journeys

Charms Rough, A.C. Out, & A Quandary

Queries for Assassin's have been sent off to all of my first round choices for agents. So far, 7 have returned with rejections. Only one of those disappointed me because I'm pretty much expecting A.C. to end up at a small press. Not because it's not good—I definitely think it is worthy of an agent and a traditional publisher. But it's epic fantasy, and honestly, that's not a genre high on anyone's acquisitions list. I love epic fantasy and hate that it's not being given more attention right now, but being aware of that reality helps keep me from being too upset about the rejections.

Once all my first round agents get back to me, I have another 25 or 26 on my second round list. I'll probably also start hunting around to see if I can add any others. After that, I have half a dozen publishers followed by a list of maybe a dozen or so small presses. Hopefully the book will find a home in all that. Not just any old home either, but a home that's "right".  My job is to not give up on it.

In other news, just finished the Blood Charms rough draft. I need to revise the last 3 chapters and get them posted to the workshop, then I'll be re-outlining the novel to figure out what's missing and how and where to add or cut things. This is a different process for me—usually I'm content with my first outline and just building from there. But this is also a bit of a different genre for me, and I'm still figuring things out.  The outline will also help keep my hands in the book without me actually working on revisions.  I know I need to break for about a month, it's just hard to do—I want to dive in there and get those revisions going. What I need to do is let it rest and percolate a bit between the rough/first draft and my next round of revisions.  Working on world building helps, but it can get...tedious.  I'm hoping the outline will help keep me away from actual revisions for at least a few weeks.  It should help me work on some notes to apply to the next round.

I already know one of my biggest problems is the "blended" setting I'm aiming for.  It definitely fades towards the end of the novel.  Hell, it fades towards the middle of the novel.  So that's something I'm really going to have to think about and work on while I'm letting the actual draft rest.

In the meantime, the question now becomes, do I move Quest of Ehlarayn to a primary project or do I find something unrelated to either the Alden books (or maybe even another Alden book that's in a completely different series, like my 5 book Phoenix series) or the Kayde books?  I have ideas for totally unrelated projects, but I'm not as excited about them as I should be, but neither Assassin's or Charms are sure things, so am equally not sure working on additional related books is a good idea.  Probably shouldn't worry about it too much—Charms has a few rounds of revisions to go before it's no longer the main writing project.  Something will sort itself out by the time I get there.

Never Bored

A.C. is off to agents.  Out of 10 so far, 3 have sent rejections—2 form and 1 that was brief but seemed much more personal. I still have another 15 on the first round of agents to send off to and am planning sending out to about 5 a week until the whole first round list is taken care of.  Then I'll wait until all those are back in before I start working on y second round choices.

In the meantime, I'm working on Blood Charms, my first attempt at something with an urban bent.  I say an urban "bent" because I'm actually playing around with it to blend in another genre.  This will hopefully do two things for me: one, make it easier for me to write since I find the strict urban setting/genre too restrictive for the kinds of stories I like to write, and two, give me something different and more interesting to present to agents when I'm done.  I've been going through and revising my building draft, which is actually the draft before the rough in my usual process, but it's actually working nicely as a rough draft for this particular novel.  At the same time, I'm still in a very flexible space with what I'm doing with it, which is nice.

I'm still working on the second book in the A.C. trilogy on the weekends, but it won't be a priority until/unless A.C. sells.  As much as I love the world setting and my critters want to see the next book, I'm still trying to find that sweet spot for me in a publishing atmosphere that's not as wide open as it once was, especially where epic fantasy is concerned.  A.C. is a beautiful book, and I think it would have a better chance at an agent if epic weren't a genre that now appears to be pretty much on the "outs" in general.  A few things get published, but not a whole lot.  And to keep writing in that series until I see how it does doesn't help me, especially since I have other ideas that might have a better chance.

This is something I'm quite fortunate in right now: I have LOTS of ideas, most with a foundation paragraph written somewhere so I won't forget it.  And writers wanting to be published can't just rest on the finished novel; they have to move on while they shop the finished novel.  Writing is a job.  You don't stop doing it just because one book is done.  You keep doing it.  The process changes a little once you have a contract, from what I gather, but the one thing you always do is write.

I'm enjoying Charms, but still working on my vision of the world and getting to know the characters.  It's much harder when you haven't been working on the novel for years, like I did with A.C. But the NPB process still worked, thank goodness.  As long as I have an idea on my main characters and a plot, it seems to work by me.  I still have some things to work out that might make changes to the book, but it's okay.  There were major changes in A.C. even in mid to late revisions, so I'm not too worried about it.  One thing I will be doing differently is outlining what I have when I'm done with this round so I can see what I need to add and where.  I'm not much used tot he "mystery" aspect of urban fantasy, and I'm hoping the outline will help me figure out how to make it work.

Which actually supports something someone said on a journal entry awhile back: every novel is a different and ends up needing a different process.  NPB may be my foundation, but I'm having to be flexible with it.  The one thing I always need: to know how the novel ends.  Otherwise I stall trying to get there.  A basic road map for the middle helps too, but there's where I have to be ready to change things when I need to.

One thing about writing: as long as you're spreading your wings, it's never boring.  :)

 

Almost There & Other Things

I should hear back today or tonight from my final reader for Assassin's Choice. She's checking to make sure I didn't trim too much, trim in the wrong places, missed places I could trim, and so on. At this point, the manuscript is just under 115k and lost almost 9k from its original final count.  I expect the things my reader wants me to add back in will outweigh anything she says could be cut (I told her to think as if she had to pay for it per word and was on a limited budget, but also to give me reasons for her choices), but I'm hoping not by much.  115k falls in the 100-120k a first time fantasy novelist should aim for, but a number of small presses (which is where I think A.C. has a good chance of ending up if only because epic fantasy is not one of the must haves these days) want closer to 100k. 15k over their word count may be a deal breaker.  I do think too much more would damage the story, but we'll see how it goes with my reader.

Once she gets it back in to me, I'll look over her suggestions and make changes, revise the synopsis according to some comments I've received, and polish up the query letter.  Hopefully I'm looking at it going out to the first round of agents next week.  We'll see since I'm waiting for my query to be looked at by someone who has worked with queries a lot in the past and has a query evaluation she does on her blog. Depending on when she gets to it, A.C. might not be out until the first of August.  But we're almost there.  In a week or two, I'll be querying agents.

As for other things, Blood Charms is moving along nicely.  It's looking like it'll end up somewhere around 65-70k when done, which is better than I expected for the current draft. 10k or so won't be too hard to make up since I tend to run long in the words rather short, whereas I would be concerned if we were looking at 20-25k plus needed in additions.  So far the critters seem to like what I'm doing.  I know next round I really need to look at bringing in more of the setting the way I want and getting more into Randi's head.  I think if I have one weakness (though I'm sure I have more) as a writer, it's that I seem to have a tough time really getting across what's going on inside my MC's head.  It was a problem in A.C. and now it seems to be a bit of a problem for Charms.

Quest isn't getting nearly enough attention at the moment, but that will probably change once A.C. is completely off my plate. One thing I've discovered is that I can work on 2 novels at a time, but not much more than that. I have a novella languishing because I tried to work on 3 major projects at once, and I just can't do it. I've also discovered that those two projects work better if not in the same series because it's very hard for me to keep where the characters are in their growth straight.  I'll also probably never outline and draft all three (or more) novels in a series at once ever again either.  Just too many changes happen when I'm revising to make this a useful way to work for me.  At any rate, Quest is almost 50k in the building draft and remains my weekend project unless A.C. sells.  Then I kinda need to hoof it on Quest because the Alden novels do take quite a bit of time to get done.  Probably not 20 years the way it was for A.C., but I can see 2 years being the minimum I'd need (if I'm lucky, I might be able to get it down to 18 months, but not holding my breath on that) and even that will take a little time to get down to.

So things progress and I'll be hitting a new stage (that of the Querying Author) in short order.  I'm excited about that and am actually very ready to let A.C. go.  I know a few of my writing buddies never thought THAT would happen, but I can say A.C. is done and just about ready to go.  No more readers except, hopefully, agents after this.  :)

 

Another Round Down

Just finished the beta revision of A.C.  Next I need to look at a couple of things that weren't a simple "cut here, add there" kind of thing.  Finally, I'll work on some trims and see if I can finagle the word count closer 115k, but not holding my breath I'll actually get that low.

Sent my query off to an agent who makes suggestions on queries on her blog.

Hopefully it will all come together and A.C. will be off to the first 3 major publishers by the end of July.

Still Having A Hard Time Getting Here

Yea, I know, what a title.  lol

Anyway, despite having a problem doing regular updates on what is supposed to be the "official" author blog, things are going pretty good with the writing.

I was going to start the final polish (based on beta reader comments) on Assassin's Choice this week, but that's been moved to next week.  A new reader popped up and will have it back to me by Wednesday.  I have 2 other readers I'm waiting to hear from.  If I don't by Wednesday, I plow forward anyway.  I did do some work on the first chapter and submit during Dragonmoon Press's open submission recently, but it was rejected as expected.  I'm pretty sure even if they liked it, 124k was just a bit daunting...and it was their preferred word count plus another 25%.  I had to give it a shot, though.  I would really like to be a part of DMP.  ;)

Book 2, Quest For Ehlarayn, is moving along a bit more slowly. Until book 1 sells, making the Alden books a primary project doesn't make much sense, but I do want to get them done.  So for now, they're my alternate projects and I work on them on the weekends.  Really, way too slow for them since they're intense in terms of the amount of work they need to begin with, but a better use of time unless/until one of them sells and brings them to the forefront work wise.

I may write because I love to write and I have all these stories in my head, but I also want to be published.  For the latter, you need to work on new projects until something sells.  Fortunately, I have plenty of new something to keep me busy.  ;)

The other major project right now is Blood Charms, and it's going much better now that I've freed myself to step outside of standard urban fantasy boundaries.  I actually got to about chapter 7 while trying to stay rigidly in the genre, but I was getting less and less comfortable with it, and the crits weren't too enthusiastic.  Scratched that, started over, let myself move inside and outside the boundaries of genre as I need to, and it's not only going better for me, but the crits are more positive as well.

The sort stuff, eh. Have been buried pretty deep in the novels, for one.  And right now, with other issues going on in the personal life, time has become a little more pressing.  It's been a lot harder to do as much.  Strangely, the weekly word counts are still going okay, even without the revision words from A.C.  Third, still only one sale for the year, so not encouraged to put more time into stuff that's not getting me anywhere and is costing me more than I'm earning.  Still dabbling, still submitting, just not as invested in them.  Honestly, novels are my best length.  I've mastered the short story, and now...just don't need to keep torturing myself with it.

Am trying to get to some work on the author site, but that too seems to be one of those things I have a hard time with these days.  Really do need to make some updates, but I suspect another move might be in the offing soon.  NOT looking forward to that at all.  But if things settle out at home, I might make a preemptive strike and move before the trouble I see brewing occurs.  Besides, I'd rather have the site somewhere where I feel it's safe instead of someplace where I'm worried about it all the time.

And that's pretty much it.  Maybe that's why I don't write here with overall updates much.  all they are is writing and more writing with the occasional personal or web thing thrown in.  Hopefully soon I'll have other exciting updates to share.  ;)

There's Writing & Then There's Writing

So,  keep meaning to update, but it just never seems to come together as often as I'd like.  There's a lot of reason for this, the first being real life.  It's been busy.  Hubs was finally offered a job, and we've been working around new schedules as his winter quarter ended and the job started, and again now as both he and our oldest get back into college together (at the same school, even, which actually is helping us incredibly when it comes to the payments we need to make).  My younger kids are about to have their spring break, which means a week or two more of upheaval before everyone is out of the house and we have something of a routine for the next few months.

With all the busyness, I sometimes have to make choices in my writing time, which is hard because I really would like to get EVERYTHING in.  But everything is A LOT of stuff: two novels in progress, shorts in revisions, upkeep of a couple of different journals (each with their own focus, for the most part), upkeep of three websites (including the author site), plus the management of the writing group.  And all of that has to be worked in around being the mother of an active family and having the husband working AND in school.  That means a lot of the things he was managing, I have to take care of now, so time has become even tighter for me.  And with the oldest in college now as well, I'll be called on to baby sit more frequently.  And three year olds are entertaining to watch (most of the time) but aren't conducive to high word counts.

So there have been a number of times (and will be more of them in the future) where the choice has been writing in a journal or working on a novel or story, and the choice for a writer is obvious.  Which is not to say that's always what's going on—I do have this starting problem where I have a hard time getting things going so I procrastinate by doing anything but any kind of writing.  I'm working on that.  I'm also working on becoming a faster writer, but that's going about as well as taking care of all the things I procrastinate with.  Thankfully, none of those things are Facebook or WoW. lol

And then there are the days where I have to push to get anything done.

So the pushing and the choosing the fiction over the journals means that the Blood Charms building draft is done and off to an apha reader to make sure my plot is worked out, the timeline works, and most the major issues are working out the way they should...and whether or not the novel needs another body or two or anything needs a little filling out.  The break also gives me a few days to decide whether I want to push for a rough draft or consider the building draft as the rough draft and start revising once I get it back from her.  I suspect it'll end up in the middle: taking care of the messes she finds, adding where I need to answer, then going into revisions from there.

In the meantime, I'm working on Quest For Ehlarayn, book 2 of the "Heroes" trilogy that was begun with Assassin's Choice.  Still waiting on those beta readers, but they have until some time in May, so that's fine even if I am a bit antsy.  When I originally wrote the Heroes trilogy, I actually did the novel plotting for all three books so I have rough drafts for all three books.  But since then, book 1 has changed so much, that I need to make A LOT of adjustments to accommodate those changes (not in plot, thankfully, but even with the plot the not butchered, there's enough that has to be worked through that it's going to really expand the drafts).  Lesson learned: basic plotting out of a trilogy all at once works; writing a trilogy all the way through all at once, not so much.  lol

As soon as I get Charms back, I'll be working on that, and the next time I pick up Quest will be after I've posted it to DII and take a bit of a break from it.  Then I'll get Quest up to par and up at DII before I get back to Charms.  That's the plan anyway.  Only time will tell if it actually gets followed that way.  ;)

And Then There's Life

It's been busy in a lot of ways, but not necessarily with the writing.  I had a nasty tooth problem that took 2 months to resolve because of lack of funds (large tax returns are so nice), then I got sick.  I managed some sporadic writing, but it's hard to think, much less write, when you're in pain.  All I wanted to do, pretty much, was sleep.  Everything I was doing at the time got derailed.

And now the husband is employed.  This is a good thing.  It's been nearly 6 months, and even with our older girls helping out, it's been scary on the financial front.

However, if things were in upheaval over the last few weeks over my health issues, it's really going to get crazy now.  Hubs works nights now, which means I'm back on dinner detail.  Haven't done that in awhile.  His current term in school is out in a few weeks, then he has a whole new schedule for next term and our oldest will be going in with him for her classes...and needing rides on the days that he doesn't go in.  Some time in May (with the floods and snow days, the question is now when in May), the kids are out of school.  They go back in August and I'll probably have to give youngest rides to and from her school since it'll be parental choice rather than a problem school that lets her stay there and the van they have this semester will more than likely no longer be available because of budget cuts.

Writing is about to become a challenge.  A very big challenge.  Especially since there won't be much opportunity to adjust to each new schedule change before it changes again.  Up early and driving on and off all day can really mess with my writing, but I'm going to have to figure out a way to work around it.

As for Charms, it's moving along quite nicely.  I have some things I still need to sort out world building wise, and I had to make some cuts in the draft because of timeline issues.  Otherwise, it's going well and I'm enjoying it.  I just hit 33k last night and expect the building draft to clock in at about 50-60k and the rough to finish up at about 70-80k.  I've not been working on much else, not even my shorts, but with everything that's been going on, the focus has been a good thing.

I've also had 2 shorts accepted as reprints.  I turned one down because the changes the editor wanted would have made it a totally different story.  The other, "Presence", should be in a summer issue of Golden Visions.  I'll list more info when I have it.  A third short is on the short list for another market and I should hear in May whether it makes it.  I'm still not stressing the short stuff in terms of sending it out, but I am trying to submit something every month.

And that's pretty much what's been going on since January.  I swear, one of these days I'll manage to update on a more regular basis here.  Of course, with all the changes coming up, it may not be until next year, but I'm trying!  ;)

Finally, Blood Charms

I was at loose ends for most of last week.  Assassin's was sent to beta readers, and I had nothing else on my to do list since I thought it would take longer.  Turned out a break was in order because every time I tried to turn my mind to another project, I just couldn't seem to wrap my head around it.  By Thursday, I gave up and just took a break from any writing I'd planned.  I did my crits, read some, did some baking, but left the writing alone to give myself space.

Which seems to have helped.  Tuesday, I finally dug into Blood Charms again.  I'm at the building draft stage, which is the point where I go from telling about the story into actually writing story and stuffing in all the details I can to make the rough draft easier to sort out.  What I've found at this stage is that I always have a problem getting started,  I've opened Charms several times, written a few lines, deleted them, and closed out again.  I'm not supposed to be trying for the perfect opening line yet, not supposed to be worrying about the technical stuff, but I do, and I have to get past the first paragraph or two before that seems to really kick in.  With Charms, it doesn't help that I just spent 6 months almost totally focused on polishing another novel, and I've barely even look at Charms during that 6 months and so need to refresh myself a bit on the story and characters,

The good news is once I got past those opening paragraphs, I did fine.  I found that love of the story again, began getting into the character again, and the words started rolling.  Yesterday, I tried to pick it back up and had the same problems I had when opening compounded by the persistent interruptions by family.  Again, I think some of the problem is having been away from the story so long.  Once I get further in, I should be more comfortable and the story should flow smoother for me.  The hope is to get Charms done this year.  The language is cleaner, the story telling more straightforward.  The only thing new for me in Charms is the genre, which is big enough in some ways, but isn't some of the high level, complicated stuff I was trying to work with in Assassin's.

More than likely, Quest For Ehlarayn will keep to the side until I'm at the point where I'm revising Charms.  Then it can serve as that alternate "I need a break!" project that I seem to need when deep in revisions.

Off To The Betas

A.C. is finally off to my beta readers.  I actually expected this last run through to take at least this week so was surprised when I managed to get through everything in two days, but I sent it out at 2:30 this morning.  I've given the betas until May to get back to me.  This gives me a little space from the novel and time to work on the query and synopsis.  I'm actually not too worried about the synopsis.  The query on the other hand?  Yea, not so sure about that.

I have about 10 betas.  Most are people who have known me and about the project or have seen A.C. in previous forms over the years.  I'm hoping there won't be many changes, and most will be suggestions on cuts (it's still 4k over a good number for a first book) or technical corrections, but I'm not deluded enough to think the book is that good. lol  So we'll see and hope not too much needs to be changed.

In the meantime, I have Blood Charms and Quest For Ehlarayn to work on, as well as several shorts in need of revisions to prep for submission.  It's just very weird to not have A.C. waiting for me.  I feel just a bit at loose ends since I'd planned to work on this last pass at least all this week and made no plans to work on anything else.  I think my head is still a little too wrapped around A.C. to work on a new project, so a few days away from anything new novels might be good.  At the same time, it's very hard to not be working on something.  Maybe the query and the synopsis will be a good coming down from the project and clear my head enough to work on something else.

At least I'm finally seeing an end to all the work on THIS novel.  For now.  I've already started looking at agents.  There aren't many who take high epic fantasy, but there are a few.  I'll have to try to dig up more over the next few months and try to pull together a bigger list.  Then we shall see....

Another Step Forward

The read through revision of A.C. is done.  I have two more things to do before I hand it over to betas: do revisions based on crits for chapters 31-38, and work in the way I'll be showing time through the whole novel.  The sad thing with that last one is that I had an idea, a specific idea on what I was going to do and how, and I failed to write it down.  Because of my 5 minute memory lifespan, the idea is gone.  So now I have to figure the whole thing out again, settle on it for good, and get all my time measurements down through the book.

This will not be fun, but it is necessary.

Once all that is done, it's off to beta readers (hopefully no later than the end of February) and I get to work on the synopsis and the query letter, both of which scare the crap out of me as I've never done either of them.  Well, I've sort of done a synopsis in the early stages of the writing, but it's not written the way you need a synopsis written for submission, and a lot has changed in the book since those early novel building days.  It's a better book for all those changes, but they now need to be taken into account for a new synopsis.  The betas will have 3 months to read and respond.  Hopefully I can get a synopsis and query letter together in that time.  I'm also hoping the changes they suggest are minor.  I don't need another 6 months on this project.  I need it done and on the market-go-round.

Then I can get to Blood Charms and start the reworking of book two in the Ehlarayn trilogy, Quest For Ehlarayn.  Yes, A.C. isn't sold yet, but that just means I'm free to work on the projects I want to instead of the projects I'm under contract for, and I want to finish the trilogy.  I want to say it's done.  I finished it.  I beat the damn thing into submission and won!

ah hem.

But the next book slated for completion is Charms.  I know I need to have different books for the market go round: trying to sell book two doesn't make sense if book one doesn't get picked up, so I need to have something completely different ready to go next.  Quest might be the third book finished, but even if it's not, it'll help me get faster with my Alden books, which are the harder to write for a variety of reasons.  More practice means it will get easier and faster as I go along.  So, Ehlarayn may not sell, but if any of the Alden books do sell, they will, hopefully, take less than 5 years to complete for a contract.

And that can only be a good thing.