Tia's Writing Blog

The Good News and the Bad News

2010-09-27T11:29:00.000-04:00

The good news is The Sevenfold Spell is out today! Woo Hoo! Here are some buy links!

ePub and PDF Format
Kindle Format

Help a new author! Spread the word!

The bad news--I'm really having a hard time with Chinese spammers, so I'm going to have to add a captcha or something to my comment system. I hate captchas. But I'm going to have to do it because I hate spam on my comments. I'll see what options I have before I go the captcha route.

I did come this close >< to shutting down this blog altogether, bit I like keeping a more personal and cozy blog, so I'll see what I can do. Really, Google needs to get ON IT with the spam. Wordpress does a much better job!

The Print-Out Phase

2010-08-08T06:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I reached the point in my Cinderella retelling where I print it out and go over it with a red pen. I am just a more effective editor on paper, and I print out all stories/novellas/novels at least twice during the editing process. You may think that this is a waste of paper, but there is NOTHING like seeing your work printed out. After all, the finished product will appear on paper (or e-ink, which is in many ways better than paper, for reading purposes). If you are not doing this, go ahead and try. I think you will be astonished at all the errors that sneak in. For this reason, I'd hate to ever see my blog printed.

The first time I print it is when I'm still trying to organize the story. This story is still a dreadful mess, and I just need to draw arrows all over it and generally have the freedom of a pen. I print it out a second time when I THINK I am done. Once again I use my red pen on it--hopefully making way fewer marks--and I read it aloud. Hearing the story also helps me hone the voice. Especially when trying to polish the rhythm of dialog.

I still have not finished the ending. My first stab will go in the garbage--I don't like it. I'm trying to refine a second ending, but I need to think of a devious plan for one of my antagonists, and I'm just having a hard time thinking of one. I'm hoping the exercise of reading it aloud will help spur a few ideas.

At this point, Before my sale, I would have set the whole story aside. But I've made an oral commitment to produce another fairy tale retelling, and I think they expect it within a year. And I'm finding that setting the entire story aside isn't really required. Instead, I can simply skip a scene and write the scene that I really want to write. And if I need something fresh, why what works better than a new plot twist? Both of these techniques spur on those scenes in the middle, which will hopefully result in a finished story.

Reasonably Productive Week

2010-07-25T22:22:00.000-04:00

I got another 3000 words done this week, and I'm over three-quarters of the way through my Cinderella retelling. The layer I'm adding to the story now is the romance subplot. I'm no longer thinking that this story sucks quite so much. Things are coming together.

In order to give it a little soul, I decided to put a tragic event in Yvette's past--a shameful event that results in a secret that she must bury. And of course, that secret will come to light to the very person she most wants to keep it from. I'm also being coy about revealing the secret to the reader. The reader will find out exactly what it is only when the hero finds out from the worst possible source. And the reader won't hear the whole story until Yvette must tell it to him.

Abrupt subject change--I found it necessary to research the history of football for this story. Yes, the oddest things come out while storytelling--who would ever have guessed that football belongs in a fairy tale retelling? But Pierre--my love interest--was once at the same school as the prince, and they played on the same football team.

I researched football just enough to learn that I was indeed safe in calling it football. And then I stopped researching it. I call this little technique "just-enough researching". It's kind of like my "just-enough worldbuilding" technique. Don't get me wrong--I love to research. But I don't like bogging the story down in unnecessary detail. Who cares if the football back then was like modern-day soccer or modern-day rugby or modern day football? I certainly don't. All I really care about is that football is the appropriate term to use.

In other news, my short story, "Once Upon a Gas Tank" is now overdue from the last market I sent it to. I don't know if this is a positive thing or not. I used to think that if they had a story for a long time, then it means they are seriously considering it. But The Sevenfold Spell sold in three weeks, and another market had another story for over three months before rejecting it. So the only thing I really know for certain now is they haven't reject it yet.

Don'tya love this writing game?

Writing in Layers

2010-07-19T18:51:00.000-04:00

After finishing an extremely rough draft for my Cinderella retelling, I realized that I write in layers.

The first layer is the biggest layer. It's the main plot. Each additional layer is a subplot. And I've discovered that I cannot really think too much about the subplots until I've nailed the plot.

And, I don't ever seem to come up with an ending the first time around. So this time, I did what I did in Starcaster on purpose, and in The Sevenfold Spell by accident. I left the ending unfinished. (With The Sevenfold Spell, I thought I had an ending, but I discovered I did not.)

But more on layers. As I was writing, I knew there would be an uneven romance between commoner Yvette and nobleman Pierre. But I didn't know exactly how it would work out. I also knew that Pierre's sister would be a problem for Yvette, and I knew how she would be in the overarching plot (she's after revenge), but I didn't know how I was going to make it personal for Yvette. I'm a bit closer now--and it will involve Pierre.

I also have this whole jealousy subplot with the stepsisters, and I realized that overcoming jealousy would be the whole theme behind the novella.

So there's four layers - the main plot, the romantic subplot, the revenge subplot, the stepsister subplot. Each plot/subplot equals one major character, so we have Yvette, Pierre, Esmerele and Agnes.

Since the main plot--the extremely sketchy main plot--worked out to 13,000 words, I think that will fill up a 20,000 word novella quite nicely.

In other news, my proposed series title for my fairy tale retellings is now official! The series will be called Accidental Enchantments. I'm thrilled!

A Literary Meme

2010-07-16T21:14:00.000-04:00

Susanna Fraser, author of the intriguing upcoming Carina Press title, The Sergeant's Lady, inspired me to do a meme!

1) What author do you own the most books by?
John Steinbeck, I think. Either him or Charles Dickens or Mark Twain.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Bible. We seem to have been collecting them over the years, and we have multiple translations.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Didn't notice.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
It's no secret--Fitzwilliam Darcy. Henry Crawford had a lot of potential too. And of course, Henry Tilney. Sigh!

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? The Once and Future King

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Sadly, I didn't become a reader until the next year. It was all still too new to me for me to have a favorite. But I loved Nancy Drew's The Hidden Staircase by the time I was twelve.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
I stop reading if I'm not enjoying it.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I'll skip this question.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature? Dunno.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
??

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I have a dreadful time recalling my dreams beyond ten minutes after I wake up.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
The X-Men. But, I do have comic-book versions of Pride and Prejudice and Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Seriously!

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
Crime and Punishment.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
Um. Next question.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The French. That being said, of the two nationalities, I've only read Dostoevsky, Hugo and Dumas.

18) Roth or Updike? Um . . .

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Um . . .

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Chaucer.

21) Austen or Eliot? Austen. But I loved George Eliot's Silas Marner!

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I really have not read enough Shakespeare.

23) What is your favorite novel?
Not an answerable question.

24) Play?
Pygmalion. I can only name a favorite because I've seen so few.

25) Poem?
Um . . .

26) Essay?
Why?

27) Short story?
See question on novels.

28) Work of nonfiction?
Ditto.

29) Who is your favorite writer?
Mark Twain and Jane Austen.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
No opinion.

31) What is your desert island book?
I'd probably try to finish reading the Bible. Yes, we have a lot of them, but I still have not read it from cover to cover. Bad, I know . . .

32) And … what are you reading right now?
Bewitched and Betrayed by Lisa Shearin, Scene Stealer by Elise Warner, Meeks by Julia Holmes, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

If you decide to take part, be sure to let me know!

Excerpt from Cinderella Retelling

2010-07-11T17:31:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the blog silence! To make up for it, here is an excerpt from my Cinderella retelling, which is unnamed for now. This is my opening scene. I wrote this because I needed to get behind Pierre's eyeballs so I could fall in love with him a little:

(Interruption - Blogger dropped my post when I finished it this morning! I was so traumatized that I was not able to come back and rewrite this until now. Anyway, here it is:)

“A woman, monsieur?”

Pierre ignored his valet’s doubtful tone. “Not just any woman, Corbeau. The modiste’s daughter.”

“And she’s a valet?”

“Of course not. She’s a . . . a . . . well, I don’t think society has a name for what she does. But her mother has created my suit for the festivities, and her daughter . . . well, she’s going to do me.”

“Do you, monsieur?”

“No, do me. That’s how she puts it. She does people.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, monsieur—but you can hardly bear to be done by me. Why the sudden interest in being done, as this . . . this mysterious valette insists upon putting it?”

Pierre grinned, knowing Corbeau wasn’t nearly as annoyed as he sounded. “For that, you could only understand if you knew the valette herself.”

“Aah. Well in that case, I have a word of advice, monsieur.”

“Yes, Corbeau?”

“Wear a codpiece.”

I trust everyone knows what a codpiece is? If not, you'll know by the next scene, if you read it. I coined a French word here, valette, and I trust I did it right, but I'll have to run it by an actual French speaker to be sure. The Sevenfold Spell had a British flavor, so I'm making this one French. I'm thinking the Snow White retelling might be German, and Beauty and the Beast will be Irish. If I write any retellings beyond those, I'll go for other cultures. India especially has some wonderful legends.

What are your favorite legends or fairy tales?

One-Fourth Done!

2010-06-27T19:12:00.000-04:00

I went past 5000 words today, which means I'm still behind, but I got caught up by quite a bit. My deadline is toward the end of July, so I might still be good.

With Fairy Godmothered--and I'm beginning to think a title change might be in order--I'm trying to keep on target even when I have some writer's block. Yesterday morning I woke up with some great ideas and banged out several thousand words before everyone else got up. I'm still getting to know my characters and until I get to that point, things can be a little rocky.

I'm often inspired by movies, and in this case, the inspiration is Dangerous Liaisons from 1988. Fairy Godmothered is not going to be anywhere near that risque--in fact, next to The Sevenfold Spell it's going to be squeaky-clean--but I'm giving the novella a French setting and I have some dressing scenes for which I needed to consult the opening scenes of Dangerous Liaisons. Every time I watch that movie, I think, no wonder there was a French revolution.

My favorite characters so far? The jealous stepsisters. I got one who is genuinely bad, but the other just has a character weakness with jealousy. Ought to be fun.

Dear Mr. White, This is all your fault.

2010-06-20T18:23:00.004-04:00

Word Count Status: Unchanged. My copyedits for The Sevenfold Spell came in and I had to work on those, and then of course I needed to reread the whole thing, because this is the version that is "final".

RedRoom had a blog post idea that I found interesting--they wanted you to write a letter to your favorite author. I took the idea and changed it a bit: write a letter to the author who inspired you to write fiction. Please feel free to do this as well. Here's mine:

Dear Mr. White,

This is all your fault. If I had not read The Once and Future King, I might have had a quiet life, free from any writing urges. Instead, you had to go and make the craft of writing a novel look so darned fun, which of course, is how it turned out for me.

Because of your Pellinore, I tried my hand at writing humor. Because of your Wart, I am not afraid of letting my characters look foolish to the other characters for a while—as long as they don’t look foolish to the reader. Because of your Lancelot, I’m not afraid of writing about plain and even outright ugly characters. Beauty gets boring, but ugly can be surprisingly interesting.

After I finished The Once and Future King for the umpteenth time, I tried to write a story about a knight who was heavily based on your Lancelot. His name was Gilbert Von Roth, and he was a knight in the First Crusade. He had carrot-red hair and was horribly clumsy--unless he was in battle. Then, he was a deadly whirlwind. He was the first character I ever fell in love with.

It took me years, Mr. White, to stop writing in a voice that imitated yours.

So this is all your fault. And for that, I thank you.

Yours truly,

Tia Nevitt

(If you write a letter, please let me know!)

Cover Art Ideas

2010-06-13T20:20:00.002-04:00

Word Count Status: 2074 out of 20,000 words. This was my half-week, so I'm happy with this, plus I'll be doing some more writing tonight.

~*~

On Thursday, I heard from the marketing department from Carina Press. They wanted me to fill out a Cover Art Fact Sheet. She said to go ahead and find some images on the internet and include them. So I went nuts on her. I figured it would be better to give too much information than not enough.Here are the images I found.

This is a medieval city in Brittany, France.

http://www.clos-saint-cadreuc.com/Images/Dinan.jpg

This is a re-enacter at the spinning wheel. She is almost exactly as I imagine Talia and the cheerless basement in which she works:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/09/world/09medieval.xlarge1.jpg

Here is a spinning wheel:

http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/spinning-wheel?item=3961&_m=d

Here is a fairy working her magic from the Nutcracker sequence in Fantasia.

http://www.inetres.com/gp/anime/fantasia/f04_02.jpg

Check out the blooms of magic at the bottom of this image:

http://one1more2time3.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/nutcracker-707.jpg

Love these understated magic effects:

http://one1more2time3.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/fantasia-comp-nutcr1.jpg

Here’s another one with the fairies:

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb162/SecurityKitten/fantasia2.jpg

They wanted a lot of other stuff too, including my bio, my online hang-outs, my synopsis and my "visual hooks." It was fun to put together, and pretty exciting! I am very interested in seeing what they come up with.

Working to a Deadline

2010-06-09T20:18:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in previous posts, I seem to do well with deadlines. Therefore, I'm giving myself a deadline for my next novella, which I'm now calling Fairy Godmothered. I'm only shooting for 20,000 words, so deadline is six weeks from tonight, rounded up to the next Sunday. Therefore, my deadline is:

July 25th!

With this deadline, I'll have to write 5000 words a week, then I'll need to take a week away from it and spend the last week editing and revising. 5000 words a week would not be possible without my laptop, but since I now have it, I'm going to go for it. My husband is thoroughly behind me, so that will help.

In order to keep myself honest, I'm going to post my weekly progress here, on Sundays. I'm taking this week as my half-week, so I'll use this time to perfect my six-sentence outline and expand it into a decent synopsis. I also have some pilot scenes I want to write. I wrote about 2000 words initially, but most of that will be cut and I'm starting almost over. But that's ok; that's the way I write.

And ready ... set ... go!

Last Chance to Get It Right

2010-05-31T14:00:00.005-04:00

Carina Press has been keeping me busy. I had a very tight deadline to finish up my revisions for The Sevenfold Spell, which I met. For some reason, I do well when given a deadline. I've met some tough ones, so they don't scare me anymore. Now I'm just hoping they'll like my revisions.

This was my last chance to get it right. And that does scare me. Once we're done with the tweaking, that's it! Other than copyediting, the next judges will be the readers. It's a pretty gulp-worthy feeling. I think it would have been easier to have my first pub be for a magazine, which would have had an automatic readership, and where the success or failure of the thing wouldn't all be on my back.

Anyway, Carina said they were interested in seeing more fairy tale retellings, so I'm working on another one and I'm almost 2000 words into it. The working title is Switched and it's based on Cinderella. My overall concept with these fairly tale retellings is that it is focused on innocent bystanders who are caught up in the magic. I have at least three stories in mind.

Finally, I've decided to start an email newsletter about my writing news. If you'd like to receive it, please go to tianevitt.com and use the sign-up link at the top of the toolbar.

Thanks so much for following my ramblings on writing.

On 23 Years of Rejection - A Retrospective

2010-05-16T13:44:00.000-04:00

I asked my husband when he thought I started writing seriously and we agreed that it was some time in 1987. I did make an attempt in high school, working on my old toy (but perfectly functional) typewriter to write a time travel novel. I soon gave up, having come to the conclusion that writing was hard, and that I need to read more quality authors.

My first submission was a story called, "Lady Forest Maid", and I sent it to a then-new fantasy magazine. It was definitely an apprentice-level effort. The rejection was so brutal and cutting that I never sent anything there again. I always wondered why the author/editor saw fit to type out such an awful letter. It was my very first rejection.

But I did continue to send to other places, where the rejections were bland and inoffensive.I didn't write short stories very often -- I was working on my trunk novel -- but when I did, I dutifully sent them off. The only non-form letters I ever got (until very recently) were from Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have a nice stack of personal rejection letters from them. Some of them said, "nice writing, but . . ." But not very many.

During this time, I read a great many classics. I figured that they were the people to study if I wanted to become a successful writer. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the writing styles people used back then weren't in use today, and the books I really needed to be reading were current bestsellers. I also hit upon the idea of reading debut novels, because I figured the novel that got an author noticed must have been pretty good. So my reading time wasn't entirely wasted, and the foundations of storytelling can still be gleaned from the classics.

In the early 90s, I made my first nonfiction sale, to the first editor to whom I pitched an idea. I made a hundred and fifty dollars. And then I went back to school and writing went on hold for a while.

After I finished school, I finished my novel. It took me ten years to write (including some non-writing gaps), and ended up 230,000 words. I sent it to one agent, who rejected it with a brief note. I then trunked it. It was a mess. I had a terrible time writing the synopsis because the story wandered in all directions without reason, and the synopsis made that glaringly obvious.

Then, I had a baby. While she was little I did a bunch of nonfiction work for the Bathroom Reader. I wrote articles with titles like, "Port-a-Fortress", "The Cosmic Speed Limit", "Good Vibrations", "In One End and Out the Other", and a bunch others. It was all work-for-hire without a byline. But it paid good. They used the articles in subsequent editions for years.

I started querying again with my second novel, Forging a Legend, in late 2006. I started querying Starcaster in 2009. Rejection, rejection, rejection. I had a few short stories that I was circulating. Rejection, rejection, rejection.

That's right. Not a single sale. I only went for the top markets (which included quality semipros like Weird Tales), because the one time I strayed from that restriction, I had an almost-published story with a fledgling magazine that only operated for about six months. It was never rejected, but the editor at one point (and after much prompting) said that she had it on her table of contents for the next issue. Which never happened. That almost-published story was "Spin", an early version of The Sevenfold Spell.

And over the years, I've come to realize that writing a salable story is hard. Damned hard.

I set a deadline for myself: if I had not sold any fiction by the time I was 45, I would shift my focus to nonfiction and freelance writing and pursue a much easier writing career there. I am now 44.

I would have written this retrospective no matter where I had sold my first story. I sent The Sevenfold Spell off without any real hope that they would want it. One gets so inured to rejection that one is utterly shocked when it fails to happen.

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me. Have you sold a story? If so, how long did it take for you to make the sale?

My First Fiction Sale!

2010-05-13T06:04:00.000-04:00

Exciting news! Carina Press called me the other day, and offered to publish The Sevenfold Spell. The call came totally out of the blue (they always do, I'm told), since my submission had not even been out a month. I had a LOT of questions, and I'm afraid I pestered the editor quite a bit. I wanted to understand everything and feel comfortable with the terms, and she was very patient.

This is my first fiction sale. I have learned that it is much easier to break into nonfiction than fiction. I published a nonfiction article with my very first try. I started submitting short stories in the 80s. The 80s! Marion Zimmer Bradley sent my first rejection letter!

The fabulous Lisa Nevin read the manuscript just after I submitted it, and she suggested the exact same revisions that Carina Press proposed! Lisa, thanks for being such a great beta partner. Superwench and Carole McDonnell also critiqued a very early copy, and J. G. Paine, who is the pseudonym for another critique partner, is the one who inspired me to expand it to e-book length and send it to an e-publisher. Thanks for your help, everyone!

The tentative publication timeframe is the fall of this year!

Back to Writing!

2010-05-10T21:17:00.000-04:00

East of Yesterday won the inspiration contest and I'm writing like mad. I'm making heavy use of my Neo, which is great for distraction-free typing. I've got Brad the Jerk seamlessly woven into the novel, and I decided to throw Henry, Adele's (changed her name from Ashley) love interest from the past, into a scene where they run into gypsies on the time road. It worked out great because I'm able to use a lot of fun time-travel twists.

I'm thinking I need to seriously read The Time Traveler's Wife, just to make sure I'm not using some of the same concepts.

In other news, I'm waiting on some submissions, plus a request for a full, and a referral. Both of the latter have been out for a while, but I know to be patient by now.

Keeping Motivated

2010-04-25T20:05:00.000-04:00

At times when it starts seeming too hard to break into publishing, I declare a break for myself. And that's what I'm doing this week. It's a writing break, something we all need from time to time to remind us that writing isn't everything and that everything isn't about writing. So this weekend:

I finished reading a very funny novel that didn't necessarily have an upcoming release date (something I consider for Debuts & Reviews).
Took a walk in the park. And not just any park, it was Devil's Millhopper Geological State Park. A big huge sinkhole festooned with greenery. Will post pictures later.
Had long and productive talks with my husband.
Went shopping with my daughter. Had hot chocolate in a Border's cafe and people-watched.
Danced with my daughter with the help of Just Dance for Wii. Not a pretty sight.
And now I need to call my brother.

What fun, non-writing thing did you do this weekend?

The Sevenfold Spell Submitted!

2010-04-18T19:01:00.000-04:00

Got some stuff done this weekend. I submitted The Sevenfold Spell to my first epub market today. Here's hoping! I also wrote out a complete outline for A Hollywood Miracle, which I didn't really intend to do when I sat at the computer, but now that I have it, I'm going to use it. I bought some colored post-its so I can use different colors for each storyline. That way I can merge all the storylines on some sort of board, and easily be able to pick out each storyline.

Plans for this evening include sitting down with my Neo and writing another scene in East of Yesterday. Right now, my efforts are floating between AHM and EOY, but I think after tonight I'll know which one I'll want to focus on.

I also had another short story idea, but it's still on simmer.

Wish me luck for The Sevenfold Spell!

Back From Vacation, Back to Writing

2010-04-04T17:42:00.000-04:00

I ended March with a vacation, and when I came back, the vacation from writing was over. I dove right into East of Yesterday, and blew past my 25,000 word hurdle. I'm now at 27,000 words, and I'm hopefully gathering momentum again.

I decided to drop an interracial romance storyline for two reasons: the romance wasn't working in my mind and the story screeched to a halt when I started it. I'm just going to continue to write my original concept and see where it takes me. This is a lot the way I wrote Starcaster/A Spy and a Lady -- I just came up with a concept and hung on while it took me on a wild ride.

I temporarily trunked my short story, "Under Observation" while I purchased some of the better online semipro zines in order to get an idea of what they like. And lo and behold, I found another potential market for "Under Observation". I also failed to mention that an online pro zine recently rejected it while saying they "enjoyed reading it but after careful consideration have decided that we cannot use it at this time." It looked like a form rejection, but would they say they enjoyed reading every story? So maybe someone will want it.

I'm sorry this blog has been so boring lately!

Long Overdue Post

2010-03-14T17:37:00.000-04:00

Wow -- I have some new followers. Welcome!

I have finished my novella, The Sevenfold Spell, and I'm currently writing a synopsis for it. I hoped to have some time to devote to it this weekend, but we had out-of-down visitors, plus an unexpected trip to the emergency room (everyone's fine now), so I'm now zonked.

I have not done very well with my pledge to submit something every weekend because I only have two stories in circulation right now. I have, at least, kept them continuously submitted. I ought to be querying my novels to more agents -- I know-- but serious querying might have to wait until the second week in April.

I'm on high blood pressure medication. I've lost fifteen pounds and the doctor thinks my blood pressure will come down on its own when I lose another ten pounds. In the meantime, it was high enough for him to want to put me on meds. When I lose this weight, I really can't let it get that high again. It was nice to have a try-on session, getting into all those pants I haven't worn in two years. In another five pounds, most of them will fit quite nicely.

When I get The Sevenfold Spell sent to my first-choice market, I'll finish up my prehistoric fantasy (called "Riven") and then I'll be working on East of Yesterday again while I shop around those four stories. Hopefully at some point, someone will want to buy one! Unless inspiration slaps me in the face with another short story (that's the way it happens for me), I'm going to stick with E of Y for a while. I've been working out things in my head even thought I haven't been writing, and I think I have changed direction on several plotlines that weren't working.

What have you been working on (writing or otherwise)?

An Invitation - Tear Up My Opening

2010-02-20T18:44:00.000-05:00

Here's the opening to my novella, The Sevenfold Spell. Feel free to read and if you'd like, to critique. If you've read my stuff before, this is more in the style of Forging a Legend than A Spy and a Lady. It's a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story, through the eyes of a spinster who had her spinning wheel taken away and burned.

A pair of booted feet stopped before me. I refused to look up. One of them kicked forward, thumping against my thin shins. It smarted, but I knew it could have hurt a lot worse.

"Get up."

"Don't move," Mama said. So I didn't, except to look up at the harried constable. He frowned down at us -- a troubled frown, but not an angry one. He was portly and balding. He didn't look like an evil man, but like a good man who had been sent out to do an evil task.

A task that we resisted as we sat together in the doorway of our shop, defending our livelihood with our bodies.

The constable sighed. "Come now," he said. "I don't like this any more than you do."

"You'll have to move us," Mama said.

The constable looked over his shoulder. The fairy hovered there. She was tiny -- no larger than my hand -- with shimmery pale green leggings and tunic. Her beauty almost held one's gaze prisoner, so that was difficult to look away from her.

"Can you move them?" he asked her.

"I am not here to do your job, Constable," the fairy replied, "only to see that you do it honestly."

The constable's sigh was exasperated now. He gestured to his men. "Move them."

Mother and I were both slight. Moving us took no great effort. Suddenly, as I sprawled in the dirt of the street, our defiant gesture seemed pathetic.

Mother screamed and raised a holy fuss. She went charging back into our shop after the constable's men. I ran in after her. She flailed on their backs as they picked up the spinning wheel and carried it out.

"My daughter," she said at one point, grabbing me. "Look at her. Do you think her face will ever get her a husband? That spinning wheel is her future."

"You will be well-paid," the constable said, "as soon as it's destroyed."

They brought out the spinning wheel and flung it into the back of the wagon. Mama winced as it crashed amid the wreckage of the other spinning wheels. They had no regard for its fragile structure, its delicate beauty. They had no care that our lives depended upon that simple wooden structure.

The fairy darted out of our shop and hovered near us. She aimed her wand at our spinning wheel and a burst of colors flew out. The colors hit the spinning wheel and buzzed around it like angry bees. When the colors dissipated, the spinning wheel collapsed into all its various parts, no longer distinguishable from its neighbors.

My mother raised her arm as if to swat the fairy. I grabbed her arm.

"Remember Widow Harla!" I hissed. Widow Harla had attacked the fairy with her broom, and she had felt the fairy's retaliatory spell. She was still unable to speak.

I felt the tension in Mama's arm relax.

The constable offered my mother a chinking pouch. Mama ignored it as she held herself erect. I could tell she was determined to show no weakness. With a glance at the fairy, he tossed it at our feet. I shifted so I stood on the pouch strings. The guards climbed onto the back of the wagon while the constable and the official got in on either side of the driver, and they rumbled off down the street, the fairy flitting after them.

A few of our neighbors looked at us in pity, but also with a bit of dread. They knew that if we were to fall on hard times, they would be obliged to show us Christian charity.

It all made no sense to me. I knew there was a curse involved, but it seemed pointless to attempt to get around it by banning spinning wheels. Fairies were not so stupid as to make their spells so easily circumvented. Why bring misery to families such as ours by taking away our only means of income?

I bent down and picked up the pouch. "What will we do now?" I asked.

Mama took the pouch and hefted it. "We'll buy a loom. If we cannot spin, we will weave."

That night, the light and smoke from the bonfire of burning spinning wheels blotted out the stars.

Feedback? Comments here are welcome, or privately at tia dot nevitt at gmail dot com.

Guest Post at Guide to Literary Agents!

2010-02-20T12:52:00.000-05:00

A while back, I wrote a column for the "7 Things I've Learned So Far" series over at Guide to Literary Agents, and they posted it yesterday. Go check it out!

Forging a Legend Domain Parked

2010-02-11T21:14:00.000-05:00

My Forging a Legend website now goes to a domain parking service until I figure out what I want to do with it. I own it for another year and a few days.

It was freaky. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with this one thought: I must transfer my domain before I lose it. I had just over a week left before it expired.

Here's the story. I first created the domain in 2006 or so with Microsoft's OfficeLive, an initiative of theirs that they have since started sundowning. As part of that process, I received an email about half a year ago saying that I'd have to pay for my domain after February something. The email assured me that I'd receive another email 45 days before the domain expired.

Guess what? I never received the email.

The whole transfer system was quite shoddy on the part of Microsoft. After much searching, I finally figured out that I had to go to MelbourneIT's website to transfer the domain. As in Melbourne, Australia. So I did, but the correct thing you had to click on the MelbourneIT site was completely obscure. Finally, I happened upon something and got in and entered the right codes to initiate the transfer. Then, the whole thing was delayed by five days unless I clicked something else. But there was nothing at the MelbourneIT site to indicate what that something was. Then, I had to go to work.

In the intervening 12 hours between then and a little while ago, an email finally made its way from MelbourneIT to my forgingalegend.com email account saying that I had a domain transfer pending. I quickly clicked Accept Transfer and within five minutes, Daydream Domains had the domain parked.

Daydream Domains, by the way, is wonderful. I learned about it through Lisa Shearin's website, where she had similar things to say.

Now, what do I do with it? Do I have it redirect to my tianevitt.com domain, or do I rebuild it, using all the content that I saved in a Word document (and is still available on the Microsoft site)? Ever since I completed this latest rewrite, I've been quite excited about it, and I kinda want to redo the website now that I have absolute control over how it will look. However, judging how long it took me to set up tianevitt.com, it might take until the summer for me to have it ready. So, I might just send it to tianevitt.com.

Suggestions?

Quiet but Productive Month

2010-02-05T20:02:00.002-05:00

I've been slacking on my posting lately. Sorry!

Regarding my short stories: I've only missed one weekend submission so far. I thought I'd miss last weekend, but a rejection came in on Sunday and I was able to send it out again immediately.

I need to finish up "Riven" and send it to my first choice magazine this weekend. I'm hoping I'll be able to do that. We are planning a lazy weekend, and the miserable weather outside should help.

(You know you are a writer when you welcome rotten weather!)

Regarding novels: East of Yesterday continues to churn around in my mind. Now that Brad the Terrible is accompanying Mike and Ashley, the conflict has really picked up. I have a scene where he holds up a convenience store (entirely to Mike and Ashley's surprise) and flings a bunch of 20s in the air once they are on the road again. And the 20s become worthless the instant they start traveling back in time again, so they have been sitting in the car, forgotten.

Until they meet the gypsies.

Since this is primarily a road trip novel, I figure that gypsies will fit in nicely here. Especially since they're time traveling gypsies, and they have a lot of things for sale . . . from every era. And they take currency from any era too! Too bad Mike and Ash don't run into them until they're almost at their destination.

I've also decided that there will only be one love story . . . Mike's. I just can't make Ashley's work. Maybe she hasn't met the right guy yet. We'll have to see if he turns up as I write.

So Far, So Good

2010-01-17T16:38:00.000-05:00

I had an inspiration and renamed my science fiction western from "Petroleum Sunset" to "Once Upon a Gas Tank". I think it is a much greater indication of the mood of the story! I just submitted it to another pro market, one I've never submitted to before.

I went through the whole thing and read it allowed while speaking with the kind of dialect that I was hoping to emulate in the story. I hope it helped. If I can't sell this one, I'm just going to post it on my website. It might be almost impossible to find someone to buy a story that is written in dialect. But I have a lot of markets to go before I give up.

A third story, "Riven", is being beta-read. I like this one very much and it's a fantasy, which is different for me. For some reason when I write short stories, I tend to write science fiction. And when I write novels, they're anything but.

My progress on everything is slow but sure. I can only expect to be able to write so fast because of demands on my time at home. But I'm happy with a little bit of progress. If I ever do manage to sell a novel, I'll have to re-prioritize a bunch of stuff, including Debuts & Reviews. In the meantime, once I get all these short stories polished as well as I'd like them, then I'll have nothing to do with them but submit them here and there. So far, two stories have graduated from my short story file on my iPod touch. Riven will be the third. Then I'll be playing with those stories that I never quite finished, but with concepts that I still think are promising.

Here's a question for you. When you are writing a scene that proves to be difficult, do you:

a) scratch the scene. Obviously my muse is telling me something.
b) work with it. Difficult scenes are worth the angst.
c) something else?

The Dangers of Excessive Wordsmithing

2010-01-12T22:04:00.000-05:00

When is a polished novel really polished? When you reach the point where you are wordsmithing your wordsmiths. Stuff you know you keep tweaking this way and then back to that way. I just got done doing this.

I was guilty of excessive wordsmithing.

This is a crime in so many ways. One, I have wasted valuable time. I could have been working on one of my other novels! Two, I run the risk of ruining some perfectly good sentences. Mark Twain once said, "Choose the right word, not it's second cousin" (paraphrasing here), but sometimes you argue with your muse as to what that right word is. And three, I could have gotten so much else done! Which brings us back to number one. But this was probably a lesson I had to learn.

I also realized that STARCASTER/A SPY AND A LADY was in much better shape than FORGING A LEGEND was during that recent rewrite. I guess that is the difference between novel number 2 (Forging) and novel number 3 (Spy).

Oh, and I DID send "Under Observation" to another market -- a pro magazine. Yay me!

Short Fiction Progress

2010-01-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

I've made a lot of progress with my various short stories. They are all in one file that I keep synchronized between my Ipod Touch and my computer. The Ipod has turned out to be a good place to edit and revise, but it's not such a good way to draft. Not when you have to touch the shift key to get basic punctuation. So my Neo continues to be my preferred drafting tool.

I've polished up a story called "Riven" and I just asked one of my beta readers if she wants to read it. I've also worked a lot on The Sevenfold Spell, trying to get it polished up for epublishers. Plus, I've plucked out the old opening to Starcaster (the embassy mission scene, for those of you who have read it) and I'm going to try to make a short story out of it. One day. I don't have any ideas for it at this time. I'm a blank. So onward.

What I haven't made progress with is Forging a Legend

According to my goal, I'm supposed to submit to a market this weekend. So I'll try to find one of the semipro zines to send "Under Observation" to. My beta readers gave me very positive feedback for it, but I'm wondering if it ends too bleakly. I'll take another look at it and see if I can't shoot some hope in there at the end.

And I'm sorry I've been so BORING lately! I'd say I have the winter doldrums, but I've been in a great mood. Will try to find a way to liven things up around here.

Still Here! Still Writing!

2010-01-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

So I write a post on maintaining momentum, then I vanish for three weeks. Sorry! I've been sick, but I'm all better now. I started out the new year with cleaning off my desk.

My writing new years resolution: to sell a story. Any story. A novel or a short story -- I'm good with either. I need to sell something to the more respectable semipros so I can build up a bit of a bio. Currently, I try with the top four or five magazines and then I tend to fizzle. Gotta stop that.

To get ready, I'm going to pick out my most viable short stories and put them all in one file. I'm going to slap a table of contents on it and zap it to my nifty new Ipod touch. This way, I'll always have them with me and I'll be able to work on them anytime.

I'm also going to get my novella, The Sevenfold Spell, in front of the eyes of the ebook publishers. Currently Sanheim has an anthology going for fairy tales, but unfortunately, they are only for super-hot fairy tales. Spell has sex in it, but I woudn't call it anything close to erotica. I'm just not going to go there. I'm not sure if they want to look at fairy tales stories that aren't hot, but I'll try anyway. Corina Press is a new e-publisher imprint of Harlequin, and they are my first choice. Spell is ripe for a final polish, and then off it goes.

Forging a Legend also will be ready to submit in the next week or so. I have a few agents to try, who have not seen it before, plus one agent whose asked for it twice (never hurts to ask if she wants to see it again, especially since it's been almost two years since she's seen the last version).

Once it is submitted, I'll be working on East of Yesterday and my short stories. My goal? To submit a short story to a market once a weekend until I run out of markets. That will be the absolute minimum.

What are your goals this year?

On Maintaining Momentum

2009-12-06T19:58:00.000-05:00

One thing I'm finding out is that reading and revising on a compressed timeframe can be a very valuable thing.

There's this series of chapters in the first half of the book that take place in a town called Conarzon. I have been revising these chapters all weekend, and they are the chapters that have always given me the most trouble. They are also the chapters during which Awesome Agent Who Requested My Full Twice could not make it through. Kristy also warned me that there were momentum problems here, and although I tightened it up quite a bit, I never saw this particular problem until this reading. I wasn't reading it quickly enough -- like a reader would, not a revising author. Right now, I'm devoting major back-to-back hours to reading and revising, and I was humming right along, snipping here, tightening here, down to about 13,000 words from over 115,000.

And then I got to a scene where it becomes evident that it was time for Abriel to leave. As a reader, I was all set up that it was time for her to go, and for the next part of the story to take place.

Except she couldn't leave. There was this dangerous chimera loose, and before she can travel, a hunting party must find it and kill it. Which takes another three chapters.As a reader, this would frustrate me. I would SO want Abriel (and the plot) to move on. Problem is, as a writer, I really like the actual chimera hunt.

So I cut the 6000 words that included the chimera hunt, the aftermath and her leavetaking, and I slowly spliced the leavetaking back in. Abriel must now deal with the chimera on her way back home. She only has one companion, and they are both new to the sword.

Much better, I think! Now, I'm off to write that scene. As it stands now, I have revised almost 44,000 words out of 111,000.

Single-Minded Focus

2009-12-04T20:10:00.002-05:00

As I hinted in the comment thread of the previous post, I have a hot query lead which means I need to finish this revision of Forging a Legend pretty close to now. So I have suspended blogging at Debuts & Reviews for the weekend in the hopes to get the most done possible.

I have a question for you. What is "literary" fiction? I'm trying to determine if Forging a Legend qualifies. Justin Allen's Slaves of the Shinar is often spoken of as "literary" and I'm thinking that the tone of his novel isn't all that different from mine. However, I'm not sure I want to qualify Forging a Legend as literary if it holds the novel up to a standard that will make it even more difficult to get published.

So I'll leave you with that question while I get my nose back in my book. I'd love to hear what you think.

Discipline

2009-11-24T20:46:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I wanted to work on East of Yesterday. Things are really coming together in my mind. However, I was disciplined and I opened my file for Forging a Legend instead. Nighttime writing time is for revisions. I can draft on the weekends, using my Neo.

I'm really trying to be more disciplined about not hopping from work to work. I recently finished a novella and a short story, and they are in simmer mode, where they will stay for another week or so. Once I started working on each of them, I made sure I finished. I'm trying to be better about this.

I also need to be better about submissions. I do fine for novels -- I query dozens of agents, then I revise, then I query dozens more. I don't seem to ever give up (except for the trunk novel). But for short stories, I fizzle out at about five submissions. Which just about gets me through the pro magazines, where I have almost zero chance of acceptance anyway. I really have to force myself to keep submitting. But honestly, I wonder if I shouldn't just display the short stories on my website and forget about trying to sell them. At least that way, some people will probably read them. But as far as novels go, I think my plan of drafting one work on the Neo and polishing another work on my computer might satisfy my apparent need for variety.

I started working on Forging a Legend in 2004. That makes it five years, now. But in the same amount of time, I wrote another novel, a handful of short stories, one novella and 20,000 words of two additional novels (East of Yesterday and A Hollywood Miracle), both of which I do want to finish. A third novel start, Any Woman, is trunked, probably permanently.

There must be some reason I keep going back to Forging a Legend. And the biggest reason I can think of is I really want to finish it. I love Abriel, and I love the story that I've come up with for her. Book 2 -- if I can ever get the chance to write it -- really ends with a bang and it's got twists and turns you'd never expect. Wait till you get to meet Husband #2! And Book 3 is where I finally get to tie up the many plot threads that I laid the foundations for in Forging a Legend.

Have you ever written anything that has stayed with you like this, and resisted all your attempts to set it aside?

Catch-Up Post

2009-11-21T20:08:00.002-05:00

Ok, I'm posting too infrequently -- so infrequently that I have to review what I posted before so I don't repeat myself. I'll try to pick up the pace.

The foil character who I blogged about last time is working out excellently in East of Yesterday. (I know I said I'd be working on Forging a Legend, and I am, but I can't revise when my daughter is awake, so I revise FAL at night and draft during the day on my Neo. EOY is the only novel I'm drafting at this time.)

Anyway, I decided to call him Brad, and he's a muscle-bound moron. I decided that too many muscle-bound guys are the romantic love interests, so I'm going for muscle-bound villains instead. It will make the job for my good guys all the harder. Here's a brief description from Ashley's eyes. It's short because she tries not to look at him much:

He was about 5'8", with spiked brown hair and arms as big as his head. He wore a tight golf shirt and a thick gold chain.

And that's about all her glance takes in. This isn't one of those she-hates-him-but-grows-to-love-him stories. She really despises him. They've known him since they were all about 1o or 12, and he's been trouble every moment.

Here's an example of the kinds of trouble he's going to get them into. This is just after they found out they are traveling back in time. Mike has sent Brad into a convenience store to find out what year it is. This excerpt has stronger language than you have ever seen on this blog; my apologizes; I'll bleep it out to keep this blog with a PG (or so) rating.

"What do you think?" Mike asked.

"I think Brad's voodoo woman theory has merit."

"How the heck are we supposed to -- oh s--t!" He sat forward in his seat. Brad's posture was evident -- he had pulled a gun on the cashier.

"Where the f--k did he get the gun?" Ashley shrieked.

"He always carries one -- he's got a concealed carry permit."

"Yeah, but you're only supposed to use those in a LAWFUL manner."

Brad came running out. Mike threw it in reverse. By the time Brad was opening the door, Mike was putting it in first gear. They pealed off.

"Money problems over," Brad said, flinging a fistful of twenties in the air.

Ashley whacked him on the side of the head. "Don't you ever do that again!"

"Look, all you have to do is go down the road a mile or two, and the crime never took place and no one is looking for us. It's the perfect crime!"

It's fun. I just get them to a certain place and I think, what's the worst thing that Brad can do now? I've barely started and already the word count has gone up 2000 words.

Have you ever just had fun writing about a complete jerk?

Novella Finished

2009-11-08T21:05:00.000-05:00

I finally finished my novella version of "The Sevenfold Spell". I sent it off to my writing mentor and I'm putting it out of my head for a few weeks. This is the first time I've ever written a happily-ever-after, and I had to write it four times before I ended up with a version I liked. It still needs lots of work, but my head needs a subject change.

I came up with a great new foil for East of Yesterday. Kimber An taught me about foils in one of her amusing Protagonist Cafe posts. My two main characters are twins and while they squabble, there wasn't enough conflict in the time travel scenes. Now, they're going to have Mike's annoying semi-friend along for the ride, for what they think is only about 80 miles. Boy are they in for a surprise. Brad (the new character) is a major jerk, and he's going to be a huge thorn in their side. Should be fun.

But I'm not ready to write that yet. I asked myself which story would give me the most bang for my buck (or time)? And I decided that the answer was . . . Forging a Legend. I've had enough distance from it that I think I can work on it again, ONE FINAL TIME. (Yeah, I know I've said that before.) And when I'm done with this revision, I'll be sending it directly to publishers. And I really need to get it done before January or so, when all the NaNo novels will start swamping every publisher in existence.

Then, I'll have had closure with all these novels, and I'll be able to work on East of Yesterday with a fresh brain.

Purchased Publisher's Marketplace Subscription

2009-11-07T09:58:00.000-05:00

I broke down and purchased a subscription to Publisher's Marketplace. It's 20 bucks a month, which is pretty expensive when you consider the accumulated annual price. However, I've already sent a query package (which included a partial--love it when they let you send partials with the query) to an agent I hadn't seen on any of the public boards. And today I'm going looking for more. Some of them look like absolute noobs -- or scammers. One guy only has a yahoo account listed as his contact method. Another was broadly discussed and ultimately dismissed as a scammer at Absolute Write. But there are some gems in there.

Now that everyone is NaNo-ing (well, not everyone; you guys all seem to be skipping it), I'm hoping the agents have a noticeable drop in queries, thus having time to give some attention to mine.

On Writing Sexy Stuff

2009-10-30T06:11:00.003-04:00

Most of my writing is pretty clean. But occasionally, sensual situations come up and depending on the mood of my novel, I go ahead and write them.

In Forging a Legend, things got pretty steamy, but I keep the sex scenes short. In A Spy and a Lady, the most sensual scene is a make-out scene on a rooftop. Which I tried to make more humorous than sensual. In future novel, when Tory actually gets married (in a scene long envisioned!), there will be no sex scene whatsoever. These novels are definitely have a "sweet" heat level. I have not run into any sex scenes yet in East of Yesterday, and I'm thinking it would be mildly sensual at most.

I have a brief sensual situation in my flash fiction, “Under Observation”. (That reminds me—must find another market!)

But my novella, The Sevenfold Spell, is turning out much more sensual than anything I’ve ever written. As some of you know, it’s a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story. However, it’s told from the point-of-view of a homely young woman who, along with her widowed mother, made her living by spinning before spinning wheels were banned. It opens with the confiscation of their spinning wheel. With the loss of their livelihood, they must live on her dowry, thus ruining her chance of marrying a certain homely young man, who cannot afford a wife without a dowry. He gets sent off to join a monastery, and she and her mother must fend for themselves. Woven into all this is the actual princess, the prince, the evil fairy and the good fairies.

As with Forging a Legend, I’m trying to keep the sex scenes short. I don’t like reading long, involved sex scenes, so I’m not going to write them either. I am going for short and powerful, without using any explicit language.

Here is a scene that shows the mood of the novella.

My infrequent confessions went something like this:

"I have not been chaste, as a maiden ought," I would say to the priest.

"With whom have you not been chaste?"

"A butcher. A baker. A candlestick maker. Plus those I've mentioned before."

"And are you sorry for this sin?"

"No, I can't say that I am."

"Then until you are, your soul will bear its burden."

The local bachelors talked about me, I know, they traded stories--but they always went happily to my bed.

To the aisle? Never.

I spoke of it to Harla, sometimes.

"I would make a good wife," I said.

"I've no doubt of that," she said.

"I'm ready to be faithful to a good man who would have me," I said. "I would devote myself to him and his children."

"You're thinking of Willard."

"Yes."

"Did you love him, then?"

"Love? I didn't think of it as love."

"We all thought you went mad for him."

"I did. I wanted his child."

She looked at me in shock. "Out of wedlock?"

"I couldn't have him, so I wanted a piece of him."

"You were mad."

"Maybe," I said.

"Either that, or you really did love him."

And I wondered about that. Why did I offer myself to him? Although to lie with him had been my own choice, it would have never been a choice I would have made had we been able to marry. I often thought of the child I had wanted so badly, of little Aurora who was never conceived. She would be coming on her menses about now, had she been born.

I was picky about men, in my own way. True, I did look for the men so often rejected by other women: the too thin, the too chubby, the too pocked, the too graying. But I also looked for shyness, for awkwardness, for the socially inept. Was I looking for another Willard? Perhaps. I never found one, but I did find some men who stayed with me for lengths of time that measures in months rather than weeks. One even stayed with me for over a year.

Only one was handsome.

The scene that follow surprised me. I thought I’d have at least one more sex scene, but it turned into a scene where my plain protagonist turns down the most handsome man of all. She walks away. With no regrets whatsoever. I figured that my character needs to grow, and while she turns to men to ease her loneliness in her past, at some point she must grow beyond this. And I didn’t even realize that the story needed this until I wrote that scene.

Don't you love it when you muse takes over?

This Blog is Staying Put

2009-10-20T19:45:00.000-04:00

Even though I've semi-officially launched my new blog at Debuts & Reviews, I'm still going to blog here. This blog is much more personal than my review blogs, and I intend to keep it that way. I actually don't have any obvious way of finding this blog from my domain, which is just fine by me.

I've still been working on "The Sevenfold Spell" and I'm really having to crack the whip to keep myself on a project long enough to finish it. I will allow myself to interrupt novel writing to write a short story--they come along rarely enough--but I simply must finish what I'm doing with this short story (or novella) before I will allow myself to move on to another. Discipline! Must have it!

Short Fiction E-Book Market

2009-10-13T21:52:00.002-04:00

A writing mentor of mine has given me the gift of knowledge. And that knowledge is the fact that e-book publishers accept short fiction. I never knew this!

My sleeping beauty retelling, "The Sevenfold Spell," is long. I have always tried to keep it under 8000 words, because that is typically the maximum short story length, but in truth, it has tried very hard to be longer. It's also somewhat racy. Not really racy; just somewhat. I don't normally write racy stuff, but when the story insists on being racy, then I, as the mere writer, cannot fight it. It's racy in a rather sad and tragic way.

But the fact that it was racy limited my markets. Very few short fiction magazines will take short stories that aren't teen friendly.

And now my friend tells me that e-book publishers routinely publish novellas as short as 10,000 words. I checked around with some of them--like Samhain--and she is absolutely correct.

So I've been on a writing tear. My 7000-odd word short story is now over 10,000 words, and I thought of several great subplots that need to be in there, which should increase the word count by at least 5000 words. I thought of a great way to change the ending that made me throw my head back and laugh. Better yet, it enables me to bring the story full circle, which is always a plus.

I love it when I get to unleash the true story.

There's a certain agent . . .

2009-10-04T20:04:00.003-04:00

. . . and if you read agent blogs, you know her name. She's requested at least partials for both my books . . . twice. And she keeps rejecting them, usually with little encouraging notes at the bottom. I suppose it's a good thing that she keeps requesting to see my stuff. But I do wonder if I'm beginning to be a pest. Oh, well. (Heavy sigh.) I do have other queries still out there.

I won't be making another round of agent queries with Forging a Legend without a contract. However, I will be submitting directly to publishers soon. I've been dithering about a recent rewrite. I sent it to one of my beta readers and she really liked it--in fact, she said she loved it. However, I thought of another way to frame it, and so I made a copy of it and was attempting to make this latest frame work. However, I don't think it will. I really don't want to do another major rework of it, and if I attempt this latest idea, it will require exactly that. So I'll be going back to the rewrite that my beta reader read and will be sending it to another beta reader this week.

One of the things that's been on my mind is the fact that I'm glad I'm branching out into another genre. Historical fiction may be harder to write, but it does seem to be more friendly to females. You guys know that I am intimately familiar with debut novels due to my work at Fantasy Debut. However, the bulk of epic fantasies that have come out since I started FD have been written by men. If you count small presses--old Juno Books and Avari Press--then I can think of a few. If they're not by men, they're about men, such as Naomi Novik's novels. The only exceptions seem to be urban fantasies and YA fantasies, both of which I have not written.

But some of the biggest names in Historical fiction are women like Phillipa Gregory and Diana Gabaldon. It also has a wider readership. I'm also hoping that by the time I am ready to query, this recession is over and time travel historicals are the next big thing.

Maybe--if I get very daring--I'll serialize Forging a Legend at Fantasy Debut. I have a large readership there; I might as well see what they think. What do you think? Good idea, or bad?

Writing Break, plus a Sneak Peek

2009-09-20T21:27:00.005-04:00

I took a break from writing this weekend. Sometimes, you just need to get away from it all. I did send queries to four or five agents today--they were requeries to agents who requested partials from the first batch of queries I sent out, back in November, December and January.

I do admit to getting discouraged. True, I have known a few writers who snagged agents recently, but they all wrote YA, the one area that seems unaffected by the economy. Those of you who have read my novel have been so supportive and encouraging--thank you!

I had an idea for a nonfiction article, and I'm going to query some of the smaller national women's magazines. But I haven't even written the query yet because, as I said, I took a writing break this weekend.

And now, a sneak peek. Since you guys have either been here since before I started Fantasy Debut or followed me from there, I consider you my most loyal readers. I've created a new domain at http://www.tianevitt.com/. I would appreciate it if you would visit it and leave any suggestions you may have here. I'm not going to announce it at Fantasy Debut for a week or so.

Thanks!

Scrub, Scrub, Polish, Polish

2009-09-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

I forgot that I had not sent "Under Observation" to Analog, so I prepared a submission this morning. I made three editing passes through it:

Pass 1 examined the whole thing for sneaky little phrases of telling instead of showing. I want as few words as possible. Every one must count.
Pass 2 used an advanced Word feature called Search by Word Form. This allows me to do a search and replace for "to be" verbs. Some of them--like those in dialog--were necessary. But those outside of dialog is where more telling instead of showing might be hiding. Therefore, I scrutinized each one.
I didn't do it this time, but another thing to search for are -ing words. Gerunds can infuse blandness into your story. I'll think of it next time, but I usually avoid gerunds, anyway.
Pass 3 examined the document for words ending in "ly". A few adverbs snuck in there. I zapped them.

This was after I had printed it twice. For both printings, I had made a lot of red marks just trying to tighten it up. For some reason, I continue to see problems better in hardcopy than on the computer.

I have an old typewriter that someone gave me. I use it to type up addresses on my envelopes. Luckily, the carriage is wide enough for a 9 by 12 envelope. I kind of like typing on the typewriter, but not enough to give up my computer.

I don't read many of the larger short story magazines. I find the taste in certain magazines far outside mine. It seems to me that they're writing to win awards rather than attract readers. But I do like Analog. If you've never read them, give them a try!

Pantster?

2009-09-10T20:13:00.004-04:00

Recently, I've been writing six-sentence plots that covers all the major events of my book. I had one for my Christian novel, A Hollywood Miracle, which is currently stalled. I also had one for my romance, Any Woman, which is also stalled. For my trunk novel, I knew the ending up front.

When I wrote Starcaster, I just let the plot carry me along. With Forging a Legend, I had a plot to begin with, decided it didn't have enough oomph, and rewrote the whole thing--several times.

At this point, I'm wondering if I should bother forcing myself to write the six-sentence plot for East of Yesterday. So far, I'm letting the plot carry me away, but I'm a little nervous because I don't know where I'm going. But, such ambiguity seems to have helped me finish novels in the past. I end up rewriting them backwards, but it seems to work for me.

So I'm thinking I'm a panster, rather than a plotter.

I had some radical ideas today during a brainstorming session today, including the possible heartbreaking death of a major character. I also had a cool idea wherein the headings of my chapters will contain excerpts from my characters' travel journal.

But before I go any further, I'm going to take down my copy of Donald Maass's Writing the Break-Out Novel and peruse some things I've been thinking about. It's my favorite writing book because it give you so much to think about.

Which are your favorite writing books?

Productive Weekend

2009-09-07T20:31:00.000-04:00

I love three day writing weekends at home! I got a lot done this weekend, including:

1) I started my East of Yesterday Gazetteer. I do one of these for every novel I write. I use TiddlyWiki for my gazetteer, which, despite its odd name, is a wonderful tool. Look at the sort of connections I can build using this wiki:

Each hyperlink opens to another wiki topic. Building these wikis are a breeze, and the software has grown to the extent that it doesn't take a long time to learn it. Things like the bullets are intuitive - just use an asterisk when you enter the info and the software converts it to a bullet. It works especially well with FireFox. Want to try it? Here's the TiddlyWiki website.

It also helps me think of connections between characters. Sammy Jones, one of the employees in the above example, is quite a bad character who sprang wholly formed after I wrote the entry for his father, the Reverend Oscar Jones. Sammy is a driver and a thug for Felix the gangster. You can just imagine the conflict. And what of Dorothy Latham? Exactly what is she doing to work her late husband's debt off for a gangster? Even I'm not sure yet.

2) I organized my various POVs. This is the first novel I've written in many years where I have more than one points-of-view. Oath of the Songsmith, the novel of which I never speak, had multiple viewpoints, including the various villains. Forging a Legend originally had three, but I cut it down to two by rewriting all of Thesk's points of view. Starcaster had one. East of Yesterday has at least three, possibly four. Plus, EOD does more POV switching than any novel since OATS. I had a terrible time keeping track of POVs with OATS, so I created another Word Style called "POV". Now, they all appear nicely in my Document Map along with all my other stuff. What am I talking about? Refresh your memory by reading my primer to the Document Map here.

3) And lastly, I wrote another 5000 words, cut 2000 words for a net increase of 3000 words (just in case you can't add), for a grand total of just over 20,000 words! Plus, I do believe I have already gotten through my mid-novel slump! I might be due another one, because I'm shooting for at least 100,000 words. But we'll see.

And that was all on the weekend! It made up for a rather unproductive week.

The Sunday Night Post

2009-08-30T19:57:00.002-04:00

My blogging here is getting to be a weekly thing.

I saw some buzz on Absolute Write that indicates my four-week-old full manuscript request may yet get a response. In the meantime, I have been less than enthusiastic about sending out my rewrite of Starcaster. I guess I still like the old way it was written. Which means I'm working on East of Yesterday while it's all so ambiguous in my head.

And I'm encountering more ambiguity there. I have a bunch of stuff in my notebook that I need to transcribe. But I've gotten hung up on a subplot and today, after writing a bunch of stuff, I started wondering if that subplot shouldn't just be cut out. It takes the novel in a different direction and gives it a very different tone. So I'll probably read a book tonight and go to bed early!

On the bright side, I've discovered something in my research that makes my plotting much easier. US-1 as it exists in Florida and Georgia has not changed routes since 1926. I haven't pinned down the year where the bulk of my story takes place, but 1926 is more than far back enough. Once I determined that the route has not changed, I was finally able to figure out where all the stops are on my characters' road trip. I have actually traveled up 95 as far as Waycross in the researching of this novel, and we are talking of going as far as Swainsboro. Who knows; we may take a long weekend and drive clear up to Columbia.

Driving along these old highways really helps. I got the idea of Ashley's close encounter with an alligator while on the road to Waycross. What I can't research in person, I will attempt to make up for by using Google Street View (a marvelous tool).

In the meantime (or have I said that already?), I am waiting on two short story submissions. I am now subbing to "semipro" markets (it doesn't take long to go through the pro markets), so I'm hoping to attract some interest there. I am currently submitting "Petroleum Sunset" and "Under Observation". I'd like to submit "The Sevenfold Spell" as well, which is my Sleeping Beauty retelling, but it's a bit racy and I'm having trouble finding markets that take racy stuff. I may run into this problem with "Under Observation" as well. It only has one tiny little racy part, but it's very powerful and I think the story would lose something if I take it out. I think Kristin would agree with me here.

Ordinarily, my writing is squeaky clean. I don't include sexual stuff unless the plot calls for it, so when it does, I include it for the impact. So it can get rather earthy.

And that's my weekly update! Maybe I'll surprise you sometime with a post mid-week.

Coming Up for Air

2009-08-23T21:02:00.000-04:00

Two weeks since I've blogged! Yikes!

I've been keeping busy. It occurred to me that I needed to get serious about querying Starcaster again because soon it will be November and after that, the Christmas break and after that, another post-NaNoWriMo query flood. I was caught up in that last year; I don't want to repeat the experience this year. Agent after agent stopped taking queries altogether, and many agents stopped replying at all. I ended up wishing for rejections! So it occurred to me that I needed to send my next batch of queries out now.

But I wasn't ready. Before I could do that, I really needed to revamp my opening because it is obvious that my old opening wasn't working. I very reluctantly dis-engaged my East of Yesterday brain and re-engaged my Starcaster brain. And I got to work.

I deleted the entire opening scene and started the novel with (for those of you who have read it) the arrival of Miss Henry. Just as Tory's running down the stairs of headquarters to meet her student, she meets Crowley coming up. He takes her into the men's dorm (!) where together, they listen through a convenient heat register to a conversation between Miss Henry and Mr. Bradburn, in which Mr. Bradburn assigns Miss Henry the task of spying on Tory.

I'm hoping this opening is much stronger. I have also renamed the novel, but I'll keep using the old name here in the blog.

This involved some major re-arranging, the inclusion of one backstory scene as a flashback, and following all that, an entire revision. I started out with 94,000 words. After my cut, my novel was bleeding profusely at barely 80,000 words. When I added most of the scenes back in their re-arranged and flashbacked places, and finished going through the whole thing again, I was still down to 88,000 words.

Which, to me, is uncomfortably short. A fantasy novel is generally between 80,000 and 100,000 words. I wanted to be comfortably in the middle. So I started going through deleted scenes. And I found a gem. It was where Tory briefs the king. None of you have read this; I never finished the scene because it just fizzled when I was trying to write it. Well, timing is everything because I thought of a great way to end the scene. I put the scene back in the novel where I originally envisioned it (the next morning after Crowley is shot), and smoothed everything that came after.

Now, it's 91,000 words. And I'm very happy with it.

Now I just need to rewrite my query. Some of you will be getting emails about this; thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give me!

Oh, and I also have a potential short story. My old opening could very well be a standalone adventure. I think I'll spiff it up and send it to various fantasy magazines.

Time Travel Historical

2009-08-09T21:42:00.000-04:00

I'm homing in on 20,000 words. I know historical novels run longer than your average novel, but I'm not sure how much longer. Fantasy, by average, runs longer as well. So I'm going for 100,000 words and we'll see how it goes. Almost 1/5th way there.

I'm writing this novel in a rather episodic manner. This week, I wrote a couple of scenes from Mike and Ashley's final destination in the 20s, and now I'm writing a scene that takes place during their journey back in time, in the 60s. I'll smooth them all out at some point in the future. I'm not sure if I'll use them all, but I'm trying to make sure they each are relevant to the plot. Even fun "fish out of water" scenes must advance the plot, somehow.

I also have to figure out the rules of time travel. I decided to rule out the possibility of two "copies" of a person in the same place at the same time. If someone goes back to their own past, they become the only copy, even if the person must vanish in one place and appear in another. This means that Mike and Ashley would have vanished for brief periods in their own past while their future selves were visiting that particular time. I'm not sure if this will have an impact on the book, because I really don't get into their own personal past very much. But it will be an interesting possibility.

I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be fun to have someone they meet in one timeframe come looking for them in another. For example, they save a black teenage boy from a beating in the early 60s. Wouldn't it be fun if they run into him in the 70s--before they ever get to the 60s because they're traveling backwards through time--and he knows them and just wanted to try to find them to convince himself that it wasn't all a dream. And of course, they wonder if he was crazy until they finally meet him in the 60s.

Fun? Oh yeah.

Rewrites and First Drafts

2009-08-03T20:32:00.004-04:00

I'm sort of tackling two projects at once, a rewrite of Forging a Legend and the first draft of East of Yesterday. Although I like my rewrite of Forging, I can't help but get the feeling that I've put too much effort into it, and maybe I should just move on . . . for now.

I have a history with this. My first novel was called Oath of the Songsmith. The strange thing about it was that the oath was really not all that earth-shattering, and when he breaks it, he loses his voice, so for a good half of the novel, he isn't a songsmith at all. The rest of the book kind of . . . doesn't make sense just like that. It was my journeyman novel.

I spent ten years writing and rewriting it. It took one agent rejection for me to set it aside.

I don't want to get sucked into that trap again. Although I think Forging a Legend is worlds away better than Oath of the Songsmith, I'm thinking I should just leave it and move on.

Why? Because I think East of Yesterday is worlds away better than Forging a Legend.

I know some of you loved Forging a Legend and don't get me wrong--I love it too. And I'm thrilled that it found readers who loved it. Abriel's story is something I want to finish one day. But I'm coming to a conclusion that I've come to before, and I really need to listen to myself. I think I need to be in a better position as a writer in order to interest a publisher in Forging a Legend. I think I need to "write" this as an established author, rather than have it be my debut novel.

I think East of Yesterday has great potential as a debut novel. It's a standalone novel. The genre of historical fiction has a much wider audience potential than the fantasy genre. And I'm having great fun writing it. As I write it, I have sort of a goofy half-smile plastered on my face at all the situations I'm putting my characters in. I'm tackling difficult subjects, such as racism and segregation in the South. It's almost . . . but not quite . . . literary.

My time constraints do not allow me to work on two novels at once. I'm still in love with the concept and the characters in East of Yesterday, so I need to focus my efforts on it. In a few months, when I hit the inevitable roadblock that I always hit, I'll turn back to Forging a Legend and finish up my rewrites and maybe even enter it into RWA's annual contest. So I'm not setting it aside for good. I'm setting it aside for now.

In other news, I've finally resubmitted my short short, "Under Observation", to another market. I think this story could be "the one" that finally nets me a fiction bio entry. Wish me luck!

Writer Wednesday at Fantasy Debut

2009-07-22T18:07:00.002-04:00

I should mention that it's Writer Wednesday at Fantasy Debut. We have a Featured Writer--Jennifer Estep of Bigtime (the name of her series) fame. We're having a roundtable on Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys. Jennifer is friendly and accessible, and it's been great fun.

Join us! This will be going on at least another day.

Random Updates

2009-07-21T21:36:00.003-04:00

Wow; it's been over a week since I last blogged. Busy week. We spent the weekend at a homeschooling convention. Homeschooling is our last choice because we tried EVERYTHING else. Most schools won't take my daughter and the ones that will are either bedlam or frightfully expensive. My daughter can't learn in bedlam--who can?--and our resources are better spent elsewhere than tuition. So, homeschool it is. Or rather, "nontraditional private school" since we aren't technically homeschoolers.

Not conductive to the muse. So I am editing. I finished incorporating Katie's edits into Forging a Legend--thanks, Katie!-- and now I am polishing. Lots of things have changed since 2005, when I wrote this novel, including my word choices. So I'm going through the whole thing, paragraph by paragraph. The lovely Lisa and Kristin have both volunteered to reread it when I am finished. I don't know what it is about this book; I'm just not willing to give it up.

Regarding East of Yesterday: I'm feeling grateful that I had a grandparent born in 1895. She was very old when I was in high school--much older than my friends' grandmothers. No one else had a grandparent born in the previous century. She had WONDERFUL stories when I was growing up. She always called Woolworth's the "five and dime". I learned all about the lunch counters that they used to have there, and various other details I was able to incorporate in this brief scene:

A waitress stopped before him. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Mike," he said before he remembered to use his last name.

She seemed unfazed by his informality. "Well, Mr. Mike--what'll it be?"

"Oh, some coffee and scrambled eggs, I guess."

Someone joined him on his right. "Morning," he said as he opened his paper.

Mike glanced at him. He was in a suit similar to his. "Morning," he replied.

The waitress thumped a teacup and saucer before him, and filled it with coffee. He looked around for creamer, but all he saw was a little metal milk pitcher. He took it and poured some in, then dug some sugar cubes out of a bowl with a spoon and dropped them in.

He decided to start his housekeeper search here. He would probably be seeing these men every morning, after all. It would be a step above hiring someone through an ad.

"Anyone know of someone looking for a housekeeper job?"

Silence. Then a "Nope," and a "Not me."

Mike stirred his coffee and wondered how long it would take for the sugar cubes to dissolve.

"If you don't mind a Negro, I know someone," the guy on his left said.

And ugh--an agent has had the complete MS for Starcaster for almost four months!

I've Decided - It's Historical

2009-07-13T17:55:00.003-04:00

Despite the warnings of my fellow bloggers, Kimber An and Katie, I am writing a novel that fits into the classification of "historical." It's my time travel fantasy, but I've decided that it fits into the genre of "historical" more than anything else. It's about as much fantasy as Outlander by Diana Gabaldon is. No one considers Outlander a fantasy, although it has fantasy elements to allow for the time travel. My novel is much the same. Therefore, when I shop it, my top choice agents will represent both fantasy and historical.

I even have settled on a historical-novel-sounding title: East of Yesterday. That's definitely not a fantasy title.

Since it's a time travel novel, I'm not limited to one particular era. Here are the eras I'm writing about so far:

Colonial St. Augustine, during which time it was under British rule,
The last Spanish occupation of St. Augustine,
St. Augustine during the Civil War, during which time it was occupied by Union soldiers,
St. Augustine during the and after the 1914 fire,
St. Augustine during the 1964 Civil Rights demonstrations,

These eras are visited by Henry, a Colonial-era farmer, as he travels "north" in time. Ashley and Mike take a road trip south in time, starting in Columbia, SC and ending in St. Augustine, all of which I've already written about in the posts below. They meet in the 1920s--except they've met before. It has been so much fun to write.

So my novel covers almost 250 years. Since the South was segregated during the 20s, I'm also writing about that. Right now, Ashley is interviewing a young black woman who was fired from her last housekeeper position after being falsely accused of stealing a ring.

Since the novel is recent history, I'm wondering if I should avoid any historical names. The Flagler family was very prominent in St. Augustine during this timeframe. Do I mention them by name, or do I invent a different family? They won't have a big role in the novel, but they had such a huge impact on development in St. Augustine (and much of the East Coast of Florida) that it would almost be remiss to omit them.

~*~

Ok, I wrote all of the above last week, and then forgot to post it. I was in the middle of dealing with all these questions when Katie's feedback for Forging a Legend arrived in the mail. I just wanted to send a public thank you her way for her wonderful feedback. She discovered a VERY LARGE inconsistency resulting from a deleted scene that I probably would have missed despite a rereading because I'm just too close to the novel, and I've read it too many times. So now I'm sitting here trying to decide whether I put the scene back in, or rip some more scenes out, with possible more repercussions down the line.

Writing -- it's a wonderful, crazy life!

Time Travel Fantasy

2009-07-02T20:20:00.000-04:00

I've plunged right into the middle of my time travel fantasy, leaving the opening chapters incomplete. I did this on purpose. There's absolutely no use spending a lot of time on the opening chapters when I know I'll go back and rewrite them. I have the first chapter written, where my characters take a road trip from the 2010s to the 1970s. Then, I just jumped back in time to the 1920s, their destination. In the final version, they'll take the road trip all the way back in time. When they get to the 40s, they are going to trade their vehicle in for a 1920s model, which they'll use to cruise all the way to their destination. But I'm not going to bother writing that yet.

As part of my "research", we took a road trip up US-1 into Georgia. We stopped off at the Okefenokee Swamp Park. At the entrance, the alligators were right there; no walls between them and us. They could have easily run up the bank and chased us to our car. However, it was a hot day, and alligators are cold-blooded creatures. They're just not going to move fast for any old reason.

It made me think of my characters. There's a long patch of nothing between Waycross and Folkston. Imagine them cruising along in some rattletrap vehicle when Ashley--who drank too much iced tea in Waycross--can't hold it in any longer. She makes a pit stop on the side of the road. And there she is, with her dress hiked up, when she finds herself in a staring contest with an alligator.

Is that too cruel? (Imagine diabolical authorial laughter here.)

And railroad crossings. I can imagine Mike breezing through them until they have a close encounter with a train in an era where there are no crossing guards. (In Arizona, many rural railroad crossings still have no gaurds. There's simply a stop sign. Here in Florida, every road--no matter how insignificant--seems to have a crossing guard.)

I'm having to do a LOT of research. I don't know whether St. Augustine was electrified in the early 1920s. Since the Rural Electrification Act wasn't until the 30s, I'm not sure. Most urban areas were, but I would hardly think that St. Augustine would qualify as "urban". For that matter, did St. Augustine still have gas lights during that era? The lighthouse--which is on an island--wasn't electrified until 1936. Oh, and I see the lighthouse's keeper's house was electrified in 1925, which might indicate that St. Augustine proper was being electrified a few years previously. I might have to actually go and look through the microfiche of the St. Augustine Record, something I have not done since my college days. Or, I could look up the local electric company's history. (Microfiche sounds funner.)

And that's just one of my questions!

Getting to Know Characters - Pilot Scenes

2009-06-23T06:09:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who wanted to read Forging a Legend.

I've been writing a series of pilot scenes for my time travel fantasy. I came up with the term "Pilot Scene" after the concept of a pilot chute in aviation. A pilot chute is a small parachute that drags out the larger one. My pilot scenes are independent, sometimes disposable scenes that draw out the larger story.

I realized that I didn't have any emotional connection to my main characters, Mike and Ashley (who are twins in their late 20s). I needed to write some scenes to get to know them and to form a bond with them. So I jumped ahead in the story and wrote about them acclimating to living in the 1920s.

In this scene, Ashley has been trying to get to know 1920s household technology. It's a bit spare on description for now.

Mike's first day of work was the longest that Ashley ever spent. When he got home, she opened the door and announced, "I want a housekeeper."

He took off his hat as he entered, exactly as if he had been born in 1900 rather than 1985. And where the heck did he get that thing, anyway? "Why?" He asked as he put it on a peg beside the door.

"Good lord." Ashley said.

He shot her a level look. "What?"

"Next thing, you'll be telling me to fetch your cigar and smoking jacket."

He scrunched up his nose. "Not likely. The cigarettes here smell terrible. The men at work couldn't believe I didn't smoke. I was actually glad for the open windows, even if the screens had holes and let in every fly in St. Augustine." He pulled off his jacket. "So why do you want a housekeeper?"

"Because I don't know anything. I can barely operate that stove well enough to boil water. How the heck do you tell how hot the stove is?"

"By how red the heating element is, I guess."

It made so much sense she wanted to smack him. "Well, that's not all. Come look at this." She led him into the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the sink and brought out a washboard. "This overgrown cheese grater is how we wash our clothes. Do you know how long it would take to do even one load of clothes? So don't count on having a fresh shirt every day unless we get a housekeeper."

She caught a smirk on his face. "Don't think you can hack the 20s, Ash?"

"You can't either. Come see this."

He followed her out to the backyard. She gestured over the neglected lawn. "How do you expect to mow this grass without a power mower?" She was satisfied to see the smirk melt off his face. "The neighbors won't put up with all this grass now that someone lives here."

Shortly afterward, they discover the local speakeasy. Ashley's been night prowling, and here she has a bit of a shock when she takes a shortcut back home to the back porch.

Michael met her on the back porch with a gun.

"Where'd you get that thing?" Ashley asked as he lowered the gun.

"I thought it advisable."

"Well, I want one too."

"Why? Did something happen?"

"Inside."

She made sure the door was locked behind them, and then took him upstairs before she would talk, and then she insisted on talking in the stairwell, well away from any windows.

"How much did you check this neighborhood out before you decided to rent this house?"

"It seemed like a residential neighborhood to me. Why?"

"Well, there's a speakeasy around the corner."

His eyes lit up with interest. "Really? Where?"

"I'm not telling you!"

"Really, Ash. There's nothing to be alarmed about. If it's really a speakeasy, they're not going to want any trouble with the law."

"Yeah, that's what the guy said, too."

"What guy?"

"The guy who wanted me to go in."

He frowned, then tromped back downstairs and grabbed his coat and hat. "Come on. Let's go check out the place."

"Now?"

"They're not going to be open every night. I want to see it."

"Well, have fun, then."

"Come on, Ash. They're not going to let just any stranger in, and they've already invited you."

She stared at him and crossed her arms. He grinned. "Where's your sense of adventure? You afraid?"

"Yes."

"No you aren't. Let's go."

"Wait." She went over to her purse. "I want to take my camera."

"They'll never let you take pictures."

She held up the thin, pink plastic device. "And they'll never know it's a camera unless you tell them."

Forging a Legend Rewrite Complete!

2009-06-18T21:31:00.000-04:00

I finished my revision of Forging a Legend. For those of you who have read it, Verit is now a first-person point-of-view character, and his POV is the framework through which the story is told.

My problem is I'm too close to the story. I'm wondering if any of you want to read--or reread-it. I need to know if the story still bogs down in the Furdi chapters. I've cut about 8000 words.

Here's the first chapter. It is short. If you've read it, it refers to things that don't happen until the third book, only bits of which are written.

Chapter 1
The Fallen God
Verit

It took me many years to forgive her. For most of those years, I wanted only to kill her.

Then one day, she showed up at the doorstep of my hovel one day with that husband of hers behind her. Once, I lived in a castle on a cloud with a vista that seemed to encompass all the world. Now, because of her, I was here, forced to scrape an existence out of the stubborn earth.

For a moment, we just stared at one another. Forgotten was my wish to kill her as I absorbed the impossibility of her presence. She looked to be about fifty--the age I felt, although we were both much older.

"I never renounced you, you know," she said.

I opened my mouth several times before I managed a reply. I lived the life of a recluse by then, and had not spoken to anyone in months. "I know. You just stopped believing."

"You can't compel belief. You can't give it if you don't have it."

"So you told me, once."

We were silent for a moment.

"This is for you." She handed me a square package, wrapped in sackcloth and tied with string. "If anyone deserves an explanation, it's you," she said. She turned away.

"Do with it as you will."

She walked away, her husband beside her.

I took the parcel inside, set it on a table and stared at it. An explanation. I hadn't realized until that moment how very much I wanted an explanation. I untied it with increasingly eager hands and yanked away the layers of sackcloth.

It was a codex. No, many codices.

I opened the top one. The brittle sheets of papyrus were crowded with words. I flipped through it, reading phrases here and there.

It was her story.

It was clear that the words did not come easily. She was no writer. Parts of it showed heavy editing. In many places, words had failed her and she had simply drawn pictures instead. In these, there was no sign of hesitancy, no stray marks, no rubbed-out lines.

Her drawings demonstrated her true genius. In these, I saw the world through her eyes. The aqueducts of Ulrith. A Furdi shepherd on a clifftop. A snarling chimera. The placid lake of Fermere. The pyramid of Thesk with his bright light shining through the storm. The arena within the pyramid.

A dying god.

At the bottom of the stack was a scrap of papyrus, upon which she addressed me directly.

"I would have done none of these things had you not made me what I am."

She was right. She would have lived the simple life of an artist, had I not intervened. I had seen that as a waste. I saw her only for her heroic proportions, for her strong arm, and I made her into the legend I required.

She became a myth all on her own.

Do with them as you will, she had said. I saw nothing for it but to write, to take her words and pictures and stitch them into a coherent whole. I took her story and rendered it in my words, while adding my own side of the story.

Therefore, what follows is my last great act as the Lord of Truth.

She had started with her childhood, but I see no need for that. The divorce. That is the true beginning of her story.

If you'd like to read more, please let me know at tia dot nevitt at gmail dot com, or leave a comment below. Thanks!

No Middles

2009-06-06T08:02:00.000-04:00

I figured out my problem with both Any Woman and A Hollywood Miracle. For both novels, I plotted out beginnings and endings, but I didn't end up with enough material for a decent-sized novel.

I have no middles.

I suppose I could keep throwing complications at my characters. I would have plot in the beginning, a long string of complications, and plot at the end. I think that would be annoying to read. And to write. And I'm not sure if the result would be a strong enough novel to pursue. For either novel.

It makes me wonder if I'm a panster, rather than a plotter. As in, do I write by the seat of my pants, rather than plot?

The evidence is clear for the "panster" approach. When I wrote Starcaster and Forging a Legend, I was a panster for both. For Starcaster especially, I had no idea where I was going. I threw Tory in a sticky situation, and I let her figure her way out of it. The same for Forging a Legend. No clear ending, but when the idea for my ending did come to me, it was like a bolt out of the blue. And I really liked it. Abriel really faces what you would call "insuperable odds" to achieve a worthwhile goal.

The drawback was both took about five drafts. For Forging a Legend, which is the novel I wrote first, I had about 30,000 words in deleted scenes. For Starcaster, about half of that.

Fortunately, I always have something on a back burner. I've just started Highway of Time. As of right now, it's definitely a panster. I have some glimmers of ideas, such as a girl lost in time, and her brother looking for her. 1920s gangsters and gun molls. Time-traveling magic. Old cars. Telegrams as the fastest means of communication.

I think I'll write for 10,000 words and see how it goes.

When in Doubt, Throw Yourself a Curve

2009-06-03T21:25:00.000-04:00

I was writing the other day, feeling a bit spiritless, when I decided to throw a curve at my character, Karen. I made her take a plane trip with a demon. Not just any demon--an arch-demon; one she'd been warned against, and one she will have to "prepare herself" for before she can attempt to exorcise it.

Yup. I have an exorcist in my story. I sure didn't see that coming when I first started it. The New Testament can be excellent story fodder if you let it!

I wrote this scene after-the-fact, when she just got off the plane and met up with Max. But of course, I'm going to have to go back and write that scene on the airplane. It will be one of those corporate jets, so there will only be about six to eight people on board. And naturally, he will taunt her.

His name is Armonde. I know demons usually have names like Azrael, but I figure if I'm going to have angels named Leroy and Butch, then a demon named Armonde is perfectly acceptable.

I'm modeling my arch-demon after the demon in the movie Fallen. Somewhat. Since my story is based on New Testament-style exorcisms, lots of changes will be in order. And that's a good thing because I wouldn't want to just make my demon a Fallen knock-off.

There's nothing like a bit of a curve to put some life back into your plot.

Another Blog Buddy Gets an Agent!

2009-05-31T10:20:00.000-04:00

Yes, agents are still taking on clients, and here's the proof. Congratulations, Cheryl!!!

Weekend Update

2009-05-26T05:29:00.003-04:00

I wrote about 3000 words this weekend. Some of it is still on my Neo. It was all for the same novel--A Hollywood Miracle. I decided to go with this novel based on pure logic--it was closest to being finished.

When I sat down to write yesterday, I really didn't want to. My husband and daughter were taking up both computers by playing a networked game (Doom of all things. I can't believe I'm letting my daughter play Doom. At least it's the 90s version), so I couldn't even get to my manuscript. So I got out my Neo and my notebook and tried to find an untranscribed scene. But they were all transcribed. I looked at my outline (which is in my notebook) to see what should come next, and I started working on some scenes to up the tension between John (the actor), Max (the stunt man) and Karen (Max's friend). That accounts for about 1000 words.

I was very proud of myself for a) sticking to the same novel all weekend, b) writing even though I didn't feel like it and c) managing to come up with a good, conflict-filled scene anyway.

Which title do you like better, A Hollywood Miracle or The Stunt Man's Miracle?

Chewed Out By My Muse

2009-05-21T19:59:00.000-04:00

This morning, I gave myself a harsh talking-to. Or rather, my muse chewed me out. In case you didn't know, my muse is a Drill Sergeant. From the Marine Corps. I may have served in the Air Force, but my muse is a Marine. He looks something like this, except he's younger and more good-looking:

Any, DS Muse told me in no uncertain terms that if I want to be a writer, I need to act like one. No more letting stories languish just because I'm waiting on the decisions of agents and editors. No more vascillating between my favorite book-of-the-week. I was told that I need to sit down, shut up, and write.

So yesterday and today, I hammered out a synopsis for my time travel fantasy. I now have to choose between the following projects (not counting my low reading level young adult novellas, which are languishing in maybe-land):

Title: A Hollywood Miracle
Genre: Hollywood Mainstream/Inspirational (it's too edgy for Christian, I think)
One-sentence blurb: Martial arts expert meets angel and is given the ability to work a single miracle in order to rescue the soul of his childhood hero, actor John Raven, who has sold his soul for worldly success.
Progress: 20,000 of 80,000 words

Title: Any Woman
Genre: Hollywood Romance
One-sentence blurb: Small-town girl refuses to date big-time actor unless he can remain scandal-free for an entire year, but the media learns of her challenge and she finds herself at the center of a scandal of her own.
Progress: 10,000 out of 80,000 words

Title: On the Highway of Time
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
One-sentence blurb: Brother/sister travel writing team take a road trip back in time to rescue a girl from Colonial times who got lost in time and ended up an opium-addicted gun moll in the 20s.
Progress: detailed synopsis only

I like 'em all, and I keep floating between the three of them. I'm asking myself, what would Nora Roberts do? She would pick one and go for it. So that is what I must do.

"Under Observation" Released Into the Wild. Plus Other Stuff.

2009-05-11T17:32:00.000-04:00

My short story, now renamed "Under Observation", has been released into the wild.

Many thanks to those of you who read it. The feedback I got for this story is the most enthusiastic feedback I've ever received. Let's hope it's not met in the publishing world with a yawn.

~*~

My membership with a certain online writer's organization has expired, and I've decided not to renew. It wasn't what I expected, and it's not worth the 40 dollar fee when the only benefit you get is membership of yet another bulletin board system.True, agents hang out there, but agents hang out at blogs as well, and lots of blogging agents take questions from readers.

Instead, I am thinking about joining Online Writing Workshop. I was a member years ago when it was free. It's a great system and I was an idiot for not fessing over the money and joining years ago. And it has an added benefit of specializing in fantasy, science fiction and horror. It's 49 dollars a year, which is only 9 bucks more than that other system. The drawback to this system is that I don't always have something to critique, and I tend to only critique works when asked, or when I have something for which I am seeking critique.

So I might just save the money and join the Romance Writers of America later this summer.

Blogging has actually been tremendously helpful to me as a writer, so I may join nothing. Are you a member of any writing organization?

Teaser Tuesday - The Facts of Life Briefing

2009-05-05T19:46:00.000-04:00

First, some almost-news. The editor at that publishing company liked the two synopses I sent her! Now she has to clear it with the CEO/Publisher.

This scene is not quite the same as the one in the version I sent out to beta readers. It's when Tory tries to give the Facts of Life Briefing to her new protegee.

Since most young women were kept in a state of ignorance about the ultimate relationship that occurs between men and women, the Ministry had developed what they officially termed the Reproduction Briefing. My mother had tried to prepare me for this briefing before I entered the Corps, but her tentative instruction had nothing on Miss Young's excruciatingly detailed drawings of parts of the body usually covered by clothes.

"Since we lack more dignified terms," Young had said during that briefing, "I will refer to the male parts as the "butterfly" and the female parts as the "flower."

Oh, how my cheeks had burned. We sat in a briefing room, and she used a pencil to point at drawings that looked nothing like either butterflies or flowers.

"As you know," she said, "the butterfly has between its wings, a long shaft. You may think of a man's . . . organ . . . as a butterfly without wings." She moved on to the female parts. "And like the flower, the female organ has a tubelike structure hidden among the petals." At this point, she had pinned her gaze upon me. "Now, anyone who has ever seen a butterfly pollinate a flower knows that the butterfly actually inserts itself into the flower. . . ."

I had emerged from my briefing much worldlier--and perpetually red-faced every time I looked at a man for weeks.

As I blushingly stumbled my way through the briefing, spots of color appeared on Miss Henry's cheeks. She listened in studious silence. However, when I got to the part about the insertion, Miss Henry began to giggle.

I looked at her with my brows raised.

"It's just that . . . that . . ." she gave up and giggled again.

"Yes?" I said, trying to keep my dignity as an instructor.

"I saw our dogs doing something like that once before my brother threw a rock at them. Are you telling me that all men and women do this?"

"Any couple who has had a child, yes."

"But it seems so undignified!"

At this point, I couldn't help it--I began to giggle as well. "Can you imagine?" I said, "Iron Mark?!"

We both sniggered like schoolgirls.

However, our newfound rapport vanished the next time Bradburn summoned her into his office.

Edgy Science Fiction Story

2009-05-03T14:46:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had an idea for a very short science fiction story and I wrote it in my notebook. It sat there for a few weeks until yesterday morning, when I woke up knowing how it ends. Don't you love that? It's not even a thousand words.

Yesterday, I read it aloud to my husband. He was heaving heavy sighs when I started reading it, but he got interested quickly. He found one part rather shocking. And last night while I was trying to go to sleep, he kept talking about it. I take these all as hopeful signs. It involves an alien species and humans kept as lab rats.

I could use some feedback, so if you want to read it, please email me at tia dot nevitt at gmail dot com. Or, if you know my personal address, email me there. If you've read any of my other work, don't expect anything similar. This is very dark. Thanks!

Freelance Fiction Writing

2009-04-28T19:37:00.002-04:00

I've become friendly with a tiny handful of authors since starting Fantasy Debut. One is Janet Lorimer, writer of children's novels and more recently, the adult fairy tale Master of Shadows. Here are my reviews. It's still in print, so if it sounds good to you, go buy it!

Anyway, Janet and I have stayed in touch ever since. She read a few short stories of mine, and I gave her my opinion on the opening of one of her novels and several synopses. She also went into detail about her freelance career, where she write a great deal of educational fiction and nonfiction.

I've done some freelance writing in the past ten years, mostly for the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader humor book series. I wrote one history article for them ("Port-a-Fortress") and twelve science articles.

Now thanks to a referral to from her, I have the opportunity to pitch a short YA novel to the educational publisher. It's a specific type of writing called high interest/low reading level, aimed toward "struggling readers". When Janet described it to me, it sounded a lot like what I did for the Bathroom Reader. I sent her contact at the publisher an email introducing myself, and she sent back an overview of the types of novels they're looking for. I already have an outline, which I thought of on the way home.

It will be work-for-hire, but I'll get a byline. It's for trade paperback style books. And if the editor likes my idea, I'll get a contract to actually write it. Therefore, I'll potentially be selling the novel on proposal.

I did an interview with Janet where she discusses this type of writing in detail.

Wish me luck! This will be great for my bio. And my pocketbook!

Writing Mainstream Fiction

2009-04-26T13:36:00.000-04:00

I've been doing all the "time to get serious" stuff that I always do for a book once I realize that it's a "go." I've created my storybuilding wiki (which I use TiddlyWiki for). I've given all my characters first and last names. I've numbered my chapters and named my scene breaks. I've come up with a six-sentence outline of the entire plot.

The genre is Contemporary Romance. It's not a genre I read much of, but it is a genre that I've read a great deal of, in years past. Like most romances, it's a standalone novel. This will be the first standalone novel I've contemplated. Even with my Christian novel, I envision a five-book series. I seem to think in series. Not this time. This means everything will have to resolve. No dangling plot threads. And such genres usually have an 80,000 word limit. It will be my shortest book yet.

My approach is quite different. With Starcaster, I held on tight and let the plot take me for a ride. Here, I'm being a lot more deliberate. When I came up with all my characters in my wiki, I tagged a bunch of them if they could be classified as protagonist or antagonist. While doing this, I came up with another antagonist, because I needed someone to betray my heroine. I also realized that a good supporting character was, in fact, an antagonist. He's a good antagonist, but since he's working against my character, that makes him an antagonist in my novel. Another neutral character turned out to be an antagonist, and a while back, I realized that another antagonist will turn into a protagonist over the course of the story.

And I'm giving myself a deadline. I have to be able to enter it into the Golden Hearts contest by December. Sometime over the summer, I'm going to join RWA. That way, I won't have to pay both rather expensive fees at once.

And no, I still haven't finished the Christian novel. I figure I can work on them both. When the muse goes silent for one, he just might speak for the other.

I Love Your Blog

2009-04-25T08:18:00.000-04:00

Lisa of Life's Goulash has nominated this blog for an I Love Your Blog award!

She posted this an embarrassingly long time ago, and I'm so sorry that I didn't post about it sooner.

Thank you for the award, Lisa!

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs!

Here are my nominations:

Kristophrenia - my critique partner, whose been on my blogroll since, like forever
Katie Lovett - a beta reader who I met through one of Rachel Vater's query critiques.
Star Captain's Daughter - intrepid Alaskan, fellow reviewer and fellow aspiring author
Initial Draft - who recently self-published his novel, The Ninth Avatar
Jen Haley - recently agented, pre-published, with fascinating insights on the newly agented.
Robin's Mystery Blog - writer of my other favorite genre, mother of great-sounding kids.
Kelly Gay - recently contracted but still pre-published author who occasionally guests at Fantasy Debut.
West of Mars - another longtime member of my blogroll, who has amassed a legion of fans around her unpublished novel.

And, of course Lisa, who gave me this award and who blogs on fun stuff, beta reading, cats, and occasionally, writing.

Thanks again, Lisa!

Snippet Tuesday

2009-04-21T17:19:00.000-04:00

Here's a snippet from one of my works in progress. John is a big-time movie star, and Max works for him. Both of my WIPs are about Hollywood. It's getting hard to keep them straight.

In the nightclub, Max spotted Karen near the entrance, looking out-of-place. She wore a knee-length black dress with a high neck, which he suspected was risqué for her. Here, it was impossibly modest. And impossibly lovely. He went over to her and found himself hugging her before he even said a word.

"Rough week?" she asked. He thought he could hear a smile in her voice.

"Yes. I'm sorry." He released her.

"It's okay," Karen said.

"You're sure?" He wanted to hug her again.

"Sure. Did you know this place has a twenty dollar cover charge?"

"I'm sorry--let me pay you back."

"It's okay, really. The only reason they let me in is I claimed to be meeting John Raven. See that big dude over there?" She nodded toward a large bouncer-type. "He's given me five minutes to join John Raven's party or he's throwing me out."

"Well, let's go, then."

He drew Karen back to the group. They had settled at a set of tables in the corner, which had apparently been reserved for them.

"John? I'd like you to meet my friend, Karen Johansen."

John looked up at Karen. Then, a smile like Max had never seen before spread over John's face. He looked as if he illuminated from within. Max was taken aback. For the first time, he really saw what had made John Raven a star.

John stood up and came over to them. He held out his hand. "Any friend of Max's is a friend of mine," he said. Karen hesitantly took his hand, at which time John covered it with his other hand and then--Max couldn't believe it--lifted it to his lips. Karen's brows rose.

Getting Back in Gear

2009-04-16T17:33:00.003-04:00

After weeks - no, let's be honest here, it's months - of writing laziness, I'm starting to think about getting back into gear.

I have a good excuse, not that I need one. I do most of my writing on the weekend, and this is the first free weekend I've had since February. It will be bliss. My daughter and I are going to rent movies and hang out. My husband too, but he doesn't like the kind of movies that my daughter and I like. Although he did think High School Musical was cute. That's my daughter's new fave. We're going to rent 2 and 3 this weekend. Vicky will think she's died and gone to heaven.

And while she watches her tween flicks, I'll be in the background with my Neo, reading old works-in-progress. I want to see if any of them re-ignites my imagination. I might work on my Christian novel, but I've gotten in a bit of a plot tangle, and my head is too muddled to work it out. I could polish up a short story I wrote recently. Or, I could work on my Hollywood romance.

I wrote to a long overdue zine editor two weeks ago, asking the status on a short story that was tentatively accepted. At this time, I'm going to have to conclude that the magazine is defunct. I find this annoying. If you're going to let your magazine fold, the least you can do is notify all the writers whose work you were sitting on. Especially the writers who you tentatively accepted.

So back to the drawing board with that one. I'm working on taking it from an R rating to a PG so I can submit it to more markets. I'm thinking of Fantasy Magazine next.

Teaser Tuesday - A Carriage Chase

2009-04-14T18:47:00.003-04:00

This Teaser Tuesday has been taken down. I'm leaving the post up so Google will re-archive it over the original. If you are interested in future teasers, then tune in each Tuesday! I will only leave each teaser up for a week.

Tuesday Teaser

2009-04-07T20:40:00.004-04:00

Starcaster 2 - Resurrecting Old Characters

2009-03-29T14:11:00.003-04:00

I think I finally found my major conflict in Starcaster 2, and I've begun to outline it in my head. I wrote a thousand words and I think it's off to a great start.

I intended to bring in a minor villain from the first book and I decided to put her in a position where she can be not only a major annoyance, but a major villain as well.

She's now a cop. Detective Meyer, my crooked cop from Book One has decided that he needs some starcasting help. So he's recruited a few starcasters who don't necessarily have the sterling character so essential to good policework. But that's OK. Meyer isn't looking for good cops. He's looking for good toadies.

And I have the perfect older brother for her. Introducing: Clyde Yancy.

Clyde is a character I developed WAY back in the 80s. Yes, I said the 80s. Some of you were kids back then. But that was when I started my first novel, Oath of the Songsmith. Clyde was a highwayman in Oath. In A Spy and a Lady, he's pretty much the same, but he's a gang member rather than a highwayman. He fits rather perfectly into my Regency-era timeframe. He LOVES having a sister as a policewoman, and he has stepped up his criminal activities accordingly. I'm thinking Meyer offered him a job first, but when he refused, his sister convinced Meyer to take her on.

He's also a thug, which makes him a perfect nemesis for Cecil Crowley, Tory's gentleman friend and fellow starcaster, who's something of a thug, himself.

Clyde is six feet tall, so he is significantly taller than the 5'7" Crowley. But Crowley has one advantage over Clyde and almost every other man. He regularly hoists around his six foot tall mentally disabled cousin, and he is therefore very strong and tough.

I'm having a lot of fun putting together all these conflicts.

Scattered Focus

2009-03-24T05:31:00.002-04:00

My writing has been scattershot lately. I've worked on a new short story based on Native American myths, which I finished and is simmering right now before revisions. I've also had ideas for two more short stories, one a mystery in Ancient Rome, the other a futuristic fantasy. And I wrote 2000 words for my Christian novel. It was a conflict scene that's been on my brain lately. I wrote it out of order, but that's okay. I found the perfect point in which to tuck it into my novel.

For some reason, scenes with conflict come effortlessly to me. I guess as a writer, that's a good thing. In order to get this novel written, I just need to write a long string of conflicts. The novel will be done in a month and a half, and then I can go back and fill in anything else that might be necessary, such as description.

S0unds like a plan!

I Passed!!! I have a Credential!!!

2009-03-18T20:11:00.004-04:00

It's official! I am a Microsoft Certified Word Expert! Check out the logo, which I can officially add to my email signature (which I won't):

The test was difficult, probing into all the little nitpicky corners of Word. I got a 906 out of 1000, with 630 needed to pass. The cool part is I googled "Microsoft Word Expert" and came up with all these help wanted posts for people looking for certified Word experts to design courses, fly out and train people. Cool! Maybe I can quit my day job!

The best part about this is it is a credential. Credentials are critical when writing nonfiction. A while back, I thought about self-publishing my Word for the Novelist articles. Well, now I can conceivably put together a proposal package and sell the idea to a publisher like . . . maybe Writer's Digest Books? I'm thinking it can't hurt to try?

On Friday, I take my test for Microsoft Access. It is for a specialist-level test, because that's all they offer. The only other expert-level exam they offer is for Excel, and I don't think I have that much expertise in Excel. But if obtaining such a credential might help me eventually change careers into Instructional Design, then I might just start studying.

New Short Story

2009-03-13T05:42:00.003-04:00

I decided to write another short story because, to be blunt, I need some fiction sales. I went to my bookshelf and took out a book on American Indian mythology for some story fodder. This time, I didn't intend to cripple my efforts by writing in dialect, or by writing a racy story. You would think that raciness would help, but it hurts. 75% of markets won't take a story with racy content. And I went and made it integral to the plot.

Not this time. I'm going for some drama here, but I also want the weird plot twists you come to expect when reading short stories. I'm definitely approaching this one with more of a business sense than any of my recent shorts. No sex. It's not even in first person.

I'm finding the Native American concepts of totemism and fetishism (not what you think) to be excellent story fodder. I'm not going to focus on any particular tribe--I don't have enough expertise for that. It will be a fictional, unnamed tribe. The hardest thing so far is the names. Do I make up my own names, or attempt to find Native American names? I haven't decided yet, but I'm using made-up names as placeholders.

I definitely do better with short stories if I have some sort of idea to glom off of. It's like I need a writing prompt. Recently, it's been fairy tales and gas prices. I'm also started plenty of stories that went nowhere after writing myself into a corner. That's probably my single biggest problem when it comes to short stories.

A Big Decision

2009-03-06T12:15:00.002-05:00

I am considering putting all publishing attempts on hold.

I still have queries out, so I have not made the decision yet. But I am questioning whether, at this time of my life, it would even be a good thing to get a publishing contract. Whether I even want one at all. Sound strange? Read on for an explanation.

I am 43 years old. When I was 35, I had my first child. She has Autism. I don't talk about it much here because I consider it an invasion of her privacy. She has a high-functioning form of Autism, which means it will be possible, with a lot of hard work, for her to lead an independent life.

Assume I get a publishing contract. If she fails to become independent, do I really want it on my conscience that I didn't work with her enough because I was trying to meet publishing deadlines?

I write in my spare time, mostly when my daughter is in bed, and odd hours on the weekend. After all, I don't have to spend every minute at her side, and my Neo makes it possible for me to write and still be accessable to her. I don't think I'll ever stop writing. What I'm considering changing is my attempts to publish anything I write. Like Emily Dickenson, I'll just let my writings accumulate. Unlike Emily Dickenson, I hope I don't die before any of it is published.

It's actually a pretty exciting thing to contemplate. I could finish Metamorphosis, which is the temporary (and probably defunct) title of my Forging a Legend trilogy. I've been sitting on Book Two and Three in my brain all this time, hoping for a publishing contract--or at least an agent--before I write the rest. Were I to unleash the muse, the words would just flow from me. I could also write several books in the Starcaster series (which is the name of that series, as well as the name of the first novel). In seven years, I will be fifty and my daughter will be fifteen. How many novels can a stifled muse write in seven years? I'm thinking five or so. Add that to the books I already have, and that makes three Metamorphosis titles and four Starcaster titles. So I wouldn't have all my eggs in one basket.

And my beta readers--the ones who have been wanting to read the next books--would be able to read them as I write them.

Far from being disappointed in this line of thinking, I'm finding it oddly liberating.

Fun with Cuts

2009-03-04T20:50:00.003-05:00

I did a 6,000 word cut today. I'm so proud of myself!

Actually, it was several cuts. I had already red-penned my manuscript, X-ing out long passages and removing entire subplots. When I took the MS to my computer today (it was a day off!) I discovered even more passages that could be deleted.

Now, of course, I'll have to read through the 4 chapters that are left to see if 1) I can cut anything else and 2) if what I left still makes sense.

I'm thinking of skipping the whole agent hunt and just submitting directly to the publisher. I've already sent this novel (Forging a Legend) to several agents more than once. Tor, Baen and Ace Books all still take unsolicited manuscripts. Submitting to all three of them will take about a year. I also could go for some contests, but not very many are for novels. I have two languishing short stories I could enter. "The Sevenfold Spell" was supposedly going to be accepted (good news), but I think the magazine is now defunct (bad news). The other--"Petroleum Sunset"--I just haven't sent anywhere lately. I know. I can't sell it if I don't send it.

Printer Recommendation

2009-03-01T07:38:00.003-05:00

Since Starcaster is in query limbo and A Hollywood Miracle is in peculate mode, I decided to work on my revision of Forging a Legend. I decided to print a large chunk out of the middle (the Conarzon chapters, for those of you who have read it), because having it in print in front of me makes for much easier editing. I want to cut out large chunks of this part, paring it down to only what is absolutely revelant to the plot. It will probably revisions further on, but that's the writing life, isn't it?

Anyway, I thought you guys might want to know about my whiz-bang printer. I got it at Office Depot. It holds 250 sheets of paper in the paper try and prints very fast. It is not your typical photo printer. It is an HP OfficeJet Pro K4500. I got it when I was mailing manuscripts to beta readers, because I quickly learned that buying a new printer would be almost as cheap as photocopying several copies of a 300 page manuscript.

It's big and clunky. It's noisy. But it's great for lots of printing. Each black cartridge prints something like 2500 sheets of paper. I was able to print two and half manuscripts on the sample cartridge that came with the printer.

In the time I wrote the above, it printed from page 64 to page 204 in draft mode. I didn't have to stop and feed it paper, and I didn't have to pull any pages off an overloaded tray. It's truly built for printing thick documents. I recommend it highly. It cost me about a hundred dollars on sale at Office Depot. I think the original price was something like $120. The black print cartridge cost about 35 dollars, and each color cartridge--there are 3--costs about fifteen dollars. I paid 35 dollars for a three-pack. I hardly ever use this printer for color--we still have our photo printer for that--so I expect the color cartridges to last a while.

Here's that link again. I only bought it about six months ago, so it should still be available.

Rejections on Partials

2009-02-26T19:19:00.003-05:00

I'm going to break my own rule and write about rejections. I figure I'm not giving away any big secret here. You guys know I'm querying; I haven't announced an agent yet, so you know I'm getting rejections.

Problem is, these rejections are on partials. Requested partials. More than a few of them.

Rejected requested partials are a problem because 1) the agent was interested to begin with and 2) something about my writing disinterested them. They didn't want to see the rest. I did better than this with Forging a Legend. Something is obviously wrong with those opening pages.

I expected to do better than this. My readers--all writer-types who I know online, and who are unlikely to blow sunshine up my ass--used words like "I loved it" and "I couldn't put it down." I never got feedback like that before. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up, but I am human, after all.

Yesterday, I finally got some feedback from an agent. Something I could work with. She said that she loved the premise, but I was showing more than telling and I had too much authorial intrusion. What brutal words for my fragile writer psyche!

I promptly wrote a thank you email to the agent for taking the time to provide such priceless feedback.

Then, I went in draconian mode and cut 12,000 words off the opening.

By this morning, I had come to my senses. I needed those opening chapters. They lay all sorts of foundations and set up a bunch of conflict. So I went back to the previous version of the manuscript. And I read the opening pages. And lo and behold . . .

Yikes! I was telling! For three pages--three out of five of the critical opening pages--I was delving deep in to my character's psyche with--yes!--authorial intrusion! My goal was to make my reader like the character. But if my character's actions can't make the reader like the character, than nothing can.

I skimmed until I got to the action. Then, I discovered a gem of a sentence. I decided to open my story with it. Here is my old opening sentence:

Mr. Julian Crain was late.

This evokes mild curiosity. Late for what? But nothing more. We aren't dying to know what this guy is late for.

Here is my new one.

I hurried up to the embassay as if I belonged there.

I like this better. I think it evokes curiosity. Why is she hurrying? Why is she going to the embassy if she doesn't belong there? And why is she trying to look like she does belong there?

Still waiting to hear back on some other partials, requested and otherwise.

Writing Unleashed - Larger Than Life Characters

2009-02-20T20:20:00.003-05:00

I feel like my current novel has unleashed some latent quality in my writer's voice, because it is intense. Yet, I'm also trying to make it fun. Like this:

He was leaning against a water truck on a cactus-covered hillside in a tiny mountain range southeast of Phoenix. Behind him, he could hear a bike rev. He turned around. The director yelled for action and after a few moments, the bike came sailing over a gully. It was a beautiful sight. Not for the first time, Max thought about learning how to jump.

He'd spent the past few days tearing around the desert for the camera. He took a nasty spill early on and slid right into a cactus, and ended up with cactus balls sticking in his rear, right through his leathers. He could have sworn the cactus balls actually jumped off the cactus onto him. One of them left a thorn behind that the paramedic had to yank out with a pair of pliers. Then, he had to drop trou and let the paramedic prod his butt cheek with tweezers and antiseptic wipes. It was humiliating, but it gave him a healthy respect for the damned things.

I found a cute intro to Jumping Cactus on You Tube.

It's all true! Even the location of this scene. It's the Santan Mountains in Chandler Heights, Arizona. My husband and I spent a lot of time, driving around, exploring old mines, shooting the .44 and listening to the coyotes.

Anyway, I'm learning there's a fine line between larger-than-life and over-the-top. I think with Abriel, I strayed perilously close to over-the-top. With Max and Karen, I needed to keep them as realistic as possible, while also having them do things that I wish I had the guts to do. When Karen and Max first meet, Max is so impressed by something that Karen has done that he's a bit in awe of her. And by the end of the book, Karen is so impressed by something Max has done that she is in awe of him. What I'm aiming for is for the reader to have the same reaction that Karen and Max have to each other.

I'm also enjoying writing a novel that takes place in the here and now. I have never been able to use a term like "drop trou" before. It's pretty fun.

Write Every Day! And Delete With Impunity!

2009-02-15T16:18:00.003-05:00

I hit a small snag in my novel and I stopped writing for a week and a half. Today, I slapped myself around some, uploaded my Neo files to my computer and started writing again. And I wrote a great scene.

It's all too easy to get out of the habit. Sometimes, the amount I write is very small--not even a thousand words. It's not easy trying to be a writer with a disabled child and while working full time. But I still have an hour or so to myself in the evening, and I still have my Neo, which I can use to write almost any time. I have no excuse.

Slow but steady was how I wrote my 75,000 word first draft of Starcaster in five months. Progress is progress, even when you occasionally have to delete a scene. So if you are a writer--and I'm thrilled that not all the followers of this blog are writers, since that means they are READERS interested in my work--if you are a writer, be sure to scribble something down every day.

~*~

On a related note, I've noticed that the number of discarded scenes for this novel is sharply down. Here's a rundown of my discarded scene for all my novels:

Oath of the Songsmith - All of it
Forging a Legend - 55, some of then quite lengthy
Starcaster - 40, most rather short
A Hollywood Miracle - 2, so far, each very short, of 12,000 words

I don't know if this is because I'm working from an outline this time. All my other novels just grew, and required extensive reworking even while I was writing it. With AHW, I'm doing a lot of thinking before I actually write anything. Or, I write it in my notebook first, where I appear to plan things better.

Oh, and I should add that my motto about deleting is "delete with impunity, but save everything". This is why I have all my deleted scenes in dozens of tiny files on my hard drive.

What about you? Do you write every day? Do you delete a lot of scenes?

Something Special - Sneak Peak

2009-02-11T20:58:00.003-05:00

I'm starting a new program at Fantasy Debut and you guys get to be the first to know about it because you read this blog. I call it "Discovery Showcase", and it's where I will post the first chapter of unpublished or self published novels. The details will go live tomorrow at 6 AM EST.

I won't be vetting or editing these chapters in any way. I'll simply format them as I do a debut showcase, and post them. I won't comment. But others probably will. I will post them in the order that I receive them, once a week on Saturday morning. Not sure if any of you will be interested, but if you are, stop by Fantasy Debut tomorrow for the full details.

(Yes, I deleted a post. Sorry about that. I appreciate the encouraging words from everyone who commented.)

An Absurd Dream

2009-02-06T07:35:00.001-05:00

I dreamed last night that I got not one, but two offers of representation. One was from an agent who has my full right now. Another was from my daughter's language therapist, who apparently--in my dream--wants to moonlight as a literary agent. Her only "sales" (in my dream, mind you) were self-published novels. Through a comedy of errors, I accepted both offers, and had to retract my acceptance with the language therapist. So now, my daugher's language therapist hated me. And she's the school language therapist, so I can't exactly fire her.

In the meantime, other agent was showering me with attention by flying out to meet me, sending a photographer to do a photo shoot and alerting the media. People who I know in blogs were stopping me in the street to congratulate me. Kimber An--who lives in Alaska--was one of them. She looked just like her Meez.

It was a completely absurd dream. But with dreams like these, it's no wonder I write novels.

10,000 Words! Plus some thoughts on Plotting

2009-02-02T20:28:00.002-05:00

I'm drafting again. It's been a year since I seriously drafted a new novel (Starcaster being the last one). After false starts on various Starcaster II drafts, I decided I needed to work on something different while querying Starcaster. So I loaded up my Neo with the first three chapters of my Christian suspense, deleted the scene that caused me to get stuck a few weeks ago, and started writing. I'm not sure how many words I got in this weekend, but overall, I am at the 10,000 word mark.

10,000 words seems to be an important milestone for me. Once I reach 10,000 words, I know I'm in it for the long haul. I start thinking about long-term word count goals, like where I want my novel to be by the time I reach 25,000 words, 50,000 words and 75, 000 words. That's the count I'm going for with this novel.

This is the first time I've started a novel with the opening scene that I know I want to keep. I know where I want the novel to end. Going from A to Z is the fun part.

I'm having to do some interesting research. The point-of-view character is a stunt man. The antagonist is an actor. A secondary antagonist is an actress. Another point-of-view character is a courier. I'm not big on Hollywood. I don't know much about this stuff. Right now, I'm just getting the story down and I'm doing the minimal amount of research it takes to plot it out. I'll go fill in all the fun details when I get this story out of my head.

I know they say to "write what you know", but I needed my antagonist to be someone rich and famous. So no matter what I did, it would have to be something I had no experience with. So I went with Hollywood because it had the biggest wealth/fame potential.

I can feel my three-novel experience as I write this. The plotting is coming smooth and easy. In my most recent scene, Max, my hero, has brought in his friend Karen, the courier, to help. He had to introduce her to John, the actor, for whom he works a stunt double and a sort of bodyguard. Max recently met Karen, and he really likes her. John suspects this immediately. Well, I thought, what would John do? He's a famous actor. Of course he would pour on the charm, because he really doesn't like Max at all, even though he trusts him. And Karen is doing her best to keep objective, but damn! John keeps flashing that knee-melting smile and is treating her like she's the only woman in the room. Which makes Renna, the secondary antagonist and John's female lead in his current movie--and who, by the way, is possessed by a demon--distinctly irked.

And then something magical happened. Remember that scene that I said I deleted? It suddenly came back to me, significantly morphed. It will be perfect for upping the conflict between John and Max, and it will make Karen nicely indebted to John. And John likes having people in his power.

Next post: why I decided to write a Christian novel.

Word for the Novelist - Master Documents

2009-01-29T21:00:00.001-05:00

Do you, when you are writing, typically have a bunch of files open, and you're constantly switching back and forth between files? Well, with the Master Document approach, you can greatly speed up how you get things done.

This article assumes a couple of things:

That you have Word 2003 installed on your computer. I'm told that my instructions translate easily to 2007.
That you have a manuscript split into many segment files, probably chapter files. It does not assume that you are beginning a manuscript from scratch (although you could easily do so).

Setting Up the Master Document

First, create a new document with all the basic formatting you usually use. Set up the header and footer as per whatever guidelines you follow. Set up your address block, title and byline. Then, position the cursor at the top of the page where your first chapter should start.

Put the document in outlining mode by clicking View, and then Outline on the menu bar. The Outlining toolbar should appear. If no toolbar appeared, right-click the toolbar and click Outlining.

Yes, the document is now ugly. Don't worry about that. None of that formatting stuff will print, and none of your subdocuments will be uglified.

Inserting Your Chapter Files

Toward the right end of the Outlining toolbar, look for this button. If the toolbar is cut off at the right end, simply click that little tiny down arrow at the blue end of the toolbar, and you should find the button in there.

Click the button. Browse to your first chapter file and click OK.

Your first chapter will appear. It will be uglified. Don't panic. Trust me. Your original document is not affected. It only looks that way in the Outline mode. Your first chapter will now appear where you positioned your cursor. If you had any blank lines at the beginning of your first chapter, they will appear as well. Everything in that first chapter file will appear at the point where you inserted it.

"What a mess!" you may be thinking. "This is the worst 'feature' I've ever seen! Guess I won't be reading THIS blog, anymore."

We're not done yet, so stay with me.

Look for and click this magic little button on the Outlining toolbar.

Behold! A hyperlink!

Go ahead! Click it! You know you want to!

(Ooops! Word complains that you need to hold the control key down while clicking. Well, go ahead.)

Your original file pops open, in all its original glory. Aren't you glad you trusted me? How would you like an entire document set up like this, with all 40 of your chapter files just a click away? Better yet, the headers and footers you set up for the master document will work for the whole shebang, including all 40 files! When you print it, it magically acts like one document. No more combining files! No more fiddling with headers so they all look the same! In fact, don't even bother creating headers for your subdocuments. The master document ignores them, anyway.

Goofing Around With Subdocuments

But what are all these funky little symbols in the Outline view? Let's examine them one by one.

If you double-click the top ugly little thing in the left corner, your document will again pop open. That's the subdocument icon.

The little padlock lock indicates just that—that the hyperlink is locked to editing.

In the meantime, the Collapse Subdocuments button has become Expand Subdocuments. If you click the Expand Subdocuments button, you will get your uglified document back. Here's a screenshot of one of mine:

Sorry about the poor quality image; Blogger insisted on shrinking it. We should be able to work with it. Notice the lock is gone. You can now edit your document. But what's with the dots next to some of the lines? Each dot indicates a paragraph. Click a dot, and the entire paragraph is selected.

What about the broken lines down the sides of the pages? I'll admit it—I don't know. But I do know that there is meant to be a box around the entire subdocument. Maybe it's a tad buggy.

If you turn on the Show/Hide ¶ button,

you will see that your subdocument is enclosed by section breaks. The end of one document and the beginning of another will look like this:

The Master Document Portion of the Outlining Toolbar

Let's explore the rest of the master document portion of the Outlining toolbar.

To create a subdocument, click this button:

An empty subdocument frame will appear. Simply put your cursor in the frame and begin typing. Word will automatically name the file when you save, based on your first sentence or line. So if the first line is "Chapter 6", that will be the name of the file.

This is a great way of creating your chapter files automatically as you write your manuscript.

To remove a subdocument from the master document, click this button:

If you click it, it will remove the subdocument link, but all the text from the subdocument will remain. So you'll have to delete that text manually.

This may seem useless, but if you just want a time stamp of what your all your files looked like at a certain moment in time, simply remove all the subdocuments and save it as a different filename. Your original master document will be as before you started.

To merge two subdocuments, click the subdocument icon in the upper left corners of each subdocument that you wish to merge together. Then, click the Merge Subdocuments icon on the toolbar:

When you save the file, the file behind the top document will now contain the contents of both files. The file that was merged into the first will remain unchanged.

To split a subdocument, position your cursor at the position where you want the split to occur. Click the Split Subdocument button:

A new subdocument will appear immediately below the one you are working in. When you save it, it will name the document based on the first line or sentence.

Lastly, you can lock a subdocument:

Click it, and edits will no longer be allowed in the subdocument that you locked, and a little padlock will again appear below the subdocument icon. If you collapse the subdocuments and open them up again, the lock will be gone, and you will be able to edit once again.

~*~

I first did this way back when in about '95, and things really haven't changed much since then. I'm curious about whether Microsoft has prettied things up in Word 2007. The very first time I tried to use a subdocument all those years ago, I was so alarmed by how different my document looked that I panicked and exited without saving. Once backed up my work, I was able to calm down and play around. I used this method for my first novel, but when I started on my second novel, I switched to the Document Map approach, which I still prefer.

Please let me know if you think any of these instructions need clarifying, and if you were able to successfully put these instructions to use.

Status Report

2009-01-27T21:14:00.000-05:00

Sickness is good for writing. I wrote a bit of everything last week; Starcaster II, Christian thriller and time travel fantasy. The Christian thriller went into a direction I didn't expect, and then came to another screeching halt. I wrote an opening scene for Starcaster II, then fizzled because I don't have a plot. I have a plot for a later book in the series, not the second book. And my time travel fantasy is still very much in the idea stage.

So I'm doing a lot of writing, but getting very little done. This is typical for me while I am querying. The querying is going well--better than the last time--but no representation yet.

Since I'm neck-deep in trying to prepare for my Word Expert certification exam, I started thinking about my Word for the Novelist series. Would you guys be interested in an article on Master Documents? I know some of you use separate files for each chapter. Well, a master document allows you to jump to each file in the master document by way of a hyperlink. It's very cool and would be a very viable alternative to the Document Map method I already detailed in this article. I used the Master Document Method for my trunk novel, Oath of the Songsmith.

Let me know and I'll get writing!

False Starts

2009-01-21T19:56:00.000-05:00

I wrote several chapters of another Starcaster book before I realized that it can't be the second book. It has to be a later book. If it is used at all. For now, I'm discarding it and the entire outline I wrote the other week. Why? Because the stakes weren't personal enough for Tory. I still think the idea has merit. It is exciting and dangerous. But I think it's an idea before it's time because I can't think of a way to make the stakes personal for Tory.

For the second book, I need to keep it close to Tory and personal. After all, most of the time, we will not be following Tory through her espionage adventures. We'll only be following them when they get personal. That's the way these kinds of books work.

In the last book, I had a nicely corrupt police officer. I also threw an enemy at Tory without fulling exploring her potential. In the second book, some people in the Intelligence Ministry thinks that Tory's division needs to be disbanded. The corrupt police officer will happily get involved with this endeavor, because some people in Tory's division--including Tory, herself--knows just how corrupt he is.

And then we have Cecil, Tory's gentleman friend, who is just a magnet for trouble. He and the police officer would absolutely clash. And the boss of Tory's division is not really all that fond of Cecil.

Sounds like this could be the plot I was looking for. I'll explore it a bit before I know for sure.

Fun With Research

2009-01-13T19:55:00.000-05:00

I'm doing some research again. I like looking into to obsolete stuff that was in use way back when and incorporate them into my writing. For Starcaster, I used coding disks, black powder revolvers and hackney coaches, among others. For Forging a Legend, we had codexes, papyrus and chariots, because horses weren't large enough in ancient times to carry a rider. Oh, and aqueducts.

I decided that for Starcaster II, the spy headquarters needs a network of speaking tubes. Here's a brief explanation of speaking tubes I found online:

A normal installation had a removable whistle plugged into each end. To initiate a conversation Person A removed his whistle and blew down the tube, sounding the whistle at the other end. Person B then removed his whistle, and talking could begin. Hence the expression, still current in Britain, "I'll get him on the blower" when a telephone call is meant.

Such systems appear to have been quite common in homes and offices, though very little information about them, and very few references to them, seem to remain today.

Naturally Mr. Felding, the Commissioner of the Starcaster Corps, will have a network of speaking tubes that all lead to him. And naturally, he will keep the whistle removed at his end, because that's just the way he is. And naturally, a bunch of people will constantly be sneaking into his office in order to use the speaking tubes when they can't find someone. Down in the workroom, people will quickly get tired of the tube whistle and may even "lose" it from time to time. It will drive the dog--who belongs to Tory but stays at HQ because HQ has a larger garden--insane, and I'm thinking that the dog really needs to start howling whenever the whistle sounds.

Low tech. It's fun stuff. It makes my imagination run wild. I have as one of my reference books a copy of Isaac Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. Sadly, it appears to be out of print, but some people are selling used copies at Amazon. One is even billed as a collector's item!

A Frame for Forging a Legend

2009-01-07T20:23:00.000-05:00

After reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, I found myself thinking about Forging a Legend again. I'm thinking it needs a frame.

Blog newcomers have not read much about my epic fantasy, Forging a Legend. It has been rejected over 50 times. I wrote an epic at a time when epics are a hard sell. My beta readers liked it and one agent liked the opening chapters enough to request the full manuscript.

But that was it. So on the shelf it went.

At the start of a new prologue, Verit is a fallen god who has become a recluse. His nemesis, who is Abriel, my protagonist, shows up. She gives him a bundle of journals where she has both written and drawn (she's an artist) her story. She tells him that he deserves an explanation for what she has done.

Verit takes her memoirs and drawings, and he writes her story. He interjects his own side of the story where appropriate.

To do this rewrite, I'll have to rewrite all the Verit scenes as first person. I have a few scenes in the POV of Thesk, Abriel's antagonist for book 1, but at least one of them will have to go. I had an epilogue, but I think it will have to go as well.

But Abriel's story--which currently takes over 95 percent of the book, I can leave untouched. So it may only take a month or so to accomplish this rewrite. I do believe I'll start now.

A Spy and a Lady - Progress

2009-01-03T21:45:00.000-05:00

The second Starcaster book is opening a bit rough. But that seems to be par for me. I take a while getting into the story, then I go back and whack alarming chunks off the start of the story. And then I rewrite what's left two or three times.

But it's not wasted effort because it gets the backstory in my head, where it can leak into the rest of the story only when it is necessary.

I have over 6000 words written, and it's unlikely I'll get 4000 words written tomorrow and meet my 10,000-word 4 day weekend goal. I found myself absorbed in a Janet Evanovich novel (Twelve Sharp--her best one in a while) and my story was unable to compete with hers. She gave me a lot of good ideas. Never mind that her voice and my voice are about 200 years apart. The way she has Stephanie's running commentary throughout the novel must have influenced the way I wrote the first Starcaster. And I wasn't doing that enough in what I just wrote. It was boring--just a recitation of events. Since the voice was probably the strongest aspect of Starcaster, I need to stay consistent.

I did write a number of scenes that I like. In one, Miss Young, Tory's mentor, lectures her for spending time alone with Cecil, her "gentleman friend". (Anyone know a good word for "boyfriend" that might have worked in about 1810? I know Jane Austen used "Beaus" but that's too French for me.) Tory's got to protect her reputation, you know. In those times, a girl's reputation was her strongest asset.

And in another scene, Tory wants Cecil to go to her mother's soiree, but he flat out refuses. There isn't going to be a soiree, of course--Tory doesn't have time for soirees. She's got a mission to perform.

A Spy and a Lady

2008-12-30T05:27:00.000-05:00

I officially started my file for Starcaster book 2, A Spy and a Lady. In it, I took advantage of something that I had changed in book 1 after all my beta readers read it--Mr. Layfett didn't die after all. I figured he could be useful. So I made him disappear, instead. I don't leave it a mystery long in book 2.

I have 30 or 40 pages in my head, so I'll go ahead and get that down. After that, if it keeps on flowing, I'll keep on writing. I'm more hopeful about this novel than the last one, so I may just go ahead and write at least one sequel.

Here's about 300 words. It starts with Tory talking to Lucy, who is Sgt. Crandall's granddaughter. Sgt. Crandall is the owner of a pub on Tory's street. A mysterious gentleman just tried to talk to Tory, but she brushed him off in order to protect her reputation in front of a gossipy neighbor.

"I don't know," I said to [Lucy]. "But he obviously wanted to talk to me."

"Are you going to talk to him?"

"Discreetly, yes. Please tell your grandfather to tell him that I'll meet him in the history section of the bookshop."

"But the stranger is standing right there with him."

"Whisper it in his ear."

Lucy did so and came back inside. Shortly afterward, the Tarquillan gentleman departed.

I tarried twenty minutes before I followed. I couldn't make my visit much shorter than usual without making it stand out in the minds of my fellow patrons.

I entered the bookshop. As I walked in, I noticed that Sgt. Crandall had followed me and he now lingered outside. This didn't really surprise me and I appreciated the backup.

"Hello, Betsy," I said to the young woman at the counter. Her husband was the owner.

She gestured for me to come up close. "There's a man back there," she whispered. "A stranger."

Needless to say, strangers didn't often appear on our street. "Well, if he tries anything, I'll scream," I said with a wink, only half kidding.

She giggled.

I wandered through the fiction section, eventually ending up across from the history section. The bookshop wound and twisted behind the shop beside it, so we were out of sight of the cashier.

"Miss Lawrence?" he asked.

"You'd better talk fast," I said. "My neighbors can be somewhat protective."

"I represent a group of dissidents within Tarquil who wishes to make contact with the Alden intelligence community."

This was not what I expected. "You're not after asylum?"

"No. I intend to go back to Tarquil as soon as possible."

"How did you know about me?"

"Messer Luc Layfett said that you could be trusted."

I have this great scene in mind where Miss Young, Tory's mentor, feels that she must interfere in Tory's love life in order to protect her reputation. I can't wait to write it.

Word for the Novelist - Revisions, Part 2

2008-12-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

It's been an embarrassingly long time since my last Word for the Novelist installment, and now that I have some new readers, I decided I should make time for this.

Before we begin, you might want to review Revisions, Part 1. It discussed setting up a document for reviewing (which is really quite easy) and what all the menu items are (a bit more complex). This article discusses reviewing revisions by others, and making revisions yourself.

These instructions are for Word 2003. I'm told it's not too difficult to apply these instructions to 2007.

Protecting a Document before Distribution
You can protect your document and force any reviewers to make any changes as revisions.

Click Tools, and then Protect Document. The Protect Document pane will appear.
Under Editing Restrictions, pull down the menu and select Tracked Changes.
Click Start Enforcement and enter a password.

Unfortunately, you can only restrict editing to either tracked changes or comments. You cannot have both in a protected document.

A more friendly method of encouraging your reviewers to track any changes is to click the Track Changes button before saving and distributing your document for review.

Reviewing Revisions by Others

To review changes to a document, use these buttons on the Reviewing Toolbar:

The buttons with arrows let you jump back and forth among the change markups. The Accept button is the button with the checkmark, and it accepts the change. The Reject button is the button with the X, and it rejects the change.

The Accept and Reject button each has a dropdown menu with the following options:

To accept or reject all changes in a block of text, highlight the text and click the Accept or Reject button.
To accept all changes in the document, pull down the menu next to the Accept button and select Accept All Changes in Document.
To reject all changes in the document, pull down the menu next to the Reject button and select Reject All Changes in Document.
To delete all comments in the document, pull down the Reject menu and select Delete All Comments in Document.

The dropdown menus also contain options to accept, reject or delete all changes and comments shown. If you had chosen to hide any changes, choosing this option will let you accept or reject all comments that currently appear in the document. Any hidden revisions will remain in the document.

Selecting Reviewers

If more than one person made changes to your document, it will appear less cluttered if you only look at one reviewer's revisions at a time.

To look at a specific reviewer's comments, point to Reviewers. The names of all reviewers will appear.

Place a checkmark next to a reviewer's name. Word will hide all other comments and changes.

Remember to go back and unhide everyone's revisions by selecting All Reviewers.

Final Clean-Up

When you think you are finished, do a final check for revisions.

Ensure your document view is Final Showing Markup (see previous article if you don't know how to find this).
Ensure you have all options checked in the image above.
Click the right arrow button. If you see this box, you know that your document is clean.

Reviewing a Document
To Track Revisions

To review a document and track any changes that you make, click the Track Changes button, which is the highlighted one, below.

The button turns orange while Track Changes is on.

If you are viewing the document in Print Layout view (which shows your page as it would appear after printing, including headers/footers), your deletions will appear either as strikeout text or in balloons to the right of the page. Insertions will appear in color within the text. In Normal view, it looks like a legal document, with strikeouts and insertions. (To change your document view use the View menu.)

You can turn the Reviewing Pane on and off with the button next to the Track Changes button. The revision pane will show the complete text of all your revisions and comments.

Use the button that looks like a sticky note to insert a comment. Comments will appear as balloons to the right of the text, or in the Reviewing Pane, depending on your options.

In previous versions of Word, Word prevented you from accepting your own changes. This is no longer the case unless the author has protected the document.

Tips

If you have many changes in a small amount of text, such as capitalizing or converting the tense of a phrase, just delete the original and re-enter the text with your new wording. It is easier for the author to review.

When Word's grammar or spelling checker replaces text, it automatically replaces the whole word. To avoid this, you may want to enter the change yourself.

If you have the Show Formatting option turned off (which is off by default), you may see some apparently empty balloons. These balloons contain any spaces that you have deleted. You can see them if you turn the Show Formatting option on.

~*~

To read the rest of my Word for the Novelist series, click here. Previous articles include instructions on making a manuscript template, grasping Word styles, and making excerpts for emails and the web.

Slammed With a Plot

2008-12-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

So I was driving down the road, on my way into work this morning. I live near a town called Bayard, Florida which the highway I was on, US-1, runs through. In Bayard, about three years ago, there were a bunch of old houses, motels, and restaurants, all abandoned. My husband and I took a photo trip through all of them before they finally tore them down. I don't know why, but I got to thinking about that particular stretch of road and all the pictures we took and suddenly I had a plot. It coalesced with some other ideas that had been swimming around in my head for years.

Since it's a time travel novel, I need to do some research. To make it even more difficult for myself, I decided that the trip back through time is gradual. Therefore, I need to research the entire twentieth century, back to the 20s. Yeah, I love a challenge.

The great thing is I even have the ending! But then, endings aren't my problem. Middles are.

Am I Brave Enough . . .

2008-12-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

. . . to post a snippet of my work? Yes, I think I am.

Today on the way in to work I thought of a little sub-scene that I just had to write down. Once I got to work, I immediately grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote it out. I caught it at that critical instant when all the words were still spinning in my head. It was like I was taking dictation.

~*~ The Cast ~*~

Tory Lawrence: the protagonist, a spy with an inherent magical power called starcasting.
Cecil Crowley: a fellow starcasting spy. Referred to by his last name because Cecil and Tory are not on a first name basis. Is a muscular 5'7".
Robby: Crowley's simpleminded cousin. Has something like Downs Syndrome. He's about sixteen.

For those of you who have read the novel, this take place at Crowley's house, just after Tory and Crowley had their Eye Contact Moment. I'll add a bit of context. For those of you who have not read it, this is sort of like a Regency Romance, but it's a Regency Fantasy instead. Except the romance aspect is really quite light, this scene nonwithstanding. And it takes place in a fictional world, not Regency England.

~*~

Then, I realized that we were staring at each other. Crowley bowed and I found myself curtsying in return. We had never exchanged such courtesies before. I would not have even thought that Crowley knew how to execute them. I was beginning to find out just how much I didn't know about Cecil Crowley.

And, I wondered, how much did I really want to know?

Then, Robby barreled into the room and flung himself at Crowley. He climbed up into Crowley's arms exactly as if he were still two years old. Crowley handled him with apparent ease and administered a few spine-jarring thumps on Robby's back. Crowley looked over at me while I stood mute with astonishment. He didn't look a bit embarrassed.

"He thinks of me as a father," he said.

Robby looked over at me. "The lady!" he said.

"That's Miss Lawrence," Crowley told him.

"Hello, Miss Larrence," Robby said.

"Hello, Robby."

Robby looked back at Crowley. "Wanna run!" He bobbed up and down in Crowley's arms as if Crowley actually ran while carrying Robby.

"Not now. Look. I'm dressed."

Robby immediately climbed down. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't see."

"Go to your Mum and get some biscuits," Crowley said. "I need to speak to Miss Lawrence."

Robby barreled back out of the room, yelling, over his shoulder, "Bye, Miss Larrence!"

"Good heavens--you run while carrying him?" I asked once he had gone. "He must weigh at least twelve stone."

He grinned. "It keeps me in good physical condition."

I was completely impressed and not just a little charmed. He didn't give me a chance to dwell on it for long.

"I have news," he said. "You are now wanted for arson."

~*~

I just love it when the words flow like this.

Is the Recession Affecting My Writing?

2008-12-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

I'd have to say, no. It's not affecting my querying, either. I got a bunch that I sent out just last week. I intended to send more this week, but sometimes, intentions are like . . . well, never mind.

Anyway, I'm not letting the recession affect my writing or my writing plans. Life goes on. What goes up must come down, and what sinks in the ocean eventually bobs back up. If I lose my job, that'll be another story, but my job seems good so my writing plans are unchanged. I'll still write my slightly off-the-beaten-path stories. Just this morning, I loaded up my Neo with a bunch of different possibilities:

A Christian thriller. I've blogged about this one before. The first three chapters zoomed by like a rocket sled, but now I'm a bit stalled in a "what do I do next" complex. Sounds like a good time to throw a problem at my hero, whose name is Max.
A Hollywood Romance. I've blogged about this one as well. This one will be unusual because it will have no sex scenes. The entire story takes place before the couple's long-delayed and much-hyped first date.
A modern fantasy. This is the comic book/graphic novel I alluded to in the previous post. I reread it today and hooboy! Have I ever improved! All the "telling" rather than "showing," even when I was describing something for an artist to draw. Anyway, it's sort of a superhero novel, but sans costumes. With immortals.
And Starcaster, Book Two. Tentatively entitled A Spy and a Lady.
A Snow White retelling short story. I have a very exciting plot but I've kind of backed myself into a corner. I need to think of something really clever to get out of it, and I'm not sure if I'm clever enough to think of it.

If you write, has the recession affected your writing plans?

Funny Kid Story

2008-12-06T09:10:00.000-05:00

So there we were, all chilling out after putting the Christmas tree up. I was snuggling on the couch with my honey, watching the lights of the tree behind me reflected on the TV screen. I was in sort of a mesmerized Christmas spell. Behind me, I could hear my child dancing around the tree and talking about the lights.

Then, all of a sudden, it got quiet and the tree began to lean.

Without turning around, I said, "Don't pull on the tree."

My sweetie said, "You have eyes in the back of your head."

Magical Mommy powers.

Welcome Back, Nano Survivors!

2008-12-02T05:29:00.000-05:00

I hope you made whatever goals you set! Now maybe you have time to comment on my blog. Hint, hint.

;)

More on the Synopsis

2008-11-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

The synopsis is going better. But I discovered something. I went through Agent Query and sorted about thirty agents into those who want synopses and those who just want the query. The ones who just want the query vastly outnumber those who want the synopsis. So some of the pressure is off. Of course, I'll have to have a synopsis ready for partial requests, but at least I can send a bunch of queries out this weekend.

Ugh; why do we put ourselves through this?

In a Synopsis Mire

2008-11-24T20:50:00.000-05:00

Any advice for writing a synopsis for a book that has a very twisty plot? It's all I can do to make this thing sound coherent. Which, of course, makes me wonder if my novel is coherent.

If you know of any tricks, I'm listening. Right now, I'm going to try to give myself one paragraph for each day of the action. That's seven days.

If you love something, let it go . . .

2008-11-24T12:12:00.000-05:00

. . . and so, Starcaster is now launched in queryland, as my friend Kimber An would say. May her journeys there be short and successful.

Final Draft Finally Final

2008-11-21T18:36:00.000-05:00

I finally got through my final draft. I've written my hook and tweaked it endlessly. Now I'm working on my synopsis. With any luck, I'll be sending my first queries on Sunday. It's later than I wanted, but repeated sinus infections really affected my motivation. I'm on some really whiz-bang antibiotics right now. Tomorrow I get to go for a sinus and lung X-Ray. Lovely. When I had a stomach X-Ray, I had to drink a foul concoction in order for the stomach wall to show up. I shudder to think if I have to breathe anything before the lung X-Ray. Probably not, I know, but it's amazing how much one's imagination can run away with one.

I wrote three chapters of my Christian novel and it fizzled. But I'm not panicking. I have never started a book bump-free yet. I am certain that the first three chapters are good to go. The ending all set up in my head. It's getting from A to Z that's giving me trouble.

I also find myself thinking about Starcaster Book 2. The plot possibilities are wide open, because the first book resolved everything except the overall political situation. I find myself thinking about Sgt. Crandell, the owner of the inn across the street from Tory. I'm thinking that the book is going to begin when Tory meets a mysterious stranger at that inn, who came looking for her. Sgt. Crandell will probably play a much bigger part than the line or two he got in Starcaster, plus his grandaughter, Lucy, is shaping up to be part of it. Tory's love life is going to encounter some difficulty, especially since it is in limbo as long as she's a spy.

Writing is fun, isn't it?

Starcaster Hook

2008-11-12T17:15:00.001-05:00

I am going to keep my current hook for Starcaster in this post and on my sidebar.

Tory is new spy for the nation of Alden. She's also a lady. Therefore, she's dismayed when her director, Mr. Bradburn, pressures her into using her feminine wiles to seduce state secrets out of unsuspecting fascists. While Tory appreciates the implied compliment, she's also a starcaster--one who can use a sneaky form of nighttime magic--and she thinks he's wasting her talents. When she learns that he's spreading rumors that question her loyalties, she wonders what's really going on.

She doesn't realize that what Bradburn really wants is a patsy, and he's set up the entire conflict in order to make her look untrustworthy. When enemy spies try to steal a prototype that enhances starcasting ability, Tory thwarts them and traces the spies back to Bradburn. Before she can gather evidence against him, he frames her for the theft of the prototype. Now, everyone wants the prototype and Tory's dodging villains like ladies evade louts at a ball. Her pursuers include corrupt policemen, spiteful femmes fatales, and a frightening spy with a penchant for disfiguring the faces of female spies. Not to mention her own fellow operatives.

Clad in an apron filled with lockpicks, revolver and other spy paraphernalia, assisted by a trio of quarreling gentlemen, and thwarted by rogues both foreign and domestic, Tory must figure out what Bradburn is up to before she ends up in the gallows.

I wrote STARCASTER out of a slightly malicious desire to place a character who might have come out of a Jane Austen novel into a harrowing spy setting. When I'm not writing, I run a review blog called Fantasy Debut, where I have showcased and reviewed debut fantasy novels since June of 2007. Currently, Fantasy Debut attracts over 100,000 visits a year.

Other Starcasters

2008-11-11T20:17:00.000-05:00

Just for fun, I Googled "starcaster" and came up with some matches.

The coolest match was the Fender Starcaster Guitar. Check it out:

I don't play the guitar, but I am a musician, so I appreciate the fact that the title of my novel has such a cool synonym.

StarCaster is also a traffic control system used by radio and television stations. I rather wonder why they came up with "starcaster" to describe a traffic monitoring system. The interface looks a bit dated, as if it were a DOS program. And indeed, they appear to have been around since 1986. Still, they just put out another release over the summer. And -- sigh! -- they own the www.starcaster.com domain.

There is also a whimsical craft shop called Starcaster Crafts. They sell things like dreamcatchers and wands. The website looks really dated, so I wonder if they're still in business.

And then we have the StarCaster Automatic Terminal Information Service. It doesn't look very interesting, which is why I'm not linking it.

The Star Caster Network appears to be just what it sounds like, a company that casts stars. In movies, that is. And television shows, too.

Oh, and let's not neglect the StarCaster Text-to-Speech system. It's not very interesting for our purposes, but I do find it interesting that I found no fewer than three software packages called StarCaster.

And I'm done with this rather silly topic. In a day or two, I hope to post my blurb, which I am now perfecting with the help of the folk over at Absolute Write. No matter what writing community I try, I always end up going back to Absolute Write. They have the best mix of published and unpublished authors, plus a good portion of the users there write science fiction or fantasy, so I don't feel like some sort of interloper at a literary fiction party. If you're not a member, I highly recommend it.

Maybe Exciting News? Plus This and That

2008-11-05T19:41:00.000-05:00

Ooh, I could burst. I might have news. Not as exciting as getting an agent or selling my novel, but almost as exciting! But I have to wait until it's official. Mmmrrrfff! That's the sound of me stifling myself! Argh!

Progress with my novel: over the weekend I reached a page that I had covered with red marks, said "ugh" and went off and read a novel instead. It was a very good novel; I just reviewed it at Fantasy Debut. Hopefully, it helped recharge my own writing energies.

I submitted "Petroleum Sunset" to an online market that wants near-term Earth-based SF. It almost seemed like "Petroleum Sunset" was written for such a market. I had a "duh" moment when I submitted it. It occurred to me that I should PROBABLY mention that the story is written in Deep South dialect so the editor doesn't toss it aside after reading the first sentence. Since the first sentence goes like this:

After the car got stolen, Pa just gave up on 'em altogether.

the fact that it is written in dialect MIGHT be an important detail for the editor to know.

(This post reminds me: I did a bunch of edits to the story in RTF mode before I emailed it. Must remember to save it as a DOC so I don't lose those edits.)

I heard from someone who loved my Word for the Novelist series and wants me to continue. Thanks, Rascal! Therefore, I will finally do part two of my Revisions post, then I have some other stuff planned. It seems that Word 2003, which I use, is still similar enough to Word 2007 so that it is still helpful. Which makes sense. The Document Map still works essentially the same as it did in Word 97, except it is a bit easier to control, thanks to Word Styles.

That's it for now! Now, maybe I can goof off a bit more before I must get back to that marked-up page. . . .

Progress, and a Question

2008-11-01T19:20:00.000-04:00

Today, I finally finished my read-through of Starcaster. I had hoped to begin querying today, but it will take a while to apply all these edits. Then, I'll need to perfect my query letter and write my synopsis. Therefore, I'm forced to move my query begin date to November 15th.

On the bright side, I found lots of stuff. I warned my beta readers that the draft was a bit rough, and boy it was. They found a lot of stuff, and thanks to them, I didn't find a lot of typos or punctuation problems. However, for this read-through, I was specifically looking for the sort of inconsistencies that pop up after multiple drafts. Things like, has Tory been a spy one year, or two? Was her friend's name Amelia Brock, or Amelia Brook? How much time should pass between event A and event B? That sort of thing. I marked in red everything that I need to check. After Forging a Legend, I'm very aware of the types of mistakes that I make. And for some reason, I don't often see them until I print it out.

~*~

I have a question for you. I have five books planned. When you read a series, how do you feel about major characters dying? I had planned for a major character to die in one of my sequels. Now that I've had feedback, I'm starting to second-guess myself. I know I'm getting way ahead of myself, but if I do away with this character's death, it affects the next book I'm planning, even though I didn't plan for him to die in that book. In fact, I'd have to ditch the entire plot. And nothing else I'm thinking of is nearly as good.

Without giving anything away, let me use a very familiar example. In Star Wars, we have Leia, Luke, Han and Lando. (Interesting how my story ended up like this, with three guys and a girl.) The story was told from the point of view of Luke, but what if one of the others had died . . . say, Leia? What if in Happy Days, they killed off The Fonz?

Would such a character death turn you off the series altogether? Keep in mind that the tone of my novel is somewhat light, but it's not comic, so I'm thinking that a character death would not be completely inappropriate.