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2014 Projects

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 2, 2014| Leave a Comment »

THE BARD’S GIFT is out in the world.

TheBardsGiftCoverSmallThere’ll be a blog tour and giveaway in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I’ve started looking ahead to my 2014 projects. Actually, it’s probably wildly optimistic to call all of these 2014 projects. I don’t think there’s any chance that I’ll get to all of them this year. But here’s what’s on my list:

  1. MAGE STORM (middle grade fantasy or adventure fantasy) is in the query process.
  2. MAGIC AND POWER (young adult fantasy romance) is what I’m working on right now. It’s getting a heavy revision/partial rewrite to incorporate some more elements and more conflict. It’ll be much better on the other side. I’m getting close to half-way through.
  3. UNTITLED (young adult fantasy romance) will be a sequel to MAGIC AND POWER, sort of. It will take place in the same world, but the main characters of M&P will only be supporting characters in this one. (It’s possible that MAGIC AND POWER will become the series title and M&P will be renamed DESERT ROSE.)
  4. THE SHAMAN’S CURSE (epic fantasy or sword and sorcery) has just been turned over to beta readers.
  5. THE IGNORED PROPHECY (sequel to THE SHAMAN’S CURSE) is in the queue. Like TSC, I wrote a draft of this a few years ago, but it needs a complete rewrite, just like TSC did.)
  6. DREAMER’S ROSE (young adult fantasy) is probably next up. It’s a partial rewrite of another old story, but the other part will be brand new. I’m going to have some real challenges figuring out how to weave the three character arcs together. It’ll be interesting.
  7. WEIRD OZ is still on the list. It’s just not quite ripe. I need to do a little more development before I restart on this one.

More distantly, I have :

  1. An idea for a retelling of the Little Furball fairytale.
  2. An idea for a retelling of the Welsh story Culhwch an Olwen (a less well-known part of the King Arthur cycle)
  3. My secret history idea, which needs a lot more development.
  4. And a bright, shiny new idea that came to me a few days ago.

Yeah, I think I can keep busy for the foreseeable future.

 

 

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2014 Goals

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 31, 2013| 3 Comments »

Posting a little early because tomorrow I expect to be watching the parade and taking down the Christmas tree.

So, now it’s time to set goals for the year ahead.

  1. Publish THE BARD’S GIFT. I’ve already got the files formatted, uploaded, and checked. All I have to do is press the button. Release date is January 30th.TheBardsGiftCoverSmall
  2. Continue to query MAGE STORM
  3. Complete, polish, and publish THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY.
  4. Complete the revisions to MAGIC AND POWER (or whatever the final title will be) and start querying that. It’s going to be awesome when I get through with it.
  5. Write something new, hopefully Weird Oz. Maybe, if I’m very good, two new things.
  6. Continue to learn and improve. Specifically, this year, really try to find the right formula for indie book promotion. The blog tour didn’t do a lot of good. Neither have Goodreads giveaways. I’ve got a whole month to figure something out for THE BARD’S GIFT.

Happy New Year Everyone

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Last Year’s Writing Goals

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I don’t make resolutions anymore, but I do set goals. And now it’s the time of year to look back and see how well I did. So here are my writing goals for last year and the results

  1. Prepare to query THE BARD’S GIFT. I did. I got it polished up and ready. I queried widely. And the only positive thing I got out of that was four personalized rejections variously praising my writing and the story. Rejections like that are not supposed to exist. Agents just don’t have time. I got four. If four agents took the time to do that, I can only conclude that they saw something good, but just didn’t think the story was commercial enough. THE BARD’S GIFT is now up next to be e-published, early next year.TheBardsGiftCoverSmall
  2. I also set a goal of getting my rewrite of MAGE STORM ready to query again. I met this goal, too. MAGE STORM is currently a first alternate in Pitch Wars. Wish me luck.
  3. Last year, FIRE AND EARTH was a first alternate (with a different mentor) in Pitch Wars. Ultimately, I decided to e-publish it.Fire And Earth Cover (Provisional)
  4. I set a goal to e-publish BLOOD IS THICKER and met that one.Blood Is Thicker Cover
  5. I intended to enter Writers of the Future at least once, but I didn’t. I just don’t write that much short fiction. The one I attempted this year turned into a novel.
  6. Write two first drafts. I guess I met that one, too. MAGIC AND POWER was a completely new first draft and I did a complete rewrite of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, too.
  7. Learn and improve. Well, that’s an ongoing goal and a little too vague, really. I met it, but for next year it might be nice to specify some target areas.

Next post, I’ll start looking ahead to next year’s goals.

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Recharge

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on December 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Posting a little early because tomorrow’s Christmas.

I finished this draft of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE. It’ll need one more pass before it’s ready for beta readers, but not just yet. It should rest a bit first.

For now–and only for a couple of days–I’m taking a short break to recharge the creative batteries. I’ve been doing a little thinking about where the story goes from here. This should be the first of a four book series. I have a (very old) draft of the second book, THE IGNORED PROPHECY. It’ll serve as an outline, but will need to be basically rewritten, same as TSC.

I never got more than a few pages into the third book. That one will have a lot less sword swinging and spear wielding and more political upheaval. (It gets back to more sword swinging in book four.) I need to think out exactly how that’s going to work.

I’m also going to have to work out the bane of starting sequels (three times!) Providing enough grounding into a world and characters that have already been introduced for readers who start with a middle book without boring readers who’ve read the previous book(s). That, and giving a needed summary of what happened in the earlier book(s) without making it an infodump. Bothe are tricky to navigate.

For now, though, I’m just letting my imagination play with it.

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“New” Ideas

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Well, sort of, anyway.

It’s a strange fact of writing–for me–that ideas only really come to me while I’m writing. That’s probably one reason that outlining doesn’t work well for me. And it works a lot better when I’m writing something “new” than when I’m revising. However, rewriting something old seems to be close enough to writing new material, because I’m getting lots of new ideas for this story, DREAMER’S ROSE.

The final product is going to start much like the previous version. Somewhere around chapter ten, however, it’s going to diverge and never look back. Even the antagonist is going to change. It’s a whole new story. (Which is a good thing. Trust me. There’s a reason why the original version has been buried on my hard drive. I love the premise, but the first attempt just wasn’t working.)

I’m thinking now that I’ll need four point-of-view characters (including the antagonist). The three protagonists will be part of–well, not exactly a love triangle, but something similar to one. (It’s not a true triangle because one choice, while perhaps tempting, is patently impossible. The readers will know that, even if the characters don’t–at first.)

This is hopeful for WEIRD OZ, too. DREAMER’S ROSE just needed to marinate a little longer before the real story revealed itself. Maybe that’s all WEIRD OZ needs, too. 

At any rate, I’m having fun with this one right now. There’s so much I love about this new version.

Blood Is Thicker Cover

Also, a new chapter of BLOOD IS THICKER is now available on wattpad.

The blog tour starts in just over a week. Stay tuned.

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Back in the Saddle

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I’ve got a little light back in this room. Amazing how much that helps. Later, I’ll be going out to trim some more of that bishop’s cap vine back.

What’s helped even more is actually getting back to some writing. I’ve been doing revisions for a while now. Not that I mind revisions, but it’s not the same as the highs–and sometimes lows–of writing a first draft.

I was supposed to be doing the first draft of Weird Oz. (If I’m not careful, that title is going to stick.) But that story just wasn’t working out–yet. So, I looked back in my files and pulled out another oldie, DREAMER’S ROSE, and, wonder of wonder, words started to flow again.

It’s not exactly a first draft, but DREAMER’S ROSE is going to need a complete rewrite. In fact, I now suspect that I will only be rewriting the first part of the story. After that, I think it’s going to go off in an entirely new direction–the re-imagining that this story needed.

In its inspiration, DREAMER’S ROSE is a mash-up of the Hercules legend (turned on its head) and the fairy tale “Toads and Diamonds”. The Rose of the title has sort of the same function as a compass, but for people who are lost in their dreams rather than in reality–a compass rose for dreamers.

English: First compass rose depicted on a map,...

English: First compass rose depicted on a map, detail from the Catalan Atlas (1375), attributed to cartographer Abraham Cresques of Majorca. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 However, this new version of the story is probably going to be much more focused on the dreamer than on Rose.

Ah, it feels good to be writing again.

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Writer’s Funk

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I won’t call it writer’s block, because it isn’t. And, truth to tell, it’s not just confined to my writer’s hat, either, but it is affecting my writing.

 There’s been a lot of stuff going on in my real life, lately. And it’s one of those times when nothing seems to be going right anywhere. Note to the world at large: the stress bucket it full. It won’t hold any more. Any attempt to add more stress will only result in overflow–and that won’t always be pretty.

 If I was in the middle of writing some cool new fantasy, that might help offset it. I like this quote from Dorothy L. Sayers about her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries:

 Lord Peter’s large income… I deliberately gave him… After all it cost me nothing and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it. I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes. It relieves the mind and does no harm to anybody.

 Some things I can’t do anything about. Not yet, anyway. A change of scene would be nice, but it’s just not practical right now for a couple of reasons. So, I’m going to focus on the things I can change.

 First on the list: the room I write in is like a cave right now. The bishop’s cap vine along the fence on that side–which provides necessary privacy–has grown too close to the house. That I can fix. All it needs is a little elbow grease. And getting outside for an hour or two a day won’t hurt my mood, either.

 I’m going to start there.

Blood Is Thicker Cover

Also, there’s another chapter of BLOOD IS THICKER available on wattpad.

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Brainstorming

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 30, 2013| 6 Comments »

I’ve had the opportunity to have a couple of people who are very good at seeing the big picture take a look at the beginning of my Weird Oz Story. With their help, I’m beginning to get a clearer picture of what went wrong and how to fix it.

This story started when I’d read one too many novels in a row that featured a supposed female protagonist who sat around and waited for some guy to show them what to do. If you haven’t noticed already, that’s a really, really big pet peeve of mine. So, I thought of dropping a new “Dorothy” into a much more dangerous Oz–basically, the Jurassic Park version of Oz.

But it’s not working. I knew that, though I was too close to it to really figure out why. Now I’m starting to get feedback that helps me to understand why.

  1. In the interests of having my “Dorothy” make her own choices, even in a strange and unfamiliar world, I set her down alone. That won’t work. L. Frank Baum introduced Dorothy’s first companion, the Scarecrow, in Chapter 3. My character needs someone to talk to, someone to help her recognize the “she’s not in Kansas anymore” sooner. But not somebody to take over and tell her what to do. Most of all, another character who can provide some additional conflict. I’m working on an appropriate character for this–something or someone a bit ADHD who will be as much a hindrance as a help–more conflict. 
scanned from 1900 Wizard of Oz book

scanned from 1900 Wizard of Oz book (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  1. The first few chapters were a bit too frenetic. The whole novel can’t be just bouncing from one threat to the next. There has to be time to lay plans, reconnoiter, and take deliberate action. There have to be try/fail cycles in which “Dorothy” fails before she finds her way out. I have to throw enough at her to make it clear she’s in trouble, but I also need to pace it better.
  2. Writing it in first-person is turning out to be somewhat problematic for two reasons. The longer it takes to convince “Dorothy” that this really is Oz, the longer I’m actually shutting the reader out of the truth, too. Because the reader has to experience everything through “Dorothy” in first person, even while “Dorothy” is in denial. Also, I haven’t really hit on a likeable voice for “Dorothy”, probably partly because of her denial. I haven’t made a decision on this yet. There may be a way I can fix “Dorothy’s” voice. On the other hand, third person frees me to let the reader in on things Dorothy hasn’t figured out yet and, if I want, even to jump to another character for a chapter. That might be the deciding factor.

At any rate, I’m getting closer to getting back to this story.

 

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First-Person Point of View

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2013| 1 Comment »

There are a couple of reasons why I want to talk about first-person point of view today.

The first is that my Weird Oz Story is my first attempt at novel-length first person point of view. I don’t actually think that’s why I’m stuck on that one–at least not directly.

I’ve written a couple of short stories (novelettes, really)–“Heart of Oak” and “Becoming Lioness”–in first person, but never a novel. There’s a reason for that. The shorter stories could be told from a single point of view. “Heart of Oak” really had to be told in first person, so much of that story was internal. And I just started hearing “Becoming Lioness” in first person in my head–after the first draft had already been written–and I decided to go with it.

The main reason I’ve never written a novel in first person is that I usually write from more than one point of view. (MAGE STORM being the only completed exception to date.) In my young adult stories, specifically, I usually write at least from the points of view of the girl and her love interest. Sometimes, the antagonist, too. That’s hard to do in first person.

I’ve read several published novels with more than one first-person point of view character and almost universally I’ve been struck by one thing–all the characters sound the same. They don’t have individual voices that distinguish them from each other, sometimes even when the characters have wildly different backgrounds. They should speak and think differently from each other, but I have to check the top of the page to know which character is using the pronoun “I” in a particular chapter.

I don’t want to write like that, so for now I’m sticking with a (hopefully) invisible third-person narrator when I have more than one point of view character.

On a brighter note, I have finally read a story in which multiple first-person point of view characters actually sound like different characters. It’s Alchemy, by some fellow writers I “know” from Hatrack River Writers Workshop. That seems to be at least one key to doing this right–three different writers each writing a different character. It’s a really, really good story and only $0.99. You should check it out.

In other news, the Chimeria Omnibus edition (containing both BLOOD WILL TELL and BLOOD IS THICKER) is now available just about everywhere. For a limited time (but probably at least through Christmas), it’s the same price as either book alone.

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image10567743

Also, another chapter of BLOOD IS THICKER is available free on wattpad.

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Re-imagining a Story

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Time to confront the truth. I’m stuck on my Weird Oz Story. I can–and probably will–finish Chapter 10. After that, I just can’t see my way ahead. I know where the story needs to end, but I don’t see how I get there.

I’ve only been in this place with a story once before. That was SEVEN STARS, the original version of FIRE AND EARTH. The reason then was that I had just gotten the story wrong. (In retrospect, it was a real stinker, too.) I wasn’t able to move ahead and produce a story I liked until I took a step back and reimagined it. A lot of things about that story changed when I did that, but it ended up so much better. That, after all, is the goal–a great story, well-told.

Fire And Earth Cover (Provisional)

So, I’m going to have to take a step back and try to reimagine my Weird Oz Story. Let my subconscious play with it and see what ideas float up out of the depths. I suspect part of the problem was with the initial idea–throwing my Dorothy into Oz alone.  One character by herself can only stay interesting for so long. Chapters 9 and 10 were about getting her some company, but I think it’s just too late. The point was to force her to take charge, but I just don’t thnk it’s working.

Meanwhile, for now, I’ll be doing some revisions to DESERT ROSE (formerly MAGIC AND POWER) and probably working on revisions to the rewrite of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE. That’s the great thing about multiple projects: you never have to be idle.

In other news, I’m getting antsy, so I’ll likely move the publication of the combined edition of BLOOD WILL TELL and BLOOD IS THICKER up to next weekend (about ten days earlier than planned.)

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image10567743

Meanwhile, another chapter of BLOOD IS THICKER is available free on wattpad. Or, you could just buy it and get the whole story all at once.

Blood Is Thicker Cover

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