The Nectar Trilogy

I don’t have time to fix it right now. Hopefully I’ll repair this damage soon.

From an Amazon Customer:

read a short synopsis of the book before I purchased it. The author’s imagination is amazing. The story drew me in from the very first page. I can’t wait for the sequel to be available. I know it is the first of a trilogy, and I must purchase the entire set. Love it so much that I recommended it to my entire family.

Have you had a chance to check out Pleroma? It is also available at Barnes and Noble. Soon it will be available on the nook. If you have a nook and would like a free copy, just send me an email and it’s yours!

Below are the two reviews I received from the people who read the 5,000 word excerpt for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel awards.

Do you agree with them? Disagree? Thoughts and comments welcome.

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

Very well written excerpt. The story is engaging and interesting and I think the target audience will relate to Lane and his struggles.

What aspect needs the most work?

From just this excerpt, the order the story is told in seems a little awkward. The complete story might not be that way, but this small section of the story is. Other than that, I thought this piece was great!

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

I really liked this excerpt. I thought the characterization was strong and that the YA audience can relate to the main character. The writing is strong and engaging. I’d like to see how this one ends.

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

The opening scene is strong. It grabs the reader and pulls him quickly into the story. I could feel Lane’s panic, even as I wondered what his emergency was.

What aspect needs the most work?

The scene in Mr. Lancaster’s AP physics class was the least believable. I’ve been in a lot of AP classes and I’ve been around a lot of serious students. Firstly, I just don’t see a teacher setting class time aside to discuss parallel universes. Secondly, if he did, I don’t see any students trying to redirect the teacher, especially for the reason that “the world is in too much danger.” Thirdly, if he were redirected, I don’t see the teacher speak with scorn towards a serious student. “Mr. Reality, huh Lane?” Mr. Lancaster is a teacher, after all, not a student.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

Although the excerpt opens strongly, the shift from present to past leading back to the present is a little jarring. Maybe opt for a slower pace opening beginning more in chronological order or a past that is further back, developing more background, so that the time shift doesn’t have to occur so frequently.

I received an email from a reader today. She said she loved Pleroma and wondered when the second book is coming out. I’m so happy that she liked it. Don’t ever underestimate the power of one encouraging word!

Book two is underway. The manuscript is half written. Around the second week of June I will enter into my summer writing mode and complete the manuscript. I really like this story. In some ways, I like it better than the first. The working title is Amo.

The story starts off a year later than Pleroma. Lane has completed his first semester at MIT in the early enrollment program. Josh has been having disturbing dreams about his mother and everyone is worried about him. Lane shared his secret with his Physics prof and they’ve been working up some tricks in the prof’s secret lab in the basement.

You’ll have to wait to see what happens…

After a long day of waiting and checking the website, the results finally came in. Pleroma didn’t make the cut. The two reviewers who read the first 5,000 words of the manuscript did not feel that it was strong enough to make it to the Quarterfinals.

Now what?

Option 1: sink into despair. Tell myself, “I knew I wasn’t any good.” And never write again.

Option 2: play mind games and convince myself that it was all because the reviewers had a bad day. Tell myself it is an amazing manuscript and press forward, doing whatever it takes to get this book to the world.

Option 3: relax. Reconnect to the truth about this manuscript. The reason I wrote it was to give it to my children as a Christmas present two years ago. I accomplished that goal. I can rest in a calm satisfaction at setting out to do something, and doing it.

I like option 3.

It’s funny how God has ways of reinforcing this type of message in our lives. This morning I woke up, I must admit, soaking in a little pool of self-pity. I went to bed disappointed and sleep had not expunged the feeling. Yet, I pulled myself out of bed and engaged in the normal early morning routine. Let the dog out, eat banana, pour a cup of coffee, and plop in front of the computer to upload the day’s “Food for Thought” on Vibblespace.

Now, keep in mind, the articles that I am posting on that site were written in 2003. I wrote them during the first year of Hart Haus (the house church we started in Vegas) while I was still self-employed full time as an illustrator. Here I am, seven years later, on day 3 of week 12, in a daily routine of recycling these articles, and what does God say to me, through my own words?

Check this out. This is from the food for thought regarding the story of Hannah giving Samuel to the Lord:

God is not messing around; He wants the best of all that we have. He wants the firstborn of our lives, not the left-overs. In our culture this is true, but especially in the ancient world the firstborn son was everything to a family. The firstborn son received the inheritance of the father and carried the family name on into the next generation. By offering your firstborn to the Lord you were literally saying, “Lord, you own everything I have.”

God still asks us for our firstborn, even if we don’t have a physical child. He wants the firstborn ambitions, the firstborn fruit; He wants the best of all that you have. Too many times we tend to give the best of what we have to the taskmasters of the world who don’t love us, don’t care for us, but give us money to put food on the table. We give the world our best, and then drag our weary self into the presence of God…if we feel like it. We don’t give God the first because we are afraid that if we give it to Him, then we won’t have enough to pay the bills and meet our commitments at work and in the world. God promises us that if we will trust Him enough to give Him the first of what we have, that He will more than take care of the rest.

In many ways, Pleroma is my firstborn child. It was conceived in college. The main character was orginally named Jamin, long before my son Jamin was born. I’ve carried this story with me for over twenty years. Over the past couple years I have allowed the idea of getting published to creep into my heart and distract me a little. I kept giving lip service to having only written it for the Christmas gift, but deep inside I really wanted it to become something special. That deep need to be special and the desire to receive accolades is an insidious beast that lurks behind every bush, and page.

I needed this loss – again. God is a patient and loving parent. He lets me follow my whims, but when it is time to get back to business, he cuts me off. I’m failing as an idependent business man/freelance illustrator. I’m failing as a writer. But, I’m not a failure. Those are just things. Just stuff.

Once again, I need to listen to the things I teach other people. Each day we must wake up and pray this simple prayer, “Kill me, Fill me, Spill me.” God, your kingdom come. Your will be done. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive me as I forgive others.

It’s simple. It’s God’s. And it is rich.

Will I stop writing? No. I enjoy it. I’ll write the second book. And probably the third. But I won’t worry about it.

Remind me of that next year, please. I know God will.

On Tuesday, March 23rd, the quarter-finalists will be announced for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. This step narrows the field from 1,000 to 250. Over the past few weeks a team of 100 reviewers from Amazon have each been assigned 40 exerpts to evaluate. They scored the excerpts based upon a standardized rating scale. Each excerpt was scored by two reviewers. The top 250 scores will move to the next round.

Here’s what will happen if Pleroma makes it to the Quarter finals:

(copied from the ABNA rules)

(Quarter Finals (March 23, 2010 – April 26, 2010).

(1) On or about March 23, 2010, we will post each of the Quarterfinalists’ Excerpts and their associated written reviews online at www.amazon.com/abna.

2) Amazon customers may download and read any Excerpt, and then write a review and rate the Excerpt using Amazon.com’s process for submitting online reviews (as described at http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/guidelines/review-guidelines.html).

(3) For each Quarterfinalist’s Manuscript, Publishers Weekly will read, prepare a review, and rate each Manuscript on a scale of 1 to 5 on the following criteria:
a) Character development
b) Originality of idea
c) Plot
d) Prose/style
e) Overall strength of submission (a through e in this subsection D (3), “Judging Criteria”).

These reviews will be posted within each Entrant’s www.CreateSpace.com account on or about April 27, 2010.

(4) The top 50 Entries from each category will advance to the Semifinals (each, a “Semifinalist”). The Semifinalists will be determined by ranking each Quarterfinalist Entry based on the average Judging Criteria score given to each Quarterfinalist Entry by Publishers Weekly. We reserve the right to advance fewer than 50 Entries from each category to the Semifinals if, in our sole discretion, we do not receive a sufficient number of eligible and qualified Entries. If a tiebreaker is needed to determine the 50th Semifinalist in each category, the following methods will be used:
1st tiebreaker: Highest Overall Strength of Excerpt score
2nd tiebreaker: Highest Prose/Style score
3rd tiebreaker: Highest Plot score
4th tiebreaker: Highest Character Development score
5th tiebreaker: Highest Originality of Idea score
6th tiebreaker: Amazon editorial decision

I’ll let you know how it goes!

A reader emailed yesterday and said he was reading Pleroma on his ipod. You can get an app from Amazon to read Kindle books on your ipod or iphone. Pretty sweet. Check out the Kindle version at Amazon here.

Thanks for the email, Kirk!

Yesterday I had a fun experience. I had a chance to give a copy of Pleroma to one of the characters in the book.

In the opening chapters of Pleroma, Lane interacts with his homeroom teacher, Ms. Mitchell. Since the first day of High School she knew Lane was a special kid. He was smart, but he was also scared, nervous, and needed some extra attention. She did a little research and discovered that he had lost his mother a few years earlier, and, while no one could prove it, there was all the evidence of abuse at home. Being the compassionate teacher that she is, Ms. Mitchell took Lane on as her special project and made sure that he received as much motherly attention as the rules would allow her to give.

Well, Ms. Mitchell is not a fictional character. She is alive and well today. She was my teacher in High School. I was not Lane. I had a loving home and incredibly supportive parents, so I did not have the Ms. Mitchell/Lane relationship as depicted in the story.  However, I did have a great mentor/friend relationship with her. I also observed how she treated all her students. I know she had some real life Lane’s in her years of teaching.

Ms. Mitchell is now Mrs. Linda Anderson. Since my days in High School she was married and took over leadership of the IMC at Coon Rapids High School.

After 24 years, it was very cool to be able to place this story in her hands.

Thanks Linda. You will always be “Ms. Mitchell” to me.

On February 25th, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards released the names of those novels that made it to the second round of the competition. Out of the 5,000 entries 1,000 were chosen. This decision was made purely based upon a 300 pitch for the book. Pleroma is one of those 1,000 pitches that advanced.
If this were American Idol then Pleroma made it past the 15 second tent audition in the stadium and now it gets to stand in front of Simon in the audition room.
Reviewers from Amazon will read the 5,000 word excerpts from each of the 1000 manuscripts chosen and choose 250 of them to advance to the Semi-Finals. If Pleroma is selected to be among the 250, then it will receive an official review from Publisher’s Weekly. We’ll find out on March 25th.