The Dark Deliciousness of WORKING WITH AGENTS AND EDITORS by JOSHUA BELLIN

I’m a complete and total pantser.

No notes. No outlines. No character sketches. No computer programs to help me organize my thoughts and drafts. I just sit down and write.

I make lots of great discoveries this way. But I also produce really messy first drafts.

Now, before seeking publication, I whip my drafts into shape. I revise rigorously. I try to plug all the plot holes, resolve the inconsistencies, deepen the character relationships, all that good stuff. To a certain extent, I like to believe I succeed.

But I still swear by agents and editors to help me polish and—so far as possible—perfect my work.

In the case of my debut, Survival Colony 9, my agent and editor have played very different but equally vital roles. My agent, Liza Fleissig, acted more as a lay reader: she told me what didn’t make sense, what sounded bad, what she liked and didn’t like. That was invaluable to me, as it enabled me to get a feeling for how readers would respond to the story I was trying to tell.

My editor, Karen Wojtyla of Margaret K. McElderry Books, served as more of a critical reader: she spotted logical flaws in the world-building, pinpointed structural problems in the plot, challenged me to rethink the story’s climax. She helped me to draw out deeper thematic resonances that must have been in my mind but that I needed a professional’s eyes to see clearly.

Many writers swear by beta readers and critique groups. For whatever reason, I’m much more comfortable working one-on-one with an agent and editor. They get me, and I get them.

Ultimately, I don’t think it matters where a writer seeks her/his feedback—as long as s/he seeks it. Writing may be solitary, but publishing is anything but.

Even pantsers need partners.



Joshua David Bellin

Survival Colony Nine, Margaret K. McElderry Books, September 2014

Website
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads

Bio:
I've been writing novels since I was eight years old (though admittedly, the first few were very, very short). I taught college for twenty years, wrote a bunch of books for college students, then decided to return to writing fiction. SURVIVAL COLONY NINE is my first novel, but the sequel's already in the works!  I love to read (mostly YA fantasy and science fiction), watch movies (again, mostly fantasy and sci-fi), and spend time in Nature (mostly catching frogs and toads). I'm the world's worst singer, but I play a pretty mean air guitar.  Oh, yeah, and I like monsters. Really scary monsters.

Dishing Secrets about the cover of Survival Colony 9 by Joshua Bellin

Josh Bellin talks about the cover of his debut novel, Survival Colony 9.

Add Survival Colony 9 to your Goodreads TBR list today!

First Lines by Joshua Bellin

What’s the line?

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”?

A tautology, to be sure. But there’s some truth to it in the world of literature.

The first thing I do when I pick up a book is read the first line. (Well, duh…. What am I going to do, read the last line?) But seriously, if the first line is good, chances are the book will be good too. That’s not a foolproof test, of course, but I’d say it’s about 95% reliable.

Here are some of my favorite first lines, from some of my favorite books.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit 

“It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.”—Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber 

“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein 

“It was a pleasure to burn.”—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”—Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games 

(P.S. I always cite this line when people trot out the old chestnut, “never begin your novel with the main character waking up.”)

“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.”—Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City 

“At the beginning of the summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business.”—Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh 

“Querry.”—Joshua David Bellin, Survival Colony 9 

(Okay, I cheated on that one. But it is one of my favorites!)

In life, most of my first lines have been duds. (I think my first line to my future wife was, “Didn’t I see you in the Hartford airport?”) But in literature, I’ve done okay. Maybe that’s because, in literature, you do have a second chance (and a third, and a fourth, and a fortieth) to craft your first line until it’s the one you want.

I’d better end now. I don’t think I’m going to come up with a better line than that. 


Joshua David Bellin’s debut, the YA science-fiction thriller SURVIVAL COLONY 9, comes out September 23 from Margaret K. McElderry Books. Its first line is in fact the main character’s name, Querry. You can connect with Josh on his website, www.joshuadavidbellin.com, or on Twitter @TheYAGuy.

Tuesday Teaser: Survival Colony 9 by Josh Bellin

It’s April Fools Day, but life in Survival Colony 9 is no joke.

The world is a desert where small groups of survivors struggle against heat, starvation, and the creatures known as the Skaldi, monsters that appeared on the planet after war swept away the old world. The narrator, Querry Genn, suffers from memory loss brought on by an accident. In this excerpt, a scouting party investigates the western desert, where the colony has been driven following a Skaldi attack. There they find an abandoned settlement. Through Querry’s eyes, we meet some of the novel’s main characters: the commander of Survival Colony 9, Querry’s father Laman Genn; Laman’s second-in-command, Aleka; and Querry’s nemesis, Yov. We also hear rumors of the Skaldi, who are an ever-present threat in this world.

The trucks crawled up the hill, coughing and wheezing, pulled up on bare dirt and stopped with a squeal. My dad, moving faster than I’d seen him move in weeks, jumped down from the cab. He took a long look at the place, hands on hips, nodding slowly. Then he turned to us.

“Who found it?” He directed his question at Aleka, but I could tell he hoped the answer was me.

“Yov,” she said. “The kid’s got eyes like a hawk.”

My dad stepped over to Yov and reached up to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder. Yov had a calm look on his face, like he was saying, “hey, just doing my job,” but I knew I’d be hearing about this later. From both of them.

“Good work,” my dad said.

Sure enough, Yov looked sidelong at me and smirked.

“We’ll have to double-check,” my dad said. “Aleka, have your team sweep the perimeter. Querry,” he signaled. “Get over here.”

While Aleka and the others fanned out to circle the compound, I accompanied him to the interior, near the crater. For an hour he had me get down on my hands and knees to peer in the dust for signs of Skaldi. He’d taught me how to detect their presence, but it’s not easy. When they leave a body behind, there’s nothing much to see. Emptied, like a sack of skin.

He kept up a running commentary as I crawled around in the dirt searching for evidence. “It doesn’t have to be much,” he reminded me. “Scraps, flakes. Teeth. Anything they might have left behind.”

“What about this?” I lifted a long, thin strip of some translucent material from the floor of a ruined house.

He scrutinized it. “I don’t think so. Bring it back, though. I’ll have Tyris take a look at it.”

Eventually we came to the very lip of the crater. He considered sending me down inside, but the walls fell away steeply and the rock looked precarious. He made me hunt around the edge anyway.

“Seems clean,” I told him when I was done.

“Check again,” he said.

I dropped to the dust and searched once more for signs I couldn’t see.

We strolled back to the others when he was satisfied with my inspection. “Something about this place,” he said. “Familiar. Like I’ve heard someone talk about it before.”

He shook his head, remembering, not remembering. He’d told me stories about what cities used to look like, with shining towers of steel and legions of cars streaming down the avenues. But he’d never seen one himself, not that he could remember. Only the old woman had, and the holes in her memory gaped as wide as the cracks in the houses that were left.

When we returned to the others, I could feel the anticipation in the air. No one budged, but all eyes zeroed in on him.

“Aleka,” he said. “Report.”

“No sign,” she said. “And Laman—there’s food.”

The magic word shivered through the crowd. His face remained composed, but I saw his eyes light up. “Where?”

Aleka led the two of us to the structure farthest from the nucleus of camp, a windowless square of gray cinderblock overlooking the hill’s eastern edge. My dad said it looked like a bomb shelter, but even if bombs had been flying or Skaldi breathing down our necks, there was nowhere near enough room for our whole camp. Probably it had belonged to a single family in the time before. It seemed to be the only building in the compound with working locks, two in fact, one in front and one on a trapdoor that led to a basement level. But the doors stood open, the deadbolts sprung. A flight of rickety wooden stairs led below. And in a corner of the basement, on the packed dirt floor, sat a pyramid of wooden cases filled with rusty metal cans.

“You’re sure it’s edible?” my dad asked, holding one of the cans up in the glow of Aleka’s flashlight.

“According to Tyris, properly canned goods have an effective shelf life of forever,” she answered. “But Laman. . . .”

He lowered the can. “I’m listening.”

“It might be best to take what we can carry and go. I’m not—comfortable here. We’re exposed. There’s only one way out. If they were to block the road. . . .”

“Not their typical behavior,” he said. “And you told me the perimeter’s clean.”

“So far as we can ascertain,” she said. “But this room—I suspect it’s been looted.” She shone her flashlight on the floor, revealing parallel tracks where cases had been dragged. “We may not be the only colony to have visited this place.”

“And the ones who beat us to it are plainly gone,” he replied. “Driven away by Skaldi, most likely. Leaving nothing but food the Skaldi won’t return for.”

“Unless they return for us.”

 

For the latest updates on Survival Colony 9,  

follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or stop by my Website.

The Darker Side of Querry Genn in Survival Colony Nine

 Everyone has a dark side, right? Everyone has secrets.

But what would you do if you woke up one morning and didn’t know anyone you used to know? What would you do if everything you used to know about your friends and family had become a secret?

That’s the situation Querry Genn, the fourteen-year-old narrator of Survival Colony Nine, finds himself in. Querry suffers from traumatic memory loss, so he doesn’t know who anyone is--including himself. And that’s especially bad in Querry’s world, a future world where small colonies fight for existence in the aftermath of catastrophic wars. In this world, memory is both incredibly fragile and incredibly precious. So much of the past has been lost, the survivors can’t afford to lose any more.

So Querry struggles to recover his memory, to remember the people in Survival Colony Nine, to relearn the drills and rituals necessary to survive in the hostile desert the planet has become. But Querry can’t recall anything that occurred before his trauma, and he grows more frustrated and impatient with each passing day.

But that’s not the worst of it.

The worst of it is the Skaldi, creatures that appeared on the planet after the wars of destruction. No one knows what they are or where they came from, but one thing is certain: they possess the ability to consume human beings and mimic the people they consume. Without remembering the members of the colony, Querry can’t be certain anyone is who they say they are. Anyone could be Skaldi in disguise.

His father. His former friends. The colony’s scouts. Anyone.

Even himself.

The darker side of Querry Genn is this uncertainty, the fact that he doesn’t know who to trust, who to believe. The darker side of Querry Genn is the hidden self that might lie within him, or within those closest to him. That hidden self might be an actual monster. But it’s also the terrible doubt he carries, the feelings of suspicion he can’t admit to anyone.

The darker side of Querry Genn is made much darker by his own inability to see.

To read more about Joshua Bellin, check out his WEBSITE. 
Or pre-order Survival Colony Nine HERE