Being a cross-genre writer

Categorizing my writing style has always been a somewhat difficult thing. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King—these are all authors that have had a profound impact on my writing.

I also loved reading comic books as a child, everything from Tales from the Crypt and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery to Shazam, The Spirit, Marvel and DC comics and everything in between. I never missed an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. If I wasn’t reading, I was either writing or playing music. 

  

I read a lot of classics—To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein, Animal Farm, A Brave New World, Atlas Shrugged—but I always seemed to have a predilection toward the macabre and the unusual. Working in a bookstore eventually brought me in contact with a lot of newer authors and I began to read different genres. But the ones that really kept me glued to the page were the adventure and thriller novels—Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, James Patterson, John Grisham, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn—the high-octane stuff.

Around 2003, when I began writing my first complete novel, I decided that I was going to blend all my favorite genres into my writing. Horror, fantasy, science fiction and adventure would all have a place in my book. I loved the life-like characters Stephen King created in his books, but I wanted more action. Clive Cussler’s adventures were captivating, but I wanted something darker, more ominous and creepy. James Rollins’ creatures were frightening, but I wanted a touch of the supernatural, creatures not bound by the laws of physics.

So I created DIABLERO, and brought a demon-possessed Blackbeard the pirate back to life in modern times. It was a character everyone knew, but he wouldn’t be just a pirate—he would have powers to raise an army of the dead and open a gateway to another dimension. The adventure begins in North Carolina, but ends on an island in the Bahamas. Creepy and dark, with lots of action and great characters. It was the kind of book I always wanted to read.

I continued my foray into action/thriller/sci-fi/horror madness with a book called LILITH, another myth that was familiar to people, yet enough of a mystery that I could add some embellishment and still make it believable. It’s my biggest selling book to date.

I figured that the problem with blending all these genres together would be finding an audience. For some readers, a book that incorporates all those styles can be somewhat confusing. “I thought this was supposed to be a thriller? What’s with the supernatural stuff?” “This horror novel sucks—it’s nothing but action!” People who read thrillers don’t necessarily like horror, and people who read horror don’t necessarily like action/thrillers. Some people don’t like the supernatural aspect, while others are offended by the military/black ops aspect of some of my stories. This has been made evident by some not-so-favorable reviews. But the good reviews far outweigh the bad ones on all my books—so far.

I don’t really target audiences, or take polls, or check out the latest trends—I write what I would like to read. I feel like I’m filling a niche, here, because there aren’t many writers that do what I do. Authors who love horror read and write horror books; authors who love adventure/thrillers do the same. I’m not a purist—I happen to get an equal thrill from reading a good sci-fi book, a creepy horror novel or an engaging military adventure. But bringing it all together on the page and making it work is the biggest thrill of all.

For more info on me and my work, check out my website, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

My journey to finding a literary agent

The day has finally arrived when I can say, “I have an agent!” —but not just any agent, mind you—the awesome and talented MacKenzie Fraser-Bub of New York’s Trident Media Group. Now when the phone rings and I jokingly say to my wife, “That might be my agent,” I won’t be joking.

 

  

That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s time to kick back and take it easy. It’s more like a new beginning, kind of like stepping up my game and saying, “Okay, I’ve made all this noise, tooted my horn and got the attention of a major agency. Now, it’s time to live up to the hype I created for myself.”

Which I fully intend to do.

But how, you may well ask, did you get this far? What’s your secret? To which I answer: perseverance and persistence. I would also like to think I write good books, as well. Put those three things together, and you have a winning combination.

But five years ago, when I started my agent search, it seemed like an insurmountable hill. Actually, it was more like Mount Everest. I had just finished writing my first complete novel, a supernatural thriller, and had no experience whatsoever as a published author. I had virtually no short stories published, just some articles in magazines and the stories I wrote as a full-time newspaper journalist.

I wrote up my query letter, my biography, and my story synopsis, and then started firing off emails to any legitimate agency that represented my genre. I got a few full manuscript requests, but after a year, I had amassed nearly 100 rejections. By that time, I decided I was going to try some small presses, which I did, and got interest from two publishers. DIABLERO was eventually released by Nightbird Publishing in Oct. 2010.

For my next book, a supernatural technothriller, I was still unable to find an agent. I got an offer from DarkFuse to publish, and in Dec. 2012, LILITH hit the streets in hardcover, paperback and eBook. I was happy. 

Soon after, Crossroad Press published my young adult sci-fi thriller, GOD PARTICLE, and I eventually did another book with DarkFuse, a horror novella called THE BLACK CHURCH. 

When I finished writing the follow up to LILITH, a book called PRIMORDIAL, NY Times bestselling author Douglas Preston agreed to read the manuscript and give me an endorsement if he liked it. Two weeks later, here’s what he said: “Primordial by Toby Tate is an exceptionally well-crafted sci-fi supernatural thriller that tells a gripping story of ancient evil and modern horror, with exotic settings, vivid characters, and a plot that moves with the speed of a tsunami. The atmospherics are excellent and the story offers plenty of surprises right up to the shocking end.”

Can’t beat that for an endorsement. With that blurb in hand, and four published books under my belt, I went on yet another agent hunt. Once again, there were no takers. I was flummoxed.

But then, out of the blue, I got an offer from Permuted Press, publishers of zombie and apocalyptic fiction, who were looking to expand into other types of horror and sci-fi. They not only wanted PRIMORDIAL, they also wanted the sequel as well as a novella prequel, and they offered to reissue my first novel. Four books altogether. I was ecstatic.

 

They sent me the contract, and I realized upon printing it out that it was 20 pages long. The longest contract I had ever signed was three pages. I had to get an agent. I really did not feel comfortable signing a contract that long and involved.

I asked them to give me a week, which they did, and an author friend of mine suggested a few agencies I should contact. I contacted exactly two. They both wanted to read the manuscript. When MacKenzie from Trident made an offer, I knew I couldn’t pass it up, because Trident had been one of my dream agencies since the beginning. 

So there it is. In a way, I’m glad I didn’t have a NY Times bestselling book right off the bat, because where do you go from up? I believe that things happened exactly the way they were supposed to, and still are. I’m just slowly climbing the ladder, and I have to admit, so far I’m enjoying the journey.

For more info on my books and my music, go to www.tobytatestories.com, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Researching the novel: Making it real and getting it right

In his book ON WRITING, Stephen King said, “Do the research, but don’t overdo it for the reader.” Writers like me should probably take that to heart. But it’s tough, because I love to make things real.

In my last book, LILITH, I wanted the reader to feel like they were there on the USS Gerald R. Ford with me. Being ex-navy, I spent many a day sailing the ocean blue on several different ships, so that experience came in quite handy when it was time to write. I also managed to spend some time aboard a carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, which was pretty awesome. I got to stand right out on the flight deck while the jets were taking off and landing, rattling my bones until I thought they would fracture. The picture below is one I took myself of a navy jet landing in 2010.

For LILITH, I researched several different types of weapons used by Special Forces and CIA, the CIA and its methods, nuclear fission and nuclear power, DNA and genetic mutation, animal tracking, New York City, especially Manhattan Island and its layout, the abandoned New York City subway tunnels, hurricanes and weather patterns, the offices and buildings used by the mayor of New York, the type of security used by the mayor, on and on and on. I used Google maps to see exactly what the parks and buildings looked like at street level and videos to see what the abandoned subway tunnels were like. I even enlisted the help of a retired navy commander to get my facts straight about the USS Gerald Ford, which has yet to be commissioned. 

  

The research itself took a good six months, the writing another six months. In the end, I had to cut 10,000 words out of the book to secure a contract with DarkFuse, most of it having to do with the back story, via the musings of the ship’s chaplain, Commander Crane, of the creature that takes over the ship. But it was worth it, because the back story will be fleshed out in the sequel, PRIMORDIAL, which I am now writing.

For PRIMORDIAL, as with all my other books; DIABLERO (Nightbird Publishing, Oct. 2010), GOD PARTICLE (Crossroad Press, June 2013), and THE BLACK CHURCH (DarkFuse, Dec. 2013), I did most of the research beforehand. Most of the action for PRIMORDIAL will be set on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean, but there are also scenes in Romania, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Sicily, and Washington D.C.

Since I am not an archeologist and have limited knowledge on the subject, I enlisted the help of archeologists and geomorphologists from Boston U. and NC State, and even picked up a book about the basics of archeology, just so I could get the jargon right. I looked at videos of several different dig sites on Crete, researched modern Crete and its ancient Minoan civilization, which figures heavily in the plot, and did more research on the CIA, nuclear radiation, DNA and genetic mutation. And that’s just the basic stuff.

Sometimes it seems like the research will never end. I just want to turn off the computer and say, “Forget it! I’m going fishing!” But even though I make my share of mistakes, I am a stickler for realism, and getting it right. If I say, “He walked through the gate and into the park,” you can be sure that I have either been there, or I looked it up on a recent video or photo and saw a gate in front of that park.

But in spite of all the necessary research, a writer can’t forget the most important element of any story: the human element. But I’ll save that for next time.

Are you a writer? Do you do a lot of research before you write? How do you go about it? Leave me a comment and tell me about it. If you have a question about research, feel free to leave a comment, as well.

For more information on me and my books, find me on the web at www.tobytatestories.com. Thanks for reading!

Why writers need good editors

I’ve done the self-publishing thing, if for no other reason than to say, “I did it.” It was not my first book, however.

DIABLERO, a supernatural thriller that featured a resurrected, demon-possessed Blackbeard the Pirate, was published first in paperback by Nightbird Publishing in 2010 and then by Crossroad Press as an eBook in 2011.

So why do a self-published book, you may ask? Well, I think I can sum it up in one word: vanity. I wanted to get my collection of short stories out there, and none of my publishers wanted to publish a short-story collection. So I figured, what the hey, I’ll just do it myself. Shadowland was published as an eBook in 2011 with Amazon, Sony and elsewhere. 

I won’t say it was a bad decision—it was what it was. But only one of the stories, Gray Area, had gone through any kind of rigorous editing. The rest were stories that I had written and reworked several times. 

I hate to admit it, but it shows. Although several of the stories have since been edited and published elsewhere, (see Shadowland inVoluted Tales Magazine #2), they weren’t really the best they could be. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to any editors that charged less than $1,000 per manuscript, which really wasn’t in my budget. 

I said all that to say this: editing really does make a difference. I love my editors at DarkFuse and Crossroad Press—they give a professional edge to my writing by making sure the story has continuity, catching grammatical and punctuation errors that I otherwise would have missed, and even helping reword things that could be said in a better, more concise way. I would have to pay someone several thousand dollars to do what they do, so I am eternally thankful to have their expertise.

For my second novel, LILITH, a supernatural thriller that puts a mythological creature aboard an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean, I was ready to pay a tidy sum for a good editor. But DarkFuse made an offer before I did so, and author Greg Gifune ended up being my editor, so I was happy.

My next book, GOD PARTICLE, a young adult sci-fi thriller that features Chloe Johansson, a globe-trotting sixteen-year-old MIT prodigy, is due out June 4, 2013 and will be published by Crossroad press. My editor there, David Dodd, did an excellent job catching all my dumb mistakes and I think improved my chances of getting good sales. Not a bad thing. 

If you decide to self-publish, my advice is spend the money and find yourself the best editor you can afford, one that knows the business and knows what to look for in a manuscript. Believe me, the money will be well-spent. Don’t put a half-assed manuscript out there, because readers judge you by the quality of your writing, and if one manuscript isn’t up to par, it could affect the sales of any other books you publish.

Michael Garrett, who once worked with Stephen King and other big name authors, offers an excellent service at a reasonable price for anyone who is interested. I only mention him because I was so impressed with his attitude and work ethic. There are probably many other good editors out there, but do your research and make sure they know what they’re talking about, otherwise you’ll spend a fortune and have nothing to show for it.

LILITH: A character study of Hunter Singleton

Since most of the advance word about my new supernatural thriller, LILITH, is kind of a general overview of the book’s storyline, I thought it would be cool to talk about some of the characters in the story. There are actually a number of important people in there, but the main protagonist is a guy named Hunter Singleton.

Hunter is half Cherokee Indian, half white, and was adopted as a baby near a Cherokee reservation by two very special people in a small town called Tahlequah, Oklahoma. They raised him as their own and taught him the ways of the Cherokee so that he could stay in touch with his own heritage, his own roots.

Hunter grew up and joined the Navy to get away from the small town life (much as I did) and hopefully have some adventures. After that, he went back to school and got his degree in journalism, then interned at some small newspapers before getting on as a reporter in River City, North Carolina (yeah, that’s me, too!)

Hunter met his wife, Lisa, while interviewing her for a story. Hunter forgot to tape the interview, which Lisa found quite funny, and they decided to start dating and eventually ended up getting married. What happened between then and LILITH can be found in my first novel, (shameless promotion alert) DIABLERO. I can assure you, it’s quite terrifying and not for the faint of heart. But they made it through reasonably unscathed.

Hunter is thirty-ish and in good physical shape, but not very tall. However, due to his Native American heritage, he is dark-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, which most women seem to find attractive. He also has a dry, acerbic wit, which gets him into trouble.

He is not musically inclined, though he loves good rock and roll and some classical music, and generally likes doing outdoorsy stuff like hiking and camping. Hunter is a black belt in Wing Chun Kung Fu, which he learned from his wife. He believes in self-sufficiency and dislikes taking handouts from anyone. He loves his wife and will probably make a great father when their new baby is delivered.

Hunter and Lisa did have some marriage problems due to a miscarriage by Lisa, which you can read about in DIABLERO, but things have been patched up and they are going full-throttle in dealing with this new danger in LILITH.

There are some introspective moments in LILITH where you will discover more about Hunter and his past, about his shortcomings and failures, what makes him tick, and also about why Lisa finds him so irresistible. He gets into quite a jam in LILITH – one which, at first, seems impossible to overcome. Does he make it out, or not? Find out when LILITH is released in January!

Next time, I’ll talk about Hunter’s cohort in all of this, his wife, Lisa, who I think you will find a very interesting character in her own right. Ciao!

Writing the supernatural action-thriller

I have always loved reading horror—Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, Edward Lee—I can’t explain it. It just appeals to me. I guess the thought of flawed humans overcoming insurmountable odds and saving the world from some inhuman beast or life-threatening super-organism is just, well…cool. Sure, sometimes the good guy or woman dies at the end, but that’s life. Heroes are willing to pay the ultimate price so that others may live.

One of my other loves in fiction is the thriller, whether it’s politics, crime, military, whatever. Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, James Patterson, Clive Cussler—I love ‘em all.

But for a long time, there seemed to be a lack of novels that really mixed action/adventure and supernatural horror into one story. I wanted something that was creepy, but that also moved along at a good clip and had memorable characters. There were very few novelists that were doing that kind of thing—Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, John Saul, William Meikle and Jeremy Robinson are some names that come to mind.

So I decided that I would try to create stories I would like to read, something that incorporated both supernatural horror and action/adventure. I had written some short stories, but I wanted something that would keep readers enthralled for a few days. My first undertaking was DIABLERO, a story about modern-day voodoo and the resurrection of a three-hundred year old pirate, Blackbeard. 

 

I got some good reviews for that book, sold a few hundred copies with Nightbird Publishing and Crossroad Press. But for my next story, I wanted something even bigger involving the CIA, the military, the supernatural, and some human drama. So I took characters from my first novel, Hunter and Lisa Singleton, and put them into my new book.

LILITH is a supernatural creature who takes possession of the crew of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and is then set free in the streets of Manhattan after it gets demolished by a huge storm. It was a very fun book to write.

My next novel, tentatively titled PRIMORDIAL, will be on an even bigger scale, believe it or not. Did I tell you I want my stakes to be high? Even the young adult sci-fi novel I’m working on is high-octane. Can I help it if I like things to move along at a good clip? And guns? And explosions? And…and…oh, sorry. I get carried away. But you get the picture.

I tried writing “literary” horror. Yeah, that didn’t work out. I kept falling asleep and drooling on the keyboard. Shorted out a lot of PCs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the classics—Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow—and I owe my career to them. But modern times demand that we stretch our writing chops to mix genres that may not have been previously incorporated, e.g., the vampire western, the zombie literary classic, the sci-fi detective, and so on.

So now, I present to you the supernatural action-thriller. I hope you like it.

How I got two book deals without an agent

I’ve been at the publishing game since I first started writing for local magazines and newspapers way back in the 90s, and I know how tough it is to find a good agent. As a matter of fact, I still haven’t found one. But I have managed to get my last two novels published. Here’s how I did it.

Perseverance. I kept at it and kept at it until finally, someone said “yes!”

I tried breaking in by way of the literary magazine world. I read all the writer’s magazines and books and found the names of literary magazines that published in my genre. Pretty much all of my short stories were rejected, except for one—THE MUFFIN MAN, a story about a crooked lawyer who gets his just desserts, published by The Pedestal Magazine. So, I put all my stories into a book, SHADOWLAND, and published myself. It’s selling modestly well.

But the storyline of DIABLERO was burning a hole in my skull and I had to write it. So I did. Then, I found the names of all the agents that worked in my genre and fired off a great query letter and story synopsis.

After approximately 85 rejections, I decided I would try submitting to smaller publishers, ones that accepted submissions directly from authors.

More rejection. I rewrote and resubmitted. Lo and behold, just as I was about to throw in the towel, I got two manuscript requests from two different publishers, one of whom made an offer to publish. I did the obligatory happy dance and accepted. 

Six months later, another publisher offered to put out the e-book version. Cha-ching! Things were looking good.

Fast forward to one year later. I had just finished my second novel, a sequel to the first. Alas, my current print publisher wasn’t interested in sequels and my e-book publisher wasn’t dealing with the “big box” distributors. I wanted to keep my characters and I wanted a bigger audience. So, off to agent land again.

Another cyberwall full of rejection letters later, I decided to try some large indie publishers. More rejection. I was about to throw in the towel again when lo and behold, DarkFuse makes an offer on my second book. Hallelujah!  Now my book would not only be available in paperback and e-book, but also in hardcover. And they deal with all the major distributors! 

And I did it all without an agent.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love to have an agent. Any that are interested, have your people contact mine and we’ll do lunch. Until then, I’ll stick with perserverance.