Well, it appears that the reason I was having trouble figuring out how to make “Heart of Oak” free on Amazon is that they don’t let me do that. It’ll only be free if they decide to price match Smashwords. If you don’t want to hold your breath for that, pick up a free copy at Smashwords. And, of course, I hope you like it enough to buy BLOOD WILL TELL at only $2.99.
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BLOOD WILL TELL is now available on Smashwords
and on Amazon.
It should be available on Barnes and Noble in a couple of days.
In celebration, “Heart of Oak” is free on Smashwords. And will be free on Amazon shortly.
I hope you enjoy it. And, if you do, look for the further adventures of these characters in BLOOD IS THICKER this fall.
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Almost a month ago, I posted this set of priorities:
I’m doing pretty well on these goals.
So, here are my current priorities:
That’ll do for at least the next month, don’t you think?
Posted in writing | Tagged critiques, e-publishing, first drafts, Goals, Middle Grade, Multiple Projects, paranormal romance, priorities, queries, revisions, writing, Young Adult | 6 Comments »
The other side of querying, of course, is waiting for the replies. When you open your mailbox and see a response to one of your queries, there’s a moment of anxiety, because, statistically, most of those replies are going to be some variation on “Thanks, but no.”
Then, every once in a while, you open the response to find a partial or a full request and your heart starts beating a little bit faster. There’s a chance.
I had both experiences last Friday. I have to say it’s just a little nerve wracking to be getting query responses on Friday the 13th. The first query reply I recieved was of the “no” variety. The second, though, was a partial request–my first partial request for FIRE AND EARTH (formerly known as SEVEN STARS).
I sent off the partial and did a little happy dance for most of the rest of the day. It always feels really good that one of these busy professionals wants to see more of my work.
Now, for a few weeks, I get to day dream about getting a second request for the rest of it and maybe, just maybe, that offer of representation. The next step on this path I’ve set myself on.
I will get there one of these days. And I really believe FIRE AND EARTH just might be the one.
Posted in writing | Tagged agents, fantasy, queries, writing, Young Adult | 9 Comments »
I’m always more nervous when I start querying a new story. Not as nervous as the very first time I started querying, but much more nervous, or is it anxious, than when I’ve been querying the same story for a while.
I started querying FIRE AND EARTH (formerly known as SEVEN STARS) a week ago. I’ve sent out six queries so far. I already have a couple of form rejections racked up, too.
Here’s the 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. I have included the first three chapters per the instructions on your website.
Thank you for your time.
Fingers crossed for the four queries that are still out and for the queries I plan to send out in the coming weeks.
If this one doesn’t work–get me at least a partial request–after a few more tries, I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and try to revise or rewrite the query. That’s the way this process goes.
In other news, Mary Robinette Kowal published this terrific guest post on writing sequels. I just wish some of those points were more adaptable to my sequels to either BLOOD WILL TELL or MAGIC’S FOOL. I’m definitely going to have to put some thought into how I could incorporate at least some ot those tips.
Posted in writing | Tagged agents, fantasy, queries, writing, Young Adult | 4 Comments »
I can’t over emphasize the value of critiques–both getting and giving them. They’re not only how we make a story better, they’re also how we grow as writers.
I’m starting to work through the critiques of MAGIC’S FOOL so the topic of how to make the best use of these critiques is very apropos.
Some critiques are like ringing a bell. They start an avalanche of ideas that makes the writer jump up and down shouting “Of course. Of course, why didn’t I see that.” Those critiques are precious. Sometimes you have to work a little harder for that same insight, but it’s just as valuable when you do see it.
Often a critique or a group of critiques will point out a problem that the writer isn’t aware of. After all, as the writer, you know all sorts of things about the story that didn’t make it onto the page and no matter how long you let it rest you can’t ever completely come to the story the way a reader would. If three or more people say the same thing, you probably ought to pay attention because there likely is a problem there. But, and here’s where things get interesting, it isn’t always the problem that the critiquer points out. It might be something deeper. Occasionally, it’s something much simpler that leaves me saying to myself something like, “Yes, but if I hadn’t been an idiot and cut this paragraph, that would have made much better sense and you wouldn’t have been confused.”
In this case, I’ve got an interesting mix of critiques. One reader says that I need an external antagonist. Another keeps asking me to show not tell and says the first half was slow, but the second half was great. Still another says that the story has potential, but lacks excitement. As a writer what am I to make of this?
The first thing is to wonder if they’re all reacting to the same thing and just saying it in different ways. I think they are. I think what they’re trying to say is that they’re not feeling the protagonist’s problem, at least during some parts of the story. I haven’t done a good enough job of ratcheting up the conflict.
And now I have at least some ideas of how to make my protagonist’s conflict much stronger. I’ll need more, but that’s what revision is all about. So, thanks to my great beta readers. It’s going to be a much stronger story when I’m through with this revision.
Posted in writing | Tagged conflict, critiques, Middle Grade, revisions, writing, Young Adult | 7 Comments »
I’ve been tagged. The rules are:
Go to page 77 of current WIP
Go to line 7
Copy down next 7 lines/sentences/paragraphs & post them as they’re written
Since I’ve barely started THE BARD’S GIFT and haven’t gotten to a page 77 yet (haven’t even gotten to page 2 yet) and I finished the revisions to FIRE AND EARTH and started querying it yesterday (fingers crossed), that leaves MAGIC’S FOOL. I’m starting the next round of revisions based on the critiques of my beta readers, so that counts as a WIP, too.
Going backward just a bit to start in a place that makes a little sense:
Vatar took a step back. As a Dardani, every instinct told him to keep that secret. Especially not to tell a stranger. “Why? I don’t want to.”
“Because Veleus understands these things better than any of us. He can help you, if you let him.”
“I’ll help you in any way I can, . . . son,” Veleus said.
Vatar scuffed one toe on the path. “It was just a dream.”
“We all thought that at the time. But not any more. Now I think you were actually talking to someone in your mind. Tell him.”
“What’s this?” Veleus asked, looking at Vatar again.
Seeing no way out of it, with everyone’s eyes on him, Vatar reluctantly recounted his three conversations with Thekila and how they had happened. And, at Mother’s prodding, he also told about the incident with the lions. Veleus listened with interest, asking pointed questions.
Hmm. Just looking at this makes me think I need a few more dialogue tags or beats. This bit comes at the point when Vatar first meets the person who may help him to understand the magic he’s been desperately trying to hide.
Now, if you’ve read this far and you haven’t already been tagged–you’re it.
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Well, now that I’ve got a toe in the water on e-publishing, it’s time to think about marketing.
I haven’t done much of that, yet–and my sales show it. Frankly, with only “Heart of Oak” published so far, I think it’s a bit premature. “Heart of Oak” is a novelette (roughly one-tenth of a full novel). But more e-published stories are coming, so it’s not too soon to think about marketing.
Smashwords publishes a very good, free e-book on marketing, so I’ll just post the link to it, here. There are some really good ideas in there that I’ll want to consider when I e-publish BLOOD WILL TELL at the end of this month or the beginning of May. That’s when I plan to take marketing a lot more seriously. Even better, every idea in there is also free to implement. And a lot of them would be really easy, too.
One of the big tips is to have multiple titles out there. I have that underway. “Heart of Oak” is out. As soon as I hear back about “Becoming Lioness” (assuming the market that currently has it on submission rejects it), that’s going up. I have a romance novella “The Music Box” that will be e-published as soon as I’ve gotten a little feedback on it. Then the full-court press for BLOOD WILL TELL and get cracking on revisions to BLOOD IS THICKER and a draft of the third book in the series, BLOOD STAINS.
Hmm. One of the things I need to do is to come up with a title for that series as a whole, too.
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I was planning a different post for today. However, yesterday the main water line developed a leak–ours, not the city’s. Actually, the evidence suggests that it had probably been leaking for some time, it only got to the surface yesterday.
What I really need is to replace that whole line. Unfortunately, that just is not economically possible right now. So, instead, it gets replaced bit by bit where a leak develops. Thank heaven for my cousin and nephew who are willing to help out on this.
Right now, a good portion of the ditch has been dug, the pipe has been located. There’s more digging still to do before the length of pipe can be replaced. Meantime, there’s no running water.
This has sort of interrupted my plans, as you might imagine, not to mention seriously cut into my productivity. I’ll do the research and get the blog post I intended for today up next time. Promise.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Real Life | 2 Comments »
A theme is the central concept of a story. I don’t generally write a story with a theme in mind. However, it often happens that when I finish a story, I realize that there is a theme in there. When that happens, I can use that knowledge to inform choices that I make in the revisions to strengthen that theme, if I want to. Often, I don’t even ask myself what the theme is. I’m focused on telling a good story. Though, when I do, I can usually identify it pretty quickly. Sometimes, it surprises me.
For example, MAGIC’S FOOL, and in fact the entire series that starts with MAGIC’S FOOL, is about acceptance in various forms. (I really am going to have to think of a title for the series as a whole soon. Something to do with the two kinds of magic, I think.) In this case, though, it’s a little different for me because MAGIC’S FOOL and it’s sequels are rewrites of earlier stories with the unfortunate titles THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY (TSC and TIP for short). Now that I’ve decided it should be a middle-grade story, the events of TSC with a little of TIP thrown in will be broken down into three separate stories. The fourth book in the series will cover the central plot that was planned for the end of the original trilogy, but never written. It’ll actually flow much better this way.
What’s different this time is that I recognized the theme in those earlier versions, so I could construct the story around it in the first draft of the rewrites.
In MAGIC’S FOOL, the theme actually comes close to also being the central conflict as the protagonist has to learn to accept the things that make him different from who he expected to be. That works, I think, as a good middle-grade internal conflict. My beta readers who have it now will let me know if they feel bludgeoned by it, I hope. But I don’t think it came off as that strong. The two critiques I have back so far haven’t mentioned it, at least.
Still, that conflation of the theme and the central conflict is not something I necessarily want to continue throughout the series. In this case, I’ll have to be aware, not of what theme is developing in my story, but of keeping the theme and the central conflict at arm’s length.
That’s a little different than my usual course, where I don’t even recognize the theme until I finish the first draft. In the long run, of course, that’s all to the good: a learning opportunity.
Posted in writing | Tagged fantasy, inspiration, Middle Grade, revisions, rewrites, series, writing, Young Adult | 2 Comments »
Meredith Mansfield, Author 