Christine Grace's Blog

A big thanks to all of you who requested the Sydney's Skeletons giveaway. Cheers to everyone including to those who won!

Susan Sontag, American writer, teacher, and political activist wrote: "An interesting role of the writer is to be somewhat adversarial. You want to keep shifting what the center is and that means supporting things that are more despised. One doesn't worry about reputation if one is a person of honor."

Her words are not to be misconstrued with supporting cruel acts, rather, fighting for justice, for causes that advance society for the greater good.

Three years ago at a writers conference I signed in to pitch to the only agent left—the popular ones were taken. The main genre this agent represented was not the historical fiction I wrote but Christianity. Having written a non-Christian story, naturally I doubted we were right for each other and I told him so. He assured me he represented many genres with the exception of erotica and horror, so I should give it a shot. I dove into the premise of my story then afterward, grappled with questions I had for him—I had to protect the years I’d spent cavorting through the words that became my novel before releasing it to him. Still, I neither experienced a wash of brilliant light, nor visualized my future with this agent. I just had uncertainty.

The standard six to eight weeks later an email from his office arrived that stated, “As we read the manuscript, this looks like borderline erotica. Your query gave no hint of this.” I reviewed the line a second, third and fourth time, stunned as if I'd been given a handful of salt. Had I tapped into or conjured a side of myself I wasn’t aware of? And if so, does one paragraph of an expression of love in a three hundred page historical fiction throw it into a completely different category?

I thought about my story, the research, the journalistic training used for it, the interviews, the methodical deliberate writing, refining and refining over the course of years for historical accuracy, and the notion that from all of this I had spawned erotica. My writing group who’d read and critiqued my book howled with laughter, saying they’ll add this to the list of glib brush-offs in response to query letters that many writers receive, such as: “I didn’t love this enough” or “This would be difficult to place in the current market.” And now, “This looks like borderline erotica. Your query gave no hint of this.” The critique group added further, that although I viewed myself as a creator, I should not insult authors of erotica by announcing my “newfound talent.”

That night, heading to the bathroom in the dark, I slipped on a page in Poets&Writers I’d tagged to read the next day. I flipped the light switch and peeled my toe off a portion of Ben Arthur’s article: “We don’t have to love a piece of art to respond to it. In fact, sometimes it’s the work that we dislike, the work that bothers us, that makes us react the most.”

Dear readers, thank you for your inquiry of my novel, Sydney’s Skeletons. It will be re-released on June 22nd, though I project an earlier date, and available on Amazon. This adult mystery saga, also a historical fiction is for a broad audience. It deals with such myriad topics as family issues, social pressures, and political intrigue.

Dear Goodreads Giveaway participants of "Rising From the Mire" for February and May,

I truly appreciate the effort and time you’ve taken to request my book. Non winners and winners alike, with all my heart, I thank you.

Kind regards,

Christine

I'm excited about this year's (2016) new releases. Learning, skill and soul have been put into them and dared publication, which has encouraged me to hunker down—dig into my own work. Some stories are cemented in a genre, while others defy genre classification. Regardless, these new releases by new and seasoned authors reflect our era. They are bold, interrogating how language works. I’ve added a number to my Goodreads list.

I drifted through high school, but reading and writing was an escape. Although I didn’t like many of the books we had to read, I got really excited by Alice Munro and Toby Wolff, about the content of dialogue, the timing. I continue to be inspired by the greats such as Hemingway and Austen, however now I’m growing increasingly affected by the hidden gems in Indie authors.

I walked out of the "pitching" room with soaking armpits concealed in a jacket. With the agent's business card in hand I exclaimed to writers conference staff members, "I did it. It went well!" I firmly believed that my manuscript, the uncensored spilling, was on its way. I realized two months after my pitch to a well-known agent that it didn't go as well as I thought it had.

During the pitch I hadn't realized the significance of the agent's questions: 1) Do you write alone or in a group?

"In a group," I replied, reading by his expression that I had answered correctly. He wanted to know whether I was a hermit or in a healthy writers group receiving constructive criticism.

2) How do you know that the story has ended?

"Because I can feel it!" I cried out. I realized my blunder after he sniggered. Somehow though, I was able to redeem myself by wringing myself inside out about the premise of the story and his ensuing questions. He seemed to have been moved. "Maybe it's a murder mystery," he commented, in a lighter tone. "Maybe."

Two months later he rejected the manuscript. I remembered how during his lecture before the pitch he urged writers to make sure they know the genre of their story before pitching. This can be tricky. My manuscript was mainstream fiction that he thought might be a murder mystery. As honest and forthright as I was during the pitch, I grappled with whether I pitched in one genre, and sent my manuscript in another thereby appearing misleading.

I think of my story's journey, of the truths I'm rooted in, of the darkness I've edged close to, of reaching for language, of the emptying of myself, of the hope and care of my craft. I could if I let myself be defeated, burn my words, warm myself with them. But I'm not going to. I'll face the reality of it and keep going. I can't help it.