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. 

Laugh on Me x 3

Progress:  Just look at my Emma info.  I'm pitching "There Be Demons" at the Northern Colorado Writer's conference so I have to do a new pitch.  Fortunately, I have critique people standing by.

Also checked my ending on THERE BE DEMONS.  I already changed the ending and like the changes better than what popped in my had this AM aka the middle of last night.

 Sorry can't get the extra space cleaned up

Watching the Slow Carousel

Lessons from My Reading:  Still ploding along with Jane Haddam's Cheating at Solitaire.  Don't get me wrong.  The book's slow reading because there's so much in it.  Location background.  The characters interacting with each other and their heads.  Then, there's the murder mystery.  Somewhere in all the movement, clues are hiding. 

(Sometime I'm going to have to do a little research to see if real murders are as interesting as fictional ones.  Also, how the number of fictional murders compares to the real murder statistics.  The schemed ones.  Not the stupid or emotional ones.)

One thing made me pause in my reading.  The divisions of the book.  The prologue I understood.  Then, Haddam has a Part I and II.  I can be generalized as more character introduction, including detective Demarkian.  II seems to be concentrating on Demarkians reaction to all the significant characters.  I flipped through the pages and didn't notice any Part III, though there is an Epilogue.  I don't understand dividing the book like that.  Seems to me following the story from beginning to end is simpler.

Did like the assigning of numerals to the changes in point of view within the chapters though.  Made as much sense as using the "###" convention.

Progress:  Emma.  Am half way through my revision.  Also, writing a lot of notes to myself about things I need to do in upcoming chapters.  I find the revision process fascinating ... sometimes I cut out whole paragraghs because they sit like a rock in the narrative flow.  Fewer times I add one.  Always I look to replace a bunch of verb parts (to be forms mostly) with one verb.

Emma's paused on the edge of entering Faery, and I'm dreading revising the next section.  How do you make a magical place unique and different.  My critiquers have already said I don't convey enough sense of wonder.  But then, Emma is a rather phlegmatic character.  --  Think selling the book will rest on how well I accomplish the above.

Trivia:  Watched a rerun of Castle last night and am looking forward to Monday's new episode.  I like the way Castle's family life frames the detection part of the story line. 

The End of Christmas is in Sight

Trivia:  The packages went out this morning.  Then, we treated ourselves to coffee and a croissant.  Only one more batch of cookies to go (unless I make myself some chocolate chip ones) and a few packages to wrap.

Lessons from My Reading:  Bone by Bone progresses but haven't had any blocks of time to read.  500 pages (I think) and dense characterization needs concentration so you can figure out what's going on.  I'm far enough in that some of the secrets suspects are hiding don't all pertain to the murder of the MC's brother.  Then, there's the extra corpse in the grave.  Ya gotta love it.

To fill in the time -- during commercials and talking heads during the news -- I've been reading P. D. James' Talking about Detective Fiction.  Some where I think I read that it was a fund-raiser for some Oxford library which is good since as a book, it's over-priced.  The piece reminded me of the talks of Sandra Dallas, a Colorado fiction writer of note.  Whatever, James gives a good summary of the development of detective fiction as a sub-category of crime fiction.  She also delivers a good pep talk for the importance of characterization.

Progress:  Mariah ... Nothing like a 'trunk novel' popping out of the blue.  Or, is that the 'little grey cells'?

While I was dinking with my query for Demons, out popped a new take on Dark Solstice, the first of my Austel's Idiot trilogy.  I've revised the manuscript and have it out on submission to an e-publisher.  Sort of forgot about it after I put Tangled on the shelf.  (The second manuscript in the triology.) -- I still have two months before I'll hear anything.  Yeah, I'm expecting a rejection though other rejections said it had some good writing.

Demons ... I've submitted it to a few agents and already got one rejection  (I really like the simplicity of e-submissions.)  -- I don't think I'll sell this one either since some might think it skirts the edge of blasphemy.  Oh, well, but I like my fuddy gargoyles.  -- The main character is a human female teen with anger issues.

Now if I can stop dinking with the last three sentences ...

Emma ... Have begun revising my print out.  The thing is surprising me.  Either my critiquers took care of most of my problems or I've learned something about writing over the last five years.  I'm finding I have to add stuff rather than delete.  Maybe, I'll end up doing another revision where I delete like mad.  Ugh

Same Ole, Same Old Stuff

Trivia:  Spent yesterday afternoon getting the car in shape for winter, including a new battery.  The dealership didn't have any record of me buying a new battery since 1999 so I figured it was time.

Managed to finish Christine Feehan's Dark Curse while waiting.  [Read one chapter on Saturday when I should have been writing.  Took two days for a 400 page book.]

Reading Lessons:  So what did I learn?  [Other than I'm a faithful series reader ... as long as the story line doesn't bore me.  Guess, I like retreating into other people's worlds ... though I don't fantasize about them afterwards.]


Feehan's working in back story without filling up pages of explanation caught my admiration.  Many of Feehan's older characters appear in the book with just enough tag to place them in the world's setting.  No giving their life histories and their characters remain consistent with what I remember.  Jim Butcher does this very well in his Dresden series too.   Both do this without using the same tags repeatedly.


Feehan's done her Carpathian series for over a decade and is pushing twenty books.   I'm overwhelmed by her output.  [Three series plus, and I'm doing good to get one 'book' a year with endless revisions.]  To keep all that straight, her character outlines must be as long as a book to keep her people straight.  [My Half-Elven stuff, including locations, covers three 'books' and runs about twenty pages; other WIPs are only three-four pages.]


While the attraction/love scenes repeated themselves, Feehan managed to switch gears before I became bored with the same repeated descriptions.  Redundancy, anyone?  To me, redundancy is more than telling and then showing the same action.  Some might think she head hops because she switches viewpoints in mid-chapter, but she's easy to follow so I didn't mind.


Progress:  I continue to chop about 1000 words a chapter on Tangled.  Most of it is redundancies, adverbs/double adjectives, and passive verbs.  When I get to the end, I'm seriously going to have to look at whether I want to simplify the viewpoints.  I'm sure I'll hit my head against the wall of liking to read multiple viewpoint stories.


Emma got slammed by my local crit group because I don't give enough emotion.  Well, I'm not emotional ... also she's suppressed her emotions due to the abusive treatment of the grandmother.  I need to work on that a bit.  Maybe have her feel more emotion and consciously suppress them.


Whoever said writing was easy.