Indiana Beach ... Gone For Good?

Here's the interesting history of the "Riviera of the Middle West":

https://ndsmcobserver.com/2020/02/indiana-beach-gone/

For several years I got Indiana Beach tickets through my work, and would take my kids, and sometimes their friends, there. Later Emily and I went, once taking the grandkids. Like the local drive-in theater I've talked about before, it seemed like it was becoming a multi-generational thing.

 Now, although there are efforts to keep it going, the almost century old Indiana Beach Amusement Park seems gone for good.

The last time we visited was in rainy, dreary weather, which maybe I should have taken for a sign.

I took the news personally, because I just finished changing the title and doing a few corrections to my so-far unpublished young adult mystery, Summer Jobs Are Murder (formerly Red Is For Ick, but I'd rather we all forget that.)

The story's protagonist is a teenager who investigates a murder while also working her first job--at an Indiana amusement park. Since Indiana Beach is the only amusement park of its size within easy driving distance, I used it as an inspiration and model for my fictional park. Details were changed, of course, to protect ... well, me. I'm getting ready to send that manuscript back out on the agent hunt, so I'll let you know.

This isn't my first time stealing, as the basic layout of the town of Hopewell, in my published novel Coming Attractions, is based on Kendallville, Indiana. In the immortal words of Thomas Edison, "Why invent, when you can steal?" (Kidding!)

So I'm taking this loss a bit hard, and I hope against hope someone will step in to get the park running again. Meanwhile, I'll continue my efforts to show non-Hoosiers that there is still more than corn in Indiana.



 

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Red Is For Ick, or: How icky is that title?

I've been kidding myself with the name of one of my novel manuscripts. It's not that I was in love with the title: I was more in love with the possibilities the title represented.

Many readers are familiar with book series that have a progression in their titles. One For the Money, for instance, is followed by--well, what are the Stephanie Plum stories up to now? 27? And each numbered in order.

Sue Grafton has a letter in each title of her series, meaning that Z has to be her last one unless she starts throwing in subtitles, or something. AAA Is For Roadside Assistance might come after Z, but she started way back with A Is For Alibi.

When I started my young adult mystery novel, I wanted it to be a series, so I looked for something like that. Famous author names, cities, types of flowers, whatever. That would also make it clear to editors and agents that I was interested in a series, and series are big these days.

So, for instance, A Is for Asimov, or Boston Mystery, or Carnation Crime, or something like that. After thinking not long enough on it, I chose colors. For one thing, I could do those without going alphabetically. I'm not that good.

So I chose Red Is for Ick. I didn't realize at the time that all of Grafton's books have "is for" in the title, or maybe I'd have thought longer. But hey--red's the color of blood, and this novel would have a murder or two; and what would my fifteen year old hero, Cassidy Quinn, say about the blood? Yep: "Ick!" (You get to meet Cassidy, and briefly her father, in my YA adventure The No-Campfire Girls.)

It was brilliant.

Except for one problem.

The title makes sense when it's explained, but I just took three hundred words to explain it. You don't get that kind of space when you're querying an agent or editor. You need to cut to the chase.

I've been using this manuscript on the agent hunt, and got compliments and a few requests for the complete manuscript, one of them very enthusiastic ... but in the end, three dozen rejections. No, no one ever said they rejected it because of the title, and maybe the title's just fine and doesn't need explaining. But in the crowded world of publishing, you need every advantage you can get--starting with your title.

So what do you, the reader and/or writer, think? Granted, many titles are changed after the book is picked up, but (assuming you don't self-publish) you have to get the proverbial fish on the hook, first. Yay or nay on the title?

Here's a brief description of the book, if it helps:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Being a murder suspect will really cut into Cassidy Quinn’s summer vacation. When the teenager takes over her dad’s simple, safe surveillance job she becomes the only witness to the murder of her best friend’s father—except it turns out the victim is the father’s double, and only she saw the real killer. Now Cassidy must find out why her friend’s family disappeared, why strangers are stalking her, and how anyone making minimum wage can save up money for a car. Luckily her dad has the transportation, her sister the computer (and cookies), her grandfather the attitude, and Cassidy herself the wit and determination. The bad guys—and small-town Indiana—had better watch out.

Now, if you've read this far, yesterday Emily and I brainstormed title ideas, and we've already come up with a potential new one:

Summer Jobs are Murder

Opinions? I also considered My Dad's Going to Kill Me, something Cassidy thinks in the opening scene, but that's misleading.



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An Agent of Progress

As you all know from my incessant harping about it, I have some major publishing news to announce first on my newsletter—as soon as I have ten new people sign up for the newsletter, which hasn’t been active much up until now. (The signup is over at www.markrhunter.com.) We’re about halfway there.

Because I’m comfortable with how things are progressing on new projects, I thought I could take some time and go the traditional route with some other works. With my YA mystery Red Is For Ick and my SF novel, Beowulf: In Harm’s Way, I decided to take up the slow, laborious, and often fruitless process of searching for a literary agent.

The good news is that most agents are okay with an author submitting to more than one of them at a time, which speeds up the process. (But only a little, because I take the time to research agents in my search for the right match.) The bad news is that at any one time, there are about two billion agentless authors for every agent who’s looking for a new client. Maybe three billion.

Anyway, once I exhaust all the agents who might make for a good partnership, I planned to go direct to those traditional publishers that accept unagented submissions. Then I would consider independent publishing. Thinking that far ahead shows that my confidence in the traditional publishing process has eroded over the years.

The steps of publishing are measured in weeks—best case scenario. More likely months. Once an author sells a completed manuscript, it’s still often years before it comes out in print. So earlier this week I sent out some queries, along with outlines and sample pages, then moved on to other writing work. No sense waiting by the virtual mailbox.

Within less than 24 hours I got a request for a full manuscript.

I told you that whole story just to show how rare this is. It’s also by no means a guarantee of representation. I’ve received requests for fulls before: Only once did it lead to me getting an agent, years ago, and that didn’t work out. Statistically speaking, I might be no more likely to sign with this agent than the Cubs are to get into the World Series.

But stranger things have happened.