Social Media Sin #3

Phoning it in because you think you SHOULD. I mean. Everyone else is doing the Social Media thing! Taking the online world by storm. Or at least maybe talking to people. Via pixels. But hey! Selling things ulterior motive!

No. No. No. This is beaching yourself on the shores of social media hell simply because you envy someone else's easy, pithy style and/or number of followers. Yeah, I had to reach for a metaphor to match my photo. Work with me.

In echo of what Marshall said so well yesterday, the social media thing isn't compulsory. There are absolutely people who have just enough extroversion in their generally introverted little hearts to make the social media thing look easy. But, you know, do you. If watching your Twitter feed scroll gives you hives, don't do it. If Facebook or Pinterest or Tumblr or anything else is a black hole mysteriously swallowing hours of your day, you have a problem and should probably cold turkey that crack.

Here's the rule I apply to me: If fun = yes, then go. If fun = pulling teeth, then no. Okay. There is an ancillary rule: Word count for the day must be achieved BEFORE any social media. Because writing is my job. Social media is a tool, yes, and fun - but it supports the writing, not the other way around. Why such simple rules?

It goes back to Jeffe's theme on the subject: Engagement. I find that me yelling BUY MY THING is as much fun as slamming my fingers repeatedly in car doors. It's off-putting when someone else fills my feeds with desperate buy links, I have no intention of doing it to someone else. Now. Annoying people with cat photos? Or with ridiculous, nerdy memes? Or comically awful nihilistic end of the world scenarios? Sign me up. Yeah. I know. I need to work on my definition of fun, don't I? The thing is a sense of enjoyment translates. If the person behind the social media posts is genuinely having a good time posting, that comes through. And there's nothing like a bit of fun to draw people in to engage with you. At least, that works for me. Sure. There are people who attract attention by posting outrage over this cause or that cause. I'm glad there are people who do that - the unexamined dark corners of humanity could use a little light shone into them. If that's your thing, more power to you. But that's the point: Do what matters to you. Make room for having a good time.

Shoulds are boulders. They'll crush you if you let them.

Creative Jumpstarts

Burnout is a real thing, and it is something I worry about.  My multi-series strategy is something I came up with to help combat it-- I'd be less burned out if each thing I write focuses on different characters.  But even still, I need to have other ways to kickstart my creative energy when I'm in a lull.

Part of how I do that is delving back into the primordial parts of the creative process- worldbuilding, outlining, mapmaking.  I love doing that stuff even if there isn't necessarily a project for it on the horizon.  

But I also love to keep going back in and expanding the work I've done, finding new ways to express it.

Which is why I'm so thrilled I found a new toy, which I'm going to blatantly shill: Aeon Timeline.

This is a cool program that lets you create timelines, spanning from cosmic levels of ages down to by-the-minute.  You can use it to work out the history of a worldbuild or outline a specific project.  You can even create your own calendars and dating system, track multiple arcs, tie events to people or things.  It is a powerful tool.  It even can sync with Scrivener, which isn't a feature I've tried out yet, but I think I will when I dive into the Lady Henterman's Wardrobe draft.

But I'm really thrilled.  Plus you can export in all sorts of ways, like this image of the history of Druthal:

So, let's have a bit of fun.  If there's something in the history of Druthal that intrigues, tell me in the comments.  I'll expand upon it in an upcoming post.

For now, back to the word mines.  These books don't write themselves, after all.

Perils of the Writer: The Agony of Titles

Coming up with titles for books is one of my most loathed things.   Almost everything has had a working title for some portion of its existence.  And those working titles were often atrocious.

Case in point: when I first started drafting what would become The Thorn of Dentonhill, my working title was "Tools of the Trade".  In fact, in the original drafting, while I had an outline, the idea that Veranix would become "The Thorn" wasn't part of the plan.  That initially evolved out a need to have his enemies refer to him as something other than "the guy".  But my initial critique readers thought "Tools of the Trade" was incredibly bland, and I needed something that felt unique, gave the story its own identity in a way that "Tools of the Trade" never would.

A Murder of Mages was originally just "Maradaine Constabulary", though I occasionally considered "The Mage Murders", up until the point where it was being sold. Finalizing the title was part of getting the contract squared.  Funny thing is, A Murder of Mages was a title I had considered but initially dismissed as if it was not available or taken already or something.  Which is absurd.

When writing The Alchemy of Chaos, my working title was just "The Alchemist", and then "The Alchemist of Aventil", which I didn't think was a workable title by the time I had finished the manuscript.  There were so many things going on that having a title that focused on just one bit seemed wrong.  I sent it to my editor with the title "The Elements of Aventil", which she didn't like at all.  We had a few email exchanges bandying potential titles back and forth before we came up with The Alchemy of Chaos.  I'm quite glad we did, because it meant that the third Thorn book could then have the title The Imposters of Aventil, which she liked right away.

Had a similar problem with An Import of Intrigue.  My working title had always been "The Little East". because I wanted to conjure up the mystery of this neighborhood of foreign enclaves.  My editor thought it was too vague, though, making it sound explicitly Asian when that isn't the case.  I played around with some other titles that played off of collective nouns like A Murder of Mages does, and one of them was "An Intrigue of Imports", and my editor said, "Let's flip that around."  And we're keeping the collective nouns, if not the alliteration, with A Parliament of Bodies.

The Holver Alley Crew, coming out next year, has kind of always been Holver Alley Crew, though since I initially considered that an entire-series title, I played around with it being called "The Fire Gig".  But that never really took.  And my editor was all in for the title of that second book, which is one I've had in my back pocket for years, Lady Henterman's Wardrobe.  

All right, that's enough name-checking all my current and future books.  Time to get to work.

---

The UC Review has nice things to say about The Alchemy of Chaos, as well as new DAW author Gerald Brandt's The Courier, which is probably going to find its way near the top of my to-read in the near future.  

Release Day: The Alchemy of Chaos -- A Novel of Maradaine

Happy Release Day to our Thursday Blogger, Marshall Ryan Maresca!  His follow-up to fantasy THE THORN OF DENTONHILL is out today! Spend some time in the magical world of Maradaine. Whether it's your first or third visit, hold on tightly. Things are about to get...chaotic.

THE ALCHEMY OF CHAOS

Veranix Calbert is The Thorn—the street vigilante-turned-legend—and a danger to Willem Fenmere, the drug kingpin of Dentonhill. Veranix is determined to stop Fenmere and the effitte drug trade, especially when he discovers that Fenmere is planning on using the Red Rabbits gang in his neighborhood. But Veranix is also a magic student at the University of Maradaine, and it's exam week. With his academic career riding on his performance, there's no time to go after Fenmere or the Red Rabbits. But when a series of pranks on campus grow deadly, it's clear that someone has a vendetta against the university, and Veranix may be the only one who can stop them...

BUY IT NOW

Amazon   |   B&N   |   BAM!   |    IndieBound

Perils of the Writer: Recognizing When It's Time To Trunk

I think that the Trunk Novel is an important thing.  Some people can, of course, write that first novel thats just a thing of brilliance.  Others get their process-of-work writing out in shorter works, so by the time they actually write a novel, they know what they are doing.

But for most of us, learning How To Novel takes some work, which means we have some misshapen Novellike Objects in our closets.

Probably one of the hardest things you can do is learn how to call Time Of Death* when it isn't going to work.  Some novels are just unsalvageable.  And that is hard to face, because you put heart and soul and hundreds of hours into something, and it's never going to work.

It's never going to work.

I mean, I'm not being melodramatic here.  That's the death of something.

The manuscript for The Crown of Druthal clocks in around 125,000.  And there are some really good bits in there.  And there was definitely a point where my entire mindset was based on selling it and pushing that series.  I was invested in making it work.  I had sketched out a whole plan.

But it wasn't a novel.  It had length, it had characters, it had dialogue, events that happened, but... it wasn't a novel.

And I needed to recognize that it wasn't, and my energy was best spent elsewhere.

I don't know exactly when I formally gave up on it.  Near as I can tell from digging through old emails, it was somewhere around 2009.

It's terrible.  It's not a novel.  But I wouldn't trade the process of having done it, because that was how I learned how to write the books that followed.

--
*- Yes, I watched a lot of E/R back in the day.

The Anticipated Things of 2016

I have to admit it, when it comes to books, I've had my own head deep into my own work, so I haven't been paying too much attention to what is scheduled to come out in the coming year, or is hoped to come out this year.  I went and did a cursory look at the various "Can't Wait" or "Highlight Anticipated" lists, and most of the top things listed are books 3, 4 or more of series that I haven't read yet.  I am looking forward to reading The Thorn of Emberlain when it comes out, though.

One book in the coming year that is on my radar is Charlie Jane Anders's All The Birds In The Sky.  I've been a fan of Charlie's work as the editor of io9, and she's getting tons of good buzz, so this looks like a book to check out.

In other media, well, I'm an absolute sucker for just about anything superhero related, and next year is delivering plenty for me along those lines: Legends of Tomorrow, Batman v. Superman, Captain America: Civil War, Daredevil Season 2... and that's just getting us up to April.

And that will be the sort of thing that will help keep my creative brain energized in the months to come.  Which, believe me, friends: I'm going to need.

Hope your new year is joyous.  See you in 2016.

My Choice of Children's Books

When I was a kid, there was one book I just plain consumed, over and over again, which was D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.  This book, to me, was the gold standard for taking something as rich and complicated as Greek Mythology and making it accessible to a young audience.

I loved this book as a child. It was first published in 1962, but it's rather timeless.  I had my dog-eared copy as a kid, and my son received two copies for his fourth birthday from different people.  It's a good child-gift book, after all.

I remember in sixth grade, we were doing a unit on ancient Greece, and for reasons that I can't quite recall, I was surprised by the fact that I was supposed to give an oral presentation on Greek mythology, which my teacher thought I was going to be utterly unprepared to do.*  But since I had read this book backwards and forwards numerous times, I then took up the entire class period relating the various stories I had long since consumed.

So this was my first grounding in the classics.  The D'Aulaires also wrote one on Norse Mythology, which I read as a kid, but it didn't stick with me in the same way.  But if you're looking for a book to give a child that will blow up their imagination into all things fantastic, well, you could hardly go wrong with it.

---

*- See: surprised.

Things I Read This Year

So, I really didn't read anywhere near as much as I ought to have this year.  I've been slow at it.  It's one reason why I can't get too upset when a friend tells me they haven't read Thorn or Murder yet, because there's so much in my growing To-Be-Read pile, much of it by people I consider friends, that it would be extraordinarily hypocritical of me to hold people to standards that I don't even remotely live by.

Just a quick glance at my TBR list, just from books from this year:

Gemini Cell by Myke Cole
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Grace of Kings by Ken Liu*
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older
Archangel by Marguerite Reed
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
Dreams of Shreds and Tatters by Amanda Downum
The End of All Things by John Scalzi

And that doesn't even include the things that are books three or four of series I hadn't even read book one of yet.

I should read more and faster, I know.

So what did I read-- and I mean actually read and finish, not start and bounce off of-- and actually like?

Cold Iron, by Stina Leicht
Ok, I'm cheating a bit on this, because I'm not done, but I'm two-thirds through and enjoying it, and I'm familiar enough with Stina's work to believe in her ending it well-- or as well as a Book One in a planned series of at least three can end.  Stina's style is brisk and fun, and you can tell she loves her characters just enough to be horrible to them.

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
This was a fun one.  Steampunk adventure with a mecha sewing machine.  How can you not love it?

Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
I have to admit-- Wes left a lot hanging for the second book, but I'm kind of a sucker for narratives about jerks who do the right thing, and his protagonist fits the bill.  James really is an unlikable bastard, but you still enjoy him.

So, there's my three for this year.  I'm going to try better next year.  But I've also got plenty to write.  So I'm off to it.

---

*- I started this and had to put it to the side for a bit.  I intend to get back to it.

Perils of the Writer: The Final Pass

So, about a month ago, I turned in the "final" draft of An Import of Intrigue, though there are still several stages of copy editing and proofing before the actual finished book comes out, and that is still a ways away.  Currently we're scheduled for November 2016.  I know you're all eager for the continued adventures of the Maradaine Constabulary, and I'm eager to give them to you, but we all have to be patient.  But the book is turned in, and the heavy lifting on my part is done.  

At this point, I don't have the luxury of tweaking and fidgiting with the manuscript.  Even with the long lead time now before Import comes out, I had a deadline and I think it's important to hit those.  I'm not a superstar who can get away with the big gap between books, or at least, I don't have the large, dedicated fanbase who will be there no matter when the next book comes out.  My business strategy has been: do good work, do it efficiently, and do it on time.  

So, how do I go from a solid draft of a novel to final one turned in?  How do I know I've got it done and I can send it off, not to worry about it anymore?  (Or, you know, at least minimize the worry until the copyedits come and show me All The Mistakes.)  

Once I've received edits on the polished draft from my editor, I print up a hard copy and read it, pen in hand.  I make a lot of my own notes based on my editor's, and then I've got a copy of the manuscript that looks a lot like this:

A lot of these notes involve cleaning up sloppy phrasing, clarifying details and fixing minor continuity mistakes.  Once I'm done with that, I go back into the master Scrivener document and implement the changes.  

Once that's done, I really feel like anything further is fiddling out of fear rather than actual useful editing.  I mean, yes, there might still be things that slipped past me, but more time spent with another reading pass is diminishing returns. Could there be something more I could do?  I suppose, but I believe that perfect is the enemy of good.  There reaches a point where you have to decide, "This is done, and I have to move forward."  

And then go on to the next thing.  Which is the third Thorn book, provisionally titled, The Imposters of Aventil.  

Brief Thoughts on Appetite-Whetting Fiction

Today I'm in the kitchen doing all sorts of things-- if you've read my books it probably does not surprise you that I'm into food and I'm the primary cook in the house.  I remember when I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, one "rule" he puts in there to maximize your "healthy" eating is, "you can eat anything that you make from scratch", and I though, "this does not limit me much".    In fact, I'll cop that I'm something of a food snob.  

I've made a point of including food in all my work, because food is culture, food is worldbuilding.  I've made a point of highlighting how Druthal has many different regional cuisines.  

But what books have gotten my appetite going?

I'll have to confess, it doesn't happen very often.  See above: something of a food snob.  At least, it doesn't happen with fiction.  Foodie memoirs, like Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential or Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones and Butter?  Yeah, those got me inspired to go down to the kitchen and getting to work.

I can think of one example though.  While I'm a food snob, my snobbery leans toward rustic simplicity.  There's a passage in David Eddings's Polgara the Sorceress, the second sort-of-prequel to the Belgariad, where Polgara decides that Faldor's Farm (where the Belgariad begins) is the place she's going to settle down for a bit to raise Garion, and thus she's going to take over the kitchen.  The former head of the kitchen was an incompetent drunk, and Polgara has to "audition" to take over with minimal time and mostly force of personality (which Polgara has in spades).  So she whips together a vegetable stew and biscuits, which the farmhands-- having not had a decent-tasting meal in months-- eagerly consume every last drop of.  

I felt like going down to the kitchen and making a stew after that.

All right, I've got a full day of kitchen ahead of me now, so I'm off.  Hope your days are filled with joy and delicious things.

The Sweat, The Hard, The Hours.

I'm not much of one for simple quotes of advice on writing craft.  Part of the reason for that is it's not that simple.

It's about doing the work, the hard work, to get it done.

But, if you want quotes, if you want some of the things that ring in my head about doing the work, it's better for you to hear them.

The basics what they're all saying: Do the work. Keep doing it. It will not be easy.  Put in the hours.

There's not a writer worth the ink their work is printed on who will tell you this is some easy lark.  Anyone who does is selling something. There are tools to help improve, there is mastery of the craft, but all that comes from just planting yourself in front of your writing implement of choice and working at it.

I joke about "going down to the word mines", but it helps to keep that frame of mind that it's a process of work and effort, and it shouldn't be taken lightly.   

And on that note, I've got plenty of that work still do to, so off I go...

Dialogue on dialogue

"So, I got a question for you."
"Go ahead."
"Dialogue."
"That's not a question."
"The question's implicit."
"No, it isn't.  That's an absurd statement."
"Fine.  How does one write good dialogue?"
"You're asking me?"
"You are the professional writer."
"That's true."
"Some would say you've got a good ear for it."
"That is the term of art used."
"Term of art?"
"Term of art.  Because, that's right... The yard for the boy."
"Yard for the boy?"
"Well, that's the whole..."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're supposed to ask, 'What is a 'term of art'?"
"Why?"
"That's the dialogue."
"Are we doing Mamet or something?"
"Actually..."
"Fuck that, I'm not doing Mamet."
"Maybe you should."
"Do Mamet?"
"Look at the theatre, if nothing else.  You want to write dialogue, listen to people, listen to the rhythm of how they talk.  But also pay attention to playwrights.  Their craft is almost entirely dialogue."
"You were a playwright."
"I've written plays, yes."
"And that's helped you write dialogue?"
"I think it was crucial in developing my craft.  In my development of my craft.  Same with being an actor.  I had to take those words and put them through my mouth.  When I write dialogue, I'm constantly thinking about what it would be like to say them."
"And that helps?"
"Absolutely it helps.  If it sounds right being spoken, if you can get that in your ear-- see, there's the term of art--"
"Please don't start that again."
"But if you can get it in your ear, then it rings true on the page.  They hear it.  They hear the voice of the character.  Sometimes so well, you don't even have to attribute the dialogue."
"For real?"
"Hell, yes.  Check out Rules for Werewolves by Kirk Lynn.  It's a novel that's only unattributed dialogue.  And Lynn?  Playwright."
"Worth checking out?"
"Completely.  So, again:  watch, read, listen, then write.  Got it?"
"Got."
"Good."

Sticking to the Goals

So, now that I've gotten through October, I've got a few things of my plate. Namely, the proofs for The Alchemy of Chaos have been finalized, and I submitted the final draft of An Import of Intrigue.  Which means now all I've got to work on is rough draft stuff.

I've mentioned before that when I'm in drafting mode (which is just about always), I target 500 words a day.  I often surpass that, but 500 makes a good target for me.  It's a not a breakneck finish-a-novel-in-a-month pace, of course, but it works best for how I write.  I tend to be very deliberate in how I write and plot, so the pound-it-out-and-fix-it-later method does not work for me.

But what I need to do-- what every person who has the intention to actually write a novel needs to put their ass in the chair (or their feet on the floor, if you've got a standing desk), and just plain do the work.

The work itself is not the sexy, exciting part about being a writer.

I say that because I notice there's a certain class of hopeful-novelists who don't want to write, they want to have written.  They want a shiny book to point to, and the work is something they kind of gloss over.  There's a certain ginormous best-seller who speaks of the process of writing their first novel like it was some kind of unintended wacky accident, that they were just typing away and *novel occurred* out of the blue.  No.

The process of writing a novel cannot be expressed in the passive voice.  You've got to actively decide, each day, each week, that you're going to get it done.

Speaking of, I've got quite a few things percolating, above and beyond the third Thorn novel and the Space Opera in Progress, so I need to get to work on that.

But not before sharing this big news: The Alchemy of Chaos has a cover!  The fine people at SFSignal shared it with the world, and again Paul Young has done me right.

Check out The Alchemy of Chaos over at Goodreads.

Perils of the Writer: Knocking the Characters Around

Last week I talked about how, as an action writer, the weapon choices a character makes helps define them.

Of course, the other side of the action story is being on the receiving end.  As fond as I am of Veranix, Minox and Satrine, they are not infallible, and fight sequences don't always end well for them.

Sometimes quite badly.

The big thing I always have to watch out for is getting too "cinematic" with their recovery from injuries.  Plenty of movies have people get shot, fall off buildings, suffer major head trauma, and then walk it off five minutes later.  It might make for good movies, but it isn't particularly realistic.

Now, how much realism does a fantasy novel need, you ask?  That depends on your rules.

For example, in Maradaine, one thing magic cannot be used for is healing.  So that keeps me from having an easy out when things go badly.

What this means is I have to keep an eye out for the long term consequences.  Scars last.  Some things never quite heal right again. The body will give you a constant reminder that something isn't right any more.

Thinking about that also forced me to tone down certain things.  I tend to avoid characters getting knocked out over the head if I want them to get up again.  A bit in Thorn where Veranix gets grazed by a crossbow bolt was a change from the rough draft, where the bolt goes through his leg.  I decided I needed to avoid any sort "never walk right again", at least at this point.

Of course, those long term consequences can also be character points.  Without delving into spoilers, an injury suffered in one of the books already out provides the seed for a significant subplot in the sequel.

--

Speaking of sequels, The Alchemy of Chaos is just about three months away.  Both it and An Import of Intrigue have Goodreads pages, Alchemy can be preordered everywhere you preorder books, and we should be sharing a cover for Alchemy very soon.  In the meantime, I've got to get back to work on all the things.

Worldbuilding: How the Arms Make the Character

I write action-filled books, so obviously, my characters are going to be armed.  This is something I put a lot of thought into when first designing the characters and the world.

First off, in Maradaine, I didn't want guns.  They just didn't fit into the mold of the world I wanted Maradaine to be.*  Plus, I don't really know about guns, and when you get that stuff wrong, those who do let you know.  Sometimes quite loudly.  So I avoid that conversation completely.

But which weapons do I give my characters?

For Veranix in Thorn of Dentonhill, I really wanted his weapons to mean something to him.  His bow is to honor his father-- former soldier and leader in the Aventil streets, and then later a trick shot performer in the circus.  His staff is to honor his mother, who a circus acrobat, aerialist and tightrope walker.  Of course, they are also the tools he is skilled with, but that's because those skills were passed on by his parents.

For Minox and Satrine in A Murder of Mages, what I chose for them had to apply to the constabulary force as a whole.  They carry crossbows (usually loaded with blunt-tip quarrels, for an option that is not-necessarily-as-lethal as a pointed ones) and handsticks, The handsticks are, of course, why the constabulary are called "sticks" on the streets.

A lot of the Aventil street gang folk, like Colin, have knives, knucklestuffers (think brass knuckles or this beauty my friend Kat used to carry in college) and cudgels.  Now, I also had to consider what this meant on a cultural level.  Why are people on the streets carrying  this stuff, and what does it mean, legally?  Maradaine is a civilized city, after all, with an established constable force, legal code and court system.  

But Maradaine also has a dark past, where corrupt lords had no checks to arrest anyone they pleased for whatever reason-- or no reason-- as the mood struck them.  So when the founders of the Parliament and other aspects of Druthal's modern government were drafting their Rights of Man, the need to protect oneself from false or unjust arrest was prevalent in their minds.  Thus enshrined in the Rights of Man is the right to be armed, explicitly to protect oneself from unjust arrest.  At one point in Thorn, Colin even mentions it when confronted by a stick. 

These character-based weapon concerns, as well as how old traditions can clash with a "modern" world, come into play in several aspects in Way of the Shield,  a book that I hope to have some news for you about in the near future.  

Also, I decidedly made some unique weapon choices for some of the more flamboyant characters showing up in The Alchemy of Chaos, coming out early next year.  Hope you're looking forward to that as much as I am.  Until then, I have a very full plate of edits, proofs and drafting for the rest of the month (and year).  So I better get to it.

---

*- Not that fantasy can't have guns.  There is, of course, the rising subgenre of Flintlock Fantasy.

Perils of the Writer: Characters Out Of Control

When other writers talk about characters "getting away from them" or "out of their control", I have to confess, I'm at a bit of a loss to understand that.  I'm not saying that in a "I'm right, they're wrong" sort of way-- it's just a difference in process.

For example, I write with a well-established outline, so my major character's goals, intentions and actions are largely worked out in the outline phase.  In the drafting phase, none of them are going to "surprise" me, nor do I have a conflict between What The Plot Needs and What The Character Needs, because I've already taken that into account.   If one is more of a pantser, I can see how the process of pantsing a first draft can create these Plot vs. Character conflicts, where what a character needs to do is at odds with what you, the writer, need them to do for the plot.

However, notice I say "major characters".   This is a crucial distinction, because it's the minor characters where those surprises and discoveries can come into play, mostly because they aren't even taken into account when the outline is written.

Take, for an example from Thorn of Dentonhill, the character of Hetzer.  Hetzer initially existed solely because Colin needed someone to talk to in a scene.  I establish that Colin is a street captain in the Rose Street Princes, so I need someone for Colin to be a captain of.  Hetzer was never in the outline.  Nor were Jutie or Tooser, the other Princes in Colin's crew.  So, when I reached the point in the story where Colin makes a crucial decision and acts upon it... Hetzer is by his side.  Hetzer got elevated to being a crucial part of the story-- even being the POV character for a couple scenes-- because it made perfect sense in the moment.  He stepped up in the story because that was exactly what Hetzer would do.

Now, I'm not going to act like this was some sort of out-of-my-hands divined-from-above thing.  This was a realization I made when writing the scene, and that realization made it clear how the details of the rest of the story played out.  I could have ignored that realization, made a different choice.  I know my first choices aren't always the best.*  Heck, a major thing that became a crucial character element for Minox in A Murder of Mages wasn't even in the rough draft.

My point is this: you know who your characters are.  You know what they need and want, and what choices they'll make because of that.  How that manifests in your skull during the process.... that's not for me to say.

What IS for me to say is that I'll be signing at the Penguin booth at New York ComicCon at 4pm on Sunday.  That is LITERALLY the final hour of the con, so if you're there and you still have strength to shuffle on over to the booth, come say hi.  ALSO, as I said before, there's a multi-author Post-NYCC Event in the Penguin Random House offices on Monday at 11am, and if you can come, you totally should, because they're giving away free books, and there are many authors there who are much cooler than me.

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*- Back in my theatre days, my usual costume/set/art director had a mantra: "Your first three ideas are wrong."  A bit pessimistic, but it highlights a key point of it being okay to work through bad ideas to get to the good ones.

Serial Fiction: Part Five

Through the Yellow Doors.  To his team.  Memory was returning now-- the whos, the whats and the whys.
But he had to keep it cordoned off.  They were still in his head: their chips, his chip, his own meat brain.  All of them were trying to make him do different things, and he needed to break each bit into a different part of his psyche.
Shatter himself to save himself.
Through the Yellow Doors.  Three cryo containment units, lined up against the walls, and four goons tending to them.
"How is he up?" one of them said, drawing out a stun gun.
"Won't last," another said, pointing at Drake.
Drake, he thought.  My name is Drake.
"The bed is waiting for you," the goon said. Code phrase.  Their chips lit up in his skull, sending his body the message to doze off, stand peacefully to be led back to his place, so they could start all over again.
The message was sent, but the compulsion didn't come with it.  Drake broke off that part of himself and locked it in the closet of his psyche.  It could come out when it learned how to behave.
But Drake did what their chip wanted.  At least, he let these goons think so.
Hands loosely grabbed his arms, about to lead him off.
Like lightning, he twisted his arms around the backs of the owners of those hands, and before they could react, cracked their heads together.
He grabbed the stun gun off one of them as they dropped, and took down the other two in a heartbeat.
Three containment units.  Three of his people.
First one had Arthur, his loyal back-up for as long as he could remember.
Second one had Crowley, best damn infiltrator he'd ever worked with.
And the third... had Aurora.
But Aurora wasn't real.  She was a figment they had fed him.  But there she was, in the cryo unit, clear as anything.
The units were daisy-chained together, encrypted shut-down sequence.  He could force a unit open, but that would cause the other two to fail.  Saving one of his people meant dooming the other two.

Perils of the Writer: Writing Synopses

Synopses are a necessary evil.  You need them to query, you need them to submit to publishers.  No writer I've talked to likes doing them.  They're horrible.

Well, maybe not "horrible", but certainly no fun.

Really, there are two kinds of synopses: the ones you write for the book you've written, and the ones you write for the book you intend to write.  Personally, the second kind are far easier for me.

This is partly because of how I outline.  I usually write out about 1000-1500 words as my outline for a 100K novel, so turning that into a synopses is mostly a matter of changing it from a document only I need to make sense out of into one that any one could make sense out of.  More often than not, my outlines are written in a long form already, instead of bullet points, so this essentially just an editing pass.

On the other hand, paring down a finished work down to around 1000 words?  That puts me in a tailspin.  Which parts are the critical things to highlight?  Which can be ignored for the sake of the synopsis.

I mean, it should be easy, right: Just say what happens in the book.  But it never seems that way.

Best advice I can give is to try and bring some emotional distance to it.  Imagine how someone else might write the wikipedia entry for the book.  What would your average reader take away as the key story points?

(This is an interesting exercise in general.  I find it kind of fascinating which elements reviewers focus on-- and moreover the ones they don't-- for both Thorn and Murder.)

Is there a milestone in one's career where one doesn't have to write synopses anymore?   I don't know.  I'm certainly a ways away from it.

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Reminder: I'm at FenCon this weekend.  If you're in the area, come say hello!

Perils of the Writer: Keeping All Those Balls in the Air

As I'm now hip deep into the process of the third Thorn book, I've developed a lot more respect for writers whose subplots "get away from them", as it were.  Because it turns out it's a lot easier for that to happen than I thought.  It's now completely clear to me how, for example, Rowling went from the lean-and-tight Prisoner of Azkhaban to the 800-page beast that was Order of the Phoenix.

Both The Alchemy of Chaos and An Import of Intrigue have bits where minor characters from their respective first books have expanded roles.  Part of this was out of necessity of the plot-- I needed POV characters for a situation where those characters were the best choice.  Part of that comes from enriching the world altogether-- bigger things are happening with the gangs in Aventil, for example, so that means more people and new situations.  

So, the big question: how do I keep that natural growth from getting out of control?  Because as I reworked the outline for Thorn III, it became clear there were things I needed to at least acknowledge that I hadn't planned on before.  Characters who barely existed on the fringes of Thorn now needed a subplot.  How did that happen?  How do I keep that from taking things over and making what should be a lean action-y novel into a doorstopper?

For me, the main thing is pacing: each scene has to have a definitive this-drives-this-part-of-the-plot purpose. If it's not buying me anything, I drop it.  Case in point, in Import, I have a scene where Satrine visits with Sister Alana.  Mostly this is to put a pin in there that Sister Alana still exists and that Satrine has rekindled a friendship with her, because she doesn't really have a role in the plot itself.  But the scene gives character work on Satrine, her frame of mind in the current case, and advances the plotlines of her personal life.  Now, a minor character from Murder who gets bumped up in Import is Corrie, Minox's sister who works the night shift in the Constabulary.  I needed her as a POV character because Things Happen where neither Minox or Satrine are present, and hers was the best fit.  But that meant I couldn't just POV her when I needed her and ignore her at the later. She needed to stay involved throughout.  But, again: it must advance the plot.  I'm not going to check in with characters like Reverend Pemmick or Lieutenant Benvin or Commissioner Enbrain just for the sake of doing it.  

Now, do I succeed with this?  I think most of the time I do.  But that's for you all to judge next year when The Alchemy of Chaos and An Import of Intrigue come out.  

In the mean time, I've got plenty to do in the word-mines, including finalizing aspects of both those manuscripts, so off I go.  See you down there.

Perils of the Writer: Order from my Chaos

Any writer-- especially a genre writer-- is going to have a lot of notes.   Character notes, story notes, location notes, worldbuilding notes, etc. etc.

Keeping track of that all can be exhausting.  I use notes in Scriviner, I use Evernote, I use Excel spreadsheets, I use Photoshop for maps.  I code everything with a three-letter tag for the series and a two-digit identifier for the entry in that series.  For example, The Thorn of Dentonhill was VER01 (First Veranix book), and A Murder of Mages was MCI01 (first Maradaine Constabulary Inspectors book).  Right now I have seven "active" project codes*: four 

Since I'm constantly working on different things, I have a lot of things open at any given time, and the notes, spreadsheets, etc. for those things are incorporated.  

So, a snapshot of what I've got open right now in all my various works in progress and secret projects.

VER03: Third Thorn book, which is my "primary" project right now.  Thus I have with it all my city of Maradaine notes, maps of the city and of Aventil explicitly, a Dramatis Personae and outline breakdown for this book, and my notes on Tetchball.  

BAN01: My still-in-progress space opera.  In addition to the manuscript, Dramatis Personae and outline breakdown, I have notes on the main alien races, as well as the various others which are part of the larger universe but not involved in this story.  I've got the 10,000+ stars of the 'verse on a monster spreadsheet, and some photoshop files that attempt to visualize the 3-D starmaps in a way that makes sense.  

MSD01: Secret Project #1.  Still very much in the early work-in-progress stages, with the requisite Dramatis Personae and outline breakdown, as well as maps, worldbuilding notes on places and flora and fauna, and a long-term plan for that.  There's always a long term plan.

9DE00: Secret Project #2.  It's a "00" because this is something fully in the worldbuilding/planning stage, not actual-manuscript stage.  Here I've got maps-- oh so many maps-- and culture/worldbuilding notes in progress.  I have a lot of linguistic notes, including an excel file with fifteen different phonemic inventories.  I have history notes-- still very much in broadbrush-- and the beginnings of character notes.  I still don't know entirely what this is going to be or the shape it'll take, but I am very excited about what I'm doing with it.

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*- Actually, technically, eight, but that eighth one is a Long Plan thing, not something I'm currently writing in any way.