Finished my book!

Yep. I did. I finished the short novel, Wild Wild Witch, that I have been posting as I go on Inkitt. Happy dance!

I have a lot of fun with this book. It's a fantasy/western/romance with a little bit of horror thrown in for good measure. I set out to write a romance, and then I was like, "Hey, why not try a little genre blending... I'll make a western, too." Then I thought, "What's a story without fantasy elements? I like fantasy stories the most, so I'd better make it a romance-western-fantasy." And then as I was writing the last chapters the horror just made sense.

This book taught me a few things about my writing.

1) I am incapable of writing anything simple.

2) I seem to be compulsive about things my character does going wrong, as opposed to having a lot of external obstacles get in their way. In my next story, I'm going to try not to do that. Not that I regret anything about this story--I think it all works very well and is entertaining. But I feel like if this is my pattern I have to try to push myself outside of it. It comes from an anxiety that introducing external obstacles will somehow feel contrived. I'm not sure where this anxiety comes from.

3) I want to work on creating more layered villains. My two major villains in this book are hate sinks. I realized as I was writing Witch that I really am not instinctively interested in my villains in and of themselves, other than as hate sinks. I am very interested in my protagonists and supporting characters, but on some level the fact that my villains are villains makes me dislike them and I don't want to spend much time on them other than to make them hate-worthy. Which isn't to say I've never written layered villains--I have. I think Reister is interesting (more so than Finnarun, who falls more into hate sink territory again) and I don't even really consider Liut a villain despite what he does. But I think they developed into interesting villains not because I planned them that way but because the story called for it, if that makes sense. With my next villain(s) I will take time to really plan and try to give them redeeming qualities that make them more complex.

Who are some of your favorite villains in novels, films, and TV? Are they hate sinks, or more complex?

Inkitt: Publishing as You Go

I recently discovered Inkitt.com, which is, I gather, a lot like Wattpad. I've dabbled a little on Wattpad but never done very much. I decided to try out Inkitt a bit more thoroughly. Maybe it's the novel contest. I don't know. Does Wattpad have a novel contest? It's possible that everything I like about Inkitt is the same on Wattpad, I'm just not that familiar with that platform.

In the past when I've written novels I've hit walls where I've reached out to a friend and asked that they read what I have done so far, not for feedback, but because knowing someone is reading my stuff is a better motivator for me to finish the book than anything else I've come across. I know it's sort of ass-backwards. You're supposed to finish the novel, revise it, polish it, revise it again, and then polish again, and then send it out into the world to find readers. I may get to the point where that feels right to me. I certainly have some ambivalence about not doing it that way. But right now the reason I'm enjoying myself on Inkitt is because I'm posting each chapter as I finish it, and they have these cool analytics that show you how many people are reading. I've got something in the neighborhood of ten people reading my incomplete novel right now. It's so great for motivation! I imagine that these people have all read the latest chapter (the analytics say so, actually) and are eagerly awaiting the next installment. So I feel that push to deliver.

I'm on Chapter 16 and I think there are only a couple more chapters to go. The story is definitely winding down; I'm just not sure how long it's going to take to write everything. It's not going to be a very long book, in fact... barely a novel by word count standards. But I've been approaching it more in terms of episodes, with each chapter being an episode. I'm playing around.

It's one of the first things I've written with a thorough outline. With the WiP I set aside a couple of months ago (that I still hope to return to) I did a lot of outlining, but that is a huge monster of a book and I don't know how long it will take to write the whole thing. This one is much shorter. I wanted to try a few things. Romance, for one. It's a genre I have been wanting to have a go at for a while. Veronica in Paris is a romance, but it started out as a chapter of The River and the Roses so it wasn't like, "Hm, I think I will sit down and write a romance today." I've always been a fan of soap operas, and I wanted to see if I could capture some of the qualities of a soap that I love in a novel. And I wanted to mix genres: romance/supernatural/western/thriller.

I think when it's done it's going to be a fun little book. Nothing earth shattering, but I do think it's going to succeed at what I want it to do, which is show people a good time. I'm having a good time writing it.

What are your projects, these days? Trying anything new?

Vanguard of Hope, by Kathy Steinemann

Vanguard of Hope, by Kathy Steinemann, the first in her Sapphire Brigade series, is a melodrama set in the late 19th century. I have had quite an internal struggle over how to rate this book. Because I determined that several of the problems I had with it were probably personal taste issues, I'm giving it three stars instead of two.

One thing that Steinemann could easily clarify at the beginning with a quick edit is the location of the story. I was very confused--there were references to "Free Negroes" and the 13th Amendment, implying the United States, most likely in the South. But the spellings are often British, there is a reference to British tutors, and Peter, the husband, is described (too far in) as having a British accent.

There are also some other editing issues like verb tense inconsistencies and confusing shifts in focus from crucial plot points to details about a secondary character's appearance and personality.

But now, on to the major issues I had with the novel...

[Warning: Spoilers abound in the next few paragraphs]

First off, Steinemann sent me the book to review, and she probably didn't realize I am a historian, or she might not have. There were a few distinct, well-researched passages, but the book had so many anachronisms as to completely throw me out of the story. Finally I decided to pretend that it was set in 1958 instead of 1890, which took care of almost all of the problems. For one thing, the term "paedophile" was not in common use until the 20th century. I am not convinced that people in the 1890s would have reacted to Hope's confession about her secret as they did. Perhaps one or two exceptionally advanced thinkers might, but the vast majority would have labeled her "hysterical" and locked her away in a room with yellow wallpaper.

The concept of "racism" as a bad thing is also far more recent than the turn of the century. At that time and well into the first half of the 20th century "racism," and specifically "scientific racism," was widely accepted as an appropriate world view, not as something to condemn. Read some of Teddy Roosevelt's writings on the topic of race sometime. By the mid 1920s literally millions of people, including a half a million women, belonged to the KKK. It became something you had to do in order to make it in a career--even Harry Truman joined for a brief time. Had the novel been set in the late 1950s or in the 1960s, after the Civil Rights movement had begun, it would make a lot more sense to me that Hope would want to reject racism. And it would still make a lot of sense to me that she and those around her might suffer retaliation for it.

Terms like "cheating" and "stalking" are also later 20th century terms, for what it's worth. The book is full of language inappropriate to the time.

Another issue I had was that I thought I was reading a romance, and as romances go, Vanguard doesn't follow the rules. Some readers may enjoy this as a step away from convention. However, I like romance conventions. Introduce the main love interest at the beginning and that's who I want the main character to end up with. But Hope had not one, not two, but three loves. Hey, I'm all for polyamorous love stories, but this really wasn't one of those (way too much talk of offending God for that). The introduction of Owen in the last third of the novel really threw me off. I never trusted him. It didn't help that he kept breaking into her house and surprising her when he 1) knew she was a victim of sexual assault and 2) was a doctor who counseled her sister about her own assault and should have been a lot more sensitive to the repercussions of violating Hope's space and safety like that. On top of that, Hope's reactions to this violation didn't ring true for me. She wasn't the least bit unnerved. Maybe if she had met Owen before Solomon or Peter, if there had been established sexual tension with him from the start, I might have been able to hang in there. And it didn't help that I found their playful sexual banter awkward (they had names for their body parts) and tiresome (there was far too much of it).

Click on the image to purchase on Amazon.

I was disappointed because in the beginning of the novel I got hooked despite the anachronisms and minor editing problems, which is saying a lot for me. I get frustrated with that sort of thing usually. But I was impressed because the story of Hope's affair with Solomon was compelling and I thought that would be the focus of the book. Also, Steinemann has a good grasp of how to throw twists into a plot. In fact, I think she does it too much (he was murdered, no, he killed himself, no, he's not actually dead--that one annoyed me particularly because I was invested in the hate crime aspect of the murder scenario). But by the last third of the novel, I felt that the tension just wasn't there. The only looming threat was Hope's illness, and that wasn't enough for me. I needed something else to threaten her--the illness was just saddening, not exciting.

Anyway, I think others may enjoy this novel more than I did. Anachronisms really bug me (unless it's an alternative history) and I don't think they bother non-history buffs nearly as much. So if you like melodramas with lots of twists and prefer romances that stray from the usual conventions, you may enjoy Vanguard of Hope.

Veronica, Book 3 is Out!

I got so busy this week I haven't had a chance to do this post until now. My newest Veronica Barry novel, The Plane and the Parade, is out at Amazon and Barnes & Noble! This is the third book in the Veronica Barry series. The first, The River and the Roses, is available for free until the end of the month. I hope you'll download your preferred format and try the series out!

In The Plane and the Parade, French teacher and amateur psychic detective Veronica is off for the summer. It's not all fun and games, though, as Veronica begins to help SPD Detective Daniel Seong, her boyfriend, in his search for a murderer who may in fact be a terrorist. At least she and Daniel are going strong--but a visit from someone in Veronica's past may rock their solid foundation.

My bestest beta reader, Kathryn, interviewed me about The Plane and the Parade on her blog. That was loads of fun! It's always great to be invited to talk about my writing.

And as of this post, one copy of Plane has already been sold, so that's awesome.

This month has been great for sales, actually, after a somewhat disappointing March. And we're only halfway through, so I'm hoping this is the start of an ever increasing trend!

Releasing Plane brings up an interesting question for me, though. When you have a series, do you advertize the latest book a lot, or focus on the first? As a reader, I avoid jumping into the middle of a series. So it's irrelevant to me that book 7 of Song of Ice and Fire is out, for instance, because I would need to start at book 1 anyway. Then again, knowing that there are seven books does appeal to me, because I know when I start the series that I've got a ways to go before I run through the books that have been published. However, I also often hear complaints about book series that have "gone on too long" because the author "needs an editor" or has "lost passion for the story" or whatnot.

What do you think about book series? Do you like them better than stand alone books? Do you ever start a series in the middle? How would you approach marketing books in a series?

Cover for Myadar's Revelry (part 2 of The City Darkens)

So just to have all my new covers in one place, I figure I'll post a blog article for each.

This one is for part two of The City Darkens, which I'm hoping to publish tomorrow, depending on whether I get the final edits done and whether my homework for the MA program gets in the way. In any case, it should be up by the end of the day Monday.

My concept for the covers is to keep the background mostly the same (although I'm smudging and shading each individually, and unless I find a way to cut that corner, that means each will still have a slightly different background). The portrait of Myadar, the main character, in the foreground, will change with each episode, and have something to do with the story in that episode. In Myadar's Revelry, for instance, it's the first time Myadar's look gets "updated" to reflect the court's fashion (basically flapper, art deco, etc.).

So here it is:

What do you think of it?

Smashwords No More

I'm pretty disappointed in Smashwords. They asked me to unpublish Myadar's Snare because they don't allow serial novels. Which makes no sense at all. I don't see the difference between allowing someone to publish a series of novels and a serialized novel, other than the length of the works. But Smashwords says they don't consider a part of a serialized novel to be a complete work (even though they publish novellas all the time), and it is therefore against their terms of service. These are the people who also publish porn, (unlike Amazon). But when it comes to serialized novels, no no.

I contacted Amazon to be sure they didn't have a similar policy. After all, I suppose I could be taking crazy pills. They informed me that they have no problem with publishing parts of a serial novel. So there.

I am so annoyed with Smashwords that I've unpublished everything I have with them. I know, it probably is a little, "Imma take my ball and go home!" The thing is, this policy of theirs is bad business. No one stands to lose in the scenario where they allow me to publish my novel's episodes. If people like the first and want to buy the second and third and so on, they get to read these installments faster than they would if they had to wait for me to finish editing the whole thing to publish it all at once. (I do intend to offer that as an option eventually.) Meanwhile, if folks purchase the parts, that means both Smashwords and I would benefit financially.

Ultimately the best thing about Smashwords was that they made it easy for me to generate coupons to give away books, but I've realized I can just upload files in various formats right here, and I don't need them. The majority of my sales happen on Amazon, followed closely by B&N (I read the B&N policy, and while they don't prohibit serial novels, they do prohibit including links in your book, which I find weird as well). It's a pity, though. I liked Smashwords because it felt more like working with an individual's business rather than a monster corporation like Amazon. In this case, though, the logic of the big corps wins over the crazy of the little guy.

I'll be updating this blog to reflect the change soon. Look for a new page with free books to download.

Have you ever come across a baffling business practice that made you want to stop working with that business? How did you handle it?

COVER! OF! PART! ONE!

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I was really fretting over the creation of my covers for the decopunk serial novel I've been working on, The City Darkens. I wanted a deco feel, and the closer I could get to a tribute to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the better. Since part one is almost ready to be published (maybe tomorrow!) the time had really come to confront my fears and get to work on the cover. So I collected some images on Pinterest and sat down at my dining room table with all of my boxes of art supplies, none of which I have touched in over a year, and this is the result:

I'm really pleased with it. If you are familiar with the posters for Metropolis, you might recognize the one I like the best:

I realize my font is a bit hard to read, but I figure the title will be all typed out nicely at the top of the page next to the cover, so it's really more about catching the eye and also communicating the Lang inspiration and deco quality.

My husband asked whether I'll get in trouble for the similarities. My understanding is that as long as an image is 75% altered from the original, you're okay. Now, I can't claim that I ran any sort of algorithm, but I did change a lot in the picture. I think I'm okay. Would you agree?

Anyway, be on the look out for the soon to be published first episode of my novel, The City Darkens: Myadar's Snare. Yay!

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett

Continuing in my pursuit of good fantasy novels, I picked up The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, by Galen Beckett. This one is not GLBT, although I suspect two of the male characters may pair off eventually in a sequel.

First off, let me say that the novel was not only good enough for me to finish, but I've wishlisted the sequels. So that's saying something. However, I did have a number of problems with it, which I'll get into in a bit.

The novel is set in an Edwardian-esque fantasy world with strange night/day cycles that change all the time. Nights are referred to as "umbrals" and days as "lumenals," and due to some unexplained phenomenon, some umbrals last 20 hours, some five, and likewise with the days, etc., with no rhyme or reason to when the long and short umbrals and lumenals occur. Magic exists in this world, and seems to have different manifestations based on gender. Other than that, the setting is very much Edwardian, as you can guess from the dress the woman on the cover is wearing.

So my initial reaction to the first lines, which are very  Jane Austen, was delight. I thought, here is exactly the sort of book I want to read, especially given my intent to explore writing an Edwardian romance. However, this delight soon faded.

First of all, I think it just doesn't fit to combine fantasy and Austen. It's weird, because I love both, but somehow, they just don't go together. It's like lemon curd and white cheddar. Love 'em both. Wouldn't spread the one on the other.

Secondly, Beckett moves from Austen, to Bronte (all of them, but especially Jane Eyre) to Dickens, and back to Austen. I love all of these, of course, but they are all very different. I don't read Austen if I'm in the mood for gothic romance (Northanger Abbey is not my favorite of hers), I read Bronte instead. I don't read Bronte if I want a taste of the drudgery of living in working class London, I read Dickens. 

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

So the movement in the novel from the (mostly) cheery story of Miss Ivy Lockwell and her sisters and their association with Rafferty and Garritt to Ivy becoming a governess in the lonely, shadowy Heathcrest Hall in the windblown, wild country of Mr. Quent (who almost has a wife locked in an upstairs room, for pity's sake), to a return to the capitol with a focus on Garritt's struggle to find and keep a job as a clerk... I just had trouble with it. I found the similarities to real works by Austen, Bronte, and Dickens too distracting and when the plot deviated from the expected formulas for those novels (Austen would not have had Ivy fall for two men, for instance--at least, not without resolving it for the reader so that one of the men was revealed to be a cad) I was annoyed.

I also found it bewildering when the mid section of the book, set at Heathcrest, suddenly switched to first person, and I became convinced that the whole first part of the book was almost entirely unnecessary to the plot. I started thinking, why did the author even include it? And why not write the whole novel in first person? I know why now, having read the whole thing. Beckett needed to go with third person in the first and last thirds of the book to show stories like Garritt's. Could the middle part have remained in third person? Probably. I'm left feeling like the novel just wasn't very tight. Maybe if I reread it I would feel differently.

Anyway, those are my quibbles. Overall, I did enjoy the novel. Ivy is likeable, as is Rafferty. Garritt I'm on the fence about, and I was ready to toss his sister to the bad guy he so strenuously protected her from. I have a theory about Mr. Quent, but I won't share it until I've read the next two books.

Click the image above to order.

I won't say, "If you're a fan of Austen and Bronte you'll like this book," because as you can see, that's not how it worked out for me. Rather, if you are looking for a fantasy novel that departs from the usual medieval setting and involves some likeable characters, you'll like this book.

Maledicte, By Lane Robins

I came across Maledicte, by Lane Robins, when I tried out this utility, which suggests a list of books you might like based on a title or author you provide. I typed in Kushiel's Dart. So the implication is that Maledicte is like Kushiel's Dart, which it isn't, except perhaps in the most superficial ways.

I am a picky reader, which doesn't work well with my also being a pretty voracious reader. And also I read very fast. Forgive me for saying so, (because it is bragging, and I do it because I had a learning disability and didn't really learn to read until fifth grade, so my inner child still has something to prove) but at my fastest I read 700 words a minute. So I go through novels very quickly. Despite this, I don't spend time on a novel I don't like--I just quit reading and move on to the next one. My shelves are littered with novels I have started and tossed aside. So the fact that I didn't toss Maledicte aside speaks to the fact that I liked it somewhat.

A short list of reasons Maledicte is worth reading:

• The gods in the world of Maledicte are intriguing and original. First off, they're dead. Secondly, each one is the patron of two things, one positive thing and one negative thing, but rather than being two sides of coin, these things are fairly unrelated: there's a god of health and greed, for instance.
• The title character is transgender, and in such a way as to be fairly fluid, which is unusual.
• One of the central characters, Gilly, is quite likeable.
• Another of the more minor characters, the king, is also likeable.
• The writing is good. Good phrasing, no grammatical problems, strong figurative language, etc.

  

  To order, click the image above.

Aside from that, the novel has many problems, and the ending drove me up a wall. For details, read on.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Except for the two characters cited above, no one in the book is likeable, least of all, Maledicte. It's hard to conceive of why Gilly becomes so infatuated with him. Gilly seems to really dig how sulky and rude Maledicte is. I do not. Plus, Maledicte kills cats. UNFORGIVABLE.*

To enjoy this novel, you must enjoy witnessing your protagonist commit one gory, brutal murder after another. Where Kushiel has sex, Maledicte has murder. And make no mistake, there is very little sex in this novel, and what sex there is either takes place between unlikeable characters, or amounts to rape.

Which brings me to one reason the ending pissed me off. I'm firmly rooting for Gilly, right? Even though Gilly insists on falling in love with Maledicte. So by extension, I root for Maledicte, because if Maledicte gets killed Gilly's going to be devastated. And there's this well-written build up of tension between them, because Gilly's hot for Maledicte, and thinks Maledicte is a man, and eventually Maledicte starts to fall for Gilly, and doesn't want to reveal the physical secret of his body. I enjoy sexual tension that's complicated with an extra layer of resistance like this. But a major part of why I was reading was for the scene I was convinced was coming, in which Maledicte gives in to his lust for Gilly, they start to fool around, and Gilly gets to uncover the secret as they do. This scene never happens. What happens instead (watch out, the following spoils the ending) is that Gilly thinks Maledicte died, and then when they are at last reunited, he not only has the shock of seeing that Maledicte is still alive, but also that he is a woman. And they live happily ever after.

The second reason the ending of this book made me want to spit nails was that I needed to see Janus get an ass-kicking (at the very least). In yet another instance of Sophia's vaunted ability to "see how a plot will unravel" going horribly awry, my conviction was that in the end, Maledicte would have to murder Janus, the love from his childhood and the reason he got into the revenge business in the first place. After all, Maledicte made a pact to murder the earl of Last, and Janus became the earl of Last. And that was just fine with me. Janus, of just about any character, was screaming to get murdered. I don't know why Robins thought he would appeal to readers just because... I don't know. Because he was a street urchin who got abducted... right after he tried to ambush and murder a guy for his coin? Maybe it was supposed to happen because Janus spoke like nobility even though he lived in the slums? Or was it just that we are supposed to love him because we're told over and over that he's pretty (same with Maledicte, there). And sure, sure, Maledicte was desperately in love with him, and that's why he can never kill him, because the god he made the pact with is both the god of love and vengeance. But there's a scene where Maledicte slays an enchanted child of himself, a shade that represents who he used to be. Couldn't he then be free of the love that originated in his childhood?

Anyway, I was left deeply annoyed. But this is a first novel, and I did like it enough to finish it, so maybe I'll give Lane Robins another try, if I run out of other authors to read. Which actually seems pretty likely, given my reading habits.

*FWIW, if you are a cat lover like me, and you like fantasy and don't mind when it gets pretty violent, check out Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards novels, starting with The Lies of Locke Lamora. Cats figure more prominently in the second book, but the first is very enjoyable.

Wherein I Muse about Writing

Despite going back to work last week, I have managed to continue working on the current WiP, which is satisfying. Lately writing has been functioning as my escape. It's not always like that--I'm far more likely to retreat into the Sims 3, but I've had to set that aside because the game has so outpaced my poor computer's abilities that without an upgrade the game is unplayable. Which means I have to resort to writing to get away from reality--and lately reality has been giving me reason to want to get away (see my recent entries in my family blog if you want details about that).

I've set aside the decopunk serial for the moment because I wrote myself into a corner with it and I decided I need distance before tackling it again. Instead I've written about 40K words of the third novel in the Veronica Barry series. I'm still wrestling with the title. Something to do with clouds. I have a whole elemental symbolism thing going--first water, then fire, now air. Next will have something to do with earth. Maybe the fifth will have to do with spirit. Or maybe I'll switch to feng shui elements and have metal and wood. Or some combination.

So far, the novel is moving along nicely, and I've managed to bring together several elements that I'm enthusiastic about, so that's cool. My only regret is that I didn't write The River and the Roses in first person. Ever since working on the decopunk serial, which was in first person, I've decided I really prefer it. However, River, Fire and Veronica in Paris are all third person, so it doesn't make sense for this book to suddenly switch to first. Oh well!

Veronica is, by now, like an old friend, and I can see returning to her over and over to tell more stories about her. I have a lot of other plot bunnies bouncing around in my head. I really want to write a romance, for one. Maybe an Edwardian romance, since I just love Jane Austen. Plus, I sometimes get tired of the violence that necessarily comes with writing a Veronica book (other times I'm in the mood to write horror and it really works--lately that hasn't been the case, though, because I really feel like there's too much violence all around us these days). So I figure a romance would be a good genre to choose if I want to avoid writing violence.

Romance is a challenge for me. I tend to be very cynical about romance in real life, and to find a lot of fictional romances unoriginal. Then again, I almost always enjoy romantic comedies, so I suppose that's the exception. I'm not sure I have the skill to write any kind of comedy, though. I can be funny, but it's sort of this out-of-nowhere thing that happens sometimes, not something I can sustain. So I'm really not sure I could actually manage to write a romance. But it's something I'd like to try one of these days.

I've always loved soap operas, and I've often thought it would be fun to write a series of novels, or maybe even another serialized novel, that emulates soap operas. I'm not sure how that would look, though. I mean, to really emulate soap operas, you have to be willing to go the whole hog. Baby switches, returns-from-the-dead, improbable-relative-revelations, etc. Would that work in written form? Maybe I'll give that a try one of these days. It would probably work best slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I wouldn't want to go too over the top with silliness, because then it wouldn't really be sustainable, would it?

What genres have you thought about trying out? Have you jumped in and tried one that was new to you? How did it go?

Review of Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

I had hoped to be able to provide a little interview to go with this review. Alas, Ms. Carey is working towards a publishing deadline and declined my request for the interview. Oh well! Here's the review, in any case.

Naamah's Blessing, by Jacqueline Carey, is the third book in the Naamah trilogy and the last of the Kushiel's Legacy novels. For me, this latter fact is very hard to accept. Like many, many readers, I have loved Terre D'Ange and the elegant prose of the novels Carey has set there, waiting anxiously for the next installment.

The Naamah trilogy takes place several generations after Phedre and Imriel's stories, and this, at first, discouraged me. I loved them both so much! But I came to love Moirin as well, the "jade-eyed witch" who narrates the Naamah novels. Moirin, half-D'Angeline, half-Maghuin Dhonn, travels the world following the spark of her soul, and getting into a lot of trouble as she does. In Naamah's Blessing, Moirin finds that despite her many adventures, her greatest challenge lies ahead of her, and she must travel to the equivalent of the Aztec empire. Carey soon connects the challenges of this new setting to mistakes Moirin made in the first novel, Naamah's Kiss, pleasingly closing the circle of the plot.

I have always found that Carey's Terre D'Ange novels tap into my personal tastes--often right at a point in my life when I've been thinking about just the sorts of things her stories happen to address (for instance, I was seriously considering adopting a child at about the time I picked up Kushiel's Avatar). The Naamah trilogy was no exception. That said, I did pick up on a sense of fatigue in Naamah's Blessing. Perhaps it was because I knew it was the last one--perhaps had I not known that, I wouldn't have gotten that sense at all. However, Moirin herself has had enough of adventures by the time she reaches the Terra Nova, and she seems to really only want one thing: to settle into a monogamous marriage with Bao, so they can start having plump babies. I can't fault her for that; in my experience, a loving marriage and a plump baby are the keys to heaven on earth. Still, I think the novel lacked drive; it was certainly compelling, and a good end to the series, but it was no Kushiel's Dart.

I do have to say that I admire Carey's handling of the Aztecs and Incas. Some reviewers on Amazon complain that the portrayals were too flat or stereotypical--I didn't think so. Sure, I would have loved more description, for the novel to delve even more deeply into their culture. Perhaps this is one was in which it communicated fatigue. However, thinking back to the discussion some months ago on this blog about orientalism, I have to say that Carey sidestepped that pitfall very gracefully. [Spoilers ahead.] The characters travel to a strange, intimidating place, but it is not the Aztecs or the Incas who are sinister and evil. It is a D'Angeline, wielding power he attained through a demon Carey created and he accessed while still in Terre D'Ange. Yes, his weapons are the fearsome fire ants of the Amazon, but it is his evil that drives them. The Aztec and Inca characters themselves are multidimensional, believable, and range from honorable and brave to treacherous and villainous. This confirms my earlier realization about writing adventure stories: the big bad needs to be from off-world or a complete creation of the author's, in order to avoid any taint of exoticization and the like. This was quite effectively handled in Naamah's Blessing.

I absolutely recommend this novel, but if you haven't read Kushiel's Dart, start there. And give it about 330 pages before you make up your mind--there's a pretty sweet plot point that really throws the reader for a loop--one I very much enjoyed.

Free book! Come and get it!

Hi everyone! To celebrate the publishing of The Fire and the Veil, book 2 in my Veronica Barry series, I'm offering my novella, Veronica in Paris, (it's a prequel) for free for a limited time. Go to Smashwords, start a purchase of a copy of Veronica in Paris, and enter coupon code TL69N, which gives you 100% off. Smashwords is convenient because you have many choices as to format (including Kindle and Apple), so you should find one that suits your needs. Enjoy!

New book out! The Fire and the Veil

I decided to devote last week to finishing the revisions on The Fire and the Veil, the sequel to The River and the Roses, which I'd been neglecting since last year. I created my cover and published it on Amazon! I'll need to find some more time soon to get it up on Smashwords, too. I'm so pleased to have finally got it out, though.

Here's the summary:
French teacher and reluctant psychic Veronica Barry is under pressure. Her best friend's daughter, Angie, still traumatized from the assault she survived, has transferred to Veronica's school. Veronica's new boyfriend, Detective Daniel Seong, already wants her to meet his family. And fellow French teacher, Khalilah Jadeed, asks for Veronica's help to locate a missing woman. Add some disturbing dreams and aggressive spirits, and Veronica may have more than she can handle. Soon, she will discover that the spirits she sees and hears sometimes affect her world in other ways as well.

Ack... be back soon...

Just a quick note to say, I will me MIA for the next few days (and have been already for the last few, in case you hadn't noticed). It's the end of my quarter with my MA program and that means paper-writing time. Which makes me feel like this:

...because there's no time for novel-writing, and with the baby, every minute he's napping I have to be working on the papers, and it's very stressful. In fact, I should be doing that now, so bye.

Sample of Broken Ones

The pounding on my front door woke me, which told me two things right away. One, I’d overslept. Two, whoever was at my door was about to break it down, they were pummeling it so hard.

I straightened out the tee-shirt and drawstring pants I slept in and ran my fingers through my hair a few times, although from the feel of it, there was no taming it.

“Alright!” I shouted as I made my way to the front of the house. “Alright, stop it!”

“Marie!” came the answering bellow. “Marie, I know you’re in there!”

Everett. “Oh, god,” I whispered, unsure of what to do. A quick look around my living room showed that Marie and the kids had already left. The afghans were folded, stacked one on top of the other on one end of my old worn-out couch.

Everett started pounding on the door again.

“Everett, knock it off!” I shouted, and opened the door. He stood there, red-faced and panting, eyes wild. Everett has coffee hair and eyes, and just a hint of olive in his complexion, but at the moment it was as dark as a beet.

Everett Karrar came from a “nice” middle-class family in Point Loma. WASPy-types; they went to their church and attended fundraising events at local nonprofits. Everett fit their image of the good son--but to look at him now, you’d think he was a reject from some reality show. He was so mad, spittle was flying from his mouth with every breath.

“Everett, she’s not here,” I said, trying to project calm.

“I know she’s here!” He was trying to look past me.

“See for yourself,” I said, and stepped out of the way so he could come in and look around.
Everett stalked into the entryway. I watched him take in the empty living room, and his eyes came to rest on the afghans on the couch. Some of the red was fading from his face. He kept his eyes on the afghans and said, “She was here.”

I shrugged. “Yeah. She spent the night.”

His gaze flashed to me. Two spots of red stayed in his cheeks. “Where’d she go?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know. You woke me up. I didn’t know she’d left.”

His eyebrows plunged down and his eyes teared up. His hands balled into fists. “Bull-fucking-shit, Louise. Bull-fucking-shit. You think you can hide my wife from me? My kids? Where is she?”

I stood with my hand on my hip, trying to look bored. Inside, I could feel my pulse accelerating, and my hands went cold. I wasn’t going to tell him where Marie went, and I wanted him out of my house. But Everett used to be a Marine, and although his body was going to seed, he was still a lot stronger than me.

“Everett, I don’t know,” I said. “She was here when I got home last night. She asked to stay over, so I said sure. Now she’s gone.”

Everett grabbed my arm, fingers hard and squeezing. “You think you can just laugh at me, don’t you, Louise! Who the fuck are you to get in the middle of things? She’s my wife!”

“Let me go,” I said, trying to yank away, but he kept his grip on my arm. “Everett, I told you, I don’t know where she is!”

“Yeah, you do,” he said, nodding. “And you’d better tell me.”

“Listen, you fucker, I’m not telling you anything!” I said, my temper snapping. I raised a bare foot and slammed it as hard as I could against his shin, raking down to pound his sneaker. It wasn’t all that effective, except that his face flushed bright red again. “Let me go!” I shouted.

Everett gripped my arm tighter and then threw me down and away from him. I stumbled and my knees hit the floor.

“Jesus, Everett!” I cried. I scrambled to my feet and pointed at my door. “Get out!”

He ignored that and strode towards me.

“Get the fuck out of my house!” I shouted. “You’re crazy!”

That’s when he punched me. I hit the floor again.

“You think you can hide my kids from me? You think you can hide my wife? Where are they?” he yelled. I tried to get on my feet again but my head spun and my jaw felt like it had exploded. “Where are they, Louise!”

I grabbed at the couch for support, pulling myself up. He was fucking crazy. I had to call the cops. On my feet at last, I lunged for the phone, which sat on a table by the wall.

“Oh no you don’t!” he growled. My feet flew out from under me—he’d knocked them out—and then the phone was in his hand. I don’t remember much after that.

__________________________________________
You can purchase Broken Ones on Kindle here, on Nook here, or in other formats here.

Titles: How do you pick them?

Man, when they say "full-time mother" they aren't kidding. Lately the bug has been limiting his naps to 30 minutes at a time, and only about three of those a day. And the rest of the time, he demands constant attention. Even as I type he's fussing. ::runs over to crib::

::returns after entertaining the baby with his toy monkey and giving him a paci::

And yet, I've managed to finish part 2 of the serial novel, which is as yet unnamed.  Which brings me to the question of titles.

For The River and the Roses, the title came after a lot of deliberation, and while I think it's the best of the options I was debating at the time, I don't know if I really like it. It's long. It doesn't really say, "This is a mystery novel about a woman coming to accept her psychic ability." But I do like the gothic quality of roses, and I like the cover, which mirrors the title. So... I'd give it a B, I guess.

Broken Ones was tough, too. I wanted to address the emotional damage the characters are coping with, as well as make a reference to the several broken windows in the story (which are tied symbolically, of course, to the emotional damage). I also wanted a title that was original, and there are a lot of titles with "broken" or "broken windows" or whatnot. When I chose Broken Ones, it was the only book with that title that came up in an Amazon search, although since then more have popped up. But I wonder if it sounds too angsty, and maybe that's why people haven't been downloading it. I changed the (VERY) brief description I've been sending out with my "thank you for following message," though, and there have been three more downloads in a week, so I do think calling it "paranormal" was part of the problem there. It's very hard to capture what Broken Ones is about in three or four words, though, so the new description says "a novel of escape & survival of abuse." Which has a weird feeling to me, syntax-wise, and may give the impression, again, that the novel is angsty. Which I guess it is, a bit, but I wouldn't describe the narrator, Louise, as angsty at all. I think what makes Broken Ones stand out is her voice, which is very matter of fact. Louise has a lot of humor and she tends to see things in fairly cynical terms--she's not the "woe is me" type. Anyway, so I'd give that title a B, too.

Veronica in Paris is the best of my title choices, and it was totally easy. There was no debate. It was my working title, and it stuck. It gives a pretty accurate impression of the story, I'd say--it's about a woman named Veronica who goes to live in Paris for a year. Paris is pretty strongly associated to romance in people's minds, so the fact that there's romance involved probably comes as a shock to no one who reads that title. So, A for that one.

Anyway, so now I'm working on this new book, and the working title is the name of the city, Helésey, where most of it is set. Which isn't going to tell anyone anything about the book, and may even mislead them into thinking it's French in some way. It actually draws on Norse mythology for some of the culture, although I've altered a lot of aspects. I also draw inspiration from America and Italy in the 1920s, as well as Germany in the 1930s. But there's really nothing French about it--the word "Helésey" is an altered version of the name of an island in Norse mythology, and the city is on an island, so it seemed to fit. The accented e comes from the original word, too.

My main character is named Miadar, which is not a common enough name, I think, to put it in the title--I suspect most people won't recognize it as a woman's name at all, which isn't surprising since I made it up by combining the words for "honey" and "hair" I found on a site claiming to have words in old Norse. I have no idea if the site is legit, and it doesn't really matter--I often choose names for characters based on what they mean, but it never comes up for the reader, so if it only means something to me, that's okay. The first part of the novel revolves around a coronation, and Miadar leaving her home because she's summoned to Helésey, the capitol, to witness it. So I've thought about The Coronation as a title, and also Summoned. The former may work, but I'm not sure about the latter, although I like the idea of having a verb in the title. Summoned conjures images of magic and demon summoning to me. Maybe I've read too much urban fantasy. The second part revolves around a night out Miadar participates in, where she visits an illegal gambling hall (think speakeasy). So I thought about Invited, The Invitation or The Gambling Hall for that one, although I'm really not in love with any of them. The next part will have to do with a seduction... so The Seduction, perhaps. Seduced, maybe. Parts four, five and six I haven't worked out completely yet, but they will have something to do with a vigilante, and probably at least one debauched party, and a betrayal. The last parts (not sure how many there will be total) will involve fighting for freedom, bringing down an evil leader, finding someone who is lost, and escaping. It's fairly murky in my mind at this point, and I don't like talking in detail about stories I haven't written, but you get the idea.

I'd like the titles to all work together:
The Coronation - The Invitation - The Seduction - The Betrayal - The ???
Or:
Summoned - Invited - Seduced - Betrayed - ???
Or:
The Capitol - The Gambling Hall - The [location] - etc.

Or I suppose it could be something like: Miadar Summoned, Miadar Invited, Miadar Seduced, Miadar Betrayed...

What do you think? What makes a good title? How do you choose your titles? Are you satisfied with the titles you've chosen in the past? Do you think about parts of speech or other specific characteristics of titles when you're trying to choose one?

My current "shoulds" of writing

My cbt therapist (or should that be cb therapist?) Shiva, would probably tell me to rephrase this, but there are several things I "should" be doing for my writing right now.*

First of all, there's the sequel to The River and the Roses, which has been through one round of revisions, and probably could stand to undergo about nine rounds more. If I gave it some serious time and energy, I could probably get it up to par for April, and publish it. I even have most of what I need to create the cover. I've been meaning to do this for about six months, with the intention of dropping the price for River to $0.99 once the sequel is out. Why have I not done it yet? Well, aside from the whole pregnancy/bed rest/newborn baby distraction, revisions are... well, work. And often annoying, painful work at that. I read a quote on twitter the other day, I forget from which famous author, saying something about how revisions or rewrites are more pleasant than producing the first draft because you don't have the dread of not finishing the novel hanging over you. I can relate to that, but for me, revisions are way more difficult to get into. Still, and Shiva would approve of this phrase, it would be satisfying to get that item done.

Then there's marketing. I stopped actively marketing my books nearly a year ago, I think, or at least nine months ago. I'm still on twitter and I update my facebook page from time to time, most often to notify you all that I've got a new blog post, actually, but as for directly sending out messages on twitter suggesting that people check out my book, no. Michael R. Hicks, one of those lucky and driven self-pubbed authors who is living the dream (he quit his day job last April, I think it was--I admire him so much!) suggests that the "tipping point" for twitter as a marketing platform is to have 1000+ followers. At the moment I have about 845. I use my twitter account to recommend news articles and just talk about things I'm doing or am interested in. And also let people know when I've posted something new on either this blog or the recipe blog. I don't advertise the family blog because it's much more personal and I figure if you're really that interested in me you'll check it out off this page. And probably most people aren't that interested in me! Anyway, I don't have a problem with people posting on twitter to advertise their books (in fact I try to retweet them when it's clear to me what they are about). Although some people will spam the feed for like, ten minutes, and it makes me wonder whether they've ever read an article about twitter etiquette. So my point is, though, I haven't been doing that. Why not? I feel like until I've got something new to offer, I don't want to risk losing followers because I'm self-promoting for the sake of self-promoting. Probably not sound business reasoning, but there it is. Maybe this week I'll send out a couple of links to my books.

I'm on Pinterest, now, too. Please feel free to follow me. I even have a board devoted to books, although they are books I want to remember to check out, so it seems weird to post my own books there. Maybe I'll create a new board for my books and stuff related to them. I do have a decopunk board where I collected a bunch of stuff to help me world build my current story. So I suppose when (if) it's done and I've published it, I could pin it to that board and it wouldn't be weird.

Speaking of the current novel, it is teetering on the edge of that going-to-be-abandoned cliff because I haven't been working on it regularly and I'll lose so much steam I'll never get it back at this rate. And that would be a shame, I think, because I have some interesting ideas for it. So what would be good there is to set up some sort of schedule or something... and bribe myself with some reward for achieving a word goal too, I think. My attempts to create NaNos outside of the official NaNoWriMo have failed thus far. It's silly, it shouldn't (there's that word again) make a difference whether I'm looking at the official site's graph for the word count or a ticker I created myself, but for some reason, it does. So the trick may be to abandon the large goal of a NaNo and make smaller goals. Shorter term, too. And small rewards as a result. Hm... must give some thought to what rewards would motivate me.

Any suggestions? Must be cheap. We are broke-ish.

How about you, do you have any writing "shoulds" or other projects that need your attention? How do you get yourself on task?

__________________
* By the way, if you have ever struggled with depression or anxiety, I strongly recommend going through cbt. Changed my life, no exaggeration.

the aftermath of my week long writing binge...?

I have these ambitions.

I decided that spring break would be filled to the brim with writing, editing, and publishing... and that happened. I published three books (although I'm going to have to upload a new copy of the third, because I rushed it and then realized I needed to still fix a few things). I finished the first draft of the WiP. I came up with a new story idea. I pretty much drove myself nonstop for ten days (we had a snow day added to the break). It was wildly productive.

And now I'm tired.

I don't regret it. At all. But there's a part of me that's really dissatified with the fact that I can't keep that pace up ALL. THE. TIME.

I decided to make April my personal NaNoWriMo. I planned to come home every day after work and write, like I did in November. That hasn't really happened. Yesterday I came home and took a nap on the couch. Today the hubby took me out to eat, and I'm dreaming of just going to bed right now--and it's 7:30pm.

And I know I'm genuinely tired, because even though I have that whip-cracking inner voice going off about it, it's a very faint voice, and the rest of me can't muster up any energy to care.

I've done the rewrites on the third book. I could take it down from the sites and put the new version up right now. It probably wouldn't take me more than fifteen minutes to do. And then, I could find all the reviewer-blogs I've been collecting and start submitting my books to them like I've been intending. This would be a good marketing step. But it's probably not going to happen tonight.

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will make it home earlier from work, and I'll have time for a nap if I need it, and then I'll find the energy to do the new uploads and write some more for ApriNoWriMo.

I think, actually, with ApriNoWriMo, two things are slowing me down. 1) Definitely my fatigue. 2) The story idea. It's not a bad story idea, but it's a new one, totally outside my Veronica series, and as such, I'm not bought in to it yet. I takes me a while to get bought in, which is why I like the NaNo format--I'm in such a rush to get words down by the deadline that by the time the month is over, I've bought in at some point without even noticing. So what I may need to do is come up with Veronica Barry: book 3. One of the lovely things about writing VB: book 2 was that I slipped right in--no initial struggle to form an attachment. That was way cool. So maybe I don't need a break from it, as I had decided when I finished the first draft of book 2 during spring break. Maybe I need a little breather and then to dive right back into Veronica's story...

Something to ponder.

My question to you is, how do you deal with fatigue? Do you ever push yourself very hard and then pay the consequences? How do you handle that, if you do, or avoid that, if you don't? Do you write in series? If so, do you take breaks between each book to write something else, or remain immersed in your series' world?

a realization

Bear with me, you probably realized this ages ago. But for me, it's a recent thing. I've figured out what I think the coolest thing about epublishing is.

• the immediate gratification? No.
• the royalties? No.
• the control over just about all aspects of the book? Sort of.

To properly explain the coolest thing about epublishing, I have to backtrack. Let's go back to January, when I entered the ABNA contest with my novel, The River and the Roses. I also started perusing the ABNA forum, which is full of wonderful, supportive writers, by the way. I highly recommend it. One thread prompted everyone to submit their first paragraph to be evaluated. So I did. Originally, my first paragraph was nearly half a page long, and contained a detailed description of my character. Zzzzzz. But I'd never thought about it before: how you open your novel can make a huge difference in your reader's interest.

For years I wrote for myself, creative writing teachers, and writing groups, but didn't have any interest in pursuing publishing (I was intimidated). When I was in my teens and early twenties, I read a lot of books on writing. Then I eventually consciously stopped doing that, because it was fueling my internal editor, and my internal editor, when fueled, is a nasty mofo. My point is that while I knew some things about writing, I really never paid any attention to writing to sell.

So going on that forum opened my eyes: the first paragraph of my novel would put people to sleep. Okay. So I gave that some thought. At what point in The River and the Roses did things really start to pick up? Well, that question was easy to answer. My main character, Veronica (the same Veronica as in "Veronica in Paris" fyi), has been repressing her psychic ability for most of her life, but when a murder happens near her apartment, a nightmare-vision of it overcomes her defenses. This is the inciting incident for the novel. I figured, perfect. I'll start the novel with the dream, and then flashback over the day leading up to the night of the murder (important stuff happens that I couldn't cut out). I sent this new version to a couple of my beta-readers, and they both liked it a lot. So I thought, alright. I'm good. I'm ready for this novel to go to the contest. And I posted the new opening paragraph. That's when some comments I got started to make me uneasy.

"Never open with a dream."

Agents hate it. You'll sink your manuscript the moment the agent realizes you're starting with a dream.

At first I figured, well, maybe that's true most of the time, but Veronica is a psychic. She's very much inspired from tv's Medium. How can it be wrong to open with a dream in her case?

But the more I read, the more this got hammered home. I read agent blogs. I read other forums. I read articles. Everyone said the number one bad way to open a novel was with a dream. So I scratched the opening and started over. I tried starting the novel a few minutes after the dream, when Veronica finds the body and the police arrive. She's in shock, there are flashing lights, they're taking her in for questioning. Exciting, right? Good opening, right? No, apparently not.

Disoriented characters are a no-no, too.

Plus, this flashing forward and then flashing back to the day that preceded it wasn't going over well with critiquers either.

So I went back and cut the flashforward scene entirely. Now I was left with a similar opening paragraph to the original, although I'd chopped the description down a lot. But still, it was pretty low energy. So I tried cutting the very beginning out and starting a bit later, when Veronica is at least doing something, planning a party and shopping, and after a couple of short paragraphs she has her first weird psychic thing. Nothing major, like the dream, but still.

So, I got it, right? It's a decent opening, right? No.

"You have to start with action! You have to grab your reader by the short hairs and yank them into your book!"

Sigh. I wrestled with ideas. I'd come up with something, and then throw it out. It got so I hated that opening chapter. And then I came up with a new thought, which tied in to a subplot I had already decided to introduce throughout the rest of the novel. I wrote it up: Veronica is walking her dog on the morning of the day of the murder, and she sees a ghost. She's embarrassed because she reacts to it and no one else can see it. Good, right? You guessed it. No. Too dream-like.

Luckily for me, at this point, one critiquer said she did like it, and she pointed out some ways to ground it more so it wouldn't feel so dreamy. So I took her advice, and I'm pleased with the result. I'm not changing the opening again, people. I'm done.

So this is a super long-winded way of getting at the coolest thing about epublishing, but I still have more I have to tell you before I can get to it. Still there? I'm amazed.

While I was laboring over my novel's opening, I was also still reading novels before bed. I read one called Unholy Ghosts, by Stacia Kane. Good paranormal suspense book: I recommend it. As I started this novel, it struck me that Kane opened it exactly right. High action, introduces the character and what she does, etc. In fact, it was so perfect, I felt like it must have gone through the vetting process at absolutewrite. As a quick explanation, absolutewrite is a big writer's forum. It's got some amazing people on it. There are experts who will explain things to you never thought you could find out about (in my case, arson investigation, the territorial disputes between PDs and FDs, Koreans and shamanism, and more). There are people who will give you step by step instructions to accomplish some formatting feat in your Word document. And there are the Share Your Work boards. Maybe it's because I opened myself up to it by saying, "Critique me with your gloves off," but I have gotten beat up one side and down the other of those forums. The worst being "Query Letter Hell." But my first chapter of River didn't fair well, either. And to be honest, most of the feedback I got wasn't very helpful, because people would say I was doing this or that wrong, and never suggest how I could do it right. Anyway. So I'm reading Unholy Ghosts, and I'm thinking, man, Kane is nailing it. She's got it down. Her book would totally pass muster on absolutewrite. Yeah, because she's a mod there. No joke. And there's nothing wrong with that. Is there?

"We are the same"

I started to think about this experience I'd been having, with the opening. And I'd also been reading a lot of articles and forum posts about other right and wrong ways to do things (you can even see the results of some of that in my blog post from earlier this month about naming your character and ending your novel). In fact, I became obsessed with the idea that I could write a perfect novel that followed all the rules (a bit like Kane's). I started gathering all of the rules I could find in a notebook. I outlined a novel to follow every one of them.

And then one day, as I was walking my dog and chatting with my husband, I started feeling uneasy about it. Not so much because I learned long ago that I can't force myself to write something, even if I like the idea (Stephen King talks about how he wishes he could write like Amy Tan, but he can't--I can totally relate--I want to be Jacqueline Carey so much; it's like she took all of the things I love and put them in Kushiel's Dart... but I can't write like her). But because I started to think, wow, eventually all the commercial novels out there will be fundamentally the same. Not the stories, but how they are told. A horror novel and a mystery novel and a western and a romance--they'll all start the same way, follow the same path, and end the same way. Not blatantly, you understand. But the skeleton will be the same--start with some nondreamy exciting incident, go through the correct number of plot steps, include all the important aspects of a plot, and end by tying all of those together. And the only novels that won't do that will be from established authors who can get away with ignoring the rules.

I already can tell you the ending of most movies or what a character will do next in tv shows without having seen them before. Knowing the structure and rules of novel writing means I can do the same thing when I'm reading, and the best I can hope for is that while I'll know a twist is coming, I won't quite have figured out what it's going to be.

How sad is it to know a twist is coming?

Which brings me, at last, to the coolest thing about epublishing.

There are no more rules.

Don't get me wrong. I think River's Veronica-sees-a-ghost opening is good, and I'm keeping it. I'm glad I had to work on it so much, because I do think it's better for it. But the cool thing is, if I want to open my next novel with a dream, because that's the best way to open it, I can. No agent will look at it and say, "Damnit, another dream opening!" and throw it in the garbage. Epublishing means the only people I'm beholden to are my readers. I'm guessing that breaking all the rules may create a big mess, but just think of the creative possibilities of that mess! Just imagine the weird directions novels can now go in! Or, how about this... I have a critiquing partner on a forum who wrote an epic fantasy that's the first book in a trilogy and it's something like 200K words. He's been told on forums like querytracker that he's got to cut that thing down because no agent will consider publishing a first novel that long, epic fantasy or not. But he feels that it's already as trim as its going to get. So if he epublishes it, does he have to amputate some part of it that he feels is vital to the story? No! How cool is that?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Is this really a good thing? Don't authors need the gatekeepers in traditional publishing to force them to tighten their prose, make better plotting decisions, etc.?"

I put it to you that the answer is no. The only people authors need to please are readers. If my friend publishes his epic and he gets readers, that's all that matters. Now what may happen is that when an author puts a novel up, very few people will buy it, because it has massive flaws and gets bad reviews. Then it's time to go back to the drawing board. And who wants to have to keep pulling their novel off the retail pages to fix it? No, I think good authors will work their hardest to create the best novel they can to begin with anyway. Most of us are not hacks trying to throw a few cliches together and thinking it will sell. Most of us love what we do. We love our characters. It matters to us that a story hang together well. It feels good when you come up with a solution to that plot point nightmare you've been struggling with for weeks. So while there will be people who epublish before their novel is ready, they'll learn. And once they do, they'll become better writers for it. And best of all, the novels they will produce will be original and wonderful and not fettered down by rules!

Pretty cool, huh?

You've made it through this whole post. That means you have an unusually robust attention span. So tell me, what do you think about all of this?