Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 24

Update: Pre-Christmas puttering

So, I’m not trying hard to reach goals or meet deadlines, which is sort of nice, but also feels sort of weird.

I’ve written the first chapters of “Sekaran” and the next couple chapters of “Midwinter” — the latter is probably going to go a little longer than I thought; raise your hand if you’re shocked! shocked! to hear that something is going to be longer than I expected. Yes, me neither. I have, however, reached the chapter that I had in mind AT THE BEGINNING, so that’s certainly progress. I just thought of a different way to handle the ending, though, which means another chapter. Or two.

I’m aiming for a chapter every two days, but it’s turning out to be more like three because of re-reading and tweaking. Even if neither novella is finished by Jan 1st (plausible) (but I hope at least “Midwinter” is finished by then, though!), I’ll probably set everything else aside and pick up Tano’s next story at that point. Ideally, I’d like to finish that in January, and even though I have 100 pages sitting here, that does not necessarily mean it’s 1/4 finished, because, I mean, who knows how long it’s going to wind up? At least I have an ending in mind. I think I do. My goal is to have each of Tano’s books be self-contained, even though they also constitute a single overall story arc. We’ll see how it looks when I get closer to what I think is the ending of this particular book.

Have I mentioned that there’s an important plot point that I don’t know how to do? There’s an important thing that needs to happen and I have no idea how to justify this thing. I’m assuming I’ll figure it out when I get there. I’m definitely assuming I won’t get horribly stuck. I don’t think it’s THAT big a problem. It’s not like I’m trying to figure out somebody’s, or everybody’s, secret plans. It’s just a thing that is somewhat difficult to justify.

In the meantime, I’ve started a Jennifer Cruisie novel, partly because it seemed like too much trouble to scan back and see what you all suggested I should read, when I asked for suggests a month or so ago. I’ll do that later (soon), but in the meantime, as I say, I’m reading this Crusie/Mayer novel, Rocky Start. I like the dog, of course. Maybe I should filter my immense TBR pile for “books that include good dogs,” just to narrow it down a bit.

On day three of what was shaping up to be the second worst week of my life, I was trying to glue a blank doll’s head (I’d stripped off all its paint with acetone) to a very old bottle of paragoric (a medicine made of alcohol, honey, and opium, which was sounding pretty good to me right then) when somebody rattled the front door to the secondhand shop where I worked. I thought the CLOSED sight on the front door pretty clearly communicated that we weren’t open, but this was Rocky Start. Not a lot of people obedient to signs here.

Rocky Start is a town where spies and assassins go to retire, it turns out, which the narrator does not know, although she’s going to get a clue about that pretty soon. The male lead picks up on the weirdness of the town quite fast, as he’s a retired … something. not sure what yet. I haven’t gotten that far into the story just yet.

The romance vibes are pretty strong so far. Beats me what the mystery/thriller plot is going to comprise, but the “danger” vibes are pretty strong as well.

So that’s what’s going on right now! Plus I have a few more presents to wrap! Yes, very last minute!

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AAAAH Microsoft is Evil: How to Cope

Okay, look at this:

 Even Microsoft has joined the thrust-AI-onto-users train, where there are now certain features of their products that I’ve been using for years that one can no longer use unless you agree to let Microsoft use your content to train their AI.

This is from a comment at Kill Zone Blog, here.

I had no idea. I don’t like Libre Office as well as Word, but maybe eventually I’ll switch to that, because it’s not actually unusably bad, I guess. In the meantime, here is how you switch off permission for Microsoft to steal your content:

File

Options

Trust Center

Trust Center Settings

Privacy Options

Privacy Settings

Uncheck the box next to Optional Connected Experiences

And you may need to re-start your computer; not sure.

***

I will add, From this article.

​Microsoft has denied claims that it uses Microsoft 365 apps (including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) to collect data to train the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t believe them.

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Poetry Thursday: The Night has a Thousand Eyes

Here’s a poem by someone named F.W. Bourdillon, who died — it says here — in 1921 having “written several volumes of verse, but only one memorable poem.” This was the poem in question:

THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world died
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
when love is done.

***

That is memorable! But who was FW Bourdillon? Here is a short Wikipedia entry. It looks like he had some interesting events in his life!

Here at All Poetry, we learn this:

Bourdillon’s poetry reflects the Aesthetic Movement’s focus on refined language, meticulous craftsmanship, and the exploration of sensory experiences. His poems frequently depict scenes from nature, classical mythology, and moments of quiet contemplation, often employing traditional forms like sonnets and ballads. This commitment to formal structure and evocative imagery aligns him with other prominent poets of the era such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, and Christina Georgina Rossetti.

That’s excellent company to be in! The above may be the poem that’s remembered today, but evidently he actually had quite a lot of poetry published during his lifetime. Here are a few more poems — more at All Poetry if you wish to click through —

***

Christmas Roses

White-faced Winter Roses,
O’er the grave I plant you
Where the dead reposes,
That a soul may haunt you,
And your ghostly whiteness
In the Winter gloom,
Seem some spirit-brightness
Shining from the tomb!

Image from Pixabay; a hellebore, or “Christmas rose,” also “Lenten rose.”

FW Bourdillon may have meant a regular rose, a white rose, perhaps. But when I see “Christmas rose,” I think of hellebores. One of the wild types is pure white, as shown above. Many other colors, including pinks and purples, also pale green, often speckled.

Let’s have one more —

***

On The South Downs

Light falls the rain
        On link and laine,
    After the burning day;
        And the bright scene,
        Blue, gold, and green,
    Is blotted out in gray.

        Not so will part
        The glowing heart
    With sunny hours gone by;
      On cliff and hill
      There lingers still
  A light that cannot die.

      Like a gold crown
      Gorse decks the Down,
  All sapphire lies the sea;
      And incense sweet
      Springs as our feet
  Tread light the thymy lea.

      Fade, vision bright!
      Fall rain, fall night!
  Forget, gray world, thy green!
      For us, nor thee,
      Can all days be
  As though this had not been!

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Wild Night by Patrick Lee: Let’s Take This Novella Apart and Look at It

So, to celebrate finishing Silver Circle, I read “Wild Night” by Patrick Lee, which seemed like a good choice because it’s difficult to start reading again after a serious hiatus, even a voluntary hiatus, at least for me. This is a novella, about 200 pages, high tension, fast paced, happy ending, neat concept, so I figured it would work to break the hiatus and it did.

And this was an interesting story, so I’m going to talk about it in some detail and pull it apart, so plenty of spoilers are going to be included. If you don’t want spoilers, stop here.

Okay, here’s the concept: there’s a skyscraper with a zoo on the top three floors. This is a really neat zoo with lots of great design. Let’s not discuss the practicality of this idea, just accept that there is this zoo on the top three floors of a skyscraper. In order to get permission to build this zoo, highly secure facilities were mandated, so the zoo locks up tight like a vault at night. This zoo offers schools a program so that eighty kids from the school can spend the night camping in the zoo (with adult supervision). I’m sure you can see this coming – and if not, the book description makes it clear – but on this particular night, the kids find themselves locked in with every enclosure opened.

This setup is just about irresistible as long as you’re pretty sure there’s going to be a happy ending. I was pretty sure, and there is indeed a happy ending. There are many daring escapes, and, here’s the first major spoiler, not even one kid gets killed.

Now let’s take an in-depth look at this story. Here’s the first sentence:

Grace Eldred was one of the most dangerous people on Earth, and on the first day of summer vacation, Jordan Clay made an enemy of her.

What do you think of that first line? I think it’s quite good. Why is Grace Eldred so dangerous and what does Jordan Clay do that makes her an enemy? I do think this line could be better in two ways: (a) my very first assumption was that Grace Eldred was a schoolmate of Jordan’s. I thought she was a child. This is not the case. It’s a few pages before we find out that Grace is not a schoolmate, but an adult crazy sociopathic vicious wanna-be killer. Also, (c) “one of the most dangerous people on Earth” is seriously overstating things. You don’t want Grace after you, but there are great whopping huge numbers of people who are, objectively speaking, much more dangerous than she is.

Yet, overall, I think this is a good line. We get that line as a teaser, it’s a good teaser, then we step back and sketch the scene:

A minute before all the bad stuff started happening, Jordan was finishing off a mint chip ice cream cone and debating dog names. She and her two best friends, Paz Reyes and Kayla Martin, were standing in line for the Arachnid, the newest ride at Thunder Cove Amusement Park.

It’s impossible that Patrick Lee used a line like “A minute before all the bad stuff started happening” thoughtlessly. He is signaling that the protagonist is a kid. That’s why he’s using really simple vocabulary.

The Arachnid is a horrifying ride where a giant central mechanism with eight arms reaches down and grabs, in its claws, eight large transparent balls, each of which holds a couple of passengers. (Daring passengers who are not risk-adverse.) The Arachnid picks up the balls and spins around, then sets the balls down. I doubt this is a reasonable design for an amusement park ride; 100% of readers probably share my doubt, and sure enough, things go wrong because Grace Eldred hacks the ride and threatens to cause the Arachnid to drop the balls from a hundred feet up unless her demands are met. Her demands are totally unimportant; Grace is largely unimportant as a person; she’s a scary villain, and good for Patrick Lee, as I am right there for uncomplicated evil villains who are plot devices rather than real people.

And I want to point out that simplifying Grace Eldred is one way Lee keeps this story short. If he had tried to build up her backstory and create her as a real person, that would have added considerable length. Leaving her as a scary but flat bad guy is also a decision that works well for a story aimed at MG readers, and with protagonists who are thirteen, that’s the readership Lee has in mind – MG, not YA – and that’s one reason I was so confident we wouldn’t wind up with bodies everywhere.

Before Grace can carry out her threat to drop one ball in order to prove she means business, Jordan spots her, jumps down from the entry line of the ride, races though the amusement park and into the parking lot, jumps up on her van, kicks loose the antenna through which Grace is controlling the Arachnid, smashes the control mechanism, and saves the day. And there is much rejoicing and Jordan is an overnight hero, with her name on everyone’s lips, and guess who is mad? Grace, of course, who gets away.

And here Lee has set up a fairly believable scenario because his villain is (a) a scary sociopathic wanna-be killer, and (b) good at hacking computer systems to wreak havoc, and (c) furious at Jordan. So this leads smoothly into a situation where, after the school year starts, Jordan’s school wins the lottery to have some kids spend the night in the Skyline Zoo, with Jordan and two best friends selected to go, and obviously the reader is already quite clear on what’s going to happen.

Lee compresses time to leap over the rest of the summer, another way in which he reduces wordcount while moving ahead with the actual story, so there are all kinds of techniques Lee is using in this story — teaser line, vocabulary shifted downward, flat characters, compressing time — and all this is worth noticing; these are all elements of craft that recent posts suggest MFA programs completely skip and/or have total contempt for. These are REALLY OBVIOUS techniques in this story because the story is so short and simple, and that’s why “it “Wild Night” works so well as an illustration of craft.

I’m going to pause here and say that I liked this story, but Lee doesn’t know much about animals, or else he threw away everything he knows about animals in order to write this thriller. And this did bother me a little bit, even though I was watching Lee put the story together and therefore I did not care a lot about the animals acting in unrealistic and frankly unbelievable ways. I do, however, vote for Lee genuinely not knowing much of anything about animals and basically not doing much if any research on any animals, and the reason I think that’s likely is that – you saw that line about dog names up there? That’s about a puppy Jordan’s getting, and

The labradoodle in question belonged to the neighbors down the street. It was a month-old puppy who had not made friends with the cat its owners already had. Three broken lamps and a torn-down curtain later, they started asking if anyone else might be interested in a puppy …

And I am here to tell you that a month-old puppy is barely toddling and may not even be up on its feet at all, hasn’t really got vision sorted out yet and cannot focus well, is just barely weanable if it’s an orphan and you’re desperate to get it eating – I recommend formula and a syringe with a nipple attachment at this age – and basically a month-old puppy is not going to be terrorizing the cat. People do get puppies this young, and what I mean here is ignorant people who have absolutely no clue, and if the puppy survives it will most likely show signs of predictable emotional trauma from being badly handled at such an early age, with the most typical problems that result being separation anxiety and lack of bite inhibition. Possibly it’s just as well Lee put this line into the story in the first couple of pages, as after this, I was prepared for him to get everything about the animals wrong all the way through the story and therefore I didn’t mind (much) when he threw away reality in favor of plot.

Note that if ANYONE in the editorial lineup had known ANYTHING about puppies, they could have fixed that line, though, and that would have been nice.

More important than realism in the story, the puppy does not get killed. Remember, almost no one actually dies in this story. Let’s talk about that.

In chapter ten, the eighty kids and twelve teachers (and no puppies) enter the Skyline Zoo. This is 20% of the way through the story, and let me note that the chapters in this story average 4.7 pages long. This is based on page numbers being enabled (for some reason) in the ebook, so I divided 208 pages by 44 chapters and there we go. These are REALLY short chapters, and I want to point out that first, MG and YA books tend to have shorter chapters than adult fiction; and second, keeping the chapters short is a way of making a story seem faster-paced. The short chapters here didn’t bother me, partly because I was noting the use of short chapters as a technique, but also because the whole story is from Jordan’s pov, so it’s not like the reader is being jerked from one pov to another or anything like that. One point of making the chapters really short is that each chapter break is an opportunity for a minor or major cliffhanger. The author doesn’t need to put cliffhangers at each chapter break, and in fact I don’t suggest the author do that, but cliffhanger lines are natural places for chapter breaks. Therefore, lots of short chapters can increase the tension to the extent they are combined with lots of cliffhanger moments.

So here we are in the Skyline Zoo. A young woman provides a tour, where we see that the habitats have been made to look as much as possible like natural ecosystems. There are lions and tigers and bears, plus wolves and a hippo – let’s not ask how much the water in the hippo’s pool weighs or quibble about design constraints. I’m sure if you REALLY want a hippo plus a giant pool of water on the 97th floor of a skyscraper, you can make it happen. The important thing is that everything Jordan notices during the introduction to the zoo is going to turn up later in the story. This is a great example of integrating description with plot setup. It’s also a game with the reader, because the reader – who is aware of what’s coming because it’s right there in the book description – is probably going to be making mental notes. Oh, THERE, that might be a good way to escape predators – oh, HERE is a great idea for escaping almost any predator – ah hah, THAT is where Grace is hiding – and all of this is correct, though there are going to be some plot twists that aren’t signaled so clearly. I’d be interested in whether young readers find so much of this so obvious, but I think Lee does a great job with this and I feel he expects readers to pick up a lot of it. There’s no problem with protagonist stupidity here because Jordan, who didn’t read the book description, has no way to guess what’s going to happen, while the reader is quite clear on this. It’s possibly rather rare for the author to so clearly separate what the reader knows and is supposed to know from what the protagonist can possibly know, and as I say, I think this offers an opportunity for the author to be playful with the reader. That’s how it feels to me, even if Lee didn’t think of it that way.

I want to mention a few things that probably aren’t as obvious. One is the tiger with the scarred face. This tiger is named Ajax; he’s one of the few named animals. Why is this tiger given a name and an identifiable mark any fool can recognize at a glance? This isn’t a random detail. Lee is personalizing that tiger because almost no one is going to get killed, remember, but that tiger is going to die. Jordan and her friends recognize him by that scar and call him by name, and so his death acquires pathos that would be impossible for a tiger who is presented as a depersonalized killing machine. They feel bad for his death – caused by Grace, after all, as Ajax was just being a tiger – and so the reader also feels bad about his death. More about that in a minute. But the reader doesn’t have to feel as bad as if kids were getting killed. It’s pathos, but dialed down for MG readers, and I think this was very clever of Lee and I’m sure he did it on purpose, or that the back of his brain knew exactly what this detail would do even if Lee didn’t think about it consciously.

And I’ll add that I have done exactly the same thing, minus the tiger: personalize one character who is going to die in order to give his death pathos and also (often) lead the reader to care about other people who die at the same time because personalizing one character leads the reader to care about the others. It’s a way of saying “This was a real person, so the rest of them are all real people too, so this is sad.” And this is where a lot of so-called action openings go wrong: a story opens with a fight or battle, but none of the characters have been created as people yet and therefore the reader has no reason to care about the death and devastation on the page. The author thinks they’re opening with action, but without at least one personalized character on the page, there’s just noise. It doesn’t take a lot to personalize a character in a story as brief and basically shallow as “Wild Night,” and that’s why just giving a tiger a name and an identifying characteristic does the job – that and having the kids notice and feel sad when the tiger dies.

Back to the story!

So, there we are in the zoo. This young woman is conducting the students on a tour of the zoo, and the finale of the tour is feeding time for the tigers, and this is where things go wrong, as the young woman giving the tour is trapped in the enclosure with the tigers. Here, we see Lee make two interesting decisions. One is not to have Jordan watch the actual death of the woman. Lee is reducing gore here, making this story more MG-appropriate. He’s also helping the readers along with recovering sympathy for a tiger when it dies later, by preventing the readers from seeing the tiger kill the woman. Most important, Lee is establishing the possibility that people can die – friendly, named characters. He’s doing that now because he wants to keep the possibility plausible, which is tricky because he didn’t kill anyone at the amusement park ride in the first chapter, so he needs to show that no, really, characters might die. However, it’s interesting to note that the next thing he does is reduce the number of potential victims – and also, I’m going to reiterate, no one else does die, not even Grace, whom I thought might well be eaten by tigers as a just ending to the story. That doesn’t happen. A lot of animals are going to get killed, but no other people.

Reducing the number of potential victims is helpful in two ways. First, clearing out most of the kids right at the beginning reduces the gore potential. If all eighty kids plus twelve adults had been stuck in that zoo, some would definitely have been killed and we’d have been looking at a sort of Hunger Games situation, with tons of death and blood everywhere we looked. This would have made the novella a very different kind of story and frankly I have a hard time believing a MG imprint would have been keen on something that gory and awful. Aging the story up to YA would make that work. Second, by getting most of the potential victims out of the way, Lee immediately reduces the potential for crowd scenes. The story becomes a lot easier to write because he’s left with only four trapped kids, and not only that, but they’re barely characters at all. We’ve got Jordan, yes; and her friend Paz. We’ve also got two little kids, who are there to give Jordan and Paz someone to protect and be heroic for.  The little kids do fine, they’re little troopers, but their basic function in the story is to act as “pet the puppy” plot devices – protecting them gives Jordan and Paz more of a chance to shine than if the two of them were only protecting themselves. They have basically no personality, and actually Paz doesn’t either. The little kids are fine for their role in the story and don’t need to be more complex. Flattening all the characters once again reduces wordcount and complexity.

And here’s something interesting: there’s an arctic exhibit where there’s a model of a ship trapped in the ice (great detail!) with nets hanging from the mast (working out why nets rather than sails are hanging from the masts is left as an exercise for the reader). I’m sure the reader – on the lookout for ways to get away from killer animals – will have noticed those nets. I sure did. The interesting thing is, when faced with the question of where to go to be safe, the kids think of that immediately. Lee doesn’t have them dither around going Oh no, now what? for more than a few seconds. This reduces wordcount and also reduces reader frustration with character stupidity. That might be useful later, when the reader says, Ah hah, I know exactly where Grace is, and this time Jordan doesn’t figure it out. She is distracted, so the reader may not feel she’s being especially dense, but more important, she’s done quite a few clever things already by that time, so that also helps her not seem dense when she fails to figure out this detail. But! In order to help with all this, Lee has it on the tip of her tongue. She realizes she’s missing something. What is she missing? Whoops, tigers, no time to think about it now! And this is helpful for making it reasonable for Jordan to miss things even though the reader may well be nodding and pointing and saying, “There’s Grace, there she is!” And a lot of this is set up by having Jordan think fast multiple times before she first misses something important, and this with the nets is one of those times.

So Lee is doing a LOT with craft — flattening the characters, reducing the number of characters, personalizing the tiger, using the setting to set up practically everything he’ll want later (not quite, but nearly), giving Jordan lots of chances to be smart so when she’s dense later, it doesn’t make the reader think she’s an idiot. Especially because, as I say, tigers.

And then things happen, and more things happen, and I guess I could lay it all out because I sure haven’t reserved much, but I’ll condense it and just say that yes, EVERYTHING Jordan noticed during the introduction to the zoo winds up being important. And nobody dies, even though Lee dials up the tension by, for example, saying, at the beginning of chapter 33:

They wasted five seconds just panicking. Crouched there, in front of the window, not even turning the screws. Not doing anything at all.

Five seconds.

Later on, looking back at it, Jordan would remember those five seconds, given how things turned out. Those seconds would have made all the difference.

Look at that! Lee thinks that the reader may be deciding that everyone is safe because no one has died except that one young woman right at the beginning. I think he thought, Let’s dial it up, let’s make the reader really worry! Those lines made me worry, and I already strongly suspected no one else was going to die, that he was aiming for a rather gentle thriller. You want to know what those seconds made a difference for? The tiger. Ajax the tiger wouldn’t have died if the kids had been just a few seconds faster getting out that window. But the kids are all fine, though their troubles are by no means over even when they do get through that window. Which is 97 floors up, remember, so that’s fun.

Look at how Lee steps back to a distant third so he can say, Looking back on it, Jordan would remember those five seconds. He’s increasing AND decreasing tension. He’s as good as saying someone’s going to die, but not Jordan. This is right at the beginning of a chapter; he might just as well have put those lines right at the ending of the previous chapter. I probably would have, if I included those lines at all. That is a heck of a cliffhanger. Nobody’s going to quit reading right there. Why did Lee put those lines at the beginning of a chapter instead of the end? Maybe to reduce tension a little bit because he wants to pull tension up, but not too high? Not sure.

Overall, this is a short, tightly plotted MG thriller, high on excitement, with a fun setting. Lee does an impressive job integrating the setting with the plot setup. He does a good job moving the story forward with very little time spent on characterization. He could have picked up this exact same story, added a ton more characterization, tripled the length, and created an adult thriller. This is the only story he’s aimed at young readers, and now I almost want to go back and read some of his adult thrillers and think about how he handles characterization in those. I think characterization is often rather flat for Lee; I think he’s exactly the sort of writer people are thinking of when they draw a (false) dichotomy between characterization and plot. There’s no such dichotomy, broadly speaking, but this is the sort of story in which that dichotomy does occur.

Weaknesses: as long as you don’t consider the flat characters a flaw – I don’t; I think they worked fine for this story – the only real weakness is implausibility. Some of this has to do with the behavior of the animals. I sort of think most people probably know that wolves don’t generally attack humans for no reason. The situation here is going to make all the animals upset and excited, so … wolves still wouldn’t be at all likely to attack people, but maybe it doesn’t seem as unlikely. There are some worse plausibility problems. It’s honestly not at all likely that all the animals will be as keen to attack each other as shown in this story. Predators are not keen on gladiatorial combat because it’s nuts to engage in gladiatorial combat. It is, most particularly, absolutely insane for wolves to tangle with bears. They wouldn’t do that unless they had no choice. They had plenty of choice here. So did the lions, and lions aren’t that stupid either. None of these animals are starving. They’re well-fed zoo animals. It makes no sense for them to attack each other and battle to the death for no reason whatsoever when there is plenty of room to retreat.

Also, after eating a big meal, almost any predator would curl up somewhere and take a nap. Predators, as a rule, gorge themselves silly given a chance and then sleep for hours. They don’t dash around athletically after stuffing themselves any more than people go out to run the 100 yard dash after Thanksgiving dinner. Therefore, every time some gazelle gets killed, that takes both the gazelle and the predators out of the way. Lee puts the lions (and wolves, and tigers) in too many scenes. It’s stupid to have the lions eat a bear and then turn up again half an hour later stalking a person. They would be asleep. (This isn’t the only problem with the lions; see below.)

Also, when you abruptly open a lot of cages all at once, you’re going to discover that most animals are pretty hesitant to leave the familiar enclosure, so you’re going to have a significant amount of time, a lot longer than a few seconds, before mayhem ensues.

It was very unlikely the tigers would respond quickly to the sound of a random tiger’s cub’s cries. Maternal care in tigers is controlled by oxytocin and progesterone and so forth, just like it is for everybody else, and without those hormones sloshing around, you’re not likely to see any maternal behavior at all, certainly not in defense of some other tiger’s cubs. Tigers are not social animals. Lee made up this detail out of whole cloth. Plus, even if tigers usually did respond to random cubs crying, in this really unusual and upsetting situation, the tigers wouldn’t be responding to normal social cues anyway. Beats me how else Lee could have gotten the tigers to attack so ferociously at that point in the story, but that was highly implausible and one of many details that shows that plot ruled this story, with the author forcing implausible events to drive the plot. Making implausible events seem plausible requires a quick pace and some agile handwaving, both of which are on full display in this story.

Overall, using the tigers as one of the big threats was a good idea. Tigers will definitely, for sure,  attack and kill you just because the opportunity is there, whether they are hungry or not. I don’t mean all tigers all the time, but I do mean you should always assume that any tiger you ever encounter is probably musing about the possibility, because that’s how tigers are. Ditto for polar bears, another good choice.

One unforced error is that when Lee had a polar bear hit a lioness full-force, obviously breaking her ribs, that lioness appeared uninjured later. I’m almost sure I didn’t miscount the lions, so I’m pretty sure about this. Same deal: a badly injured wolf wasn’t showing any signs of injury the next time it appeared. Oops. An editor should have caught this.

I don’t believe that a kid would actually dislocate an arm that way. It’s not that easy to dislocate a joint, and if you do it slowly, the way it happens here, then the kid would let go before the joint was dislocated. I found this the single least believable detail in a story filled to the brim with implausible details. So, overall, plausibility is an issue if you are counting lions and wolves, if you know anything about probable animal behavior, and if you expect people to let go before letting a joint be dislocated. However, the story was really fun even for me, even though I was aware of the plausibility issues all the way through.

I can’t resist thinking about what you should do if you ever find yourself trapped in a zoo with all the lions, tigers, bears, wolves, hippos, and other wild animals let loose and no doors anywhere strong enough to keep out a bear. Well, what I would do is find any office or other room with any door that closes, shut the door, and stay quiet. The fact that a bear could break through the door doesn’t mean a bear will break through the door. The bear is going to have plenty of other things to do that don’t require breaking through a door. It would not be able to tell you were in the room. Bears have a great sense of smell, but you’re a human, like the ten thousand other humans who walked through the zoo that day. Everything smells like humans and also like all the other animals. You know what smells like food? The kitchen in the zoo, where the keepers prepare the many, many foods for all the animals. Don’t hide there.

No offices or other rooms with doors? Climb into any tree. Yes, lots of predators can climb. Lots can’t, and of the ones that can, lots will have better things to do. No trees? There are a lot of exhibits, many now empty, and all are rather awkward to get into and out of because that’s kind of the point. Get into any empty exhibit and stay quiet. Even if the interior door is open and can’t be closed, it’s not that likely any predator will come looking for you. There are lots of other things to do and your scent would not draw a predator because, see above, human scent is everywhere and there are great heaping gobs of other distractions all over the place. I bet you’d be fine in the morning.

But this is still a fun story, and also interesting in terms of how Lee put it together. It’s a lot easier to see the moving parts in a story this simple, a story aimed at younger readers. This is the kind of story that could be easily read in a day or so and then taken apart in a class about how to write novels. This is what I think should be offered in classes or workshops aimed at teaching people to write novels, instead of whatever the heck they do in MFA classes besides sneer at craft.

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Editorial advice

I really like this post at Writer Unboxed: Following an Editor’s Advice—or Not

I like this because it’s a specific example of detailed, good editorial feedback and what the author did in response — and didn’t do. The author goes into detail: in the first version, my main character is urged one way and another; given editorial feedback, I gave my protagonist more agency and made him responsible for his own important decisions; I changed the plot in these ways to make that work.

Or, again:

“The plot right now is a bit episodic; I would love to see a more causal connection between events.”  Ronit also found the story slow, burdened by too much of what she called “interiority in repose.” Pacing was too leisurely; I gave too much emphasis to quotes taken from Ritz’s columns, and the story lacked physical action.

Fortunately, another effect of giving Ritz greater agency was to improve these other elements. It made for a tighter plot, and speeded up the narrative. It also led to fewer flashbacks, and fewer quoted passages from Ritz’s columns. Ritz was now in charge of a faster-moving story.

It’s just interesting to see all this specific detail: here are the weaknesses editors pointed to, here’s what I did, here’s what I decided was integral to the story and therefore didn’t change.

But there’s another explanation for why I resisted the reasonable advice of two capable editors: Their wish for more of the past might make for a better novel, but it would also be a different kind of novel. It would be more conventional. The past would serve to determine the present.

What I wanted was a story in which here-and-now words and deeds sufficiently reveal my characters. It’s how we reveal ourselves to others, by personal style and language, by words and deeds. We aren’t just the product of nature and nurture, but have the power to make free choices. I wanted Brady’s story to be true to this idea. …

Good post, especially for anybody who has worked with an editor, or is doing so right now, or plans to do so shortly.

I’ve agreed to beta read someone’s science fantasy novel as soon as I have time (I did say this wouldn’t be possible until around the end of the year and he said that was fine.) I don’t think I’m all that analytical, really, and I don’t think I’m necessarily that great at editing. But what I try to do is —

— Just read it like a reader, but note reactions. One huge, huge difference between reading like a reader and reading like an editor is that readers excuse all sorts of things. Readers say, “Huh, well, I guess it makes sense,” and keep reading; editors say, “Wait, what?” and then go back and forth through the story to decide if [whatever] actually does not make sense. I often find myself saying, “I’m sure it’s fine,” and then having to back up and say, “But wait, is it fine?” and think again.

— Query reactions: why did I react negatively at this point, and do I think other readers could be expected to, and why or why not — in other words, is this a strong personal preference that’s got nothing to do with general preferences?

— Oh, yes, also remember to note positive reactions, because it’s easy to focus on negatives when I’ve put on my critique hat.

— Specifically, how about the beginning, the ending, and whether I felt engaged all the way through, and if not, where that happened and also why.

— Compose the editorial letter, reviewing and rereading the book as I go.

And that’s basically how I do it. However, I rarely think of some things that Real Editors ™ probably think of all the time, such as

— Would it work better to combine these two characters or remove this character?

— Should this journey be compressed?

— Should something exciting happen here?

Instead, I think,

— Do I like these characters and find them engaging? Do I like the journey and find it engaging? Am I engaged and interested in general? And if the answers are yes, yes, yes, then I probably won’t notice superfluous characters or a slower pace.

Something that has become crystal clear to me because I get feedback from four or five early readers (not counting proofreaders, though feedback can happen there as well) is that every reader focuses on remarkably distinctive things — not just editing vs copy editing, continuity, or proofreading, which are also remarkably distinctive — I mean that every reader just cares about certain things much more than other readers. Thus, Kate draws little sketches of the floorplan and queries the movements of the characters within that room, for example, and no one else does that. And Kim points out I’m describing a scene sort of backward. And so on.

So … I think it’s possible to ask too many people to beta read, but I’m kind of leaning more and more toward thinking it’s also possible to ask too few people. Because you all help me so much, and everyone in a different way, and I guess these days I’d suggest no fewer than three beta readers, even though I also think it’s important to know when not to take advice — as the linked post points out, and that’s one reason I like this post.

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Update: It’s weird to have time to do things that aren’t Silver Circle

So, on Friday the 13th last week, I finished the last, the very last tweaks to SC #3, not counting corrections that would be made later, when feedback arrived from proofreaders. So that meant that fundamentally, this book and therefore the whole series was FINISHED. I feel a bit like Sisyphus, except for actually reaching the top of the mountain.

Then, over the weekend, I started getting corrections from proofreaders, so that gave me more to do on Sunday and I’m sure that will continue this week, but I hope and expect to be releasing SC #3: Shattered Skies on my Patreon this week sometime. Which is amazing, and though these corrections will be ongoing this week, no doubt, I am suddenly able to work on other things too.

So I thought you might like to know what’s going on with those other things, so this post is about that.

A) I read a novella! Which is not quite the first thing I’ve read by someone else in months, but close. And this novella turned out to be interesting, and since I had time, I wrote a long post about it, about what the author is doing as he puts this story together and what works and why. That post will go live later this week and I hope you find it interesting. You can read the novella if you like, and tell me if you think I missed something important.

B) I started a new novella! Maybe, probably, not sure exactly how long this story is going to go.

I know, I know, I need to finish “Midwinter” and that is on my LIST of THINGS TO DO, but I also wanted to start this other novella because once I start something, it’s usually much easier to go back to it and finish it. And now this novella is started and we’ll see where it goes.

This new novella is called “Sekaran,” and it is fundamentally episodic, which means it is perfect for my newsletter. It’s a series of scenes that each involve a meeting between Sekaran and Aras, beginning when Sekaran is nine and first meets his cousin, who is twelve, meaning Aras knows he’s a sorcerer at this point. Then they meet again the next year, right after Aras has undergone that brutal test of integrity, you remember, he describes this to Ryo in TUYO. Sekaran doesn’t know what’s happened, only that something has. In both of those scenes, Prince Sekaran outranks Aras. Then, a decade later, Aras gets his scepter and outranks Sekaran. Then Sekaran is made heir and finds out that Aras is a real no-fooling sorcerer, which is fraught, and at this point he outranks Aras. They both marry, Aras much more happily than Sekaran, so there’s that. They both have their first child, in both cases a daughter. Then Aras’ scepter is broken and that’s dramatic, of course. There’s a scene that happened at that point that you’ve never seen. (I haven’t seen it either, I just knew it was there). Then Aras receives his new scepter and outranks Sekaran. Then … possibly … a scene that steps forward in time once more, to the time when Sekaran finally becomes king and must decide whether to confirm Aras as a scepter-holder or not.

So this story is, as you see, episodic in a way that most stories just aren’t, with these big steps through time. But I thought of this while writing RIHASI because it’s so obvious that the relationship between Sekaran and Aras is complicated and longstanding, and it’s so intriguing to imagine how they must have worked out their relationship over the decades. So now I’ve written the first two chapters, and what I’d like to do is write the whole thing over Christmas break so it’s ready to go into the newsletter for a good part of next year.

C) YES, I KNOW, I also need to finish “Midwinter.” I wonder how many more chapters it will be? This week some time, in between bouts of correcting endless typos for SC #3, I will set “Sekaran” aside and finish that novella too. I sort of think it’s only two more chapters. Or three, but the last one is short. Or four, but the last two are short. ANYWAY, I need to write the rest of it and then I’ll know.

And that’s what’s going on this week!

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“Disruption” may prove harder than they think

New publisher Spines aims to ‘disrupt’ industry by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone

A new publisher has claimed it aims to “disrupt” the books industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 alone using artificial intelligence (AI). Spines, founded in 2021 but which published its first titles this year, is a startup technology business which—for a fee—is offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books. The company charges up to $5,000 a book, but it can take just three weeks to go from a manuscript to a published title.

They aren’t a publisher. They’re a scammer, but bragging about it openly, which takes gall. They’re charging “up to” $5000 to produce a book for you using AI. Let’s pause for some quick arithmetic. $5000 x 8000 = $40,000,000, which is enough for the four smart guys pictured on this article to each take $10,000,000 and retire to some pleasant tropical paradise and spend the rest of their lives sipping fancy drinks with fruit on little sticks*. Minus expenses, but does anybody think the expenses will be at all high? I don’t. AI-produced manuscripts are basically free, AI-produced covers are basically free, three weeks to hold someone’s hand and murmur about bestseller status is free except for the time it takes and the cost in lost sleep as you agonize about how unethical you’re being.

Somehow I suspect these guys aren’t going to be losing a lot of sleep, though.

The Bookseller asked if any of the titles published by Spines have gone on to be bestsellers. Niv said: “Yes, we’ve had several successes.” A follow up e-mail supplied the names of seven titles published this year that Spines claim are bestsellers. When asked for sales volume information they said “that data is private and belongs to the author”. Of the six titles The Bookseller could find for sale on Amazon, one had more than 70 reader ratings, with the others ranging from seven to 22 ratings.

Spoiler: those aren’t bestsellers. I can’t even be bothered to roll my eyes. But I bet gullible, hopeful, “authors” who know nothing about books or publishing will be sucked in.

I have seen multiple articles where people are all hot and bothered by Spines’ plans to “disrupt the publishing industry.” I’ve seen this reaction on Twitter/X too. I simply don’t understand it.

Let’s try some math! Hey, Google, about how many books are published per year right now, counting self-published books? … Okay, looks like the guesses vary, but it also looks like reasonable estimates range from about 1.5 MILLION titles per year to 4 MILLION titles per year. Let’s pick the lower number, 1,500,000 books per year. It can be hard, grasping big numbers. How many IS that? Can we put that into terms that are easier to grasp?

It is 28,846 books PER WEEK.

It’s 4120 books PER DAY.

This is the LOWEST plausible estimate of the number of books published. The real number could plausibly be more like 11,000 books PER DAY.

Spines is planning to “disrupt publishing” by bringing out another 154 books per week. That is, they’re planning to add HALF A PERCENT to the total of the LOWEST reasonable estimate of books per year. This is supposed to be disruptive? Do they even know what “disruptive” means?

How do those sharp guys at Spines plan to get readers to notice the books they drop into the vast, vast ocean of self-published titles? Well, they don’t! They’re going to point at a few books they’ve brought out and say they’re bestsellers, but actual sales data is proprietary and just trust them, a book with SEVEN ratings is a bestseller.

If you google “publisher spines book titles” you can rapidly locate some titles of books “published” by Spines.

For example, and I’m just picking them randomly off the top of the list of titles,

Managing Vertigo Naturally. No sales rank. It’s never sold a copy.

SIP HAPPENS: A Crash Course for Gen Z & Millennials. That’s quite a fun title! Sales rank: 5,341,798.

The Art of Living: Wisdom from Proverbs: Remember the F.R.O.G. That’s a fairly awful title. Sales rank: 4,483,771.

The Thoughts and Feelings of a Lonely Wolf. Only available in paper!?! Sales rank: 9,804,911, and no wonder, since it’s not available as an ebook. ONLY A SCAMMER would EVER suggest publishing a paper edition and no ebook.

Let me just try a comparison title. What’s a book that’s been out since the dawn of time, is not at all well known, and is available only in paper? I’m trying to think of a book that is probably selling really badly, that’s the point. A real book, a quite good book, but something that we can be sure is selling almost no copies … how about …

Interior Life by Katherine Blake. I like this novel a lot and wrote a post about it a few years ago. It came out in 1990, it’s only available in paper, it’s not at all well known. What is its current sales rank? Its rank is 3,183,406. This is a book that’s been out for 34 years, a book that practically no one has ever heard of, a book that is not being promoted in any way, a book that has no digital edition, and THIS BOOK is more than a million places ahead of the best-ranked of those four books from Spines, all of which came out recently.

I just don’t understand why anyone is taking this seriously. I understand why gullible would-be “authors” are likely to get scammed. I agree that’s a shame, though when would-be authors are trying to generate books using AI, my sympathy is muted. But I simply don’t understand why anybody is concerned about the potential disruption something like this can possibly cause.

***

* Yes, the “fruit! on little sticks!” came from Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. Lots of great lines in that book.

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I shall set forth for somewhere

Okay, so I’ve known these lines for a while:

I shall set forth for somewhere

I shall make the reckless choice

I don’t know where I saw those lines quoted … maybe it will come to me … and I didn’t know where they were from. It turns out they’re from Robert Frost! I’ve read plenty of his poetry, mostly the super-well-known poems, but I hadn’t encountered this particular poem before, and this, it turns out, is the source of those lines. Here’s the poem:

THE SOUND OF THE TREES
Robert Frost

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

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What an MFA does and doesn’t do

A post at Jane Friedman’s blog: What the MFA Does and Does Not Do for Aspiring Novelists

In the first edition of The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman states that “it’s not an exaggeration to say that an MFA could even be detrimental to a successful freelance career, because it trains you to be aware of how writing succeeds not on a commercial level, but only on an artistic one—which you may then need to be trained out of.” As the director of an MFA program, and as a working novelist, I find myself agreeing with this statement. One of the things I wrestle with as an instructor is how to make the MFA a more useful degree for aspiring commercial novelists. At the same time, I’m thinking about how to recreate the most useful parts of the MFA experience for novelists who can’t devote years to graduate school.

This post is by MFA director Nancy Wayson Dinan, who is evidently well-placed to think about this topic.

Now in my classes, we explore the differences between art’s success on a commercial level versus on an artistic level, and what those terms mean. We also look at what the MFA doesn’t usually do, which is the in-depth and explicit craft work that most aspiring novelists crave. We also talk about what the MFA does do—providing professionalization, feedback, and the opportunity to see and submit work in progress—and we discuss ways in which a novelist can learn those things without a graduate degree. I would argue, by the way, that all aspiring novelists should be doing these things, with or without the MFA.

I honestly would have thought that an MFA did focus on in-depth writing craft, at least inasmuch as looking at broad story structure. I guess not. The author says that nothing in her MFA prepared her to think about the structure of novels. ???, I said, because one would think that would matter to success at the artistic level as well as the commercial level?

Anyway, evidently an MFA teaches students

About the publishing profession. This means, things like the chance to meet agents and editors and learn about that side of the industry, which … fine, but there are lots of online resources about the query process and things like that.]

Providing feedback, seeing work in progress.

Submitting work in progress, AAH! NO! I generally feel, personally, repelled by the idea of showing a partial novel to anybody. I just don’t like the idea at all. I’ve done it only once (I think), which was when I was so stuck with Invictus.

However, obviously you don’t need an MFA program to get feedback on a WIP. That’s what critique partners, critique groups, and beta readers are for …

… have I said lately how much I love and cherish everyone who reads early drafts for me? You are totally indispensable. I go through Kim’s comments, for example, and think, How did I not realize I’m handling this scene kind of backward? How did I not see that I’m describing this other scene in the wrong order? It’s a real mystery how I can miss obvious scene-level things that become instantly obvious when Kim points to them.

Or Alison’s comments, and I’m like FINE WHATEVER LET ME SPEND TWO HOURS DELETING “MAYBE,” for example. Mike catches errors of fact and continuity and points out that I’ve given a character the same name as an obscure video game protagonist from the 90s. This is all before the equally indispensable proofreaders catch ten thousand stupid typos.

What was the topic? Oh right, you don’t need an MFA program to get feedback! And a good thing, too! Let’s see what else this person says about MFAs and novelists. …

[Readers of commercial fiction] expect a chain of cause and effect, a closed ending, linear time, and an active protagonist, among other things. Language might not be the focus of a commercial novel, but that doesn’t mean the language is less skilled—it just means that the story is the focus of a commercial novel, and we expect that story to have some conventional structure.

That’s all very well, but Piranesi by Susannah Clarke is currently sitting at a sales rank of 1796 for all books, 23 for Contemporary Fantasy, and it’s been out for 3 years and still has this amazingly good sales rank, so maaaaaybe “readers” of “commercial fiction” are not actually all that unwilling to deal with a book that isn’t all that conventional?

I grant, maybe the publisher just ran a sale over Thanksgiving weekend, and in that case the sales rank would be higher than usual. I have no way of knowing, so let me think of another example. Okay, All the Light We Cannot See is another bestselling nonlinear commercially successful novel, and it’s well above 10,000 in sales rank right now. It was published ten years ago. It’s doing great!

I just don’t buy this idea that readers of commercial fiction expect a, b, c, d and novels don’t succeed if they deviate from this so-called conventional structure. I do think it’s reasonable to say that a lot of so-called commercial fiction does meet those four criteria — a chain of cause and effect, a closed ending, linear time, and an active protagonist — and that this is not a sign of a book that is less worthy or less artistic. But apparently MFA programs totally teach students that they should sneer at novels that do meet those criteria:

In MFA programs, we’re often encouraged to seek alternatives to traditional storytelling, to focus on character and not plot (though, for many reasons, I think this is a false dichotomy). We’re taught to value language and image more than a strong chain of cause and effect. It’s not that we’re actively told to avoid the traditional modes of storytelling, it’s just that other modes are privileged. And when we do see a genre piece in workshop, there’s often a palpable disdain.

An attitude of open contempt is very active discouragement. Certainly the character / plot thing is a decidedly and even blatantly false dichotomy, and when you teach students that this dichotomy is real and then add the contempt, then you’re actively teaching them that plot is to be despised. No wonder Jane Friedman says NO to MFA programs! Talk about harmful!

Well, let me see. Okay, the author of this post then explains what she means by “provides professionalism,” and she adds that and MFA provides a chance for writers to give and get feedback, and provides a community of writers, hmm. I just can’t see spending time and money on an MFA for any of this.

Here’s the ending of this post:

I still remember one day in my MFA program when a professor asked me what I was reading those days. “Oh, you know,” I said. “Some craft books.” The professor looked horrified, as if I’d confessed to somehow cheating. “Hmm,” she replied. “I hope they don’t mess you up too much.” After that remark, I didn’t touch a craft book for five years, and when I finally did, I felt like the act was somehow shameful. …

And personally, I feel that this is a sufficient indictment of MFA programs, or at least that program. Honestly, I think the whole post is worth reading, but I also think it could be deleted and replaced with the above paragraph and the words

JUST SAY NO TO AN MFA

because good lord above, who needs to face that attitude of sneering contempt when they want to write a novel? Look at this author! She didn’t touch another craft book for five years! That’s terrible! After reading her post, I feel there should be a huge warning sign blinking on and off above MFA programs

IF YOU WANT TO WRITE A NOVEL, THEN JUST SAY NO TO AN MFA UNLESS YOU CAN COMPETELY IGNORE YOUR TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE OF SMUG CONTEMPT FOR ACTUALLY WRITING NOVELS

which isn’t as pithy, but seems like good advice, even if that’s not exactly the advice that the author of the post had in mind.

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Best advice for writers

From Writer Unboxed: The Year in Review – The Best Advice for Writers

A surprisingly inviting title! Sure, tell me, what “best advice” do you have in mind?

Oh, the post starts this way: When all else fails, we write. We tell stories. Then we revise them. And then we revise them again, and again. And if you’re anything like me, again. … And I’m laughing, because this is the exact right time to say to me, And then we revise and revise and revise some more. We sure do. Got that right.

But what’s this advice? Ah, I see this is a compilation of four interviews. Here we go —

A) Terra Weiss, Author of the Wingmom Series: Advice for writers considering self-publishing 
Ask yourself the important questions. The first one is whether you want to make writing into a career or not. If the answer to that is yes, then the second is whether or not you want to be an entrepreneur … The third is if you are—deep down in your heart—okay with writing to market. Some people lose the joy of writing if they have to fit their books into a genre or trope. Which is fine, but it may mean you need to pursue the trad route. 

Well, I don’t know. I don’t think about writing to market. I’m pretty sure there’s an adequate market for almost anyone. I’m thinking here of Chuck Tingle. If there’s a market for … um … badly written adult stories featuring dinosaurs, shall we say … then there’s a market for ANYTHING.

B) Linda A. Duggins, Media Strategist: What authors should know about media and publicity 
It’s optimal to create a compelling e-media kit. Be sure to include a detailed and concise author bio, author photo, an engaging and succinct book synopsis, press release, upcoming book event details, and pre-prepared questions to guide interviews. 

Whatever. I don’t think I’m ever likely to do any of that. Or ever change my author photo. It’s an excellent photo. I don’t usually like photos of myself, so even though it’s been a remarkably long time and I look significantly older … and Pippa, of course, is no longer with me … I doubt I’ll ever use any other photo.

Yes, once Pippa and I were both this young

But moving along.

C) Amanda DuBois, Activist and Author of the Camille Delaney Mystery Series: What every author should know

Simple as it is, I’d tell a newbie writer don’t give up. Persistence. My books sat on the metaphorical shelf for 20 years, and I think they’re better for it. Also, I think that because I live in a world of high conflict (I’m a litigator, after all), I don’t take anything very personally. When I get a manuscript back riddled with track changes, I don’t lick any wounds. It becomes part of the challenge. I think part of getting good at this craft is being willing to take feedback seriously. 

Taking things personally or not is surely just an individual thing. I don’t live in a world of high conflict (thank heaven!), but I don’t take extensive and detailed comments personally. However, sure, yes, I think persistence is crucial; and actually I think setting finished works aside for a while is a good idea … maybe not twenty years, though. And yes, seeking out the right kind of feedback and then taking it seriously, that also seems important to me. UNLESS you’re fine writing really fast, doing minimal to no revision, and aiming for the market of readers who like, say, space opera that is fast-paced, but isn’t that great.

D) Margeaux Weston, Author and Former Acquisitions Editor: Working out a roadmap to publication

First, I suggest becoming an avid reader in the genre you want to write. It’s a great way to better understand the genre and discover your own writing style. I always advise those new writers to read more than what’s popular. … I suggest finding a good editor. We’ve always heard that writing is rewriting—and boy is that an understatement. 

Back to revision! I think I’ll end there, with considerable gratitude that I’m winding up revision of Silver Circle.

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