Organizing Like Mad

Just when I thought my life couldn't get any crazier, it has.  Naturally, my body's response to this was to shut me down for about forty eight hours, huddled under every comforter in the house shivering with fever.  I feel better now--weak, but better.  So now, I have to get myself ultra-organized if I'm going to survive the next few weeks.

My writing schedule is heavy already.  It's been suddenly made heavier, however.  I have no more time to play.  My five hour writing blocks are not only sancrosanct, but scheduled almost to the number of how many words I need to crank out during those times.  My editing schedule is, fortunately, well under control.  I've got my writers' books spaced out well at the moment and I'm ahead of schedule.  The ultimate fly in the ointment, however, is going to be the books of mine that will be going into edits soon.  I can't permit myself to get so caught up in those that my schedule suffers.

And all of this is because of why, you may ask?

Let's just say that Aspen Mountain Press will be making a big announcement soon and after that announcement, every bit of spare time I have will be sucked up like a dust bunny into a Hoover.

I'm excited; I'm worried; I'm chomping at the bit. I've always said I like to be busy and that's the God-honest truth. Hopefully, I'm up to the challenge. We'll find out soon, I suppose. So for now, I'll get my boxes and drawers and shelves and paper completely organized and spend the remainder of my evening writing.  After all, it is my first love.

And oh--by the way. I've had a very interesting thing happen.  The Ameican Editor blog has had some very good things to say about me in the past few weeks, especially this new post that came out this week.  I'm flabbergasted and flattered and ridiculously terrified all at once.  Go check it out if you have a mind to.

Then come back and tell me if I should send this kind gentleman a fruit basket or some chocolates.

An Open Letter To Lane Kiffin With a PS to The University of Tennessee

Dear Coach To Whom It May Concern:

Most of my friends and one of my daughters expected me to be absolutely livid today when the news came down the pike that Lane Kiffin, erstwhile football placeholder for my beloved Tennessee Vols, had proved the depths of his insane belief that everyone accepts the crap he does and done a shameful, Cleveland Brownsesque bolt in the middle of the night for the warmth of a NCAA-probation ready USC Trojans.

I wasn't.

I'm so glad you're gone from Knoxville.  It means I can now go back to a city I love without running the risk of hurling all over my orange and white patent leather sneakers.  It means I can take a drive by the Rock, where I can read various forms of graffiti that basically boil down to F*CK YOU KIFFIN, take a deep breath of that mountain-scented air and know that my University is back.  It means I can walk down Phillip Fulmer way with the absolute conviction that a loud-mouthed punk isn't sitting behind his desk.  As a matter of fact, I couldn't have been happier at the news that my athletic donation dollars are no longer going to pay your entirely-ridiculous salary.

And then I realized.

You bolted three weeks to the day before National Signing Day.

What a piece of crap.  You misled a slew of young football players. You misrepresented your commitment to the program. You flat out lied about your loyalty--not only to the school, but to their development as players and young men.  Who gives a crap about the fan base? Next year, Neyland Stadium will still be full of Rocky Top singing Volunteer fans and in a few years we won't even remember your name--until we beat you in a bowl game. We, the alumni and fans of Tennessee, will get over it.

But what about the kids? Huh? Did you think about that before you slunk out like a Smoky Mountain polecat clutching your son named Knox and hiding behind your Barbie doll wife? Did you spare them a thought before you called your dad to drive you to the airport in the hopes that no one would throw a molotov cocktail at an old gentleman's car?

No.

You see, as long as everything is about YOU, a team will not prosper. The story shouldn't be Kiffin, Kiffin, Kiffin. Maybe you should spare a thought for the players on your team, the athletic department that stood behind you and your stupid mouth, and the kids who were just yesterday really excited about attending a quality program like the University of Tennessee and now are floundering with a commitment they may or may not want to follow through on.

I hope you're happy. You've screwed over people on so many levels with this move that you've made Nick Saban, Rich Rodriguez and Brian Kelly look like freaking Girl Scouts. Congratulations.

Here's hoping that your level of success will continue to be what it has been as a head coach. That record is what now? 12- 21?  Good luck to you.

Celina

PS:  TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AND UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT AS WELL AS THE ALUMNI FOUNDATIONS AND HIRING COMMITTEE

You know you guys screwed over Phil Fulmer, don't you? This is karma coming back to bite your ass and you deserve it.  When you threw over one of the greatest, winningest coaches in college football for a loud-mouthed punk who nearly dragged the program into probation disaster, this is what you deserve.  Seriously.

Unfortunately, the kids don't.

Do yourself a favor--do us all a favor: Call Coach Fulmer. Ask him to come back for ONE YEAR starting tomorrow. I don't care how much you have to pay him--do it.  Get him in the office and after our committed recruits TONIGHT. Save our recruiting class for God's sake!  Coach Fulmer loves the University of Tennessee.  He will do anything to save our football program and face it--you freaking owe him at least that much. 

Coach Fulmer will represent our school with class and dignity. He's also a hell of a coach. He can save our season and those recruits.  Just eat the crow. Beg him to help.  At the end of the season, you can judge his future based on what he's accomplished with the team. You'll have the opportunity to run an extensive and thorough head coach search and not land us with a bipolar publicity maniac next time.  But at the very least, there's only one coach that can save our football team, our season, and our recruiting class right now, which is exactly what has to happen.

Call him.  Call him tonight. And then pray that Coach Fulmer will be gracious enough to save your ass.

Throws Down The Gauntlet

Okay, you pigs. You spam-saturated slugs who keep leaving ridiculous comments about weight loss programs or Malaysian funds frozen in US banks or questions about what size of male anatomy I prefer. Because of you, I now have to moderate the comments left on my blog.  Why is that? Because you are all pigs.  Satan-spawned pigs, I might add, grubbing through the trash for some other poor blogger to run into.  Yeah, I know--you left me alone for the most part over the last few years but now that you've found me, that's it.

This calls for a declaration of war.

WAR I tell you! Seriously!  No more advertisements.  No, I don't care how white your teeth are, that there are hot girls in my town or that you have Super Bowl tickets you're giving away.  *Yes, that's right. You just heard me turn down Super Bowl tickets. That should tell you how pissed off I am.*

And I am ESPECIALLY not interested in hearing from any of your fly by night vanity presses masquerading as legitimate publishing companies and hoping to scam some poor ignorant writer into thinking that you'll publish sight unseen my fabulous magnum opus that will send me to dizzying heights of success just like Stephen King.  Don't know what you tools think you're doing, but you're not dealing with an idiot here. I'm not a high school kid locked away in her room sighing over the millions of dollars I'm going to make when I write my book about the Jonas Brothers.

Trust me. You're wasting your time.

So now I have to moderate comments and I'm pissed.  I shouldn't have to do it. It shouldn't even be a remote possibility.  But because some jackass decided to leave a comment on my blog about WRITING to tell me about all these great Iphones and Ipods I could buy for him for a fraction of the cost (cause, you know, I'm obviously all about stolen goods too) that means the rest of you have to suffer through the inconvenience of it too.  I'm sorry.

Blame it on the pigs.

Snowball, you have met your Napoleon. (Sorry, Orwell)  Minimus has been banned. And Squealer? Well, Squealer walked over here on his hind legs and farted in your face. 

That's it for this blog. No more spam.  And, if someone tries to get around it, there'll be pork in the treetops come morning and sausage and ham for lunch. (Sorry Goldman, but it is one of my favorite lines ever)

NO. MORE. SPAM.  Got it? Good.

Two Thousand Words A Day...or Lowering my Expectations

I have a huge contractual commitment this year.  I have to crank out all sorts of manuscripts in order to keep up, while still editing for my authors, editing previously submitted materials, continuing to submit outside of the contracted work and maybe even eke out a few minutes of my day for my family and home.  For the past few weeks, I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to meet--or exceed--my obligations. And, for the most part, I'm doing well.

But I think I want to follow my own advice.  I think I want to step back for a little while. It's like this:  the Mythos series I'm working on is comprised of novellas.  Those need to hit anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 words when complete.  Now then--when I do writing challenges, I average about 2,000 words per hour. So, thinking logically, I can complete the first draft of one novella every seven to ten days simply by sitting down for an hour and writing straight through.

So now, I need to figure out how to accomplish that.  If I work at my desk, I'll see all my plot outlines and worldbuilding notes tacked to the walls around me.  It distracts me easily and I'll get sidetracked very quickly, like I did last night.  I looked over at my husband in the middle of writing and behind him was a picture of a coral reef I'd tacked up on the board for use when describing a setting.  All of a sudden, I said, "Damn~! I don't even know what the name of that yellow fish is!"

On to Google.  The yellow fish question led to the "does that blue starfish have a name?" and from there to "where do dolphins like to be scratched?" and from THERE on to "are dolphin's young called calves or pups?"

Boom. Forty-five minutes down the tube.  I emerged from them wiser about all manner of affairs oceanographical (the answers are sunfish, no idea, anywhere but near the blowhole and calves) but vastly unproductive when it came to actually putting words down on the paper.

So working at the desk is out.  So is the living room and the bedroom.  Why? Television and the phones.  My daughter LOVES to text message me.  I love talking to her so I'll text message her back.  Before I know it, I'm typing my ass off--but on the cell phone and not the keyboard.  As for television, well, what can I say? I love paranormal shows and I have a TIVO. Diligence FAIL.

I swore when I got my new laptop that I was never going to hook it up to the internet.  My reasoning was that I'd used my old laptop for web surfing and keep this one pristine (and virus free) by using it only for writing and editing.  Well, that idea was flushed when my other daughter's laptop broke.  Now, every time I get on the computer, I always have to go check my email--which usually leads to an email I have to answer, and then I just cruise by Facebook, and then I just run to check my standings in the P&E Readers Poll, at which point I feel the need to go promote and push people to vote for me and...well, you get the picture.

I could always write longhand, but I can never find a good pen.

So here's my plan: I'll do that mandatory 2k at night, after all humans in the house have gone to sleep. There's never anything good on TV in the middle of the night, I won't get text messages from my daughters who are busy being new and sleep-deprived mothers, there's no one to hang out with online and even the people who need me to buy something from the 5k check they're sending me from Malaysia and oh! I can keep the change! won't send me more junk mail until seven am Eastern Standard Time.  You know--right before the banks open. So, I'm going to make it a rule: I'll write my daily blog entry first, then run off and do my two thousand words before I go to sleep.  If I stick to my schedule, I can reasonably produce a novella every two weeks and still have time to write on my big WIPs as well as edit the rest of the time.

Okay. Whew!  Glad that problem's solved.  Off to write.

Are You Freaking Kidding Me?

Every once in a while, I find myself getting annoyed at the rank idiocy of complete strangers.  Today was one of those days. That'll teach me to go to Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon again.

When we got there, a straggle of young women and small babies were exiting the building.  In front was a girl--probably no older than sixteen--smoking an almost-gone cigarette that was dangling out of her mouth a scant inch away from her infant's face.  The baby couldn't have been more than two or three months old.  What killed me was that she walked out of the store doing that and apparently no one stopped her and said anything to her.

Now, I'm a smoker. I trust that I'm a courteous one. I obey regulations about smoking when I'm out in public. But even when I was young and dumb, I never NEVER smoked a cigarette while holding one of my children! Christ on a stick--I didn't even smoke in the same room with them. And even then, I never walked around a store with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth!  No one can do a damn thing about what this...erm...woman is doing to that poor baby, but surely someone in the store could have said something to her about smoking so obviously in a non-smoking (by law) establishment?  Hell, when I was tending bar and someone fired up a cigarette (certainly understandable, in my point of view) I would kick them out of the bar to finish their smokes in accordance with the law.

What a world we live in!

Then, on the way home, a car full of teenagers decided it would be fun to pass in the median.  There was only about half a foot of solid ice on it, after all.  Hitting that at about sixty miles an hour would be jolly good fun, right?

Especially when they did a 360 and--much to their invincible dismay--ended up in the ditch.  Fortunately, no one was hurt and the kids walked away, but the testimony given to the cops by the witnesses probably bodes nothing but ill for that young driver when his parents came to pick him up.

And then, much to my horror, the kids next door stole a march on us this year.  Instead of our anatomically correct snowmen being the featured frozen display on our street the new kids that live next door spent much of the last two days constructing a snow fort. It's a damned good one too, bidding fair to be a sizeable igloo just as soon as they figure out how to make the roof stay up.

Unbelievable!

Makes me glad I'm staying at home tonight, especially after watching my beloved University of Tennessee Volunteers shock the #1 team in the country (Kansas) by beating the crap out of them with our second string. And good on you, Bruce Pearl, for placing the integrity of the program above the pressure to win. 

As you can see, we didn't need the alleged law-breakers on the floor to take down one of the most powerful teams in the country.

Yep. Topsy turvy everywhere.  What's next, I ask you? Pete Carroll bailing on USC for the NFL right before the NCAA wipes out about six years' worth of records? The Baltimore Ravens finally beating the Patriots in the wildcard game? The government penalizing citizens who can't afford health insurance?

Ha!  Thank God there are some things in life I can always, absolutely count upon.

Taking A Step Back

You know, I think writers need to take a step back every once in a while.

Hold on--before you get all riled up and think this is a pronouncement from the muses or whatever, let me explain myself a bit.  This has been coming up a lot lately, both in my editing work and my writing so I think it's worthy of exploration.

One of my writers (yep--I have the editor hat on at the moment) and I were talking about her latest WIP.  She was ready to bang her head against the wall (figuratively) because she felt the manuscript needed some major revisions but couldn't figure out exactly where.  Now, I've been there.  I've been there a lot.  Hell, I bought property there, so I could makes those moments more comfortable with some plush furniture and a few well-chosen but soothing pieces of art.  Oh, and a margarita machine. Margarita machines make everything better.  At any rate, I told her to send the manuscript to me and forget about it for a few days. I would look at it as a reader not an editor (the distinction there is important) and get back to her with my thoughts on it.

So then today, a thread shows up on Absolute Write about turning off your inner editor.  My response was simple--the inner editor (a mythical beastie if there ever was one) doesn't need to be involved in the act of creation.  If you get distracted by all those squiggly WordPerfect lines in your first draft, shrink your window down to only a few lines and just keep on writing.

This is easier said than done.  There's a lot of pressure on writers these days to be better technically. We need to know our grammar, spell words correctly (and according to common usage in your native form of English), punctuate appropriately and avoid passive tense.  We have to keep from head hopping, keep our narrative voices distinct and precise and for God's sake, avoid all those darned adverbs and exclamation points!

In other words, we're putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to write perfectly...erm...well. 

Yet, the whole purpose, the raison d'etre of a first draft isn't to write perfectly, it's to tell the story. Plain. Cold. Simple. Tell the story. Not tell the story while minimizing participial clauses, but to take a character or set of characters from the beginning of the story (better drop them right into the action) through the conflict to the ultimate resolution of the plot and, if you're me, killing a few Elves along the way for fun and profit.

Nowhere in the directive "tell the story" is there anything mentioned about grammar or point of view. You know why? Because those issues are addressed in revisions. Because the first draft is not the final draft. Most writers (at least the ones I know) revise and edit obsessively after their manuscript is born.  It may only take me a month to write a 150,000 word manuscript, but it'll take me at least half a year to get it done. When it's done, it will have lost a ton of words--mostly adverbs. I confess.--and the words on the page are *hopefully* better than the original ones.  All those dialogue tags with adverbs?  Those become sentences of action. Instead of "he barked angrily" after a snippet of conversation it's "He slammed his fist into the trunk of the closest tree, oblivious at first to the nasty mixture of bark and blood on his knuckles." There's nothing really wrong with "he barked angrily" but in order to give the story more life, the active sentence is better.

Writers are stressed out enough as it is.  Few people will ever understand the sense of accomplishment one gets from typing the words "The End" on the final page of a hundred thousand word novel. Unfortunately, writers think that all one hundred thousand of those words have to be perfect at the moment they are written instead of at the close of an exhaustive and thorough revisionary process.

That's simply not the case.  It doesn't matter what the words are in the first draft. No one sees that draft but you, the writer, and maybe a really trusted beta reader.  What matters is that the first draft tells the story, from beginning to close, in such a manner as to engage the reader.  You don't get cast in a play and open the next day; you have a lengthy rehearsal process.  What writers need to realize is that the first draft is the rehearsal process for a novel.

So take a step back. Ignore the little voice that's arguing with you about the best way to write that sentence. Just get the story down. Then, when the first draft is done it's time to catch your breath.  Close down that file (save and back it up first!) and take a few days off. Then, and only then, go back to it, read it all the way through and then--and only then--whip out the trusty red pencil and rip it to shreds.  Trust me. You'll be happier and probably healthier if you remove the pressure for perfection from that first draft.

Frustration and the Snow

For some reason, my biggest frustration days in writing coincide with nasty weather.  For example, here I am--stuck in Ohio while another half a foot of snow piles up outside, my husband stranded and snowbound in a hotel two counties away because it's illegal to drive and I find I'm at a staggering impasse with my daily writing/editing schedule.  I just can't write.

Why is that?

It may be because the last few days I'm been struggling with my writing, trying to figure out what's 'wrong' with it. It's not technical.  My first drafts are MUCH cleaner than a lot of things I've read from the slush pile.  That much, at least, I can be self-congratulatory about.  Could it be my premises? Are they just...eek!...not that good?

Somehow, I don't think so.  My submissions garner enough positive feedback (ie--requests for manuscripts) that I think the premises must be fairly sound and interesting.  So, weeding out the two big factors there, what am I left with?

Characters. Plot development. Plot resolution. Credibility.

But here again, no. The feedback I get from my various stories, is conflicting.  Some love my characters; some people don't.  Some readers are totally involved in my plots, to the point of sending me hate mail when I (joyfully) kill off one of their favorite characters.  I have a special folder in my inbox for those emails--they are simultaneously enjoyable and terrifying.  My continuity lines are very intricate for just about any story I write, but I make damn certain I resolve everything without using any evil deus ex machinae in the process.  And are my characters credible?

I hope so. A lot of them are me--or people close to me.  Disguised, of course, but still.  Writers are supposed to write what they know, right?  Well I write the people I know. 

Maybe it's my narrative voice.  I tend to write in first person a lot, and assume an extremely casual narrative style when I do so.  Maybe I should stick to third person and a more formal narrative voice?

But I tried that and got panned for it.

Hell, I don't know WHAT the problem is. Unless...

Unless there's not really a problem.  Unless I'm injuring myself by second-guessing my choices.  Maybe I should just toss all that self-doubt in the bin and barge full steam ahead. Maybe I should just pull my next storyline out of the hat and get going on it, make it work, invest everything I am and feel and think into it and just let the words fly.  Maybe...maybe...

Maybe I need to stop worrying about 'maybe.' Maybe now it's time to set those worries aside, put my fingers on the keys and just. write. the. damn. story.

Go ahead.  You can take this and run with it.  If you're one of my writers, you've heard me say it before.  If you're my poor unfortunate editor, you can run for cover.  It's a mantra, a way of life, a way of thinking.

Just write the damn story.

Just write.

Dadburnit!

Okay, so I'm currently trying to compile a list of review site options for Aspen Mountain Press.  Compiling the romance/erotica list was easy.  What's NOT so easy is finding genre fiction review sites.  Oh sure--there are the big, sparkly fantasy reviewers with all the bells and whistles on their sites--like fantasy name generators...are you serious?--but many of them have some variation of the following line:

We only accept commerically published authors.

Okay, let's stop and analyze that statement.  Many of these review sites mean "We only want to review books that are published by the big fantasy houses like Dell or Tor." I'm sure their purpose is to keep self-published authors and those with vanity presses (like the one who shall not be named who is scamming my mother-in-law despite my repeated pleas for her to run as fast as she can) from swamping their inboxes with low-quality stories and badly refurbished fan fic.  Yeah. I get it. I'm down with that. I don't blame you.

But what about the small, independent publishers?  What about e-publishers?  What happens to them?

Some of the large romance review sites, like Love Romances and More or Night Owls Reviews saw the need for e-book review sites and opened their doors to a flood of submissions. That's great and vastly appreciated, but not what I'm looking for.  I'm looking for a genre specific site for fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery ebooks.

It's frustrating.

What's even MORE frustrating about it is that I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "Well,heck I'd do it if I didn't already have too much time allotted to writing/editing/worldbuilding/review submitting/moving/cat care/husband care/daughter dilemma dealing/house cleaning/house restoring/snow shoveling/cooking/sleeping/lovemaking/bathing/eating/et cetera as it is!"  Surely there's someone who'll do this, right?  Right?

Not yet. I'm moving through a humongous list of alleged genre reviewers and I still keep running into a definite 'we don't read e-books' mentality.  I'm going to keep looking.  Maybe I'll find one. I'm searching in the "L's" at the moment and it is 3:11 pm on 1/6/10.  Let's see how long it takes.

4:04 pm. -- I'm starting to think that this many bored housewives who have review blogs have lucked into a good thing.  Maybe I'll have time to review books too...just in case I had a bookshelf that was needing filled.  Good grief--some of these sites!  But, alas, even bored housewives have e-book prejudices.  The search goes on...and I'm only in the N's.

4:29 -- Well, that's a new one. Never heard of someone refusing to review e-books because of DRMs. Nah...don't need to be hardballed just to get a book reviewed.  Still looking.

4:54 -- I'm finding some sites, but ones that either don't seem appropriate (ie--adolescent run) or are too obviously in the give-me-free-books-scam. I have now noted 2--that's right TWO--sites in between the letters A and R that might be outlets for submission.

And success comes in the unlikeliest of places...and well into the S's I might add. Hurray. Someone to pester.

So why the prejudice? With the latest e-readers garnering favorable reviews and the quality of e-books going up, what's the problem? My best guess is that reviewers are inundated by self-published or vanity-published authors and, to be quite frank, there have been some e-publishers (now mostly defunct) who have been guilty to rushing not-quite-ready-for-any-time books to the e-reading public. There are some really good stories out there in e-pubbed genre fiction and not all of it is erotic!

Somehow, some way I will push my foot into the door of these sparkly bastions of reviewing. Either that or I'll create a nom de plume and start my own site.  Why not? There's no such thing as too many books, right?

Right?

Blast From The Past Blasts Into The Present

So every once in a while, I get sideswiped. Not often--it takes a lot to confuse me. But when something happens that shocks me, I get really shocked.

For example:

I got an email this weekend from an old friend I haven't heard from in years.  Turns out she'd gotten a hold of my first book (The Reckoning of Asphodel) and really liked it. So she bought the rest of them. Granted, that's enough to make me excited.  After all, we've all had dreams of going back to high school and having someone completely random tell you, "Yeah, I've read your book/seen your movie/danced to your album/been to one of your games." Right?

Well, she took it a bit further.  She had emailed me to inform me that having read my blog and my website and noting all the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll nominations I've gotten in the past, she thought she'd go vote for me this year.  And, when she didn't find my stuff on the Readers Poll yet, she nominated me.

So, allow me to announce the following:

Apostle of Asphodel, the concluding novel of my fantasy series The Asphodel Cycle, has been nominated for Best Sci Fi/Fantasy Novel of 2009.

Metamorphosis, the collection of my spec fic short stories published by Aspen Mountain Press, was nominated for Best Anthology.  Also, in a complete coincidence as best I can tell, the cover art by Renee George was nominated for Best Cover Art.

Breaking the Covenants, the first book of the Covenants gothic vampire romance series co-written with Canadian author Rob Graham, was nominated for Best Erotica.

And, strangely enough, I was nominated for Author of the Year.

This is my third year in a row with nominations in the P&E Readers Poll.  Last year, the second Asphodel book, The Gift of Redemption, placed in the Top Ten for Best Sci Fi/Fantasy Novel while its sequel Temptation of Asphodel placed in the Top Ten for Best Novel. So now all four Asphodel novels have been honored with readers' nominations on the P&E poll, which I find very exciting and gratifying. As I've been proofing the print galleys for Reckoning, I've allowed myself to get caught up in the editing side of things.  But this has changed my focus, quite properly, back to where it should be--the reader.

And I figure that if I'm entertaining someone who is reading my work, I must be doing something halfway right. 

So Oxford commas and serial adverb abuse aside, please let me thank you, the people who read my stories, for allowing me the very great privilege and honor of sharing my worlds with me. Hopefully, the stories I write in the future will get better.  Hopefully, I improve in my craft.  Hopefully, one day, I may actually get one of these stories right.  But until then, thank you for bearing with me as I follow the writers' path.

If you wanted to check out the 2009 Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll and maybe...you know...vote or something, follow this link.

I'm off to go shovel more snow from the driveway.  And thus does the mundane burst my little bubble.  Then, maybe some football and perhaps...the tiniest little amount of shameless begging for votes.

Not Sure What This Post Is About Yet...

...so I'll just wing it.

I've been working a lot today--not on anything new (as I should be) but on the print galleys for The Reckoning of Asphodel. My very first book in the Asphodel Cycle will be available soon in trade paperback.  As soon as I have more particulars (release date, et cetera) I'll let you know.

But right now, I find myself in a peculiar position.  I haven't really sat down and read the first book since right after it was released (August 10, 2007--here's the link). So today, as I'm going through the print galleys, my editorial ren pencil finger is itching like there's been poison ivy on my keyboard. You know what I really want?

I want to revise the whole darn thing.

Now I realize I can't do that.  Doesn't make me want to do it any less. I actually spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to hack into the adobe program and fix things myself. (Didn't take long to dissuade me; I can turn on my computer and that's about it.) It's amazing how much a writer's voice can change in such a relatively short period of time.  I've noticed this with some of the writers I edit, but I was almost traumatized by how much my own voice has matured.  I mean think about it--Reckoning  came out a little less than two and half years ago and to my eyes the narrative voice is almost unrecognizable.  Removing the high narrative style I chose by design for the books (mostly so I could mature it throughout the course of the books) the differences between then and now are staggering.

I love adverbs now. I really loved them then.  Dialogue tags make me gag a little now; not the case back in the day.  And comma addiction? I had it. Not so much anymore.

Hell, I even used the Oxford comma back then whereas now I would rather gnaw off my arm at the shoulder.

Strange.

A lot of these changes, I attribute to my editors. The common usage mistakes I made, they've trained out of me by this point. Every manuscript presents some other new quirk they have to strive to eliminate.  And now, as I work with the authors that I edit, I contribute this new-found knowledge to correct the same mistakes in their writing. 

Kind of whacked.

For example, lately I've been harping on my writers that separate their readers from the action by using sensing verbs.  "I saw someone do something" as opposed to "someone did something"--basically, making the action more pertinent by sinking the reader deeper into the narrative point of view.  The reader knows whose point of view they're reading; if the narrative states that "someone did something" it's assumed that the narrator saw that.

Yep. You guessed it.  "I saw" and "I felt" and "I heard" litter that story like confetti in Times Square on New Year's Day.

So this has made me think about the role of the editor in the writing process, and I've realized that there's a quite definite and traceable chain of editing which sifts from editor to writer to editor.  Quirks that I identify in my writers' work will, in turn, become quirks they self-identify in their manuscripts or, if they become editors too, in the work of the writers they critique or edit themselves.  These quirks are essentially what instigates the ever-progressing evolution of language.

That's probably why passive writing became passe, why the exclamation point was poo-pooed and the ceaseless argument over the Oxford comma was begun in the first place.

Makes the role of an editor seem a lot more important when you look at it that way, doesn't it?  I'm not saying this to give myself a big ol' pat on the back, but as an observation of the inconstancy of the English language. The rules we have now are not the same rules that Faulkner followed, or Wilde or Dickens or Austen.  Each age of literature was different from the one that preceded it, and the next one will kill off some of the contemporary and fashionable quirks we employ today--quirks that future writers and editors will call cumbersome and old-fashioned.

(Jst plz--not txtspk, I bg u.)

I'm hoping this will give me a little more perspective as I move into a new year of both editing and writing. I'm also hoping that on these upcoming manuscripts, I'll remember to keep my quirks to myself so my editor will stay off my back.

Vain hopes, but what the hey?  I have to use all the ellipses I can before they go out of style, editorialized into oblivion...

Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

You know, I am a child of the South.  I am used to having two or three snows each year and the coldest day getting all the way down to freezing, maybe. But, I have always hated three things about the South: June, July and August.  100 degree days?  Not my style. I hate sweating.  So in an effort to avoid perspiration, mosquitoes as big as my arm and always-frizzed out hair from the humidity, I moved to Ohio.

And was promptly greeted by winter.

You'd think after fifteen years in Ohio, I'd be used to winter by now.  I'm not.  I don't mind snow; having had relatively few snow days when I was a kid (except for the winter of 77-78 when we were out of school from before Thanksgiving until after Valentine's Day AND were still in school on the Fourth of July) I kind of like snow.

I do NOT like single digit temperatures.  Not at all.

We had a little bit of snow last night--just enough to blanket the yards and cover the roads. It's so cold outside that salt doesn't melt the snow; it turns it into a big slick of ice.  You'd think the road crews around here would be smart enough to realize that but--oh, no. They keep salting the ice and it freezes almost instantly.  My husband is off in Columbus today doing his Micrsoft certification school and I am stuck here, watching an endless stream of salt trucks parade up and down the hill in front of the house, refreezing the ice slick that once was a road.

I could be a spectator sport.  I could run a betting pool. Just think about it.

"Hey, Bob, what odds are you going to give me on how long it's going to take the road department to figure out the ice isn't working?"

"It's supposed to snow again Tuesday, right?  Ummmm....I'll give you 3 to 1 odds they won't figure it out for a week."

"That's a little steep? You sure about that?"

"Yep. 3 to 1; seven days."

"Done. Here's my g-note. I'll be back in a week--provided the dogs are ready to get hooked up to the sled.  Heck, I'll even buy you a beer; we can snowshoe to the Fairview."

*sigh*

You have to love sheer, dogged persistence in the face of meterological common sense.

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.

Back to Ring Out 2009 and Ring In 2010

Yep! I'm back.

After taking a two-month sabbatical from my online presence in order to get a lot of work (and a grandbabies' first Christmas, house buying, lots of editing and submitting) out of the way, it's time for me to return to regular blogging.

And of course, I have a lot to talk about.

First off, the second book in the Covenants gothic vampire romance series I'm co-writing with Rob Graham is in our editor's hands and should be released through Aspen Mountain Press early in 2010. As soon as I have a release date for Warding the Covenants, I'll let you know.

Secondly, my ten book Greco-Roman mythology series, entitled (oddly enough) Mythos, has been bought by my great publisher at Aspen Mountain Press.  The first book, Bride of Death, is the story of the god of the Underworld, Hades, and his marriage to Persephone.  The second book, Daughter of the Sea, relates the myths surrounding Poseidon and Amphitrite.  For these books, I've gone back to the original classical sources--Homer, Hesiod, Ovid and so forth--to relate the actual myths in a modern narrative style. Fair warning--Greco-Roman mythology is all about sex, so while these are not straight-up eroticas per se they are fairly earthy. (In other words, each story has a sex scene. Caveat emptor--these are NOT good study guides for kids unless you want them really educated.)

Third, I finally broke down and submitted my Darkshifters two-book dark fantasy series to AMP. Despite a great deal of agent interest when I was submitting it last year, Darkshifter's Empath appears to be a better fit for e-publishing than traditional big house publishing.

Fourth, we're buying a new house! Hurray!  My husband and I found a 1930 American Foursquare house in Newark, Ohio. I really love it because of the Arts and Crafts style detailing on the house--stained glass, lovely woodwork, open floor plan and a huge...freaking...gorgeous...clawfoot tub that has been meticulously restored. We figure that restoring the house will be a long term labor of love--especially the kitchen which has four...count them--FOUR...cabinets in it.  Fortunately, most of the really expensive stuff (replacement windows, roof, gutters, hot water heater, AC, wiring et cetera) has already been done. The most wonderful thing about the house? THREE bay windows. My dream of having my writing desk tucked away into a bay window in a book-lined study? Fulfilled.  Hopefully, we'll be moving in soon; we're just waiting for the seller to square away his end of the deal.

Fifth, the babies' first Christmas was fabulous. I did all my Christmas shopping online this year--it's a lot easier to enjoy the holiday season if you don't have to knock a little old lady off the one toy left on the rack.  Although at 2 months and 6 months Keelynn and Aurora were too little to get into the whole Santa Claus expectation, they had a lot of fun playing with (and chewing on) their new toys.  My husband and I had a wonderful Christmas ourselves, and between holding the babies and watching my girls enjoy their daughters' excitement, we had a fabulous time.

At any rate, keep an eye out for lots of changes.  My website Shoot the Muse! will be undergoing major changes, as will this blog.  I expect to release a minimum of 14 novels and novellas in 2010 at this time and hope it'll be even more.  Deception Enters Stage Left is still out on submission and garnering enough interest to make me cautiously encouraged, and my editing desk is getting fuller and fuller. But, if Deception doesn't find an agent, I have Terella (my dark fantasy about an amnesiac god who leads a rebellion against her own temple) ready to go out on submission and Harlequin (the second book with the Deception characters) will be ready by October.  And who knows? Maybe some other idea will strike me in between now and then. And there is a rumor...just a rumor, mind you...that a second Asphodel series is in the works. I'll keep you informed.

So happy New Year to all of you--and may you acheive your goals for 2010~! I'll still be elf killing on this blog and shooting the muse on my website, with lots of new stories to keep you entertained. Best of good fortune!