Spinning My Wheels

The Reads ...

How do you pretend you are accomplishing something instead of spinning your wheels in the sand?  I decided to please myself and spend the weekend finishing Tamora Pierce's The Immortals series, again set in the world of Tortall during a series of medevial style magico-political wars.  

Really don't have any criticism.  Time is long gone for that.  The series was published in the 90s.  It was quite startling to see mention of CompuServ in the acknowledgments.  Pierce researched on the internet as well as the library.  A good reminder to hermit-me that even fantasy is based in the real world.

Must confess, I took some comfort in other pieces of writing (from The Realm of the Gods).  First, it had a prologue which gave me the courage to put the prologue back on Demons.  More important, Piece opened by setting the scene.

""The Stormwing sat on a low wooden perch like a king on his throne.  All around him torches flickered; men spoke quietly as they prepared the evening meal.  He was a creature of bad dreams, a giant bird with the head and chest of a man."  Did you guess this is the villain? 

Web Buzz ...

You shouldn't be surprised that I follow Tamora Pierce's blog.  Her latest discussed the eternal question of boys vs girls in YA fiction.   The title:  Dare to be Stupid.  It's worth reading by writers in all genres, I think.

Progress ...

For all my head spinning, I am making progress.  I think I've gotten all the loose ends of There Be Demons tied ... and put the prologue back on.  Why since so many dislike them?  Well, if I didn't, the arch-villain of the book doesn't appear until the second to the last chapter except as the addressee of various demonic letters.

Got my first rejection from my Demon queries.  Sent the query out last night.  The rejection was waiting in my inbox this morning.  No.  My feelings weren't hurt.  I expect this manuscript to get rejected often because the subject matter/story telling is unconventional.

Dark Solstice.  Have the revised query almost done ... and even found a few agents who haven't rejected it.  Of course, it's been so long since most of the agents have seen it and the thing have been extensively revised -- that I might just requery.  Again the story is off center.  Anyone know off hand someone interested in the grandmother rescuing a granddaughter from the villain who's plotting to usurp the ruler?

Trivia ...

I've been so wrapped up in doing websites, I haven't been doing much besides yakking at my kids on the phone.  

"Series Traps"

The Read ...

Simon R. Green seems to be falling into a major series trap with the recent Drood book, The Spy Who Haunted Me -- overwriting.  Like including more information than is needed to get a point across.  Still, I'm a Simon R. Green fan because he gives me enough laughs and chuckles to be worth $8.00.

Example:  "The Armourer looked more than a little uncomfortable at the thought of his mother (the Matriarch) getting it on with the Independent Agent ..."  [The IA is the guy who set up the contest at the core of the book and provides the villain.  The Matriarch is Drood's grandmother.  The Armourer is his uncle.]

The ponderous style had my internal editor swinging it's red pencil right and left.  The chapters are long and without breaks which can be annoying when you read in snatches.  His many adverbs annoyed me more.  I also didn't notice much character growth, other than his family is a bigger pain in the arse than most. 

There's a new one out -- giving us the tale of what happens after the matriarch is killed.  Eddie Drood is a suspect, of course.  I'll be buying it in spite of the comments above -- if it's mass paperback.

Web Business ...

When reading a link given by Patricia Stoltey on e-publishing to Amazon and Smashwords,  a terrible idea jumped into my head.  Should I publish the "sample" e-stories I was going to put on my someday-site for free?  Would you get terribly angry, put out, etc -- if you found you paid $.50 for something you could've gotten for free?

Maybe I can publish the short story ... and have Renna gossip about everyone for free, including (maybe especially), Mariah.  Renna is an aging Half-Elven who fought at Mariah's side during the Rebellion (that saved the Half-Elven from genocide 400 years ago from Dark Solstice days).

Maybe I can have my snickerdoodle and eat it too.

Progress ...

Not much that I can see.  

Demons -- got the pages changed after I re-added the prologue showing the demons plotting.  After going through it again, it felt funny that the demon-honcho didn't make an appearance until the last three chapters of the book.

Also took the plunge.  I sending it out for rejection to agents, aka as querying agents.  This will be a time consuming process since I'm googling and reading individual agents to try to match the kinds of fantasy I write.  Of course, with some poor agents with stellar reputations, I'll throw caution to the winds and just query.  Still, I'll only be sending out one or two at a time.

Promoting the Half-Elven is proving to be a bigger pain than I even dreaded.  My writing time is going to be spent talking to the guy who might help me build my site.

The rest of my stuff is just fermenting.  I have a couple critiques to do.  Also need to check if I've sent the fantasy critiquers something.

Trivia ...

After a barren five years or so, our 30-foot apricots produced 10 apricots.   About time it did something besides shade our bedroom window.

Series End or Just Shifting Gears?

The Read ...

Ilona Andrews' Magic Bleeds feels like the end of the series.  I clenched my teeth as I read it.  I liked the fast pace and development of the primary and secondary characters in their books and would hate to see the Kate Daniels' world end.  [Like, I'm green with envy ... especially after reading the scene where the hyena alpha tried to manipulate Daniels.]

What clues suggest the ending of the series?  Andrews ties up so many loose ends very little is left hanging.  The only hope in the book the team will continue writing the series is the suggestion of Daniels going freelance.

Since there are three more Kate Daniels books under contract, I can look forward to Kate's continued fights with Curren because the Daniels series is shifting gears to maintain freshness.  Even if they become a couple, I can't imagine them not fighting.  Their characters are too consistently drawn -- the super-protective male and a snarly, independent female, both intelligent.

How do I know about three more titles?  I checked the Andrews website for Kate Daniels series, of course.  You might check it out if you are thinking about site building.  It's one of cleanest, easy to follow sites I've seen.

Website building is whirling around in my mind thanks to WolfSinger Pubs.  I'm in the process of setting up a Half-Elven site, and the Ilona Andrews team has given me a great model.   Just hope Go Daddy's templates have something a computer idiot can manipulate.

Ta-Da for the Web Notes ...

Amazon's crowing about their Kindle sales.  Digital Book World  has a blog putting the hype in perspective.

I have problems with having one company controlling all the books I'm able to buy.  My e-reading device must allow my to buy books from any vendor ... now just the owner of the reader.

Hey, all you distopian writers ... how about a media mogul buying a corrupt Congress to write the laws so his company is the only one that can sell books?

Progress ...

Got my freebie story, set in the world of the Half-Elven [Cavern Between Worlds], more or less revised.  The old man only has to copy-edit the thing, I hope.  It's intended as bait to build a readership/fan base for the Half-Elven world [along with two other short stories].  Hopefully, I'll be able to sell more than a 100 copies of Taking Vengeance when it's published next year.  I'm still in the midst of studying how one does it ... but I'll try the best I can.  It'd be embarrassing if I only sold 20 copies.  [I can see my fiction career whirling down the drain.]

My head's spinning from the projects on the table.  Remember the guy on the Ed Sullivan show who spinned  a bunch of plates on top of dowls?  While musing while giving the cat his lap [aka outlining the next freebie story] I discovered I could remember some of the secondary/minor characters' names.

I'm concentrating my revision efforts on There Be Demons.  I'd rather drag my feet so I'll have an excuse not to query agents.   Maybe if I have the queries out, I won't be tempted to fiddle with the manuscript and can get on with revising Voices.  

Voices may be the most salable of the manuscripts I have endings on -- since it's more conventional.  Just a girl coping with talking to ghosts and bullies.  Mariah is a grandmother and an elf -- which should be a high fantasy quest but centers on a society coping with genetic drift in a small hybrid population.  Demons features a skewed pastiche of Catholic dogma which isn't all that complementary. 

Oh, I forgot Emma.  She's fairly conventional too but is able to see fae and travel to new Faery -- while coping with bullies .

Trivia ...

The raspberries are producing $5.00 bowls over and over again.  Glad they waited until we got back from the family trek.  

Oh, a heads-up.  I'm going to be blogging twice a week -- unless something drastic happens.  I've just got too much on my plate. 

All Tyros

stand at attention and salute.  For what it's worth, I'm saluting Carol O'Connell's Bone by Bone.

Loved her Mallory series, but I was reading them for pleasure ... not looking for things I should do when I try to write.  Oh, I write ... but how effective I am is open to question.

Lessons from My Reading:  Finished reading Bone by Bone yesterday.  I find I was right to read the book in chunks rather than bits-n-pieces.  The last 50 pages +/- tied all the questions together and answered them -- even the origins of the mysterious mother-goddess-counselor character.  What I thought were red herrings/superfluous secrets ended up tied to mystery-B which was related to mystery-A (the missing brother) by the relationships of the people involved.  What a story board O'Connell must have constructed to keep it all straight!

For the record, O'Connell fulfilled P.D. James' comments about detective fiction.  Plot is important but characterization is its equal.  All 20 or so actors came across as people.  Also, the one guy with the motive who sort of disappeared came back as a drunken-cop in the last third of the book.  The ending centered around torturing a confession from him without the main character laying a hand on  him.  Beautiful.

So, my jaw hangs (figuratively) as I wonder if I could have written so masterfully if I had turned serious about writing fiction in the 70s instead of the 00s.  Gives me something to think about as I structure Maren.

Progress:  Emma...  I'm doing whatever I'm doing in the middle of it now.  I no longer feel so comfortable with what I accomplised -- if anything more than an ending.

Demons... Did I say I submitted my revised query to a few agents?  I'm not holding my breath ... even about getting an ejection.

Maren ... She keeps opening the door of the room where I've shoved her, but she's mostly glaring at me.  Maybe telling me to get on with it?  It's kind of strange having this this person with her eyebrow ring and three tear drop tattoos staring at me.  Reminding me she's waiting for me to get my act together?

Trivia:  Christmas is almost done.  Still have to write the dreaded Christmas letter.  Maybe tonight.  We also have to distribute the local goodie bags, but that's mostly part of the fun.  Coffee.  Good conversation.  Etc.