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Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

Work In Process

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on September 6, 2011| 13 Comments »

Blogging a bit early this week. (Usually updates are on Wednesdays and Sundays.)

Since this is (near) the beginning of the Platform-Building Campaign and new people will be popping in to look at the blog, I thought I’d blog about my various projects today.

BLOOD WILL TELL

I’m actively querying this one. (Actually, this week I’m researching agents.) I have one full request out. Fingers crossed.

Being a half-blood is inconvenient on a good day, especially when the half you got from your mother is werewolf.  Valeriah can’t take wolf form, but the full moon still fills her with manic energy.  Running helps; a tired werewolf is a good werewolf.

Living perennially caught between two worlds–human and werewolf, magic and non-magic–doesn’t leave much room for love. That suits Valeriah just fine. She’s never had any luck with that anyway.

Until her cousin’s life is threatened, that is, and out of necessity she accepts the help of a mysterious young man to protect Cristel. Rolf is everything that makes Valeriah’s pulse speed up in spite of herself. Now, with Cristel’s life in the balance, is the worst possible time for that kind of complication.

But Rolf’s secrets could destroy her trust and that might cost her life.

BLOOD WILL TELL is a 97,000-word paranormal romance and potentially the first of a series.

MAGE STORM

I have queried this one, but a response from one agent who requested a full prompted some revisions which I’m still tinkering with.

Rell doesn’t want magic. He doesn’t dream of being a hero out of old legends or a mage. Certainly not a mage, after they all incinerated each other at the end of the Great Mage War. He’d just like not to be in his big brother’s shadow for a change. Someone should have reminded him to be careful what he wished for.

All he knows of magic are the violent, frighteningly aware mage storms formed of the ashes of those dead wizards. Mage storms seek out people on whom to vent their fury. When the ashes fall like rain, red cinders explode, white burn flesh like acid, orange ashes taint what they touch, and yellow cause withering death.

Caught in a mage storm, Rell is struck by a strange blue cinder that infects him with magic and protects him and his family from the storm. Rell starts to think that maybe magic’s not so bad after all, but he finds it only complicates his life. His father expects him to bring back the benefits of magic from before the war, but Rell doesn’t know how. Meanwhile, others who only remember the terrors of the war fear Rell and his new abilities. Frustration and anger only bring out one of the most dangerous aspects of his magic: fire.

Rell soon learns that whether he intends it or not, his magic will leak out, uncontrolled, whenever his emotions are too strong. If he can find some way to learn to use this “gift”, he may be able to reduce the threat of the storms. If not, he’ll probably end up adding his ashes to the mage storms.

MAGE STORM is a 56,000-word middle grade fantasy and potentially the first of a series.

SEVEN STARS

I’ve recently completed the third draft of this Young Adult Fantasy. The pitch is correspondingly very rough, still.

Because of her berserker blood, Casora has been raised as a warrior. Now that she has activated the Curse and allowed the berserker to rule her, she can never go home. She leads her band of exiled warriors turned mercenaries in the battle against the invaders who overran her homeland.

Tiaran is the youngest and least of princes, the one who will never be a warrior. He’s so desperate to get into the fighting when his country is threatened that his gullibilty leads him to run away–and straight into a suicide mission.

It’s up to Casora’s mercenaries to rescue the prince. Cut off from the commanders who are now besieged in the capital, Casora has to mold Tiaran into a warrior and together they have to find a way to defeat their common enemy.

MAGIC’S FOOL

I’ve really just started this one (half-way through chapter three). It’s a complete re-imagining of my first novel (well, if you don’t count the thing under the bed that we don’t talk about). This time as middle grade, which it probably always should have been. As such, the original 100 K word story will have to be broken up into two or even three separate novels, each with it’s own (related) arc. I confess, I’m just a bit nervous about that. I think I’ve got it figured out, but the only way I’m going to find out if it works is to try it.

So, that’s what I’m working on these days.

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Escalation

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 28, 2011| 11 Comments »

It’s not a secret. Things should get worse and worse for your characters until the climax, when, hopefully, the conflict is resolved, the protagonist having won, learned something, and grown or changed. In most, if not all, of my stories, that’s also going to put the protagonist in a position to finally get what he wants–which may or may not be what he thought he wanted at the beginning of the story.

I’m ashamed to say that in one of my current projects, I got that wrong. Not for the story as a whole. Just for the first try/fail cycle. Still, that’s bad enough.

How did that happen? Well, I was making revisions and I added some events to help make the central conflict clearer right from the beginning. So far so good. It’s just that I added them in the wrong order.

This is where a great critique group is the biggest help. It’s more than possible to be so close into the details yourself that you can’t see a screw up like this. But a critiquer will tell you that something is off.

So now I just have to go back and put things in the right order.

  1. Insignificant event that shows the problem, but doesn’t make it seem very bad.
  2. Public event that is largely benign, but upsets people.
  3. Overheard reaction of those people.
  4. Major event that scares the protagonist into taking more action.

Yeah, that’ll work much better than the other way around.

Edited to add:

Well, I thought that plan was going to work, but after playing with it all day, I’ve decided against it. Plan B is to just add some more tension and danger to the last incident. I need to see if I can make it as scary–or even scarier–than the first.

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Internet Resources for Writers

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2011| 10 Comments »

We all know that the internet is a great research tool. We all use it to research agents, too.  But there are a lot of other resources out there for writers, too.

  1. Writers’ forums and critique groups. This is a great way to network and share with other writers and improve your own writing. I learn at least as much from critiquing another writer’s work as I do by having my own critiqued. Even if you are lucky enough to have an in-person writers group, you can still benefit from an online group, too. It opens up the possibility of so many more writers and a better chance of finding a group specific to your genre. It’s not that you can’t learn anything from a mystery writer’s critique of your YA fantasy. But there’s nothing like having people actually familiar with the genre comment on your work.
  2. Blogs. There are literally thousands of industry blogs out there by authors (published and unpublished), agents, editors. It’s a great way to learn more about the industry we’re all trying to break into. Sometimes, there are fun contests, too.
  3. Online events like the recent WriteOnCon. Let’s face it, what could be better than a writers’ conference you can attend in your pajamas. And if you missed WriteOnCon last week, don’t worry. It’s all archived on the site–vlogs, blogs, forum events, and live chats. Ok, so maybe you can’t participate in the live events, now. But you can still see what all the awesome participants had to say.
  4. Our own blogs. We blather on about our WIP and whatever else pops into our heads hoping to connect with other writers and maybe even, someday, a reader or two.
  5. Third Writers’ Platform-Building Campaign. And in furtherence of that, there’s this awesome campaign being run by a fellow writer. I’m joining.

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The End

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on August 21, 2011| 1 Comment »

Gosh, I got so involved in revising the end of SEVEN STARS that I almost forgot to blog. (Well, that, and Mom’s birthday.)

I haven’t quite finished this round, yet. But I’m awfully close. I just might press on and finish it tonight. I’ll still want to do another read-through and I still have a couple of things I want to add or strengthen.

While I made revisions throughout the book, I think the beginning and the end changed the most.

The end is actually changing. But some of how the characters get there is. Some of the way things happened in the earlier drafts didn’t build tension the way it needs to. Plus I seem to have skipped some internal monologue towards the end. Actually, I think I was getting a bit fatigued when I wrote the original ending. But that’s what good critiquers will help you with–and keep you honest about.

I had to write two new fight scenes. Not the easiest thing for me to write, but I hope I’ve done a better job of it. That’s what readers will tell me, though.

I’m still really loving this story.

 

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WriteOnCon

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on August 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

If you write young adult or middle grade stories, what are you doing reaind my blog today? Get over to WriteOnCon. It’s free and you don’t have to travel–both of which make it right up my alley right now.

I didn’t even know about it until Monday.  But don’t worry about what you may have missed. It’s still there and, while you might not be able to participate live, you can still read it.

Go.

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Serialization

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It’s a topic in e-publishing right now, in a couple of different contexts.

I know a couple of writers who are either serializing stories for e-publication or thinking about it. Actually it’s a very attractive concept.

You take a 100,000-word novel and break it down into, say, five pieces. Hopefully, of course, each installment ends with some sort of hook that will make the reader want to purchase the next installment. Then you release installments a week to a month or so apart.

It’s something that e-publishing is very well suited for and something that wasn’t even remotely possible with traditional paper publishing. That is, unless you count the endless series that extend to a dozen or more books. But in those cases, readers had to wait years between installments. This is much less painful.

Another interesting thought that I read about earlier this week is the idea of e-publishing segments of your work in process. Not for free, but on some sort of arrangement where readers pay for the finished work, but get to read the story as it progresses. This potentially allows the writer to get feedback from a much wider audience than a writers’ group and lets the readers see some of their ideas or comments incorporated into the story.

Both are intriguing thoughts that I’m going to have to research more. I even know where I can find an online course on the subject.

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Something Interesting

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 10, 2011| 2 Comments »

While researching agents to query, I came across this very interesting post. Very useful ideas for any kind of writing.

Meanwhile, I’m making good progress on my third draft of SEVEN STARS. Hopefully, I’ll find a way to incorporate at least some of these ideas as I go.

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Revisions, Revisions

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on August 3, 2011| 4 Comments »

I polished of the current draft of my Writers of the Future entry. Now I’m trying to get into the revisions on SEVEN STARS.

I’ve got four critiques back from readers (two are still out). I’m hugely pleased that, so far, everyone seems to really like it. Whew! I’ve got some great ideas for things to add or change to make it even better. I’m really excited to be getting back into this project.

Nevertheless, at the moment I’m mostly just working on the fiddly little stuff. Adding a sentence or two of clarification here, moving something else over there. These are not the changes I’m excited to be getting to. Unfortunately, it does just take a few days for me to really get back into a novel-length project. I wish it didn’t, but so far I haven’t found a way around this.

Ah well. This too shall pass. And then it’s going to be fun!

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Queries and Synopses–Again

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 24, 2011| 6 Comments »

I believe I’ve mentioned that this isn’t my favorite kind of writing. In fact, I don’t think I know anybody who’d say it was. But it is necessary. So, I’m back at it–doubled this time because I’m doing new queries and revised synopses for two books–MAGE STORM and BLOOD WILL TELL–at the same time.

I think I’ve just about completed the MAGE STORM (MG Fantasy) set and will be ready to start sending that back out into the world of agents next week. Now I’ve got to work on the query and synopsis for BLOOD WILL TELL (paranormal romance). This time around with BWT, I’m emphasizing the paranormal romance aspect, rather than the urban fantasy. It’s a somewhat different set of agents. Maybe it’ll play better, since the story really doesn’t have the hard edges often associated with urban fantasy.

Queries are bad enough. At least they’re only about 250 words. Of course, I agonize over every one of those words. The hardest part for me is to get some semblance of the story voice into the query. Too many years of practice writing bland business letters, I guess.

Synopses: that’s a whole new level of torture. I didn’t have to do too much to the MAGE STORM synopsis. Just reflect the changes in the latest revisions. Not that I’m thrilled with it. There’s no way I’ll ever be thrilled with trying to tell a 50,000 word story in 1,000 words. Just not going to happen.

I’ll probably have to do more to the BLOOD WILL TELL synopsis, since I’ve changed the focus of the query.

After this, I need to do a serious round of revision on my Writers of the Future entry for this quarter. Then it’s back to MAGIC’S FOOL. I’ll be really glad to get back to original writing by then, I’m sure.

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Long Series

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

This subject comes up as I struggle to get a foothold in my new WIP. MAGIC’S FOOL (working title) is a rewrite/re-imagining of my very first novel. It starts considerably earlier. Also, since this time around it’s Middle Grade, the original plot has to be broken down into discreet segments, each with its own goal and completed conflict. I think I can do that, but I confess that I’m a little nervous about it.

However, there’s another point. My first novel, TSC (let’s just stick to the initials), was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, later expanded to possibly four books. Now, some of what was in those stories, particularly the middle two books, will simply be deleted. But still, if I break the remaining story down, that could easily come to six or eight books in the series.

Other successful series (Flanagan’s THE RANGER’S APPRENTICE comes to mind) suggest that that’s not too many.

The other thing that brings this topic to mind is that a favorite author of mine is about to wind up a series of five books. But then she’s going to start two more series in the same world, following different characters. That worries me.

The thing is, I can think of several series or conglomerations of series using the same world that lost me part way through. I can name at least three series in which I devoured the first three or four books and was hungry for more. I kept reading, but perhaps a little less avidly after that. My interest usually puttered out somewhere between books six and nine.

One of these series continued to use the same world, but followed a different cast of characters for three or four books and then switched again to another set of characters. That one kept my interest the longest–to about fourteen books.

But in every case, eventually, I just got tired of visiting that world and those characters. It wasn’t fresh anymore. I wanted something new.

Of course with some of them there were other reasons that they lost my interest. Some went on too long without any resolution. (I don’t think I need to name that series to any student of the fantasy genre.) Some just seemed to me to be the same story told over and over again. But sometimes it just was that I was tired of visiting that particular world. It had become so familiar that it almost didn’t feel fantastic anymore.

So, maybe it’s not a good thing to write too many stories in the same world.

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