Getting to know me, getting to know all about me...

Hi, there!

Welcome to the Scribblerati’s new Group Blog. Glad you could make it.

My name is Jon Hansen, I’m a founding member and, believe me, that is as impressive an accomplishment as it sounds, if not more so.

But anyway, this is our place, and we plan on putting up regular posts every Friday, rotating the authorship between members, with random ones snuck in every now and then just to keep you all on your toes. So, with that in mind, and in the interest of getting down to brass tacks here… let’s get this week started.

As Shawn covered in his first post, we, the active agents and members of the Scribblerati, are a Twin Cities Writing Group formed out of Lyda Morehouse’s Sci-fi Loft Class. This happened a little over a year ago, give or take, and we’ve been chugging along ever since then. And as our projects progress, well, now comes the part where we begin to establish our presence on-line. I hope you stay awhile, have a look around and get to know us all.

Now, it’s true, at first glance, our group does tend to skew a bit genre-ish, and sometimes this can put people off. This particular implication doesn’t bother us, of course, however, it should be noted that we’re not exclusive to that type of fiction. Not at all. In fact, we are open, willing, and interested in any and all types, but since we met in a genre class, well.... what do ya’ want? Regardless, even within the boundaries of genre, I think it is safe to say that we’re a pretty eclectic and talented group, with each of us currently hard at work on our own particular projects.

Myself, (Jon Hansen… again. Hi.) I have recently begun the Query Process. My book is entitled: Gunslingers of the Apocalypse and it is basically Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead. It is a tale of love and war and life after the end of everything. I’m hoping, that due to the current market, the fact that it all takes place six months after the zombie apocalypse turns out to be a good thing for me.

Six months ago, the Dead rose and the world came to a sudden and violent end. A virus, new and deadly, burned its infection across the face of the planet. Everything changed then and a new world was born from the ashes of the old. In the aftermath, the choice was clear: You either learned the rules of survival or you joined the legions of the walking Dead.
“Black Magic” Jack El-Hai learns these rules; this is how he manages to stay alive in the fiery ruins of the Collapse when so many others did not. Amidst the chaos, Jack meets a young woman named Noelle Easter -- tattooed, resourceful, and rowdy -- they are a perfect match and soon, wild in love.
Together, they survive the end of the world.
However, staying alive means hard choices, it means spilling blood, it means killing. So when they finally find refuge in a small Midwestern town -- a place spared due to isolation and a tall fence -- Jack and Noelle also find a new purpose: scavenging. They spend their days among the ruins of the old world hunting for the things people need to survive. It’s a dangerous occupation, a daily battle against both the ravenous Dead and the murderous living alike, but the town’s people depend on them.
And while it’s not a great life, it’s better than most…
Lately, though, things are getting worse. Trouble is coming; Jack knows it. The Dead are gathering at the town’s borders in greater numbers, scavengers are dying beyond the fence, and the shaky truce struck with the rival camps of survivors is beginning to crumble. When the town is invaded and an iron-fisted new rule threatens everything he holds dear, including Noelle, Jack quickly discovers that the true monsters are not the ones locked outside the fence…they’re locked within.

Ooooooh… neat, huh? I think so… So, yeah, anyway, after much time and even more effort, I am finally done with the book and I am busy querying Agents, but what does that really mean?

Well, mostly, it means I get to wait. Wait, wait, wait and then wait some more. After that? More waiting. It’s kind of like being in the Army, you know? Hurry up and wait? It’s like that…except minus the hurry part. Each day, I wait for responses while obsessively checking and rechecking my e-mail. I expect rejection and I hope for acceptance, but mostly, I just wait. You see, my “plan” is to send out five Query letters at a time, when one comes back, why I’ll just send another one right out… and right now, they’re all still out there… somewhere… doing something…

And I get to wait.

So…. in the meantime, I am getting back into the already begun second “Black Magic” Jack El-Hai book. Right now, it is tentatively titled: Bastard out of Minnesota. My short term plan is for this book to serve as a distraction from my empty inbox, not to mention the querying process in general. My long term plan is, if I manage to finish this second book and find that I am still un-agented, I will type up the notes on the intended third and forth books, print them out, trunk the whole mess, and then move on to something else.

Until that day though, I continue to establish the series. After all, they say series are an attractive set up when pitching your work and that said series are made all the more shiny to Agents and Editors by having more than one volume completed, or at least started, at the time of initial query. And while, I’m not sure if that’s necessarily true or not, or if there even is such a thing as a hard and fast truism when it comes to walking the path to getting published, hell, I guess every little bit helps, right?

We’ll see…

So that’s me…. Jon.

Any questions?