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Honorable Mention

Posted in writing, tagged , , on November 13, 2011| 8 Comments »

I  received a very nice piece of validation for my writing this week. I was notified that my fourth quarer submission to the Writers of the Future contest had been awarded an Honorable Mention.

Okay, you say, it’s just an Honorable Mention. Yes, but it’s an Honorable Mention in the biggest and most respected contest for short speculative fiction. When I stop and think about how many–and how many really excellent writers I personally know (well, in cyber space anyway)–enter every quarter, it’s a huge honor to have gotten this far.

It’s only the third story I’ve entered in the contest, too. So, all in all, I’m feeling pretty good about it. I had to read the email through three times before I quite believed it, in fact.

I’ve been submitting stories, short and long, to agents and publications for three and a half years now. I’ve gotten a couple of nice, personal rejections. I’ve gotten to the second round of a pro-paying publication. I’ve had agents request full or partial manuscripts of my novels. And sometimes it feels like I’m beating my head against a brick wall just because it’ll feel so good when I finally stop.

I’m nothing if not persistent, though. And I love to write. And, of course, I’m so in love with every new story that this one just has to be the one. So I’ll keep at it.

This feels like a validation. I am indeed on the right track. I can so write. I will get there eventually.

It’s especially sweet because I really consider myself more of a novelist than a short story writer (there must be some more elegant way to say that). I work on short stories because they’re an excellent way to hone my craft. And I submit them, so far without success.

It’s funny, though. My short stories seem to have a tendency to become novels if I let them sit for a year or so. The stories just seem to grow.

I’ve been hard at work on novels most of this year. Finishing up SEVEN STARS (except for the polishing edit scheduled for early next year). A revision to BLOOD WILL TELL. Making some late revisions to MAGE STORM. First drafts of BLOOD IS THICKER and MAGIC’S FOOL.

I don’t have a short story for Quarter 1 of the Writers of the Future contest. But I do have a couple of ideas percolating. I’ll be back in Quarter 2. This time, it might even be near-future science fiction.

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Rewrites

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on November 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

So, at the same time that I’m working on the first draft of BLOOD IS THICKER, I am also sporadically working on a rewrite of one of my first novels, new title MAGIC’S FOOL. I didn’t originally set out to be working on two things at once, but the rewrite was going so slowly, I had to pick something else up to save my sanity.

I’ve done lots of revisions, sometimes very extensive revisions. But this is the first time I’ve attempted a true rewrite. And I’ve learned something. Rewrites are hard.

I waited almost two years, so I could approach the story with a fresh perspective. And I haven’t permitted myself to even look at the original. Not until I’ve at least finished a first draft. I want to look at things as much as possible as if I were writing this story for the first time. Even so, I think part of the what makes this one so hard to write sometimes is that I’ve already told the story once. It’s hard to have the same first-draft enthusiasm for a twice-told tale.

So why rewrite it at all? I still believe in this story. I think it has something to say (which isn’t necessarily true of all my stories). I still have more I want to do in this world and with these characters, but that won’t happen unless I get the beginning of the series–and it is a series–off the ground. And there were just too many problems with the original version.

One huge problem was that it got over-edited. In places, it completely flat. Flat is good in pie crusts and pool tables, not so much in prose. This is the book that convinced me to limit the number of revisions I put a story through before calling it done.

The original version (yes, I’m avoiding using the original title. It was really bad.) also had way too many characters. It wasn’t quite a cast of thousands, but, well, I actually considered including a geneology chart just to help the reader keep the main character’s famil straight. And that was just for the characters actually related to him by blood or marriage. Yikes! I’m a little less than half-way through on the fist book (I think) and I’ve already cut ten named characters. Now, not all of them were important in the story. Some were more background and were cut because the more-important character that they were background for was cut. I’ve been trying to combine the characters with an actual role to play in the story where I can.

So, for example, my main character no longer has a younger brother. The brother played a role in the first book but actually became a little awkward in the later stories when he just wasn’t that important anymore. His part has been combined into the main character’s cousins. (That decision also cut the brother’s wife and two children. They probably would have had to be cut anyway, for another reason I’ll get to in a minute.)

I’ve also combined two half-brothers into one, which again got rid of the other half-brother’s parents, wife and two children. There’s at least one more character on that chart in serious jeopardy right now.

The biggest difference, though, is the audience I’m writing for. The original was written as if it were a mainstream fantasy.  (I hate to say adult fantasy. It just has the wrong connotations.) This time, I’m writing it as a middle grade fantasy.

It probably always should have been middle grade. The character started out at 15 in the original. I’ve dropped back a bit and started this one at 13. A lot of the issues he has to deal with, especially early in the story are appropriate for that age group. So is the theme of the series which is acceptance. The progression through the series is in the main character learning to accept his differences, then to embrace them, then to be willing to let others know about them, and finally to understand that people who don’t accept him for who he really is aren’t really accepting him at all.

Of course, the change to middle grade has wiped out some other plot elements. Wives and children are just one of them. There were certain other subplots that just aren’t going to work anymore. I worked really hard on getting some of those subplots right the first time around. I actually think I did a pretty good job of them and now I have to scrap them. Well, no writing is ever wasted. It’s all practice at the very least. And maybe I’ll find a place for some similar subplots or plots in some future work. Not in this though.

The one thing that worries me a bit is that the story that made up one adult novel (a little over 100,000 words) will have to be broken into at least two middle grade novels. And, as I said in my last post, I need to make those two stand alone. I’m not going to worry about that until I write through to “The End” though. I know I can fix it later if I have to. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that, though.

Back to work. My main character has a half-brother to meet for the first time.

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Sequels and Series

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on November 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. Sequels and series are hard. And since I’m working on BLOOD IS THICKER, which is the first sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL, it’s on my mind right now.

You’d think they’d be easier. You’ve already got the world built. You know the characters inside and out. And that’s exactly the problem.

You know all that stuff. And so do readers of the first book. But a reader who picks up the second or third book cold won’t. I’ve stated before that I have a very strong preference for the books in a series to be able to stand alone. Okay, it might be a better reading experience if you read them in order, but each should be able to stand on its own. I can’t stand series (which shall be nameless) that go on and on and on and . . .  Well, you get the point. If it takes more than three books to get to a resolution, you’d better resolve something in between or you’ll lose me. So, I won’t write that kind of series.

Perhaps more so because I’m not counting on readers to have read the previous book(s), there’s a very delicate balancing act of trying to put in enough world building, at the right time, without boring someone who’s read the first book and already knows all of this. The tried and true learn-as-you-go method of showing the world is a little trickier the second time around.

This is where critiques from readers who haven’t read the first book can be invaluable. Precisely the places where they ask questions or say “Wait. What?” are the places where you need a little more world building. Either right there or even better a little earlier so when they get to that place, they understand what’s going on.

Then there are the characters. In the first book, you can start with one or two and build your cast of characters gradually. In the second book, all these characters have already been established. Once again, you have the balancing act of describing who these characters are to one another without bringing the story to a complete stop.

How difficult this is depends in part on how many characters you have to introduce in the early chapters. In the first sequel I ever wrote (now shelved), I think I had in the neighborhood of a dozen established characters in the same location as my main character when the story started. Way too many to introduce all at once. I won’t make that mistake again (I hope). Of course, that story had too many characters to begin with. BLOOD IS THICKER starts off with just two, fortunately.

At the same time, of course, you don’t want to load the first chapter with so much back story that you drag this story down. That’s what makes it a balancing act. I don’t expect to get it right on the first draft, of course. But it does help to have some readers point out the places where I’ll need to beef up the background in the next go round.

Added to that, I have a theory about sequels, series, and especially about trilogies. (BLOOD WILL TELL, BLOOD IS THICKER, and the as-yet-unamed third sequel will form a series, but not a trilogy. There will be overlapping settings and characters, but not an overarching conflict that ties them together as a unit.)

My theory is this: The second book is almost always the worst. In the first book, you have the joy of discovering this world and these characters. In fantasy, especially, hopefully also a sense of wonder. In the third book, you have the big bang of the trilogy climax. The middle book is, well, the middle. I can think of very few trilogies that avoided the pitfall of the second book.

Yet, that’s what I’m writing now. The second book in a series (not a trilogy).  Wish me luck.

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October Reading List

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on November 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Sorry. I got busy writing again and almost forgot to blog. I’m not officially doing NaNoWriMo, but I’ve written over 3200 words in the last two days anyway. Love it when the story flows.

So, October’s reading list:

LINGER and FOREVER by Maggie Stiefvater:

I have two kinds of comments about these–as a reader and as a writer. 

As a reader, I found the addition of two more point of view characters (all written in first person) distracting. Two first-person points of view in SHIVER took some getting used to. But once I’d adjusted, there was a certain intimacy to it. Adding two more first-person point of view characters in LINGER and FOREVER is not twice as confusing. It was exponentially more confusing. It also diffused that intimacy of the two points of view. I’m not sure the subplot of Cole and Isabel added enough to make up for that. You really do have to check the subheading for each chapter to find out who “I” is in this one.

 I bought the kindle edition of FOREVER, even though I don’t have a kindle and had to read it on my PC because that way at least I could read it in black and white. I was bothered by the blue ink in SHIVER and the green ink in LINGER. I shuddered to think of reading a whole novel in the dried-blood color of the cover of FOREVER.

Nevertheless, there’s something about these stories. You know how I can tell? Because after I finish reading them, my imagination runs on for a while, dreaming up what happens to these characters next. That doesn’t happen with every story I read.

As a writer, the four first-person characters drew my eye to something else. They all sounded pretty much alike. That wasn’t too noticeable with just two kids who’d both grown up in a little backwoods Minnesota town. Add in a slightly older boy who grew up in New York and is a genuine rock star and a slightly younger girl who came from San Diego and suddenly the fact that they all have virtually identical voices makes a lot less sense. That wouldn’t have been nearly as noticeable if they’d been written in third person.

Still, the trilogy is a good story. And, unlike many trilogies I’ve read recently, the second book, LINGER, actually does have a plot and a conflict all its own that is resolved in that book. It’s not just a bridge between Book One and Book Two. Bravo for that.

MIRROR DANCE by Lois McMaster Bujold:

If you’ve read this blog at all, you know how I feel about just about anything written by Lois McMaster Bujold. I love almost everything I’ve ever read of hers.

This one certainly doesn’t disappoint. The story of Miles Vorkosigan and his clone brother, Mark, who was created for a plot to assasinate Miles’s (their) father. Two young men who are genetically identical, yet because of the differences in their upbringing, very different. MIRROR DANCE is much more Mark’s story than Miles’s, but there’s still plenty of Miles’s signature chaos. Really good story, as usual.

WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL by Donald Maas:

I know, I know. I should have gotten around to this one a lot earlier. Fiction is so much more fun to read. This one slowed down the reading for the month because I had to stop and think about it often. That’s probably a good thing, though. There area a lot of good tips in there, whatever genre you’re writing. Highly recommend.

I was busy with critiques, and then reading FOREVER on the PC in the evenings, so I didn’t get much research done for my alternate history.

Next up:

I’m already reading SNUFF by Terry Pratchett, because sometimes you just have to stop being serious and have a belly laugh. I also started book 5 of THE RANGER’S APPRENTICE series (THE SORCEROR OF THE NORTH). And, since Lois McMaster Bujold’s book are coming out in e-book editions, I got her first fantasy, THE SPIRIT RING.

I’ve noticed something. No matter how many books I read, my to-read pile isn’t getting any smaller. Hmm.

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Ending Conflicts Too Soon

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on October 23, 2011| 3 Comments »

I came across this problem last week. I’m not talking about the main conflict of the story, of course. That would mean I’d completed the story in eight chapters. Trust me, it’s not close.

No, but no novel (or very, very few) lives on a single conflict. There are always others–internal conflicts between mutually exclusive desires or fears. Conflicts between characters, even when they’re on the same side in the larger conflict. Sub plots. A dozen other kinds of conflict that enrich the story.

And I acknowledge that I have a problem. I have a desire to end a particular kind of conflict too early. It’s the conflict between my two romantic leads. I have no problem stringing this out before they come together. It’s after they’ve become a couple that I tend to want to smooth over their little differences. I want them to be happy together. But the course of true love never does run smooth–certainly not in fiction.

BLOOD IS THICKER is the sequel to my paranormal romance BLOOD WILL TELL. The central conflict hits very close to newly-weds Rolf and Valeriah. And there’s a conflict between them in how to deal with it. Rolf wants to run around trying to fix it (typical male). Valeriah is driven to protect . . .  well, you’ll just have to wait and read it to find out what she wants to protect.  Can’t give too much away.  (Besides, it’d take too much backstory to explain in this post.)

Rolf is basically clueless and occasionally puzzled by Valeriah’s reaction. For Vallie, it’s a sort of hot and cold conflict. Sometimes she’s really pissed off with Rolf. (And she’s half werewolf.  You really don’t want to make her mad.) Other times, she’s merely annoyed. Which, of course, only makes Rolf more confused. He’s trying to be strong for her and she’s reading it as detached.

I had the scene in my head where Rolf finally gets it and they get back on track. So, I wrote it. Nothing wrong with that. But I’d only gotten a couple of chapters further before I realized my mistake. It’s a good scene. I’m going to keep it. It just can’t happen for about a dozen more chapters, bringing them back solidly together just before the climax.

So, I’ve spent the last few days redoing chapters 7 thru 9. I don’t usually allow myself to go back during a first draft. I try to make the first draft forward only and keep the infernal internal editor switched off. But when it’s a conflict I need to pull forward in the story, well, I didn’t think I had any choice.

Even better, this conflict allows me to draw two characters closer together and set up a separate conflict which will probably continue even when the first is resolved. Don’t you love it when that happens?

Back on track, now and almost done with chapter 10.

In other news, Rebekah Loper has passed on a couple of blog awards to me.

The Blog on Fire award, which requires me to share seven (more) facts about myself and pass it on.

 

 

 

And the 7 x 7 Link Award, which requires me to choose one of my posts in each of seven different categories and then pass the award along.

 

 

Thank you, Rebekah. I’ll be taking care of the requirements in my next blog post.

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Research

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As a fantasist, this isn’t something I deal with all the time. Usually, I get to take bits and pieces from all over and fit them together in new and interesting ways, glued together with a little imagination. That’s how my world-building usually works.

I did a bit of research on my very first (now shelved) novel, because the protagonist was a blacksmith. I needed to know at least enough about blacksmithing to not make any really obvious mistakes, like setting the forge out in the open. (Always at least partially enclosed so the smith can see the color of the heated iron he’s working on.)

Now, however, I have two projects on which I need to do a bit of research. One is a current project and the other is a future project.

BLOOD IS THICKER is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. As a paranormal romance/urban fantasy, it’s mostly set in either a world I created out of whole cloth or the world I actually inhabit. However, there’s one element in this story that’s going to force me to do a bit of research into, of all things, geology. That’s because the central conflict of this story revolves around someone’s attempt to import geothermal energy technology to Chimeria without proper safeguards. It’s endangering something very near and dear to the protagonists’ hearts and they have to find a way to fix the problem. Obviously, I’m going to have to know enough about geothermal energy to not make an idiot of myself. Not there yet.

The other project is THE BARD’S GIFT. This one will be an alternate history, so the need for research is pretty obvious. Actually, I don’t need to research any historical figures and I don’t need much more than the broad brush of (then) current events. This story will take place far from the centers where such things are happening. But what I do need to know is the daily-life stuff about these people: What kind of houses did they live in? What did they wear? What did they eat? Who was in charge and why? What would their relationships have been like? Basically, all the stuff I usually get to make up to suit myself.

In this case, there really isn’t a lot of information available on my real target (the original Norse Greenland settlement). But there is information on the next-best surrogate–Iceland of the same time frame. Most of the Greenland settlers came from Iceland, so it’s a reasonable assumption that they at least tried to establish the same way of life.

I got lucky and found a book that is intended to document Icelandic life during the saga age. That’s about as close as I’m likely to get. Will it be enough by itself? Maybe not. But at the least it will point me in the right directions and tell me what further questions I need to ask.

By the way, THE BARD’S GIFT does not actually take place in Greenland (although it will probably start there). It actually takes place in a Norse settlement of Vinland (or possibly Markland) in the New World that never actually happened–at least as far as we know. Of course, it’s a fantasy, so there will be some elements that no Norse explorers would have encountered. Dragons, for example.

It’s amazing how dragons of all different kinds seem to show up in so many of my stories. Couldn’t be those three dragons surrounding one end of my computer desk, could it?

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The Value of Critiques

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on October 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve posted about this before, but it really does bear repeating. There is nothing in writing more valuable than beta readers and insightful critiques of your work. You simply cannot, no matter how long you let it rest, ever really see your own story objectively. You need somebody who will read it and be honest with you–brutally honest if necessary. Especially someone who will take the time to really analyze exactly where you’ve gone off into the weeds.

I’m fortunate to belong to two great writers’ forums–Hatrack River Writers Workshop and David Farland’s Writers’ Groups (the Pied Pipers). Links to both forums can be found in the sidebar.

MAGE STORM’s history goes something like this:

  1. I wrote it last year (2010) and submitted for readers in the Pied Pipers (a group on David Farland’s Writers’ Groups specializing in YA, especially fantasy YA). I got some good ideas, incorporated them, and started querying. I had a crit partner from over on Hatrack River read through the revised ms.
  2. MAGE STORM has been queried moderately lightly (37 queries). Of those, it’s gotten one request for partial and one request for the full, but neither went any further.
  3. However, the agent who requested the full did give me some feedback. Boiling it down, I decided that the main problem was that the central conflict wasn’t clear enough. (She complained that a certain event hadn’t happened soon enough. But that event was the second try/fail cycle, not the central conflict, and it happened pretty much right on schedule.) Well, partly that was a fault of the query and synopsis, for highlighting the wrong thing. But it was also true that there were things I could do in those first three chapters to really make the central conflict more clear. One way and another, I’ve been working on that since last June.
  4. I went back to my first readers to kick around some ideas and then revised the first three chapters. I submitted them back to the Pied Pipers for critique.
  5. Those revisions weren’t entirely successful. Basically, I’d managed to mess up the progression of Rell’s magic. It should have gotten scarier and scarier in order to propel him into the rest of the story. Instead it had done the reverse and so his decision didn’t make much sense. This, I find, is a pitfall of piecemeal revisions. It’s too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
  6. I made an attempt to fix that and asked for critiques over on Hatrack River. This is where having more than one critique group can be invaluable. It’s easier to find fresh readers who have never seen the story before (or never more than the first 13 lines) and can look at it with fresh eyes and no expectations of where the story is going to go from there. (Thirteen lines is all you’re allowed to post on Hatrack River. Anything else is handled through emails.)
  7. Well, I got some good critiques and one really extraordinary one. That one–that’s the one you’re always hoping for–really showed me where the problem was. What I had added that really didn’t need to be there. And where I needed to go to raise the stakes. (Thank you, MattLeo.)
  8. I’ve just submitted that revision back to Pied Pipers to see what they think.
  9. I’ve still got one critique on the whole ms outstanding. We’ll see what that turns up.

The point is, I can’t even begin to express how much stronger the story is for the input of all these wonderful critique partners. Thank you all.

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Not Much New Around Here

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 12, 2011| 2 Comments »

With Wolf Tracks

This is one of those days when it’s just really hard to think of a topic to blog about. Nothing much new is going on with my writing–it’s going, just in the same directions as in my recent posts. I haven’t had any revelations or discoveries to report.

I guess I’ll just have to revert to a status report.

BLOOD WILL TELL: I’m still waiting to hear back from the agent who has the full ms. It hasn’t really been that long (though sometimes it feels like it). I’m still playing around with ideas for the cover, just in case. I really want to try to insert a wolf into the oval made by the dragon’s tail. I have a couple of

With Background

images to play with, but I’m not sure whether my skills are up to it. Won’t know until I try, I guess.

 

 

BLOOD IS THICKER: Just starting Chapter 9. This story and these characters are just fun to work with. I have to think up more trouble to get them into, though, besides the main conflict. I have a couple of ideas. (Possibly one of my characters may get to thwart a kidnapping attempt. That could be fun.)

MAGIC’S FOOL: Still going slowly, but going. I’m just about to start Chapter 6.

MAGE STORM: I need to get serious about those revisions. I’d like to be ready to start querying it again at the beginning of next month. Too much later, and it’ll have to wait until after the first of the year. (A lot of agents shut down for submissions over the holidays.) I’ve identified one scene that either needs to be cut or expanded. As it is, it doesn’t serve enough of a purpose. How did that one escape the last revision? Oh, yeah. I like the way it ends. That’s not enough.

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Cover Art

Posted in writing, tagged , , on October 9, 2011| 11 Comments »

Well, in the midst of all my writing, I’ve spent some time playing around with what might be cover art for BLOOD WILL TELL in case I decide to e-publish it.

As stated in my last post, I’m no graphic artist. And the gyrations I’ve had to go through to get to this point would take far too long to catalog.

Since I don’t know what I’m doing, I spent some time studying the covers of some successful books. In particular, the HUNGER GAMES trilogy and, more within the correct genre, some of Sherilyn Kenyon’s books. (BLOOD WILL TELL is a paranormal romance, but the only thing it has in common with Sherilyn Kenyon’s books is that there are werewolves–or, more precisely, one particular half-werewolf.) These are novels that got the very best covers their publishers could create, so it seemed like a reasonable place to start figuring out what makes a good cover.

So, what I took away from that: A solid color background with some interest–a lighter highligt across a dark bacground or some geometric shape in a color only slight lighter or darker than the background and a single image or symbol.

I’m nowhere near that, yet. But, here’s what I’ve got so far:

 No text yet, obviously. I’m going to have to go through another whole step for that.

In the end, of course, I may opt for having an actual artist do the cover–if I can afford it. But it won’t hurt to have some ideas to talk about in any case.

The beauty of this cover design is that with minor variation in color, it could pretty much work for all three books in the series.

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Oops!

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 6, 2011| 4 Comments »

I got so busy writing I forgot to blog.

So, here’s an update on my progress:

  1. I finished this round of revisions to SEVEN STARS and closed the file. I intend to leave it closed for about six months. Then I’ll come back, read it through, hopefully do only a polishing edit (but who knows what I’ll find after six months) and then get ready to start sending it out. I may start the query and synopsis during those six months. It’s not too early.
  2. I got through Chapter 5 of MAGIC’S FOOL. A tricky chapter because one of the characters dies. And getting to that point made it clear to me at least part of why I wasn’t happy with the first 4 chapters. It’s a first draft. It doesn’t have to be perfect or anywhere close at this point, but it is comforting to know what I need to fix in the second draft. I think (well, I hope, anyway) that I’ll be able to move along faster, now.
  3. I’m hard at work on Chapter 6 of BLOOD IS THICKER. The central problem has been set up, but the characters aren’t yet agreed on a course of action. In fact, there’s a certain amount of conflict over Rolf’s choice. Conflict is good.
  4. I’ve just started looking over the early chapters of MAGE STORM. So far, it’s just tinkering. There are more significant problems in Chapters 2 and 3 that I have to resolve. Chapter 2 is not giving the reader a good enough sense of Rell as the main character. Chapter 3 isn’t setting up Rell’s decision to go off and seek an answer “out there” nearly well enough. I’m anxious to get this back out there.
  5. I’ve just about made a decision on BLOOD WILL TELL. I think its time is now or very soon. I haven’t heard back from the agent who has a full manuscript, yet. (It’s still really early for that.) But, if this one falls through, I think I will go ahead and e-publish this one. I even started a mock-up of the cover art. I am not nor will I ever be a graphic artist.
  6. I’ve started research for THE BARD’S GIFT, my YA alternate history. This story will ake place far enough (physically) from the main events of its time that I’m not too concerned about historic events or people beyond what I already know. But I do need to have a feel for what daily life would have been like for these characters.

Whew! I guess that’s why I was too busy to remember to blog.

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