AW February Blog Chain: Love vs. Romance

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Apologies for that.

It's once again time for an AW Blog Chain, and the theme is Love versus Romance. So far, it's taken quite a few interesting turns, from uninspired sitcom quadrangles to real life love stories, and ending so far with escritoria's post about how unhealthy forms of love can manifest in the real world.

As a writer, I often deal with the manifestations and repercussions of love. Not with romance, persay, because that's a whole other ballgame for me. I write urban fantasy, and I'm actually quite jealous of my favorite paranormal romance authors who can consistently churn out terrific, involving reads. But writing romance is tricky, and writing emotionally satisfying, believable romance is even trickier. So my hat is off to the ladies who excel at it (you know who you are)

In urban fantasy, romance is not the norm, but it certainly isn't excluded. Characters find romance, fall in love, break up, etc... Some popular series straddle the line; others stay easily within the realm of UF.

Love, rather than romance, plays a large role in THREE DAYS TO DEAD. Not the sweet wine-and-candlelight love, but the balls-out, messy kind of love. Love is the driving force behind one of my supporting characters, and it becomes an obstacle (and source of strength) to my heroine.

As a reader, I like both. The greatest thing about reading fiction is that, while I haven't found Love yet in my own life, I'll always find it at the end of the best in Romance.

Next up in the chain is bestselling author Cathy Clamp!

The entire chain:

Me
Razibahmed
Kat Frass
bsolah
AmyDoodle
FreshHell
escritora
ChaosTitan
Cathy C
harri3tspy
truelyana
tatkinson

October AW Blog Chain

It's once again time for the AW Blog Chain. I haven't participated in one of these in a while, so I was glad to climb on board this month. The theme is writing, and over at FreshHell's blog (how cool of a name is that, by the way?), she wrote about discipline and creating deadlines.

Very cool, says I, because discipline has been my big thing lately.

We say it over and over again: writing takes discipline. And as I'm finding out, writing professionally takes discipline to a whole other level, because with it comes deadlines. No more, "I'll write as often as I can, and it's finished when it's finished." Oh no. Now it's, "I have to write every day, so I can finish it by __." Which isn't usually a problem for me, because I'm a fast typer and I tend to think out the next scene while at work/driving/showering/cooking/etc…, so I don't have to stare at a blank screen and figure out what the hell I'm saying next.

There are certainly times I don't want to write. I'd rather catch up on two hours of "Bones" episodes I've missed, or spend a few hours knocking around the Blogosphere, in search of something fun to read. I write anyway, and use the other stuff as rewards. After all, don't we all perform better when there's a reward involved?

Speaking of which, I've only got a few hours until "Heroes" is on, and haven't written a thing (blog posts don't count, HA!).

Next on the chain is razibahmed .

Me (Ralph Pines)
Unfocused Me
Sassee
Feathers
colbymarshall1
FreshHell
ChaosTitan
razibahmed
harri3tspy
mbroadway
rosemerry

Reading Round-Up

When I logged on this morning, I realized it had been a couple of days since I'd made the rounds of my favorite sites and blogs (usually an everyday thing, but I've been so busy with edits this week....). So I thought I'd link to all of the things I found amusing, education, and just plain bizarre.

Half-Pint on Twitter. I grew up reading the "Little House on the Prairie" series, so this little feed is beyond giggle-worthy. I like the one about the corn cob doll that won't stop staring. Hehe.

Asking the Right Questions. I don't write YA, but best-selling author Ally Carter does. And she's blogged a list of the right questions YA authors should be asking. It's informative and a good read for any aspiring author.

Updated Want-List. Agent Jessica Faust (BookEnds, LLC) blogged about what she's currently looking for. Query her, if your book fits. She's awesome!

Lindsay Lohan has a girlfriend. I don't know why this amuses (or surprises) me, but it does.

And last, but not least, a thread on AW pointed me toward a blog I'd never heard of and a post that just made me laugh out loud/scratch my head/roll my eyes. I'm not linking to it, because this poor delusional soul doesn't need anymore blog traffic. I'll summarize by saying 1) Don't ever try and trick an editor into thinking they know you, because it won't work; 2) Advance checks don't come with unsigned contracts; 3) Editors don't send contracts without first offering a deal, be it by phone or email or other apparatus; 4) Beware bloggers who say they want you to help them write their second contracted novel as a "group project."

Two Books Sold to Bantam Dell

You have no idea how hard it's been to keep this quiet until the contracts were finalized, but now they are. And now I can share!

From Publisher's Marketplace, August 20th:

Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Kelly Meding's THREE DAYS TO DEAD, about a supernatural bounty hunter who wakes up in a morgue in someone else's body, with only three days to stop an impending war between humans and paranormals before she dies again, to Anne Groell at Bantam Dell, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Jonathan Lyons at Lyons Literary (World English).

I'm not being fake-modest when I say I probably couldn't have gotten here without AW. I discovered the world of Query Hell, innumerable agent and author blogs, and threads on writing and editing and editing some more. I've had several terrific folks here beta for me, on this project and others, and I owe them so much.

TDTD is my seventh finished novel. After three years of querying three projects, dozens of rejections, dozens more no-responses, twenty-or-so partials, and a dozen fulls, the right manuscript landed with the right agent, who read it over Memorial Weekend and offered representation that Tuesday. After a month of revisions, we pitched to six editors the second week in July. By August 15, we had three rejections, two offers, and one more pending, so we went to auction.

On August 20th, the results were in, and we accepted an offer. In the middle of an excitement fraught call to my dad, the Call Waiting beeped in. The ID said "Random House." Not something I ever thought I'd see on my telephone. I spoke briefly with Anne Groell, who wanted to welcome me to RH and complimented my book.

Did I mention I probably babbled a little?

With contracts ready, all that's left is to tackle this Editorial Letter.

*dances around the room*

Author Talk: Jackie Kessler

I'm a regular reader of Gena Showalter's blog, and last Friday the Author Talk segment was with AW member Jackie Kessler. I adored Jackie's debut, HELL'S BELLES, and am saving up for her other two novels. So go check out the segment, if you haven't seen it yet.

The Endless Prologue Debate

Countdown to the big move: 3 Days

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Prologues. Some books have 'em, some books don't. And until I joined AbsoluteWrite Watercooler, I never realized there was such a debate about them. That people could get so worked up over whether or not to include them, whether or not they read them, and if they really serve any purpose to the story being told.

I'm not going to argue pros and cons of prologues, reading or writing. They exist. Deal with it.

It just struck me hard today--a thread over on AW had to be moderated, because some of the members were getting...um...heated. And a little rude to each other. Over something as silly as whether or not to include a prologue.

Do what works for your story. If you think it needs a prologue, write it. You can always take it out later, if it turns out you don't. Worry about what readers might think after you've finished the novel, polished it to a shine, got an agent, and sold it to a publishing house.

The Steampunk Archetype Test

I admit, the most steampunk I've been exposed to was in the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I found the link to this test in an AW post and found the results quite amusing.

I am an Aetherist Bodger.

The aether carries the information, the aether is information. You are one of the few who know the ins and outs of Aether Terminals. You can access information across the Aethersphere, tapping into the Aetherpipes of anyone you want and stealing the information stored in their datatanks. Some think of you as a myth, a legend created to scare people. You are no myth or legend, you are quite real and you are currently reading the Queen’s AetherMissives.

February Blog Chain: Balance

Yes, I'm back on the AW Blog Chain Wagon. February's theme is Balance, and today I have the daunting task of following an amazing post from Ava Jarvis at Spontaneous Derivation. I kid you not. If you aren't following the chain and just happened upon this post, go read it.

Right now.

*taps foot*

Done? Yes? Good.

So balance. My handy-dandy Webster's Dictionary and Thesauras (Basic English Words for Daily Use) only gives two definitions. One: device for determining the weight of something. Duh, and not quite what I'm going for here. Two: agreement of totals in the debt and credit of an account. Close, but not quite. It's interesting that the only two definitions are both related to numbers.

The thesaurus half provides more useful synonyms: poise, stability, composure, equilibrium, equalize.

I'll add harmony to the list.

In her blog chain post, Ava mentioned being a Leo and some traits that go along with it. I don't read my horoscope or really know what it means to be a Cancer, so I checked it out. In particular, this line stood out for me: "When your level of security is undermined, particularly by domestic disturbances, you can lose your equilibrium, becoming irritable, hypersensitive, snappy, unforgiving, self-pitying and brooding."

Holy beans, that describes me so well. Especially over the last couple of months. I've been riding the ups and downs of the Query Train, attempting to land a literary agent. Family problems (snooze, snore, we all have them, I know) keep cropping up and sapping my energy. And let's not even talk about The Job From Hell right now, in which I can't seem to find any sort of firm footing.

So where am I? Emotionally exhausted, crabby all the time (no astrology-pun intended), snappy at my roommate and employees, avoiding phone calls to my parents, very down on my writing ability, and in moderate amounts of physical pain (did I mention my job is also physically strenuous?).

I've fallen so far away from my center I don't quite know how to find it again. How to strike the balance in my life that was there just three months ago. Unless it was never there to begin with, and I just never realized how far off-center I'd become. I don't know. Maybe I'll never know.

But my horoscope says that change is coming (of course, they all say that, because change is quite inevitable). It's nice, though, to believe in a positive change on the horizon. Something to nudge me back toward the center of things. Something to weigh down the opposite side of the scale and give me back my balance.

Next up is The Writer's Round-About.


The Unfocused Life
Auria Cortes
Spontaneous Derivation
Organized Chaos
The Writer's Round-About
Spynotes
Williebee
Even in a Little Thing
Spittin' (out words) Like a Llama
A Thoughtful Life
Life in Scribbletown
My Path to Publication
For the First Time
Green Diva
Polenth's Quill

On Demand or Out of Service?

I refuse the feel guilty about spending the entire day in sweats, alternating between the TV and the computer, doing a whole lot of nothing. It's the first whole day I've had to myself in weeks. I watched an Alien Nation movie, an episode of Nash Bridges, a behind-the-scenes featurette for Wild Hogs, and part of a movie on OnDemand called Reeker. Was Reeker any good? The bits I saw weren't bad, but what exactly is the point of OnDemand if the system goes down forty minutes into a movie?

Further proof that Comcast sucks wild turkey toes? I thought so...

Anyway, I finally vegged enough to sit down and get some writing done. I'm closing in on 15k words on the WIP. I'm back in Micah's POV, and the story just took a turn that I wasn't expecting quite so soon. I just love it when the story surprises me. I've become confident enough in my writing to go with those flows, and they always work out well.

I also started a pretty interesting discussion on the AbsoluteWrite forums, stemming from some comments made in Share Your Work (yes, I showed my work, I'm so proud of myself). It's been great fun to follow, and it's helping me understand a few things about that particular book (Dark City, aka Marionette).

The Great Word Chopping Challenge

Boy, what a month it's been. Craziness at work. Nuttiness at home. Ups and downs with the writing. Summer is almost over, which means Christmas is around the corner. And we all know what that means. Christmas Eve dinner with my extended family, wherein I will deflect questions about my lack of love life and my continuing status as an unagented, unpublished writer. But that little drama is still four months away, so no use worrying about it quite yet.

What have I been up to, you ask? And what the hell does my blog post title mean?

Frequently on AbsoluteWrite, a thread will pop up (very often from an overzealous newbie) asking about word counts. The common theme: "I've written a 200,000 word fantasy/thriller/mystery/whatever, but agents say they won't take anything over 120,000. I can't possible cut anything, because my baby is perfect the way she is. Since my book is so awesome, do you think the agent will make an exception?"

**headdesk**

Once a month. Seriously.

It got me to thinking about editing and cutting and making a story stronger. I pondered two books that I wrote several years ago. They were originally one long novel, but it kept growing in scope, so I split it into two average length books. Together, their word count was approximately 170,000.

I love those books. I love the characters and the world and their unique powers. It's been part of my life since the year 2000. I had queried the first novel as a standalone, unsuccessfully, for nearly two years before my final rejection arrived this summer. I had planned to simply stick it in a drawer for a while and move onward with other projects. And I did. For about a month.

Then I started thinking about editing and word count trimming. Did it really need to be two books? Were all of those subplots necessary? Could I trim it down to a manageable 120k words without losing the overall story?

No. No. We'll see.

So I opened up Word and pasted both documents into it, and thus began the Great Word Chopping Challenge. I excised an entire subplot that, while fun and research-heavy during the first draft, wasn't absolutely needed for the story to work. I chopped out whole scenes. I cut two beloved flashbacks. I removed extraneous details, excessive dialogue tags, and about a hundred "nods, smiles, and grins." The words melted off, leaving a tighter, leaner story behind. I finished with a word count of 119,890.

Was it painful to cut away favorite scenes/moments? Hell, yes. Was I proud of myself once I hit the delete key? Definitely. Do I think this single novel is an improvement over the duology? Yes. Why? Dunno.

My point is that it can be done. Words can be trimmed. Often, getting rid of that extra fat will make the overall novel healthier and happier. Is this true in all instances? No. Some stories are just long. I'd love to see the original duology in print, but if the combined version is what sells, then I'll be satisfied. It's a story I want to share with others, whether it's the Theatrical Release, or the Extended Director's Cut.

Either way, the challenge was worth it.

Happy Chopping!

AW Blog Chain 9

I haven't participated in an AW blog chain for quite a while, and I'm ecstatic to be back. I neglected the poor thing for a few months (the blog, not AW, heaven knows I spend too much time there).

If may be so bold as to quote from A View From the Waterfront (the lovely blog that preceded mine), Alan writes: What will Kelly at Organized Chaos do with this thread?

What, indeed?

Alan blogged about food security in Alaska. I have to be honest here--I never pondered the notion that food would be a problem to get in Alaska. Why? Well, I admit to a somewhat limited worldview, since my life has been spent in Southern Delaware and Northern Virginia (with a brief stopover in Los Angeles and Pennsylvania for college). I know Alaska is snowy and cold, and most of its major cities are along the coast. Dummy me never really understood why until I read his post: food.

My roommate is a huge fan of "Deadliest Catch," and she could probably write me an essay on the importance of seafood to Alaskan survival. Or on the sound a grown man makes when a crab pinches his nethers. I imagine it contains swear words.

Living here in the continental US, it's hard to imagine not having immediate access to all sorts of groceries. If I want steak, I go buy steak. If I want shrimp, I go buy shrimp. If I want peaches, I go buy peaches (although ripeness is negotiable, depending on the time of year). The idea of subsistence foods being provided by the Federal Government just astounds me. It sounds like something we do to villages in South America, not to our fellow Americans in the great white north.

It truly instills a sense of respect. Respect for the folks who carve out a life and a living up there in Alaska. A place that is fifty degrees in the summer and can have upwards of six months of constant sunlight in certain areas is not a state I'd want to live in. But my hat is off to those that do. It's a beautiful state, and you have been blessed with its wonders.

*rereads*

Well, not the post I thought I'd create for this chain (I just watched The Guardian, which takes place in Alaska, and was prepared to go off on a tangent about films set in Alaska....alas...).

Next up is Williebee.

awchain

Back on the Chain

It's been a while since I've participated in one of the AW Blog Chain's. Number 9 just started, and I'm near the bottom (as usual, I'm so slow at joining these wonderful chains). It'll be a bit before it's my turn, but I wanted to post the entire chain. A few familiar blogs and a couple of new ones, too.

I've got some reading to do.

Virginia Lee: I Ain't Dead Yet!
writing@cathsmith.com
hunt & peck
Life, Writing, and Other Things
periodically.org
Food History
A View From the Waterfront
Organized Chaos
Willibee
The Road Less Traveled
awchain