Nine Characters + One Butterfly = Chaos Theory
michael@sirois.com
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This is just to let everyone know that (aside from a quick update now and then) I won’t be posting anything here for a month or so. I’ll be doing final preparations for If a Butterfly until sometime in September or early October. Michael Standard Disclaimer: Please post a comment below if you would like …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on January 5, 2013 Well, I do. Am I anal-retentive about it? I don’t think so, but I do think details are important, especially as a writer. So, why did I pick mist vs. fog as a topic? I’m a member of a writing/critique group, and we recently …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on December 4, 2013 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] The book I’ve been posting about for the past couple of weeks, If a Butterfly, follows the migration of one particular Monarch butterfly as it tries to fly from Canada to Mexico. …
The Process of Constructing a Pitch Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on May 8, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] After the first year’s round of pitches, and the first few rejections by agents, I regrouped, re-edited some sections of the book, gave it a …
Prepping For the WLT Conference (2012) Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on May 8, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] Here’s the final pitch I used for the 2012 WLT Conference. Sorry, I still have to cut a few things. “The mainstream novel, If a …
Prepping For the WLT Conference (2011) Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on April 28, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] A month after that (3-13-2011), I had already made several changes (not necessarily for the better). This was the first pitch I tried to create …
Pitchapalooza (2011) Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on April 29, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] In the previous post, I showed you the pitch I used for my novel, If a Butterfly, at the 2012 Writers’ League of Texas’ Agents and Editors Conference. This …
If a Butterfly’s Final Pitch Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on April 22, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] My previous post was about starting to split a very long novel into two parts. I started working on doing that a few days ago, and …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on April 15, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] My first completed novel, If a Butterfly, was EXTREMELY long. The first draft was well over 300,000 words, about 1,300 double-spaced 8.5 x 11 pages; but — in its defense — …