A Month in the Life--April 2, 2010 Good Friday

When I woke up this morning, I really kind of wished I hadn't. Everything that hurt yesterday hurt twice as bad after a night on the couch. (The cats were rampaging through the house last night and keeping me awake.  I ended up closing the doors to every room but the living room and kitchen and moving the butcher block in front of the cabinets so I could remove the noisiest feline toys from their access.  The cats punished me by drinking all the water out of the fountain and discovering a new way to use dry cat food as cat toys all over the house.) At any rate, when I woke up I was already two hours behind schedule.  My husband had stayed home to take me to the doctor if I thought I should go.

I did think I should go.  For one thing, going to the emergency room would not only cost a fortune, but since I'm a chronic pain patient they (a) wouldn't give me anything for the pain, which kind of negates the idea of going to the ER in the first place and (b) would tell me to call my doctor.  I figured I'd be saving a step by going straight to him.

Totally forgot it was Good Freaking Friday.  You guessed it--no doctor, and no chance of a doctor until Monday.  So I had to reevaluate the situation--could I make it through the whole weekend?  In the end, we determined that--since the ER would only do x-rays and tell me to go to my doctor who (as is his right on a holiday weekend) wasn't there, we might as well stay home and wait until Monday.

So Shannon, after making sure I had everything in reach I could possibly need and giving me brand spanking new ice packs, went on to Columbus to salvage what was left of his day and I turned my mind to the scheduled activity of the day--mailing out review submissions.

I'm the Review Coordinator for Aspen Mountain Press, and every week I set aside time to send copies of our new releases out for review. Depending on the genre of each book, I submit AMP books to a core of about fifteen sites--adding a few different ones for genre novels (sci fi, fantasy, historical and so forth).  The majority of our releases are either romance or erotica.  The two books I submitted on Friday weren't our latest releases: they were the releases from the past two Fridays. (I like to send out in bulk) So knowing I would have two more books to submit later that day, I went ahead and sent these two out.  Both books were gay (m/m) erotic romances, so they would go to the same sites, and both books were ones I'd edited so I wanted to make sure they hit all the review sites possible.

I always block out about four hours for review submissions.  Not does AMP submit to a lot of sites, but each site has its own submissions requirements.  At some sites, I have to fill out a review request form and THEY let ME know when they want a book to review.  Others want the books emailed in advance--and then want different information: some want the ISBN, some want the length of the book, some want you to describe exactly what might be offensive to a reader.  At any rate, it's a long process.  Not a single review site lets you attach the book and send an email that says, "Yo--here's the books this week. Peace out."

But while working on that for my allotted four hours, I got a brainchild. And, as is normal, that brainchild involves more work for me.  I decided to volunteer myself (and my editor Lori because I'm nice like that) to create a blurb/tagline writing workshop for the AMP authors.  The tagline and blurb are the only chances writers have to hook a reviewer--and by extension a reader. It's the writer's chance to sell his or her book. But some writers (like me) suck at writing blurbs.  I'm good with other people's blurbs, but for some reason the ones I write for my own work blow.  A blurb is basically the back cover copy of a book.  Online, that blurb is used as the mini-synopsis of the book. It's what readers use to decide whether they're going to purchase the book or not--or, in the case of a reviewer, review the book.  Those reviews are the best promotional tool a new writer has.  Great reviews will not only give your book publicity, but will also convince readers to give you a shot for the first time.  So you can't undervalue their importance. 

A few emails later, and I added another block of work/time to my schedule. Lori and I are going to get together this weekend and work on putting together an online workshop as well as worksheets to go to AMP editors and writers.  More on that as it progresses.

Then I wrote a guest blog post for Raine Delight's website.  Raine and I have been friends for many years--she's an up and coming erotica writer out of Buffalo, NY.  I'd promised her this blog entry a couple of weeks ago, but had scheduled to write it today.  So, with a fresh ice pack (I don't think my ankle is supposed to be as big as my blown out knee. Just sayin'...) applied to my technicolored appendages, I wrote out a long blog post about the resurrection of Regency romance.  You can check it out on her website. Not too shabby if I say so myself.  So having gotten that in, I crossed it off my list.

I then sent Lena Austin, a wonderful author and all-around classy lady congratulations on the release of her book The God's Wife.  (If you love ancient Egypt and a story of female empowerment, you need to check this book out.  Here's the buy link: http://www.aspenmountainpress.com/new-releases/the-god-39-s-wife/prod_310.html .) I'd edited the story for her.  The God's Wife  is the story of Hatchesput and how she rose from just one of Tutmoses II's wives to Pharaoh in her own right.  Lena had released a version of this story earlier with another publishing company, but wanted to explore the story in greater depth. (One of the great things about AMP is that there aren't any requirements a writer has to meet with their work. I had one company tell me they wouldn't publish my work unless I cut the majority of the plot and added three more sex scenes so I know whereof I speak.) So we'd worked together on it.  I let her explore the story to her heart's desire, only reining her in if she was headed out on a tangent. I can recognize those from how many tangents I write into my own work. Tangents are fun to write and easy to move off on, but they inevitably fall to the editor's pencil.  At any rate, I sent her a note letting her know how pleased and proud I was of her and the incredible story she'd written.  Always good to spread a little love toward your authors, and spreading love to Lena is not only easy, but a pleasure. She's such a doll!

Then it was time to work. *By this time, it was already past three* I'm getting the Aurora Regencies ready for first edits and waiting for one manuscript from AMP to finish up before then.  so on Friday, it was all about writing.  I got another 18k written on Defying the Covenants, working around review requests and email exchanges. I set up a couple of conferences for Monday--one with an author and another with the head of the art department at AMP to discuss the overall theme and look of the Aurora Regency line. 

Shannon came home at six and spent much of his evening being an absolute doll, helping me out by doing all my running back and forth for me and worrying more than he probably should.  When at eleven I finally settled down in bed to try and get some sleep, he finally relaxed enough to go to sleep himself.  But I stayed awake--not sure why.  I watched a movie on tv (W.--Oliver Stone's ridiculous film about George W. Bush) thinking it would put me to sleep. It didn't. It just made me mad.  So I pulled the laptop back out and worked for a couple of hours, outlining the fourth and fifth Mythos books and getting about 6k down on the Terella WIP.  Total word count for the day--24,809 over the course of 8 hours. World building/outlining time spent: One and a half hours. Time spent on business--about six hours all said and done.

All in all, a fairly satisfying day, if pain ridden and somewhat slower than usual, I still met all my goals.

A Month in the Life: April 1, 2010 -- April Fools Day

I've always though it was bizarre that April would being with April Fools Day. It's kind of like April is giving you the finger while sticking out its tongue at you.

And, as is usual, I got the biggest bird.

Let me explain.

Two years ago, on April Fools Day, I took a header down the stairs of our house.  I think there might even be a blog entry about it.  My ankle rolled on me--which is a side effect of the serious back injury I had resulting in weaker ankle muscles and neurololgical response. It wasn't a pleasant experience; I lay on the floor for eight hours waiting for someone to get home and help me.  Ended up in the ER for a long night of xrays, tests and dehydration IVs.  Needless to say, that header accelerated the degenerative disc disease that's had its way with me since the car wreck eight years ago.

So today, I walked across the street to the convenience store.  And while I was coming home and talking to my older daughter on the phone, my ankle rolled on me. Sunny day, dry, level concrete, in new tennis shoes--and my ankle rolled. I hit the concrete hard, cell phone flying.  For a minute, all I could do was cuss and rock back and forth.  But when the jackass in the seventies' Nova almost ran me over, I figured it would probably be a good idea to get up and hobble home. I picked up my cell phone (the daughter was still talking non-stop, unaware that I'd almost lost my life) and realized almost instantly that not only could I not put weight on my ankle, but that when I'd hit I'd blown out the knee on the opposite leg. 

And somehow I had to cross four lanes...six with the turning lanes--of busy traffic without using my legs or my feet.  Great.

I managed to make it across (barely), got up the steps and into the house, where I promptly collapsed on the couch and reached for my emergency pain meds.  Within an hour, both ankle and knee were swollen and turning ugly--but what was even worse was that I could now no longer manage to either stand or sit up straight.  I was pretty much done, immobilized on the couch without any way of getting anything I needed.  Shannon (the husband) came home early to help me out.  After arguing for a couple of hours whether we should go to the ER or the doctor, we finally agreed on the doctor in the morning if I was worse or, at the very least, not improved.

Since I was going nowhere, the schedule went out the window for the day.  I stayed on the couch, switching out ice packs and working off and on on Defying the Covenants, the solo conclusion to the Vampire Covenants trilogy.  Between 4:29 and 8:00, I got 6k written on it, answered emails and headed off problems online, edited some blurbs and excerpts and sent them back to the writers and started my organizational list for the RT convention later this month. After watching Survivor & Project Runway, my normal Thursday night TV routine, I worked for a couple of hours on Terella, reading through what I've written so far and doing a sketchy mini-edit for typos, misspelled words and almost every instance of 'that,' 'suddenly,' and dialogue tags in the WIP.  Not a very productive day--albeit a lot of fun.  I helped the moderators with their annual AW April Fool's joke and was somewhat more credible than normal owing to the screaming pain and the effect of extra narcotic assistance.

Not quite a total loss.

Plotting and Plotting

It's all I seem to be doing these days--plotting.  No, not against people. Plotting new storylines. Or, in the case of Terella, replotting. 

Every writer plots.  Not all of us outline--personally, I prefer to sit around and make notes and then just let the story happen as it may.  But, regardless of what I'm writing, there's one thing I absolutely know whenever I poise my fingers above my keyword and prepare to type "CHAPTER ONE."

The ending.

I always know how the story is going to end.  If I don't know how it's going to end, how am I going to fully develop the path the story takes to get to the end?  It's impossible.  There's no way I could have written Tamsen's story if I hadn't known that at the end of The Asphodel Cycle, one of the primary characters was going to...erm...die.  I think I would have written that character differently if I hadn't known; the character almost certainly wouldn't have taken on the importance that he/she ultimately did if I'd not planned that death.  The death serves a purpose, not only for the main character at that moment of the story but for any--ahem!--future Asphodel stories that I may or may not be working on at the moment.

Yeah, if I'd tried to be any more coy than I just was, my fillings would have jumped out of my teeth.  Suffice to say that while some writers have elaborate and detailed plot outlines of their stories, still others like myself don't outline at all.  Regardless of which method you prefer, I think it's fairly important that you at least know where the story is going to end up.  The Mythos series is pretty sweet that way--I don't have a choice about how the stories resolve.  Since I'm sticking to the original classical sources, anyone with Google-fu or Morford's mythology books would be able to determine the ultimate outcome of those stories.

So here I sit, like a spider in a web, stringing out my plotlines in my head and trying to determine how to make them work.  Terella has been giving me fits now for how long? Two years?  The main reason I'm having such trouble with it is because I didn't have the ending planned before I began to write. (Darn that NaNoWriMo stuff anyway!) But now that I have an ending I'm pleased with, I figure I have to cut at least 40% of the manuscript in order to get the storyline back on track.

Color me contented--I like a challenge.

My Mantra for 2010

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist." -- Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

I very rarely bother to follow the advice of other writers.  Usually, it just annoys me; every writer's journey is different, after all.  Some got their lucky break because their wife pulled a manuscript out of a trash can; others got their break because of their family's connections; still others sent out manuscript after manuscript for decades until they finally hit upon the right combination of story-agent-editor-publisher and found themselves inexplicably at the top of the field.  But Asimov's advice is one that really resonates with me.

In a nutshell, he claims that persistence is the secret of success.  If there's one thing I've got, it's persistence.

Now granted--I have had some small measure of success. And yet--I dream of more, of bigger, of prolific production of quality manuscripts that entertain the majority of people who read it.  I find that lately in my work, I'm getting bolder--I'm exploring issues and relationships and conflicts that once had no place in my creative mind.  I, who was once inordinately fond of the tropes of genre fiction, am now looking for a way to break out of them.

And still, the weary round of submissions goes on.  Every time I hit "send," I'm sending a little bit of my soul out to be examined and judged.  Now that bit of soul is twisted, warped perhaps from my comfortable, familiar world of fantasies and romance and long-dead honor into something where faith is questionable, where romance is an obstacle and where fantasies grow darker and more intimate.  Am I doing the right thing?

Who knows?

It doesn't matter.  I'll still keep working on them, wrenching them into a condition where I can sit back and say, "I trust this story on its own. Let's see what it can do."

I woke up this morning infused with a new, stronger sense of purpose.  I feel empowered, like something is waiting just around the corner for me if I have the guts to reach out and take it for myself.  I went through my works in progress briefly, analyzing them, looking at them from glasses that are no longer rose-colored, but more of a steely grey.  And you know what?

I like what I'm seeing.

So aside from the Mythos  and Covenants books, I'm going to dedicate a great deal of my focus and attention on the darkest work I've ever written. Terella is my new pet, rising in all its onyx glory to push past my other work. I think I've finally matured enough to really explore the depths of that work and the ideological horror it emerges from.  It's time to give it the attention it deserves.

If Asimov is right--if persistence is what leads to success--then well, I've got that in abundance. All the trepidation I've always felt when submitting to agents or publishers has vanished.  Now I'm looking at it as a challenge and not the soul-sucking agony I've felt in the past.  While Deception is still alive and kicking on a few desks across the country, its successor will be polished and shined until it's like obsidian--shiny, stygian and sharp.  Then we'll see if my currect instinct about my work is correct--if I'm more suited to creating the darker side of speculative fiction than the heroic side.

Getting close...

What a week!

Getting ready for Redemption's release has worn me out completely. I've been putting the finishing touches on a book trailer, showing up at chats, sending out press releases, stomping ye olde forums with blurbs--and trying come up with everything I can for a viral publicity campaign.

Having a promotion budget of *zilch* sucks. Getting the youngest into nursing school is the financial priority in our house at the moment.

At any rate, besides that I've really gotten going on Terella hardcore this week. The story has taken over, again, and since I'm rewriting the monster from scratch I was a little surprised that it's rampaging across my desk like a rabid wildebeast. I'm trying to keep up with it but *whine* it's too fast for me! I still have the gut feeling that this may be my opus magnum to date. It's definitely taken on a literary voice that my previous fantasy works haven't had.

And Aleira is such a cool character. It's hard to make her into what I intend for her to be, but she seems to have a few ideas of her own at this point. Once I have this rewritten, a couple of hard line edits and it should be ready to query.

My goal is for October.

Which, will be just in time to do line edits on Asphodel 3 and get ready for its release--hopefully by Christmas.

We can hope.

You guys have a great weekend--I'm sure that you'll be hearing lots from me over the next couple of weeks so be prepared for the Gift of Redemption blog blitz!

Thunder is Rumbling Again

Once again, the family has a health crisis. My father-in-law is having triple bypass surgery today. It seems like we get past one hurdle only to find another one right on the horizon. I'm the central communication hub, excused from hospital duty because my back is in particularly nasty shape. Shannon is there with his mom and I'm keeping the other, widespread offspring up to date.

Right now all the up to date is: still in surgery. Try back at 5.

It's strange how the wheels of life turn sometimes. It actually can work like some of the plots I concoct with hills and plateaus--and cliffs-- in the action topography. Sometimes, as in the Summers' households this year, it's all cliffs. We've been rock climbing and rappelling like crazy this year just trying to keep one turn ahead of the twist in the road.

Four sixteen.

I start a submission orgy on January 2nd. I'll be querying two different novels (Requiem and Terella) to as many agents as possible. I've been polishing the hell out of them for a month and I finally wrote the last chapter of Terella this week. I'd been putting it off because I knew how I wanted it to end but couldn't quite wrap my fingers around how to portray it. Sort of a Jesus meets Carrie (Stephen King) image had wandered around my mind and I finally figured out how to create that feel. I am eerily optimistic about it. Requiem is paranormal romance, pure and simple. It will be nice to see what it can do.

Four twenty one. Time sure is moving slowly. I think I'll let the dogs out, smoke a cigarette while sheltering from the rain on the deck, and think about maybe taking a long, hot bath. Then I'll go back to the computer and pound my query letters into shape. Four twenty two.

Keeping the Flame Hot

No, this isn't a post about erotica.

Thanks to real life (evil bastard) I haven't been on track with TGTD. Oh, sure, I'm sitting over 60k now, but that's more to do with tuning out my relatives than any real intensity on my part. Today, however, the wheels are turning. I rediscovered my drive for the story and I think it's coming along fine.

Did I mention that I managed over 50k in 11 days? I'm a little smug, yes, but there are others who wrote more than I did.

I've noticed that my writing is a lot sharper these days. I eliminate most of my grammatical penchants before I make them. Even the comma count is down, which is a good thing. (don't crit my blog, damnit--it's where commas are allowed to roam freely without fear of molestation--and adverbs too so nyaaaaaaah.)

At any rate, it is hard sometimes to get past the first few chapters when you start a new project. I am not a compulsive planner when I write; I have an idea of where the story will end, but how I get there and most of the plot turns are accidental. Usually I stall and sputter (remember Requiem?) until I figure out how best to get the story moving along. Terella has a fairly straightforward plot intention, but the road is twisted and gnarly and oh so deliciously indecent! My heroine begins as fairly sweet and naive and morphs through the story until she takes over the page and stomps all over it.

Killing superfluous dialogue tags as she goes.

For example, this is how we meet Aleira:

Aleira liked the rain. It slanted from the thickening sky as slashes of lavender. Overall it was, particularly at this time of year, a beautiful and relaxing thing to watch. She had heard rumors that in places across the great Mneosta Sea the rain was as silvery as the clouds that brought it. She didn’t necessarily believe it. For her, it was incomprehensible that rain could be anything other than the watery purple-hued streaks she loved. She let the hood fall back from her face, glorying in the feel of the water against her skin. For a girl with many problems, the rain was a wonderful thing.

Aleira was alone. She liked being alone. For as long as she could remember,it had always been thus. No matter what town she walked through, or what inn she entered in search of food and drink, she was the lone person in her life. It wasn’t very bad; it gave her time to think. Most of that thinking time she spent asking herself the selfsame question repeatedly.

Who am I?

She knew her name. She retained that one thing from ‘before.’ “Before’ referred to the time of darkness. ‘After’ referred to now. ‘After’ began when Aleira opened her eyes a month ago and found herself standing alone in the middle of a large field. She knew absolutely nothing about her origins: where she’d come from, who her family was, what she was doing or where she was going. The only clues she had were her name and the few possessions she owned.

Later on, she's more like this:

“Tell me, Rudianos,” she began softly, as the king stiffened into renewed fury at her use of his name. “Do you think I can’t see that makings of your past? Your father was a cruel man too, was he not? Didn’t he torture you and your younger sister, to mould you into what he thought royalty should be? Wasn’t it difficult for you as a child? All you wanted to do was run to your mother and weep, but you couldn’t because then he’d beat her too.”

The words came faster now, brought up from some well of information that she’d never known she possessed. “I always wonder what the product of emotional cruelty was. I see it now, enthroned and enriched by the suffering of those who don’t even know they are your victims. Your son stands behind me. He is a good man, a patient and gentle man who you ignored when he was growing. You had two older sons; he was unimportant. This son you left alone, spared the incessant brutality you spent upon his brothers as you tried to make them in your image. When they died, you
were left with him. He’d grown up in a different fashion, left to his tutors and beneath your notice. Now you’re frustrated because he isn’t as easy to shape as your other, maltreated, bestial offspring. He has a mind of his own, and prowess that you fear. Tell me, Rudianos: when you lie in your cold bed at night, whose face do you see before you go to sleep? Is it your own face, wreathed in glory and might? Or, is it the face of your son, above a sword that whistles for your throat?”

She smiled again, a sweet, innocent smile that belied the harsh impact of her words. “I know what it is you see. I know what it is that you fear. It is the usual thing for mortals to fear their own mortality. I will say this and no more: the death you receive, King of Vegoia, will be the death you have earned.”

It took her about 75 pages to reach that point. And just afterwards, she finds herself caught up in a war that she cannot stop. It's then that her atheism is confirmed; nothing quite like a moral crisis to give a girl doubts about the gods whoever they are. Oh, yes. And Ugarit? Poor fellow. I torture him in my inimitable mean fashion, but he keeps coming up the stronger for it.

*grin*

I may have to kill him to prove a point. Wouldn't that be a nice twist?

That's one of the great things about keeping the flame of your story hot--taking out your frustrations (or your joys) upon a helpless character who lives and dies by the power of your pen. Wow. What a feeling! It gives me the goosebumps just thinking about it.

I think a nice, prolonged, lovely death scene is just the ticket. Excuse me while I run to the thesaurus to find more synonyms for blood, guts, and disembowelment. This may be more fun than torturing Elves.