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Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

From Romance to Capers

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2012| 4 Comments »

My last post was about rereading Lois McMaster Bujold’s A CIVIL AFFAIR to help me work out some of the kinks in the romance part of my paranormal romance BLOOD IS THICKER. I’m still working on BLOOD IS THICKER, though I’m in the last quarter, now and my focus has shifted.

Now I’m working on a little mini-caper plot point. In this case, I haven’t read or re-read anything exactly. I’ve relied more on this episode of Writing Excuses. This caper will only last through a couple of chapters, but hopefully adds a bit of action and suspense to the story leading up to the action surrounding the final resolution.

This is something new for me. I’ve written action scenes before, but never tried anything resembling a caper before. I’m sure that this will need more tweaking in the next draft. That’s okay. It’s good to try new things and stretch yourself a bit.

Meanwhile, I’ve also started the second draft of THE BARD’S GIFT, which is a young adult alternate history. It’s interesting to be working on two such different stories at the same time. We’ll see how that works out, too.

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Reading as Research

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

As I’ve been working through the first round of revisions to BLOOD IS THICKER, I’ve also been rereading parts of A CIVIL CAMPAIGN by Lois McMaster Bujold. Not just because it’s my favorite of the Vorkosigan Saga books, though it is. Also because it’s a good model for how a smart man can blow up his own love life–and then fix it again by realizing his own mistake.

That’s one of the things that happens in BLOOD WILL TELL, although obviously in a very different way, and it didn’t come off quite right in the first draft. It was too flat and a bit stereotypical. So, how to fix it. Well, it never hurts to try to pick up pointers from somebody who handled a similar situation extremely well.

I think I’ve made it better. It still may need some tweaking, but that’s what revisions are for.

BTW, I’ve finally built up some momentum in this one. I’ve passed the half-way point in this revision. Yay!

That’s good, because I’m very soon going to have three revision projects going at once:

  1. The ongoing revisions to MAGE STORM as critiques come in.
  2. BLOOD IS THICKER
  3. And the start of the first round of revisions to THE BARD’S GIFT.

And that doesn’t count three (soon to be four) short stories that need some attention.

Well, at least I know I won’t get stuck. I’ll always be able to switch to something else if I do.

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Progress Update

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2012| 2 Comments »

Well, by now I’d hoped to have e-published BLOOD IS THICKER, which is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. That’s not going to happen until sometime early next year.

Partly that’s because I didn’t get to it as soon as I hoped, because the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT took longer than expected. Partly it’s because the first draft of BLOOD IS THICKER is just very, very rough. It’s going to need a lot of work and I won’t release it until I’m happy with it, bottom line.

On a brighter note, I’m making better progress now that I’ve decided this first revision pass is going to be strictly to fix plot issues. That decision has freed me up to work a lot more smoothly and not get hung up on things that are basically cosmetics. Not that those craft issues aren’t important; far from it. It’s just that I can’t do everything at once on this one and that was keeping me from making any progress at all. Once the story is right, the cosmetic and mechanical issues will be so much easier to fix.

I have given a little thought to the eventual cover for this one in my spare time. Even looked at a few images. Having found that gorgeous magicl night sky for the background for the cover of BLOOD WILL TELL, I think the next two will also feature other kinds of magical skies–and that’s all I’m going to say about that for now. You’ll have to wait for the cover reveal.

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More New Cover Art

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

As long as I’m on a roll, I updated the cover for “Heart of Oak”, too.

Is that image perfect or what? 

Now I have to change the trailer and get both of them uploaded.

I like the new cover art, but now I really have to get back to work on the revisions for BLOOD IS THICKER (sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL). It’s just that the rough draft for that is so rough, that I’m having trouble keeping my enthusiasm up.

I only have another ten days or so before the month is up and I’m going to drop it again to work on the revisions to THE BARD’S GIFT, which should go much more smoothly.

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New Book Cover Revealed

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 10, 2012| 4 Comments »

Well, I got an inspiration and went an entirely different way with the new cover for BLOOD WILL TELL. I’m not sorry. Without further ado, here’s the new cover:

I love it!  I finally broke down and ditched my everything-for-free ideals. I bought the right to use the background image quite reasonably on www.Dreamstime.com. This image, with the sapphire blue night sky and the full moon just limning the clouds just screams magic to me. I had to do a little work to get a dragon image I could add to it. (For some reason, the original photo didn’t have a dragon flying across the moon.)

For the record, it’s very easy to change covers on Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble PubIt. You do have to remember to resubmit through their approval processes, though. Goodreads is a whole other issue I won’t go into right now. Just don’t upload your book to Goodreads if you think you’re going to want to change the cover.

I’ve also updated the trailer to include the new cover. Now I have to go find all the places where I uploaded the old one and replace it.

So, having made a cover I’m much happier with, watch this space for a new cover for “Heart of Oak”, too. I’ve got my eye on an image that’s so perfect it’s uncanny. The current cover for “Heart of Oak” isn’t hateful, but it’s not great either. The main problem with it is that it doesn’t read at all well in gray scale–like, you know, a whole lot of black and white e-readers out there would show it.

 

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Bright Shiny New Ideas

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

On Friday, while I was out running errands, a bright, shiny, new idea hit me between the eyes.  Don’t you love it when that happens? My mind happily followed this idea down its rabbit trails and provided me with a good slice of world building before I even got home. (I jotted notes down on the back of my grocery list.)

It’s a bit of a departure for me, but that’s okay. It’s good to stretch outside the comfort zone now and again.

The temptation, always, is to act like a magpie and follow the bright, shiny, new idea wherever it leads because, well, new ideas are sexy. But I’m not going to do that–at least not yet.

I’m in the middle of revisions for the next couple of months, one way or the other. I’m not ready to start a new first draft. A new idea needs time to grow and accumulate a few other ideas as it rolls around in my head. Time to develop more fully.

Very fortunately, there’s a new challenge up on Hatrack River that this story idea fits pretty well. That allowed me to take the edge off the need to go after the new idea to the exclusion of all else by writing a quick flash based on it. It’s not–not by a long road–the whole idea, but it let me put a little first-draft love into it without telling the whole story.

I think this is a young adult story, although it could be done as middle grade. That’s one of the things that letting the idea brew a little will help me decide.

So now the question is which of two possible stories I’ll be starting. I think I know what I’ll be working on for most of next year either way.

In other news, I happened on a photograph that completely revised my idea for the new cover of BLOOD WILL TELL. I’m working on a totally new concept with a couple of options for how to get there. Maybe I’ll have enough of it together to show by my next blog post.

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Marketing and Book Covers

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 3, 2012| 2 Comments »

My main goal in e-publishing some of my stories has been to get a feel for marketing–on a shoestring (as in free and I-can-do-it-myself are essential). I’ve tried my hand at making book covers and trailers. The good new there is that at least I’m getting better at those. I’ve still got a long way to go on twitter and my facebook author page, but at least I’ve put a toe in the water there. And I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t have without some skin in the game.

Almost everyone agrees that the cover is the most important thing in marketing a book. Well, my early covers leave something to be desired. The cover for “Heart of Oak” isn’t bad–until you try to view it in black and white. Then it’s just blobs. I’ll have to redo that one soon. The cover for BLOOD WILL TELL is . . . well, it’s busy. And the lavender background is somewhat questionable. I’m pretty happy with the cover for “The Music Box”.

So, task one is covers. I’ve got a pretty good idea what the cover for my next story “Becoming Lioness” will look like:

I also want to redo the cover for BLOOD WILL TELL. Here’s what I’m thinking about so far:

Much simpler. (The gold foot print on the right is meant to be a dragon track. Needs more work.)

Two other things I’m considering working on in the near future:

Voice recordings–I have the equipment to record myself reading part or all of these stories. Now that allergy season is fading, I need to get back on that. Worst case, I could use it as a marketing tool. Best case, maybe add audio books to my portfolio.  We’ll have to see. Maybe I’ll try that with “Becoming Lioness”. That’s one that would lend itself well, I think.

I’ve also heard the advice to keep putting out more work. “Becoming Lioness” will probably be e-published in November.

I’ve started work on revising the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL, but that one is likely to take a while. Probably not until next year. Originally, I’d hoped to have it done by now, but the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT took longer than I expected. That’s okay. Maybe that’ll be the one that helps me break into traditional publishing.

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Revision Plan and Status

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, unless lightning strikes, it looks like I’ll be in revision mode for most of the rest of this year. Being more or less the three-quarter mark of the year, it’s a good time to make plans and set goals.

  1. MAGE STORM: I actually completed the revisions on this ahead of schedule. I’ve got one reader for the revised version and I probably need to look for one or two more. Then, of course, incorporate anything coming from the revisions that I feel is right for the story. I’m feeling really good about this one. So I’ll also need to go back over the query and synopsis. This one is likely to go out to agents again early next year.
  2. BLOOD IS THICKER: I’ve started the revisions to this one. This is actually the first round of revisions and in places it’s probably one of the roughest rough drafts I’ve written in quite a while. I wrote the first draft early last year and had a few alpha readers on it, but I haven’t touched it since last May (busy with the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT). Now I need to read through it and incorporate as many of the revision notes as I can. Then I’ll be able to see what to do with it next. This is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL.
  3. Time permitting, I have a couple of short stories I might take a second look at. “Infected With Magic” is the short story that spawned MAGE STORM. It also got me an honorable mention from Writers of the Future. I won’t undertake another round of revisions on it, though, unless I can figure out a better ending. Endings are still my Achilles heel when it comes to short stories. I can land a novel no problem, but short stories, especially ones under 5,000 words, are just a lot harder for me. I’m more likely to take another pass at “The Seeker”. I’ve gotten some feedback on this one recently and I think I finally have a better idea of what I need to do with it. We’ll see.
  4. There’s also a novelette, “Becoming Lioness”.  I’m going to put this one up to my writers’ group in October. After I shine up whatever they find, I’ll probably e-publish it. It’s an awkward length for traditional publication and it’s already been to most places I’d be willing to send it. It just came back from the last one after 230 days on submission.
  5. Then it’ll be time to get back to THE BARD’S GIFT and get it shined up for the writers’ group to read in January. Fortunately, that one is a pretty clean first draft. It needs the usual (for me) things added to it–antagonists motives and a stronger presence of the antagonist, setting descriptions, etc.–but I think the draft will stand pretty well without major plot changes. At least until after I get a few reader reactions.
  6. If I just get an itch to start something new, I’ve got the outline for THE SHAMAN’S CURSE/MAGIC’S FOOL (I don’t know which title I’ll choose for the third time around) to play with.
  7. I also really need to use this time to set up a marketing plan for the things I’ve e-published. Something I really should have done first, I know. But I know me and I knew I wouldn’t do it without some skin in the game. Now that my head’s not completely in the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT every time I sit down at the computer, maybe I can make some headway on this. I’m going to have to start laying out concrete, short-term goals to get it done. Marketing was never my favorite subject.

Well, that ought to be enough to keep me out of trouble for a while.

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Reflections on Voice

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on September 26, 2012| 4 Comments »

Voice in writing is very hard to describe, except to point to examples that illustrate it. It’s also something that develops over time–one of the reasons that many of us have to write a few unpublishable things before we reach that magical level. Sometimes, it’s the thing that allows you to recognize the work of one author over another.

But voice is more than just authorial voice. There’s also the voice of a story (a fable should sound different than an adventure story) and the voices of characters.

There’s no doubt that voice is important, especially in young adult stories, but it’s not more important than the story. In my opinion, nothing is. And the voice has to match the story.

A story told in first person is almost always going to have a stronger voice than one told in third person. In fact, in my opinion, it should, since in essence it purports to be the character telling the story. Done right, it should sound like that character. I’ve seen several novels that used first person without making it sound substantially different than a narrator’s voice.

In contrast, a story told in third person is mainly going to be in a narrator’s voice (and probably a lot closer to the author’s voice). Even in third person, though, the closer the story is to the point-of-view character, the stronger the voice.

But, that doesn’t mean that in order to have stronger voice, every story should be told in first person or even close limited third person. That depends on the demands of the story.

For example, stories that have two (or more) point of view characters can be difficult to pull off in first person. First, it’s confusing to read if both characters are written in first person. Who “I” is changes from chapter to chapter or even from scene to scene. Second, two first-person point of view characters probably ought to sound different from each other–which is probably pretty difficult to pull off. I say that, because I haven’t yet seen an example that really did pull it off.

I’ve written a couple of short stories in first person.–one because the subject just seemed to demand that closeness to the character and the other because I just started hearing the story in first person in my head and decided not to fight it. I haven’t–yet–written a whole novel in first person. I probably will some day, when a story tells me that’s what it needs.

In the meantime, I think of all the great stories I would have missed if I’d demanded that everything I read had the kind of voice found in a first-person narrative.

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I Figured It Out

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on September 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve posted before about my difficulties with a particular story.

It started life as THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, my first completed novel (if you don’t count that thing I wrote in college). There really wasn’t much wrong with the story, but there was a lot wrong with my abilities as a writer and story-teller. So, I left it alone for a few years.

But I still really like those characters and that story. So, last year I rewrote a portion of that story as middle grade. It worked at least reasonably well. That version, MAGIC’S FOOL, still needed a little work, but I was pretty happy with it. And then, during WriteOnCon, I discovered that agents and editors don’t like stories that start off with thirteen-year-old protagonists. This was a problem because, for this story to work, I really couldn’t make him any younger. Drat. I had laid out several possible options for how I might proceed.

Well, last week, while I was trying to get THE BARD’S GIFT out of my head so I could start revisions on MAGE STORM, I sat down and as an exercise outlined the original novel. I have to say that was an eye-opener. It really highlighted some of the weaknesses in the original writing. I mean, I knew it, but it’s different when you see it in color-coded black and white, so to speak.

Anyway, my subconscious obviously kept playing around with the idea while I was working on other things. And then it forced me to sit down and type out a new outline. It’s the original, nearly-complete storyline with a couple of things left out that just really didn’t work well for a young adult story. Yes, it will be YA with a boy protagonist. The timeline is compressed from eight years (which was one of the weaknesses of the original story) to about two. And I like it.

There are a couple of things not clearly defined, but I’m a discovery writer; this is way more outline than I usually have at the beginning of a story. In fact, I’m sure that I’ll probably diverge from this outline at least once. That’s just what happens.

So, I guess I know what my next starting-from-scratch project will be, likely some time next year. Between now and then, I have to finish the revisions for MAGE STORM (I have a reader lined up who happens to be a great critique partner), revise BLOOD IS THICKER, possibly work on a couple of short stories, if I can squeeze them in, and then do the second and third drafts of THE BARD’S GIFT to have it ready for readers in January.

Looks like I’ll be busy for the foreseeable future, which is just how I like it.

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