Adventurous Fluff

The Read ...

The book the family lending library gave me provided lots of adventurous fluff to enjoy -- the second volume of R. L. LaFevers Theodosia series, Theodosia and the staff of Osiris.  Think of all the mummies in London, public and private, coming to life and running around after the staff of the Eqyptian god, Osiris, in the dead of night.  All this is complicated by the police inspector who tries to solve the mystery -- without a clue that magic is happening under his nose.

At the beginning of the book, Theodosia is presented with a major problem for an eleven-year- old girl.   Her veddy proper grandmother insists she have a governess so she can become a proper lady, ie. stop mouthing off to the adults in her life  --  In spite of her being smarter than 80% of them.  Of course, all the governesses are despicable and complicate her life, limiting her ability to solve the mystery of the over-active mummies and neutralize the secret societies pursuing her.  [Yes, that was plural.]

LaFevers' plot rolls downhill gathering speed.  The main villain is the Serpents of Chaos come back for another round of trying to best Theodosia, of course.  As the plot twists, possible villains turn into friends.  Friends turn into villains, and possible villains are just red herrings.  As I said, a delightful bunch of fluff.  I wish all the books I read entertained me so much.

I'll close with the pitch:  "Once again, Theodosia takes on secret societies, evil curses, and dark magic too sinister to imagine!"
 

Web Stuff ...

Dark Urban fantasy writer, Justine Musk  blogged on the elements of scenes that make them building blocks of your novel.   There's lots more info in the blog, but I thought this quote should be read by every writer.

"A scene is the basic building block of your novel. A scene is like a novel in miniature. It has its own tiny plot. It starts out in one place, builds tension, reaches climax, and then ends up in a different place."

Looking for critiquers?  Or, just maybe a litmus test to tell you where you need to revise your current WIP?  Isolated without a good writer support community?  Well, Operation Awesome recently posed a blog on identifying the garbage in your writing.  The blog gives some places where you can get some knowledgeable fresh eyes to make some comments about your writing.

Then, there's all that conflicting query writing advice.  Nathan Bransford has a great blog on what to do with it.  [No, not that.] One of the founts of information I picked up from his blog is how fast the publishing industry changes.  I think all the agents who blog are acting like yeast in the setting of preferred styles.  Then, there's that thing called "voice".  Does that mean:  to thy own self be true?"

All sorts of good stuff seems to popping up in the blogs.  Guess the end of summer rejuvenates the brain cells.  If you're fussing about querying like me, you will be interested in agent Mary Kole's blog about how she evaluates manuscripts at Kidlit.  She's also doing a Webinair, but it costs.

Progress ...

The revision of Voices is coming along.  I keep finding holes I need to fill and infodumps I need to dramatize, and all sorts of stuff to delete.  Haven't gone after the nags -- "to-be-forms", "lys", "ings", passive verbs, etc yet.  [Ain't revising fun!]

Haven't done much with querying ... for any of my manuscripts.  [You do know I hate marketing?]  I do need to send out a couple status queries.  Which comment means I have to go back to websites to see if  "no answer" = rejection.

Did send my Hattenel Half-Elven story to Untreed Reads because Smashwords was much too complicated for me to figure out how to format.  Now I don't have to think about the story for three months ... or more.  Don't have to worry about cover art either.  If I'm lucky, they'll accept and do the formatting for me.

Trivia ...

We were going to take a day trip to Estes Park, Colorado yesterday, but the smoke clouding the hogback some three miles from our house changed our minds.  You may have heard of the Boulder, Colorado mountain subdivisions threaten by fire.  We're about 50-75 miles away, north and east.  Hopefully, the winds die down, and weather pumps some moisture into our air.  Everyone needs more rain than fell yesterday. 

Foreshadowing Your Action

Do you foreshadow what going to happen in your story?  Like, drop tidbits of information in the early chapters that are important to your finale?   Or, does a character wander aimlessly through your narrative ... until suddenly s/he does something that twists the plot the way you want it to go.  The latter is harder to accomplish in a multiple viewpoint story, but still can be done when none of the important characters clues into the motivations of the stealth-character.

The Read ...

Tamora Pierce is a past master of tying up the loose ends and still leaving a hook for the next installment.  My favorite example in Beka Cooper, Bloodhound was a crippled, nasty-tempered pigeon by the name of Slapper.  To understand what I'm saying, you should know that Beka is a young adult set in a medieval fantasy world of Tortall where magic works.   While Beka has magical talents (speaking with the dead who ride pigeons to the Death God and hearing scraps of dialog caught in dust-devils, aka spinners,) --  the stories read like police procedurals.

Slapper appears as part of a greedy flock of pigeons that Beka feeds in the beginning of the day [and other times] -- while writing in the journal that becomes the book.  After the beginning character intros and plot hints are set in the first third (+/-), Slapper appears on the ship taking Beka and her partner to the "scene of the crime".  He annoys Beka regularly by demanding hand-outs 

About 2/3s the way through, one of the minor villains is killed by the super villain's henchmen  and ends up riding Slapper because he had "unfinished" business.  The finale is well-motivated, by a henchman killing Slapper who attacks three of them trying to escape capture.  Beka ignores her orders to stay out of the way to wreck vengeance for Slapper's death.  The problem?  One of the people she chases is the super-villain whom she was ordered to leave alone.

Just in case you didn't notice, I'll repeat.  The book ends like all great young adult books where the fledgling accomplishes what the adults can't do -- find the villain.  Beka's adult partner did link up with her in the end and helped save her bacon.  The scene also resolved the first problem introduced at the beginning of the book.  Beka's bad luck in keeping a partner.

The book would be good study in how to construct a book.

Web Notes ...

Perhaps you've seen agent Nathan Bransford's article in the Huffington Post about the "rejection letter of the future".  He thinks that agents will only respond to queries for stories they want to see more of.  I expected more of an explosion even though I agree with him.   Responding to 500+ queries a week must get tedious at best even if the agent considers themselves a miner.  I'm all for it ... if the agents also gives an automatic response when they receive the query ... and a definite time for a positive response.  No response = rejected.

Don't worry too much, though.  As there are agents who still insist on paper queries, some agents will continue to send "written" rejections. 

Progress (?) ...

By Tuesday, I had over 1,000 words of Voices down.  Then, I dinked.  Adding a bit here and a bit there and setting up for the coming flood.  [To soothe my feelings, I call this adding "texture".]  The great scene with the La Llorona-take-off ghost will be truncated from what I first imagined it.  No great explanations of why she's still hanging around the mortal plane.  She'll just scare the ***** out of Kaffy Anne, who'll run away and wish she never sees a ghost again.  

Then, there's the added scene of KA being seen with a classmate coming up from the creek together by the busybody who's trying to get social services to take the kids.  --  All in one chapter, the part that hasn't been written yet.  Just notes sitting there festering.

Trivia ...

Did the Friday run-around, and took the time to look at the book racks since the to-read pile is getting a little short.  I took the time to see what type of books were popular.  My quick guesstimate says "Vampires rule the racks."

And, Skin Trade, the newest (?) Anita Blake, is out in paperback and in my hot little hands.  It's not the newest/last in the series.  There are two more in the "cheapskates pipeline."  Which comments makes me wonder:  Do you dream of your novels coming out in hardcover first?