whenever I see a sight like these clouds, I think maybe everyone is wrong; maybe you can walk on air. Maybe we should just try. Everything could have changed without our noticing. Laws of physics, I mean. Why not? I want it to be true that such miracles occur. I want to stop the plane, put the kickstand down, and have us all file out there, shrugging airline claustrophobia off our shoulders. I want us to be able to breathe easily this high up, to walk on clouds as if we were angels, to point out our houses to each other way, way, way down there; and there; and there. How proud we would suddenly feel about where we live, how tender toward everything that's ours--our Mixmasters, resting on kitchen counters; our children, wearing the socks we bought them and going about children's business; our mail lying on our desks; our gardens, tilled and expectant. It seems to me it would just come with the perspective, this rich appreciation.

I lean my forehead against the glass, sigh. I am forty-seven years old and these longings come to me with the same seriousness and frequency that they did when I was a child.

Shall we keep reading?

Can I Tell You a Secret?

A writer writes because she's got something in her craw. Why else would she return to the same motifs story after story after story? And writers do.

I was aware that both my novels were about women who'd run off to secluded houses to be alone. Bonnie pointed out they are also about women whose husbands are dead. (That is a worry, but I promise you, I adore my husband.) A reader suggested they are all about crazy, wild, bohemian women. (Hmmm...)

I take comfort knowing I'm not the only one who does this. In Writing Towards Wisdom: the Writer as Shaman, Robert Burdette Sweet reminds us:

"After all what Hawthorne did was write guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. And Kafka did write father, punishment, father, father, father and Hemingway did growl cowardice, courage, cowardice, cowardice."

My hunch is that a good novel is the pearl that emerges from the pain that's worked its way into the writers inner life.

In Alone With All That Could Happen, David Jauss suggests that fiction is a lie told in the interest of truth:

"Writing about the secret life is not, then, a matter of revealing actual secrets but of distorting and altering them, consciously or unconsciously, so they tell a larger kind of truth. If you simply reveal a secret-- tell the god's honest truth about it-- you may in fact tell a lie about your real, inner life. At the very least, you will be false to the primary characteristic of the secret, which is that it is secret."

In her excellent blog, My Family Secrets (where you can anonymously post your own), Mary Demuth writes, "In Daisy Chain, many characters harbor secrets, but only a few are brave enough to bring them to the light of day and find freedom and hope." I'm glad there are writers like Mary who are brave enough to obey Emily Dickinson who told us to "Tell All the Truth but tell it slant," so as to offer comforting, hopeful fellowship to her readers.

What about you? Have you noticed recurring themes in the writing of a favorite author? How have your own secrets added power to your fiction?

Writing and the Rock Star Life.

Can ya hear the crowds chanting your name? Can ya just hear the roar of approval when you step onto the stage before an audience numbering in the tens of thousands - all wearing t-shirts with your picture on them - adjust your microphone and. . . read aloud.

Chances are, no matter how popular an author is, a mosh pit has never opened up at one of his readings. Few teenaged girls have passed out while a poet laureate signs 8x10 glossies. Scalpers rarely appear outside of libraries.

Yet writers, like rock stars, crave feedback. Even the most secure author can, on occasion be caught cruising Amazon, checking her ranking. And it's not an act of pure ego - most often it is in search of an answer to the question, "Has my work touched another life? Does this art in my soul resonate with another soul out there?"

I don't know what writers did before the Internet and all its instant goodness. Want to know how well your book is selling? Just pull up a book selling site and check your ranking. Want to connect with someone who is reading your book right now? Jump on Twitter, or Facebook, or Shelfari, or any number of sites where readers gather to talk books. And let's not forget blogging - my personal favorite. What I love about blogs is the ability to have a long, ongoing discussion between several readers and writers over periods of time.

The Internet is a great tool for marketing books, but I've found, just as Debbie discovered, that the true beauty of being online is how easily you can connect with someone you love to read. I read a wonderful book on writing called Spunk & Bite: A writers guide to punchier, more engaging language & style by Arthur Plotnik. I loved it (it's the only book on writing I've read all the way through and the only one I recommend on a regular basis). So, I blogged about it. The next day Arthur Plotnik commented on my blog. I 'bout fell over. Then he came back and commented again. I e-mailed him and asked if he would consider appearing on my blog as a guest. He accepted (and wrote a brilliant piece on staging you will enjoy reading), and we have e-mailed back and forth now and again, ever since.

What have I learned about being an author online? I've learned that famous people tend to be regular folks who love to connect with people. I've learned that the best thing for me to do when I'm online is to be professional (I often compare going online to stepping on a stage - people are watching). And, I've been blessed to learn that there are people who are as eager to connect with me as I am to connect with them - and that is a huge blessing.

Are you living the rock star life online? We'd love to hear about it!

Charming Notes of a Guerilla Marketer

Welcome to all who have visited NovelMatters for the first time during the past month! We hope you'll chime in and help to make our discussions amazing.

We have two copies of a fabulous book to give away this month: Zora and Nicky by Claudia Mair Burney. One will be won by a reader who has recently joined our ranks but hasn't yet posted a comment, and the other is for his/her friend who has not yet visited NovelMatters. Just comment on a post this month and mention that it's your first time, and you'll be entered in the drawing. At the time of the drawing, you'll give us contact information for a friend who has never visited NovelMatters and we will arrange for them to receive the other book. The drawing will be on the last Friday (May 29) of the month. Easy, huh?

I had a very eye-opening experience recently. I sent an email of appreciation to a best-selling author in the general fiction market - one whose books grace the window displays of every major bookseller in the nation. I didn't really expect a reply back. At least, not from her directly. Possibly from an office assistant who would follow up with a general acknowledgment in the next few weeks. To my surprise, the author emailed me back within a few hours (at midnight, her time), commenting on something I'd said in my email. It was no auto-reply. The next morning, I sent one more email, mentioning something I'd neglected to say the first time--which of her books was my favorite and to please keep them coming. About an hour later, I got a follow-up reply from her Blackberry. On a Sunday morning, no less! I was very impressed that this well-known author would take time from her family on a weekend to make contact with an anonymous fan.

I would have thought that when an author reached her level of success, they wouldn't need to be quite so hands-on in regard to marketing. Sure, she speaks at different venues, probably all over the world, and does book signings, but to take time to respond to one lone reader? Like I said, it was a lesson in marketing.

In the book, Guerilla Marketing for Writers, the authors state that promotion isn't over when someone buys a book. The point is to make customers for life by a never-ending circle of communication with readers and to "understand the immense potential value of every reader."

In Carolyn See's book, Making a Literary Life, she suggests sending one charming note to a novelist, editor, journalist, poet or agent whom you admire each day as a way of connecting and making your own literary life. I would add 'readers' to her list.

I have to say that a simple, personal acknowledgment from an author whom I admire has made her seem more real--more genuine. I think I'm a reader for life.

How has it impacted you to make a connection with a favorite author? I met Ray Bradbury once, and he was a very genial, interesting man who laughed easily with his fans. As writers, how does receiving notes from readers help to encourage you?

By the way, the author who emailed me back so quickly was Jodi Picoult.

The Plotting Process: No "Right" Way; No "Wrong" Way

Before I talk about the method I use when writing a novel, I'd like to chime in on the first point of Latayne's post on Wednesday regarding a question she was asked by a conference attendee over the weekend. I too was dismayed to hear that an author would think he or she could take a secular story, add some Christian elements, and voila! have something that could easily be sold in the Christian marketplace. Putting aside the fact that selling to a CBA publisher is no easier than selling to an ABA publisher, Christian elements aren't something to be tacked on to a manuscript as an afterthought, any more than elements of horror are tacked on to a story that was meant to be anything but horror. If Christian elements don't emanate from the heart and soul of the author, it will feel as false as it is. That author may get away with it once, but it's unlikely that readers of Christian fiction -- who are a discerning audience -- will buy into it twice.

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Now to the question of how we plot our novels. I loved reading the comments to Wednesday's post and seeing that even in our differences there are a lot of similarities. I've just begun my tenth novel (2 or 3 of which were great learning experiences but will never see publication) and until now my pattern was always the same. I had a beginning and end in mind when I launched the project, with a general idea of how I planned to get from point A to point B. Everything else evolved out of that, often surprising me, including most of the supporting characters. I've loved that process, loved the surprises I found along the way, loved the subplots that presented themselves.

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But this time I'm using Jeff Gerke's "How to Find Your Story." Jeff will be our guest blogger in June, and we'll talk more in-depth about the process then. It's a method that's easily adapted to the amount of detail the author wishes to develop before the writing begins. In my case I've penciled in more detail about plot, characterization, motives, etc. than I've ever begun with, but less than other authors I know. For me, it's an experiment. I'm hoping the writing comes easier without barricading the detours I find so intriguing. Next time I might try Latayne's method of taking apart a novel to use as a pattern. If I do, I have just the book in mind.

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But here's the thing I continue to learn: there is no right way; there is no wrong way. There's only the way that works for the author. And a particular method doesn't have to carry over from one project to the next. That's what's so wonderful about the creative process . . . it's so creative.

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Visitors who are readers and not writers, have you learned anything interesting about the writing process in the blog posts and comments this week? We'd love to hear from you.