IWSG - It's February! What The..?

The great Alex J Cavanaugh once dreamt of a world where folks like me, the unstable, wishy washy, highly sensitive writer could vent their fears into the world without fear of reproach. Yes, that’s the same Alex J Cavanaugh whose novel, CassaFire, is just $.99 this week.  

 

As for me, I’ve been waist deep in revisions for some time now. I’ve been piddling with this story for a few years now – and complaining about it for almost as long.

 

The reason I’ve been mired in endless revisions, which show no sign of ending, is that I have hit upon a story that I like. I mean, that I really like. So I keep rereading and tweaking things over and over again in hopes that it will be to other people, all the things it is to me. Which is great.

 

But with that, I think, comes a whole new level of insecurities. I’ve been trickling out short stories for a couple of years now, just tossing them out when I feel like I’m not really going to find a better home for them.

 

But this, this is different, this is my heart and soul, and a (intermittently at least) a few years of my life. Not constantly working on it, but constantly worrying about it. If this is the best that I can do right now, then any less than stellar rating I get for it will be a reflection of me, as an artist, as a human being, and as someone that spent a few years working on a thing that will most likely be met with a collective shrug from the world.

 

So I’m pensive, nervous, and am procrastinating. Latest target for overall readiness…. End of March. We’ll see how I feel about it then.

 

Again with the Rejections! Sheesh!

I'm in no way the type of person that should be allowed to... well, do stuff.

Last weekend, for reasons that are far beyond me, I just up and decided it was time to submit my novel to a smaller publisher that I felt might be willing to consider my would-be epic first contact novel (ahem... a little something called, The Blutonian Death Egg) that I've been working on in fits and starts for the better part of a decade.

So, I decided to do it. Right then.

But I have no query. No problem. I just whipped one up there in the body of my email and fired it off with the first few chapters. It took something like, I dunno, 10 minutes to do... as I watched an episode of the Walking Dead... and had nachos, and hung out with the family.

Wait, I did what?

I went back and reread my synopsis a few minutes after I sent it and I realized what I'd just done. I spotted a typo, and another, yep, there was another one too. In all, it ran about one typo every other sentence. Missed letters, missed words, additional words. Crazy, nonsensical things that don't make any sense at all. Yeah, all that kind of stuff.

I looked long and hard for an 'unsend' button, I thought google installed a drunk detector a few years ago. It was supposed to warn me when I was about to do something stupid. It didn't work.

Then I got a polite rejection a day later. Nothing fancy, nothing big, just a nice little note encouraging me to keep trying.

So I wrote back.

I know, a bigger sin than sending off a drunken, typo-riddled query that makes no sense.

I only said, basically, that I'm sorry I sent him such a crappy query.

And then he wrote me back. Nothing earth shattering, but this one had a few nice things to say about the sample chapters I sent and included one additional line that I choose to believe means... revise it and send it back.

So, I will.

And I'm clearly a moron.

How Does Magic Work?

The fine folks over at io9 have posted a little article advising all of us would-be fantasy authors to ask ourselves these 12 questions when it comes to how the magic systems work in our worlds.

http://io9.com/5936277/12-questions-to-ask-yourself-about-the-system-of-magic-in-your-fantasy-novel

I've been struggling with this in my fantasy book for a while. My magic kinda sucks. I've been trying to work on it and I just happened to see this today.

I wish they'd elaborated on it a bit more though.

Happy Day

I Don't Have Time to Talk About Time

I’ve got this idea about how my perception of time changes. When I was a kid, around 5, and I had to wait 6 months until Christmas, it seemed like torture. 6 months is so far in the future that it might as well never come.

Considering that folks generally don’t start developing lasting memories until they are close to 4 years old*, that means that waiting 6 months is, more or less, the equivalent to waiting a quarter of my entire living memory for Santa to visit next.

So, in my scenario, a five year old waiting six months for next Christmas in equal to me, today, waiting 10 years for something.

That’s how I figure it anyway. Which is why if I don’t pay close attention, I’ll not notice entire seasons go by. That’s seasons like Spring or Summer, by the way, not seasons in a more generic sense of the term.

And that’s true, I’ve walked outside and wondered why it was so damned cold, only to realize after a few moment’s thought that it was December and I’d missed the Fall. Leaves still change color in the fall, right?

So, I find also, that projects that I’ll start have a tendency to drag out longer than I intended. I’ll often think that if I have a month to do something then that’s about as much time as I’ll ever need to do anything, I suppose that’s because my perception of how long a month is was set when I was 5 years old, and a month was a significant portion of my life up to that point.

I just finished a rewrite of a novella I started on more than a year ago… A YEAR AGO! For that to take longer than a month is ridiculous. The bad part is that I’ve not finished the project, just the draft. I don’t intend to radically change the story at this point, just add a thing here or there, take away something in a spot or two, that sort of thing.

My feeling after I finished this draft is that it’s an okay story. I like anyway, that’s all I can ask for, although, if the feedback I’ve been getting from the pro markets I've been submitting short stories to lately are an indicator, other folks aren’t quite as thrilled with my stories as I am.

I have taken a break from my Fantasy novel for a while so I can go back to my outline and rework it a bit. I’ll be working on that with some more focus in the coming months.

Just FYI.

*I made that up. But it could be true.

Insecure Writers... May Edition: Part III

It's that time again. The great Alex J Cavanaugh's brainchild, The Insecure Writer's Support Group. A time for all those authors with some sort of hang up can express themselves in a judgement-free environment in an effort to comfort one another.

I've been doing these posts for awhile now. I can't recall how long, but long enough in the past that I feel like I'm repeating myself each month. It's okay for me, because like all people who are somewhat self-absorbed, I don't really mind repeating myself.

But I've been thinking about this, and I'm going to try to make this my last complaint filled post on the subject. I hope future ones will be far more uplifting and not-so self deprecating. I might not succeed, but I feel like I've run the gambit on my insecurities over the past - well, however long it's been.

I've got this problem, the problem is in finishing things. I've got something in the order of half a dozen novels written that are in need of revisions and self-editing. HALF A DOZEN. For those of you keeping tabs, that's around six.

Yes, I had The Blutonian Death Egg out there being subbed at one point. But it's been taken off the market temporarily while I reconsider a few structural issues it may have.

So I'm always 'working' on something, but I'm rarely finishing things. At least novel length works. I'm afraid I'll go to my grave with 40 or 50 half-finished novels and nothing complete. I'm getting old, I need to churn some of these things out.

I have made a plan of action though, I know that free-wheeling it isn't producing much by way of manuscripts. I've got my plan and I'm going to stick to it.

I hope.

Happy IWSG everyone.

Insecure Writers... May Edition

Can’t believe the whole A-Z challenge thing is over. I’ll be reflecting on that next week. But for now I’m here to talk about my insecurities. I think every post I do is about my insecurities, but I suppose this in the one-time per month I have a permission from a support group to post about it.

Yes, it's the brainchild of Alex J Cavanaugh - a monthly look at all the things that writers stress over. Click to learn more.

For me, possibly my biggest insecurity, or at least the one I try my best to actively avoid, is rejection. During the heat of the A-Z challenge I got dinged with a couple of rejections from stories I’d submitted. One was my sci fi novel that I’ve been shopping around so long that I’m afraid it’s no longer relevant. Well, relevant might not be the right word, but already  rendered all but impossible as a contemporary tale. I did go through the thing last year and give everyone iPhones to make it feel more modern. But that sort of thing is a Band-Aid, not a fix. So after another year or so I’ll either have to really rewrite it – which I might have to do anyway – or give it a firm date and call it a historical science fiction piece.

I’m going to give it one more go with the traditional track before I give up and throw the thing up as a self-published work and move on. Regardless, I think I’ll need a new query letter. My previous ones were targeting editors, and my new ones will be targeted at (sigh) super agents.

So, I can say goodbye to this gem:

“Dear Editor,

My novel, The Blutonian Death Egg, has been compared to such made up works as, The Man Who Forgot That He Couldn’t Remember, and the classic, White Elephants and Pink Whales: One Man’s Descent into Nicorette Addiction.

James Coastsman is a know-nothing, lazy, unmotivated, borderline sociopathic loner that gets forced into becoming an astronaut because he’s also me! And I’m awesome and should totally get to be an astronaut. So, while I’m he’s astronauting, he saves the world, kinda, gets the girl, and fights the establishment that is jealous of him.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to call this POS at least as good as some of the crappier SF being published currently, I mean, did you read <title redacted>? What a crapfest that was. So it isn’t like you’re throwing out winners right and left. I mean, c’mon.”

I know, who could reject that? My new query will probably be something along the lines of:

“Dear Agent,

My previous attempts at submitting directly to publishing houses have met with some crushing rejections, despite a terrific query letter.

I’m coming to you because I’ve been led to believe that you can actually get me a book deal, please do so now. I’ll be honest with you, I read a book published at a major house by one of your clients and I found that book incredibly mediocre. He was a first time novelist, so I’m pretty sure that you can get some otherwise unremarkable stuff noticed. I can’t imagine how bad it was before it had several rounds of rewrites and professional editing. I may not be capable of producing award winning fiction, but I can at least whip up something as good as <name redacted> has.

My book? Well, my completed manuscript is something about a slacker that goes into space because I needed him to for the story. Think Dumb and Dumber meets Apollo 13… Also, there may be government conspiracies… I’m not sure because I’ve got so many plot holes that I can’t recall what is on purpose and what is the result of sloppy planning. I’m not big on plotting anyway. I doubt any readers will get past the first couple of chapters so I’ve not put a lot of effort into a satisfying ending. Just slap a good looking cover on it and we’re gold!

Cheers,”

Wow. No matter how many times I read it I start to think I’ve got a sure fired best seller on my hands. Surely no one would reject that.

L is for Lem

Day...12? Of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. Read here for more.

Guess who is back to his own would-be fantasy novel with today's sketch? After taking a single day off I'm sure everyone is beside themselves anticipating the next thing from my sprawling tale of deceit and betrayal. And people wandering around in the woods... a lot.

Today it's Lem, the town doctor, holding one of his surgical tools in the picture I provided. The character looks somewhat seedy, he is not. I mean, he's smiling and everything.

He does struggle a bit in standing up for himself however, it makes things hard for him when he's pressured to do things he'd rather not.

J is for Jeb

10 Days into the A-Z Challenge. Great work everyone.

Am I still going on about my would be novel? Of course I am. In case folks didn't see yesterday's post. I mentioned the Uber Hero that was destined to destroy all evil and wickedness in the world, well, the real story, if my would be novel even has one, is the story of this guy... our intrepid hero's little brother.

Jeb loves and idolizes his older brother, even if he's also a bit envious of the adoration that gets poured on him from others. Most people realize he'll be everything his older sibling is in time - but Jeb is blind to that.

Things hit the crapper pretty quickly for him. His love of books, lore, and his wits are going to have to be enough to keep him alive.

I is for Ish

Day 9 of the A-Z Challenge already. It's zipping on by. Read all about it here.

Guess who can't stop drawing pics based on their would be novel? Me. I'm hoping somehow that by doing all these sketches the story will get better. I don't know, that's what magic does, right?

Anyway, Ish is an important figure in the book. He's the guy, that if the fates decided that anyone would be christened as the Hero of Ages, the one to save the world for the evil warlord/wizard/dragon, etc,  it would be this guy. He's got it all, the best at whatever he does, he's the nicest guy around, says his prayers, loves pretty much everyone... not a flaw to be found.

Oh, he's also harboring a pretty huge secret, once discovered it left a wake of ruined lives and set the events of the book in motion. He's probably my favorite character in the story.

On a side note, this is a quick sketch, not a real piece of art, but I think that's about as close to happy as I've been with anything I'd done this month. I like this pic more than the rest I've done so far.

G is for Godling... and Haiku

It's Day 7 of the A-Z Challenge! Week one is in the books.

A few great things happened this week. Namely, I got to meet a ton a great folks for the first time. If you've been by and commented a time or two and I've not reciprocated, well, I'm sorry. It hasn't been on purpose. I'm barely keeping up. I'm trying to get to everyone though. I promise.

Today's sketch if more of a speed painting, but that was just because I was feeling a bit monochrome with my sketches. The godlings are a race of characters from my would be fantasy novel. I know, I know, do I have to keep drawing them? Apparently the answer to that is, yes.

The fantasy world I made has elder gods and younger gods... the difference between the two is that godlings are normal folks who, for lack of a better term, were uplifted into godhood. They are smug, petty, murderous, at war with themselves, bitter at their status underneath the elder gods - who interact neither with the world of men or godlings - and torment men.

The more cynical of humans refer to them as demons. My sketch doesn't even remotely portray one as described them in the book, but whatever.

Also, I'm doing my best at a Star Wars haiku over at Briane's Star Wars blogathon. 100 days of trivia and a great prize for the eventual champion.

"Help me Obi Wan
You're my only hope," she said.
And Luke felt envy

The most awkward part of all the movies is that crush Luke had on sister. Worthy of a bad poem, I think.

E is for Edith

A-Z Challenge, learn all about it ---> Here<---

I'm sure everyone is already tired of seeing people that they've never heard of being sketched out for my daily stuff... well, sorry, today is another character from my fantasy novel in progress. A girl named Edith.

She's king of the pinwheel that all the characters revolve around, well, in a Ptolemaic sort of fashion. She's a nice girl in my story, but, well, lemons and and lemonade and all that.

Her fist hurts from punching monsters in the face.

D is for Demog

A-Z Challenge day number 4!

Back to things from my would-be fantasy novel. This is something I referred to as a Demog in my manuscript so far. It's a chimera made by the gods to torment men.

It ended up looking a bit more ape-like than what I wanted to sketch, but again, you're getting first drafts, I'm not going back and changing stuff once its down.

It's funny, the reason I like sketching, or art in general, is because it allows me to express things that exist only in my head for others to view and hopefully enjoy. It can be frustrating when I can't quite make my vision inside easily be put down in a sketch. But whatever, it's sorta what I had in mind, use you imagination if you have to.

Also, I'm noticing that there isn't very much sense of scale here. I'll need to correct that in future sketches.

Arg! I only have fur on my head.

Also, today is Alex J Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group. A time to vent our fears and hope that others can share in our neurosis. My fear of the month this month is that this Demog is just like me. A chimera made up of bits of other things... but nothing about it, or me, is truly unique.

I do think about that sort of thing, a lot. Here's hoping that I can take all the disparate parts that have influenced me and turn them into something truly new.

B is for Bit

Click to learn about the A-Z Challenge, meet and greet with new bloggers!

Yes, it's day two. This sketch was much quicker than yesterday's. I decided that even if I'm not too happy with them, they're going up anyway. For me, sketching, painting, sculpting, writing, I'm not too great the first go round, I tend to vomit something up and hope it looks okay. I usually work several ideas up before I ever get one to the point I'm willing to show someone.

Well, not this month, it's a daily dose of first drafts.

I've lamented about my half written mess of a fantasy novel a lot lately. So, I thought I'd do a few character sketches to see if that helped me any.

This on is for a character named Bit, he's an ass. He's a big, strong, and manipulative. And serves as a minor antagonist to my story's good guys. He'd be a pushover if he didn't have someone smarter, meaner, and more powerful that keeps putting him in positions of power and protecting him from retribution from his actions.

I don't like this sketch... I should have done much better, I think I went too cartoony and I made him look a bit too preeny. I mean, is he checking his nails? Hitching a ride somewhere? Maybe I'll throw out a touch more realism for other characters when I come to them.

Check out my new boots!

I Bought BOOKS!

I MADE MENTION in Monday’s post that I was back in the writing saddle now. All geared up and ready to roll with that fantasy novel I was working on last fall. I whipped out all these notes I made before I started writing, world building notes, my outline, even a synopsis of events leading up to the story.

None of that matched what I wrote.

I’m not sure what the point of an outline is if I don’t actually use it. But I apparently found some use for it. So, I went back and reread my 50k or so of stuff to see where I left off. Something jumped out at me right away.

I’m not as good as I thought I was.

Granted, I am not coming at this from a great background in fantasy, I’ve only been reading the genre in the past couple of years, and only been reading Epic Fantasy (what my novel is) for the past year. I read Martin’s Game of Thrones books, Sanderson’s Mistborn books, Peter V Brett’s The Warded Man, and maybe one or two more that I’m just drawing a blank on. 

What I have not done, is read much involving Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, etc. I have a book or two in my tbr pile that have dwarves and Goblins each with their own covers, so I presume that I’ll be taking a gander at those tropes soon enough.

It’s a well-known truism of science that innovators in certain disciplines are either very young, or are new to that particular branch of science.  The prevailing wisdom is that they have not been beaten to death with history of the greats that came before them and feel free (or naïve) enough to plunge headfirst without that baggage keeping them back.

I have peeked my head into the genre enough to know that my concept, which I thought was unique, isn’t so fresh as I once thought. That’s okay though, it’s all about execution. So I thought when I started I'd take my fresh concept and innovate the genre. So imagine my surprise when I go back over what I've written and I find out that it has one little flaw... it's not very good. 

Ah dammit. If there is some consolation, I was at Brandon Sanderson's site looking at what he had to say about his Mistborn books that I read recently, and he mentioned he went through seven drafts of his first novel (over about 6 years I think) before he had it in its final form. 

He also mentioned he's written thirteen novels before he sold his first one. Doubly impressive since his tend to be 250,000 word epics, not the 70k lightweights I've turned out in the past.

Maybe, just maybe. There is hope. I'll just need a whole bunch of work I guess.

SOMETHING FUNNY, I suppose, if anyone recalls, I did a post about Robert Wadlow recently, the poor soul that was about 9 feet tall when he passed away. Turns out, after running this blog for nearly 3 years that around a fifth of the page views I’ve gotten, ever, are from that single post last week. I assumed there was some sort of hacker related event that skewed my numbers, that sort of thing has happened before, although not on this scale. I checked and it looks like nothing more than a lot of people Googling Robert Wadlow led them to my post. That and my short critique of the Harry Potter films I did last December have brought in tons of traffic. I find the whole thing bizarre – especially since I had no idea that thousands of folks have been stopping by to see the giant man. If I’d known it would have generated that kind of traffic I would have A) found a way to tie it into my novelette, and B) spent a bit more time writing the post, you know, making sure it was actually good.

I can’t be expected to put that sort of effort into every post. I feel pretty satisfied if I manage to use there/their/they’re correctly through an entire entry.

FINALLY, my wife has had boxes and boxes of crappy cute romance novels in the back of her vehicle for almost a year. It has taken up the back and I can almost never use it when I need to (it's one of those crossover things, looks like an SUV, really its a car) and I finally told her I was getting rid of them, she thanked me profusely and I went to the used bookstore.

They gave me over a hundred bucks in trade for them! 

I picked up that haul to the right there and still had more than $40 left to use later. I was pleased to find the first two installments in the Thrawn Trilogy, which has been recommended by Andrew and Grumpy both (I could have gotten all three, but they had only one copy, and some other guy was there and wanted the same book... and he found it with me standing right there holding the other two - what a jerk) and I found two Daryl Gregory books, which made my day, as well as a stack of other books I've either wanted, or just realized I wanted after I saw them.

I feel like I've gotten away with something, like I should be in trouble. Combined with the Borders haul I got last year I have enough books to keep me busy for the rest of 2012 if I don't buy anything else. That won't happen, and there will be some of these books that I may not get to, 

Monday News... And PinkyHell 2012

Way back in January I mentioned some writing goals I had put on myself to complete this year. So far I've done the minimum amount required - but nothing really beyond that. I still have these big, nebulous goals I've not even worked on concerning novel writing. Stupid reality, it keeps dragging me down. 

BUT, I am so about to get right back at it. 

One of those goals was the completion of the first draft of my previous November’s fantasy novel. A more daunting task than it might seem because it’s got many viewpoint characters, an entirely created fantasy world, and a plot that is more intricate than anything I’ve ever written before.

And now, almost four months after I stopped working on it, I’m halfway through the first draft and can’t exactly remember where I was going with it. So I’ve been going back to my notes, notes about the story, about the world I’d made, about the characters, etc.

I can see why it takes George R.R. Martin a decade or so to write a novel. The damn thing can get to be this sprawling epic that is hard to keep a handle on. Of course, his are actually good. But aside from that, I think I have an appreciation for all the work he has to put in. It's really complicated.

Comment of the Week:

Angela won my heart with her mention of Wookies on Friday. Thank you Angela!

Let's see here, what else?I forget sometimes that there is a point to blogging, that it’s not just an excuse for me to express my awesomenity in written form. It’s actually a tool to raise awareness of not only my work, but that of others.

Brinda Berry, who kindly offers encouragement and pearls of wisdom when she comments here, as well as introducing me to the awesome digital painting videos on her blog recently, has released her second novel in her Whispering Woods series. Writing is hard, and I always want to hang on to stuff to do just one more pass, I'm impressed with her for plugging through, it shows real professionalism to be able to write till completion on her stories. I hope it does well. 

I feel like a warrior from a bygone era

Also, PinkyHell 2012 continues to plague me. It’s now been 2 weeks since that fateful day when putting on my t-shirt turned into a tale of overcoming adversity and overwhelming pain. Yes, I still manage to get dressed on my own, but I self diagnose as having some nerve damage, as it tingles still when I try to use it. It makes me happy that it’s pretty much only used for semi-colons on the keyboard, I use it for a few other things, but it can almost be ignored when typing.

And remember - It’s less than two weeks until the A-Z blogging challenge begins!

Oh No... I've Been Hit

Tagged actually, Briane Pagel tagged me with the 7/7/7 thing. I go to page 77 of a WIP, scroll down to line 7, then copy and past the next 7 lines. I'm struggling to etch in even a few moments to post right now, so I'll quickly go to the excepts.


From my super old WIP, and the novel for which this blog is named, The Blutonian Death Egg:

“What’s wrong now?” I asked, slamming my book shut and tossing it onto my desk.

Josh paced from one side of the room to the other a few times before responding. “The school sent a note to Granny, told her that I’m going to be sent to a school for problem kids.”

“They said that?”

Josh nodded, “I got caught with Mr. Patterson’s missing billfold and a bag of weed.” I think I’m done for.”

My eyes went wide, “Weed?” Does Granny know?”

And there you have it. I think that was seven sentences. Hard to believe from that excerpt that it's sci fi, but it was a random passage. Every sentence can't have flubodium or cheetah robots. 


You know what, just because I'm tired, I figured I throw in a bonus piece... from the same portion of last fall's unnamed nano novel. This one is a fantasy:

          Jeb opened up the door and saw a workbench to his left, there was a bloody surgical tool next to Lem’s bag. It was dark inside and he couldn’t make out anything further due to the darkness. He heard shuffling.

          “Lem?” It’s me, Jeb. Are you in there?”

          Lem stepped out of the shadows and into the light shining in from the open barn door. He had blood on his hands, his clothes, even his face.

Lookie there, twice what you asked for.... wait, if you asked for nothing then it's probably closer to three times. Anyhow, I do enjoy talking about my own stuff, you'd think I'd do it more often.

And I appreciate Briane tagging me. I think I'll fall back on the old, "if you want to be tagged, then please consider it done, don't make me call you out," defense. 

DRAGON SLAYER LIVES!!!!

Writing is a way of life, really. I don’t like writing, it’s painful, frustrating, it takes me away from family, it makes me angry when it isn’t going well, it’s awful really. But once I’m done with something I feel like I have to jump in and do it again. I like the pain I suppose. As it stands, I’ve got a half drafted fantasy novel that I’m considering abandoning – this year’s nano – if I can’t re-outline it into something I like better. Right now it’s a bunch of people wondering around and saying, “Hey, this whole world is really weird,” and “Man, we can totally do magic! That doesn’t make any sense.”

Yep, that’s hard core storytelling right there. Especially since these people aren’t visiting this fantasy world, but actually supposed to be living on that world. Ugh.

Easy mistake to make, happens all the time. But that isn't the Invincible Sword of Leboria - that's Glagnar's toothpick.

Part of it must have something to do with world building, or a lack thereof, I started thinking about my teeny little village that was cut off from the larger world and everyone carrying weapons. Well, that means they had to have a forge, and ore, and something to keep the fires burning hot (lots of trees, maybe coal). Ooh, then I thought of a guy with poor eyesight, then that led to optics, and glass blowing, oh, and don’t get me started about clothing, do they have wool? No, I decided, only cows and pigs… so they wear lots of leather. But then I started thinking of home construction, if they are iron poor (which they are), then they don’t have lots of nails, and if they don’t have nails, do they also have iron hinges (yes, I decided, they will). Is that significant? I have no idea. But I spent too much time figuring that stuff out as I wrote. What do I mean, figuring it out as I wrote? Let me explain by using some (made up) example.

“But Ragon can’t be the town’s only Smith, what if he were injured? Or he died?”

“I know,” Platt said, “but it’s true. We can’t support another Smith, the apprenticeship takes too long, and we need all the able bodied men to help with the harvest.”

Julie frowned. “But the harvest isn’t all year round, surely someone could apprentice for much of the year, and then help in harvest time. It doesn’t make any sense to go without.”

It was Platt’s turn to frown now. He hadn’t seen the poor logic before then. “You’re right.  There is no reason for Ragon to be toiling away without an apprentice. He must be hiding something, making up lies in order to continue working in secret.”

Oh, I can’t write anymore. It’s awful. Now imagine approximately 200 pages of what I’m now calling “plotting through dialog,” which is what happens when I chuck my outline, or even follow it, but miss a major plot hole, which gets discovered during my extended character interactions. I’ll just write it out and move on, and come back later to fix. But when more and more of the time spent writing is really just me plotting, or figuring out the world building, then I know I have a problem, I’ve not thought my story out well enough.

So, that’s where I’m at with that. I do think I’m going to give the novella I wrote late in the summer another editing pass. It’s that one I’ve complained about intermittently that starts as an epistolary tale before sliding into a traditional first person narrative. The problem I’ve been having is I like both methods of storytelling in general, and in particular, I think both serve to help me tell the story I want to… but something about putting the two together, unintentionally, bothers me. I don’t know, maybe it’s like the discovery of penicillin, or a peanut butter and chocolate thing… serendipity that leads to greatness.

I'm Trying Real Hard...

... But stuff keeps happening in real life that tries to derail me from writing. I'm at around 42k words and am running out of time to get the word count I wanted to for the month, which I'm sure you've already guessed is 50k.

All the other novels I've ever written have been in the 60-70k range when done. Very short. This one is shaping up to be a much longer project. Hard to tell though, I may end up cutting a lot. But I'm thinking it will still be around 120k when done. Long by my standards. And I think at the upper limits of what any publisher would even look at for a paper book from a unknown author.

So, here's hoping I have a couple of days free of too many other distractions, because... damn... you just wouldn't believe the stuff that's been happening.

My Nano Disaster

A metaphor for my novel

That's a strong word - disaster. I'll just call it a bit of an oversight. You see, a large portion of what I thought was the plot for my current story is actually not a plot. Yeah, I know, a rookie mistake. I thought I had a this great meta-story and then this really good personal story to tell. You know, love and betrayal, all that.

Well, that meta-story is really more like a backdrop. You know, like WWII isn't a plot for most novels, it's something that's going in the background while the actual plot unfolds.

Oops.

I'm not writing a literary novel, and I don't think I can carry the story using just the love pentagon I've developed. Sigh. Problems problems.

Even when I take the day off work, Monday's still find a way to suck.

It Started Poorly Then Got Worse...

After yesterday's rant, I had the brief inkling to continue to air my grievances today, but thought better of it at the last moment. I've got a list of things that infuriate me about the world that's a mile long. I could post every day about it, but it makes me miserable. So instead, I figure I'd throw something out there about the state of my writing.

After the full manuscript of my novel was summarily rejected by one big time publisher, I queried a big six publisher and cringe at the crappy query I sent. Really should have proofread that one one more time Still waiting for that next rejection.

A Dead God's Wrath is still hanging around there in the ebook world. Sales to date look like this:

Kindle          Barnes & Noble          Smashwords
25                            6                             2

For a grand total of 33 copies. I'm still pretty pleased with it. I think most of the sales have been to people who stop by the blog on occasion. I do realize I'm a crappy marketer, and would probably do better if I forgot the whole blogging/twitter thing and just wrote more. But I kind of like where I'm at right now with that. I enjoy reading the blogs I follow and I think I write about as much as the family will allow.

I do think I'm going to try to put something else up for sale in an e-format soon. Probably. I'll give it a few weeks for certain, I was listening to a podcast tonight and I started really thinking about why I'm sitting on so much stuff, I have short stories (a few anyway), novels, all sorts of stuff that I've been sitting on for a long time. Most of those need some editing work, which I think is at the heart of why I've not already done that part, as I am not a huge fan of editing. For me it's the difference between designing race cars and being a mechanic. One is a dream come true and the other is what you have to do for the damn thing to work.

So I need to do a lot more of the mechanic type stuff for a while. When nano is over this year I'll dive right into that.

There has been some push back from a number of authors in regards to pricing, as that race to the bottom seems to have, well, bottomed out. First, I saw a very minor author (meaning, they have a small following of fans that will buy anything they produce) selling novellas for $2.99 and it surprised me. Then I heard an interview with another author, one that has no professional sales to their credit, that is selling short stories for $2.99 and doing so with no fanfare, several pen names (for different genres) and no marketing at all on their part, and selling in the hundreds of copies per month. The latter mentioned in the interview that they saw a bump in sales of one of their novels when they raised their novel price to around $5. The logic being that the perceived quality of the cheaper priced book was poor, but when the pricing got closer to what a reader would expect for a professional product then they were more likely to buy. Weird.

So, two instances don't equal a trend, but I'm thinking of playing with my pricing some. I don't think I could ever justify selling something like A Dead God's Wrath for $2.99, I don't think it holds that kind of value. But I also don't think I can really run an experiment with only one data point either. That brings me back to my need to have something else out there.

Anyway, I'm just thinking with my fingers at the moment, typing away, and avoiding working on my nano novel. My town constable has been attacked and carried off by an unnamed assailant. I suppose I should go back and write his death... or not. It's a plot twist I'm anxious to reveal. One of many. So much fun to be had there.