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Fire And Earth

May 26, 2012 by meredithmansfield

I found out about this contest, hosted by Sharon Bayliss to celebrate the release of Wilde’s Fire, a bit late.

Fire and Earth query:

Now that she’s lost it and gone berserk, seventeen-year-old Casora is doubly cursed and there’s no going back.

Born with the mark of the berserker, she’s been sent away to learn war craft. Those skills are no use when her home is invaded while she’s far away. She turns mercenary, leading a band of teenage warriors looking for the chance to avenge themselves on the marauders.

What she really wants is to find a cure for the curse so she can go home. When she prays for an answer, she’s told to rescue the youngest prince to find what she needs.

Tiaran, third prince of a neighboring kingdom, is considered more a scholar than a warrior, but he’s determined to fight for his home. When the raiders attack, he’s trapped on the wrong side of the city walls. Casora and her band are sent to rescue him. With the capital city now besieged, there’s no option but to keep him with them and teach him to be a warrior.

But Tiaran has something to teach them, too. It’s just possible that Tiaran and Casora may be the answer to each others’ prayers.

FIRE AND EARTH is a 76,000-word young adult fantasy. Readers who liked Kristin Cashore’s GRACELING will enjoy FIRE AND EARTH.

Fire and Earth first 500 words:

Casora paused on her way to the mess tent to watch Marcian and Derian sparring with blunted swords on the practice field. Another girl might have watched Derian. He was more handsome, but Casora only had eyes for Marcian. Anyone less familiar with him might not expect so much grace or speed in such a muscular young man. Marcian was one of the best of the Deathless. Better, he was hers or would be when they were free of their obligatory service. She wished her duties were still uncomplicated enough to allow her time to spar with him–in lieu of other things.

While she was at it, she might as well wish that she was like her twin sister. Grita was lucky. She could marry whoever and whenever she chose. Having been born free of the Curse, Grita wasn’t required to be a warrior. Casora and Marcian would have to wait until their duty permitted more.

A horn blast interrupted her thoughts. At the cry of “Riders coming,” she turned and dashed to her post. Duty first.

From her desk at the front of the command tent, Casora watched the large group of riders approaching. She wore the regulation leathers and enough of her armor to disguise her slender body. By reflex, she reached for her helmet to hide her face as well. No outsider ever saw the face of a Deathless.

The tent stood on a little rise overlooking the camp, where the flag bearing a circle of seven stars on a dark blue field could be seen for miles around. It was also above most of the mud, although the smell of wet earth, damp horses, and manure still reached her on the stiff breeze that whipped the flag above her.

The rise gave Casora a good view of anyone arriving at the camp long before they reached her. More than enough time to note that these riders were all redheads, not a common hair color outside of Astraea. Casora grinned and set her helmet back on the corner of the desk. They were replacements. No need to hide her face from them. They were about to become Deathless themselves and they wouldn’t be shocked to find that the second in command of the famous war band was a girl only a couple of years older than they were.

As the riders made their way down the central road, between the orderly rows of tents, she took note of their condition and readiness. The horses looked good. Someone had thought to stop and groom them before riding in. Very shortly before, by appearances, since the mud from the recent rains didn’t rise above their fetlocks. The riders’ spears had been polished and sharpened, too. Replacements usually tried to make a good impression.

The effect was spoiled by the ease of the riders and their ragged line, strung out like a hunting party. And the shiny weapons were held too loosely. In a skirmish, they’d be overwhelmed before they could get those spears into position.

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Bringing Characters Together

May 23, 2012 by meredithmansfield

Oops. I got busy writing and almost forgot to blog. And you know what? I’m not sorry, either.

I’m at a particularly tricky part of the story. I’ve got two characters who want to get together. I’ve got to find ways to get them to spend more time with each other until they’re so wrapped up in each other they can’t see anything else. This, of course, is right before I separate them–by a whole ocean–and force them to try to find a way back to each other. Well, only one of them is going to have to cross the ocean. I’m not doing the “they went thata way scene” where they both cross and then miss each other. But they’re both going to have trials to face before they can come back together. And they won’t be quite the same people when they do.

The tricky part is, I don’t want to spend too much time getting them together. I want to get on with the story, which is not only about the love story. There are other things going on, too. Of course, it doesn’t have to be perfect this round. This is the first draft. It’s supposed to need work. That’s one of the rules.

Part of this is in the world building–which is really research, not world building, in an alternate history. I have to try to figure out what are appropriate ways for them to interact and what the consequences might be.

Anyway, it’s an interesting part of the story to be in, leading up to that first kiss.

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Stories Within Stories

May 20, 2012 by meredithmansfield

Well, things seem to have settled down for the time being. Now back to writing.

I’m beginning to pick up momentum in THE BARD’S GIFT again. That’s a very good thing. This story is a different experience for me in a couple of ways.

First, it’s alternate history set against the failure of the Viking colony in Greenland. This means I’m constantly stopping myself to go check on what plants, animals, birds, etc. actually exist in Greenland. I’m used to making up my own worlds and populating them with whatever habitats and creatures I like. Things will, I hope, get a little easier once I move my main characters to North America.

Second, this is a story about a girl who tells stories, which means that the narrative sort of stops in several places for the story that Astrid is telling. Of course, for the most part, the stories have something to do with what is happening or what is going to happen to the characters. I’ve incorporated legends into my stories before, but never to this extent.

The early stories are more or less traditional, although I’m having to make some modifications to match the life experiences of a girl from Greenland–no castles, no forests, and some animals or birds have to be changed to those that she might actually be familiar with. Later stories will be more flights of my own fancy and I’ll be able to let loose a little more with them.

This book also has a couple of things I’ve never included in a novel before: and afterword on the actual history behind the story and a glossary. I’ve put the history portion up under the “Worlds” tab, if you’re interested.

It’s certainly an interesting story to work on. I hope it turns out as interesting when it’s told. I think it will.

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Time Management and Getting Unstuck

May 16, 2012 by meredithmansfield

This last week has not been a very productive one. There are a couple of reasons for that.

On one hand, I’m just a little bit stuck on my current WIP. It’s a problem I anticipated, but it’s still a problem. THE BARD’S GIFT is about Astrid, a shy girl who finds that she’s been given the gift of storytelling–but the gift comes with a catch. Sometimes, even when it embarasses her or when people don’t want to listen to her, she’s compelled to tell a particular story. It’s potentially a very powerful gift, but not a very comfortable one.

Well, the problem with this story is that I have to put in those stories that she tells, which is almost like stopping the flow of the main story and writing a short story in the middle of it. That’s proving a little more difficult than I anticipated.

By preference, I’d like to have Astrid start with traditional stories, then maybe start finding that the story she has to tell has some variations from the traditional story, and then telling entirely new stories. This is an alternate history, so that means I need to find a traditional story from her culture (Norse or Icelandic) that fits with that point in the story. I have some more research to do. The books arrived yesterday.

Now, there are a couple of ways I could deal with this. I could just go around and come back to fill in the story. Or I could work on something else while I figure out the story Astrid needs to tell. I have a novella “The Music Box” that needs work before it’s ready for e-publishing and a short story “Apocalypse Cruise” that might be worth revisting because I might have figured out how to address a couple of its issues. The problem with that is that it typically takes me a day or two to really switch stories in my own head.

The other reason I’ve been having trouble with my writing this week is interruptions. They are, I think, going to turn out to be good interruptions, but I’m going to need to find a way to deal with them without losing productivity.

If you’ve ready my “About Me” page, you know that I take care of my mother, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. For several years, Mom attended an adult day care run by the Salvation Army and I had my writing time worked out around that. Last year, that day care closed and Mom had a one-week hospitalization. For someone like Mom, an event like that often results in a drop in functioning. Mom was no exception.

So, for the last year, I’ve been basically going it alone with Mom at home 24/7. Now, I’m deluged with potential help. Mom’s doctor switched her over to the home care portion of her HMO, which means nurses will come out to her instead of me having to try to get Mom back and forth to the doctor (not a smal task, believe me). Great. The home care people suggested that maybe she should be on hospice. In the last week, I’ve had the home care nurse, a social worker, another nurse to draw a test sample, and the hospice intake person out. And the hospice people are coming back today. I’ve not been very successful switching back and forth between these roles.

The house is a mess. I’ve never been a great housekeeper. It’s just not where my interests lie. I can always find something more interesting to do–like getting lost in my current story. But it finally does reach a point where I have to stop and deal with it. Those efforts usually run aground in the clutter.

But now I need to find some documentation. And so far, I haven’t been able to. (I have found some other things that I’d misplaced, but not what I’m looking for right now.) So, I’m going to have to start attacking the clutter and the semi-hidden stacks of paper lying around this house.

Looks like I’m going to have to make a plan. I might even *shudder* have to make a schedule.

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Mom

May 13, 2012 by meredithmansfield

Well, it’s Mother’s Day and the same people that took care of Dad are coming out tomorrow to assess Mom for hospice care, so it seems like a good day to look back.

This is Mom when she was young. Several years before I was born, so I don’t actually remember her this way.

 

 

 

 

This is Mom and Dad together, again several years before I came along.

If you read any of my stories (hint: BLOOD WILL TELL) and encounter a petite fireball for a female character, well, now you know where that inspiration came from.

Mom, Dad, and me at their 50th wedding anniversary. (Disclaimer: this should not be considered anything close to a current photo of me, either.)

 

This is Mom with a therapy dog that used to visit the Salvation Army Adult Day Care Mom attended for years. Unfortunately, the ADC closed a year ago. I give them and the stimulation they provided a lot of credit for the long plateau Mom had in the progression of her Alzheimer’s disease.

 

I could add a more recent picture, but it only gets more depressing from there. This disease steals so much. It’s twelve years now since her diagnosis. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the energetic lady who always seemed to be ready to take on the world. The things she taught–and sometimes tried unsuccessfully to teach–me will always be with me, no matter what. She encouraged me to read and to write, although I didn’t really get serious about that until it was too late for her to understand much about it.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Love you.

 

 

 

 

 

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Recording Stories

May 9, 2012 by meredithmansfield

In my last post I wrote about recording some of my e-published stories. Here’s my progress and what I think I’ve learned.

I got the microphone and set it up (which really just meant making sure that plug-and-play had the right settings). I downloaded the recording software. (Audacity). I purchased the e-book of a fellow Smashwords author on how to go about recording something.

As recommended in the e-book, I tried a test.

Heart of Oak Test

Now, this clearly isn’t ready to go, yet. I need to work on my technique a bit. I probably want to find some music or, well, for this story I’m considering bird songs for occasional background and markers between scenes. I think it’d be appropriate.

But this recording gave me some new ideas, too. I’ve tried reading my stories out loud before, which is often recommended. All I got was a sore throat. You see, I hear my stories in my head when I’m writing them, so reading it out loud didn’t really add anything to me.

Until I listened to this recording. I hear things in the recording that I didn’t hear just reading it out loud and my fingers itched to make a couple of revisions. Now that I’ve got everything set up, I think this is definitely something I’ll be trying with my writing.

Gotta love serendipity.

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E-Publishing Goals

May 6, 2012 by meredithmansfield

My initial steps into self e-publishing haven’t exactly set the world on fire. Not that I expected them to. It would be nice, of course, but so would winning the lottery and they’re both about equally likely. Fortunately, I had more than one goal in e-publishing these stories (and a couple more to come over the next few months).

One of the things self e-publishing is going to force me to do is learn to market. This is a good thing. Someday, when I have an agent and a publishing contract, I’m going to need to know this.

I’m not doing it very well, yet, which would surprise absolutely no one who knows me. As a Girl Scout, I was the little girl who knocked on doors (yes, we used to sell door-to-door back then) and ask “You don’t want to buy Girl Scout cookies, do you?” My marketing technique has improved some since then. But then, it had so very far to go to start with. It could hardly have gotten worse, now could it?

It’s not something I really can work on effectively, or have any way to discern whether I’m doing it well or not, without something to market. So, I’m feeling my way, a little at a time, into marketing my ebooks, experience that I hope will serve me well later on. Over the next weeks and probably months, I’ll be stretching slowly–and sometimes probably painfully–out of my comfort zone.

Things that I expect to be trying out soon.

  1. Twitter: I’ll have to break down my resistance to anything that resembles a chat. I’ve always hated chat rooms. (I was only ever in a couple for classes that I was taking.)
  2. Pinterest: I’m a little worried about finding still another way to waste some of my writing time, but SFWA had a recent guest blog on how this can help an author.
  3. Audio books: I just bought a microphone so I can record my e-pubbed works, starting with “Heart of Oak” (it’s much shorter). I’ve got the microphone installed. Now I have to learn how to use the recording software. Maybe I’ll put some of my early efforts up here.  
  4. I also want to put my books up for sale on GoodReads. It’s another outlet. But to do that, I’ll have to get my own e-pub compiler, because that’s the only format GoodReads will accept.
  5. And I’m still working my way through Smashwords Marketing Guide.
  6. I don’t think I’m up to running contests on my blog, yet. Maybe a little one later on. Last week I got a taste of what I definitely don’t want to do, though. You don’t want to leave your readers feeling cheated. I think that may be a subject for another blog post.

Any other marketing suggestions? I need all the help I can get.

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Characters and Stories that Are Not for Me

May 1, 2012 by meredithmansfield

Blogging a touch early because tomorrow morning is going to be too busy.

Over the last couple of years I’ve read several stories that just didn’t work for me. I want to be clear: this isn’t a judgment of whether these stories are good or not, just whether they’re the kind of story I like to read.

Of those that come immediately to mind–and no, I’m not going to name names or titles–two are by well-established and well-loved authors and one is a debut novel.

The thing all these books have in common and that makes them not work for me is a relatively inactive protagonist. It’s an inactive female protagonist in each case, but the fact is that I can’t think of a novel with an inactive male protagonist. I don’t really think that’s coincidence. These stories make me absolutely crazy.

Now, what I mean by an inactive protagonist is that this character doesn’t seem to be taking the lead in trying to solve the problem of the story, whatever it is. For one reason or another, this putative protagonist isn’t the real hero of the story. And that bugs me. It bugs me so much that it ruins the whole story for me. It bothers me even more when the story is aimed at a YA audience.

The one I’ll talk about was a very famous fantasy trilogy. Some of you may even guess which one it was. There’s no doubt the author is one of the premier fantasy writers of our time. The story was just wrong for me.

The first book was great, with a really kick-ass female protagonist. The second book was very hard for me to finish, in large part because that female character placed herself behind a much less capable male character (and love interest). They were actually, potentially, a very good pair–each providing strengths the other lacked. He was the thinker, she was the fighter. Cool!

However the male character’s agenda was allowed to overwhelm the female protagonist’s. Even though she knew there was something she should be doing, she hung back, letting the male character take the lead. I had to force my way through that book, telling myself that the second book in a trilogy is often the worst. The third book would be better, I was sure, because I had liked the first so much.

At the end of that second book, the male character was magically given the same abilities that the female had. Not only that, he was stronger. Ugh! And once again in the third book, the female protagonist sublimated her goals to his. To me, they were essentially fiddling while their world burned. I couldn’t even finish this book because I frankly just didn’t care what happened to these characters anymore.

The other books I referenced above have similar patterns. Female characters waiting for some guy to come along and make a plan and lead the problem solving. I don’t care if the protagonist has to enlist allies. That’s fine. I don’t even care if the allies turn out to have special skills that place them in leadership positions during part of the story. I do very definitely mind when the protagonist is not the one trying to solve the problem of the story. Oddly, that only seems to happen with female protagonists, which really burns me.

I want my protagonists to be active in trying to solve the problem. Now you know what kind of story you won’t be getting from me.

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Reviews

April 29, 2012 by meredithmansfield

It’s a fact of life when you publish something that not everyone is going to like it. And some of them are going to say so in the form of reviews on Amazon or some other forum. Brace yourself for it.

As a writer, I just have to get used to that, the same as I had to get used to taking–and using–critiques of my work in order to improve as a writer.  And, especially when it comes to reviews, the one thing you must not do is argue about it. That only leads to a downward spiral. Doesn’t mean that’s easy, though.

I had to remind myself of this earlier this week when someone gave my novelette “Heart of Oak” a one-star review. Ouch.

Now, by definition, a reader cannot be wrong about their experience of a story. It’s their experience, after all. So this reviewer read some things into this story that I had actually tried consciously to suppress. To me, it’s a story about an outsider trying to cope with a world she doesn’t understand and a bit of a romantic fantasy (as in, yes, there’s romance in it, although not ’til the very end). This reader found an environmentalist message that had not been my intent. But that’s what they read, so I won’t argue with it.

The part of the review that stung a bit was where the reviewer referred to me as a “beginning author”. Well, yes, this is the first thing I’ve published. But it’s not close to the first thing I’ve written. I didn’t just jump in without first practicing and honing my craft, as the reviewer implies. I’ve been working at this for four years now. Believe me, the first short story I wrote (the first that actually was a story and not a vignette) won’t ever see the light of day again.

I don’t, in fact, write very many short stories. I’m more comfortable taking my characters on longer, novel-length adventures. But I wanted to put my toe in the e-publishing waters with something that wouldn’t be too complex to format. Short stories, even novelettes, don’t have things like hyper-linked tables of contents.

I selected “Heart of Oak” as my first attempt at e-publishing for a couple of reasons. Most everyone who had read it, liked it. And, yes, I do have critique partners who will tell me if I accidentally turn out complete drivel. It happened earlier this year with a misguided attempt at science fiction. I’m just not comfortable playing in that sandbox, yet and it showed.

“Heart of Oak” had been submitted to most of the paying publications that will accept that genre and length (almost 10,000 words is a tough sell). And, although it hadn’t sold to any of them, it had gotten some personal rejections and kind words. Including, from a well-respected and professional-paying market, that they liked my writing and characters, inviting me to send more stories.

Between what my critique partners said and that rejection, I felt confident that “Heart of Oak” was good enough to be the first thing I put out. If anyone found it a disappointment, I’m sorry.

Nothing will kill sales faster than a bad review. I always think about that before I post a review on a book that doesn’t work for me. Just because it’s not my cup of tea, doesn’t mean it won’t be the best thing someone else has ever read. So much depends on personal taste. (Which is a topic I’m going to take up next time.)

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Launch Party, Sort of

April 25, 2012 by meredithmansfield

In celebration of having e-published BLOOD WILL TELL last week, here’s a snippet of my next writing project. Here’s the first page of THE BARD’S GIFT:

Astrid leaned into the freezing wind, staggering down the beach hunting for driftwood to feed their meager fire. She kept one eye open for anything edible. The gale felt like needles of ice penetrating her threadbare woolen dress and even the thick white bear pelt she wore as a cloak. What she longed to do was lay down and curl up around her empty belly. In sleep, she might forget how hungry she was, but that wouldn’t keep them warm through the night or put any food on her father’s table.

She’d been hungry before. It wasn’t even unusual at this time of year, but this had been the hardest and longest winter in her memory. The dried cod was all gone and there was still too much ice out in the fjord for the ships to go out to fish for more. The schools no longer teemed just offshore, as they had in her grandfather’s day.

The force of the wind doubled as she rounded the headland, almost knocking Astrid backward. She had to go farther and farther afield to find anything these days. An overpowering stench assaulted her nostrils. She looked up, seeking the source. The massive grey shape in the shallows was not a rock; it was beached whale. Food for weeks. Maybe even enough to get them through until the ships could get out of the fjord again.

She dropped her few sticks of driftwood, picked up her skirts and ran back for the long house. It would take every hand to harvest this windfall. No one would mind because they’d all have full bellies tonight for the first time in over a month.

Do  please check out the link over on the right to BLOOD WILL TELL. That isn’t just a pretty image of the cover.

Now, I’ve given myself an assignment to do something marketing related every week (besides querying FIRE AND EARTH, that is). This week it’s author’s pages–Smashwords, Amazon, Goodreads.

 

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