Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 30

The Intuitive Writer

From Jane Friedman’s blog: The Secret Sauce for Writers: Intuition

[Intuition], in fact, it is not a feeling at all. It is your brain connecting dots so quickly that you are not aware of the connections until you look backward to figure out why you know what you know, or did what you did. … When I was recording a recent episode of Around the Writer’s Table podcast, my co-hosts asked me what my definition of intuition is. I intuitively answered: “It is the combination of experience and imagination.” I want to stress that experience isn’t just about how many books you’ve read or how long you’ve been writing. It’s about the depth of your engagement with stories, both as a reader and a writer. It’s about understanding narrative structures, character arcs, pacing, dialogue, and all the other elements that make up a good story. It’s about knowing the rules so well that you can break them effectively. Imagination, meanwhile, is your unique perspective, your ability to make unexpected connections, to see the world in a way no one else does. It’s what allows you to take familiar concepts and combine them in new and exciting ways.

In other words, experience counts and uninformed “intuition” is just guesswork.

This is why you hear me saying a lot that intuition (and discovery writing) can be developed, and that studying the craft of writing is critical. As writers, we must read widely as well as study our genre of choice; we must engage in critical analysis of texts; we must put in the time to improve our craft.

This all sounds right to me. I think that’s a good definition of intuition when used in the phrase “intuitive writer,” and I think the stress on experience as a reader — what that means — is also appropriate emphasis.

The rest of the linked post is about developing intuition. Seven suggestions. Again, they all sound like good suggestions to me. Not surprising suggestions, but good ones — read widely, and pay attention to what you’re reading. Write a lot, and deliberately try different things in your writing, and pay attention to how (or whether) those things work. I’m summarizing, but that’s what she’s saying. She is discussing trying things like trying to write in different pov or styles. I agree.

This is also making me think of the Death’s Lady trilogy, which I wrote an amazingly long time ago — it seems like a long time ago to me, anyway. The oldest files I have, the ones marked “earlier versions” and “outdated” and things like that — have dates from 2006. That means I wrote the original version of that trilogy before I wrote City. Which I guess I did. I’d almost forgotten that.

That was a project that involved never-ending revision and yes, I sure remember that. But my point is, I had just read Dunnett’s Lymond series and I wanted to try that, I mean separated the role of the protagonist from the pov role. That was all about reading attentively and deliberately trying things. All that revision was also about whether things worked and making them work better.

And all the time, I was channeling a protagonist who isn’t me and isn’t much like me — I mean Daniel here, though of course this is true of both the pov characters in the original trilogy, and the protagonist as well. People are always asking things like, “How can you write a male protagonist?” and I’m always answering, “Do you really think that’s the only important difference between the author and the protagonist or pov character? How do you write someone who’s twenty years older, forty years older? Or younger? How do you write someone from a completely different background? How do you write someone who’s deeply committed to a profession that isn’t yours?

I mean, I’m not only not a psychiatrist, I don’t think I’ve ever talked much with any psychiatrists. I’ve never had a close friend who was a psychiatrist. I’ve never been in therapy or counseling either. At the time I wrote the DL trilogy, I’d been reading a lot of books about psychiatry and psychology, including books that modeled the therapeutic attitude. Obviously it made sense to make Daniel the pov character when I already knew I was going to separate the pov from the protagonist, I just channeled an idea of a good psychiatrist, and that means I was certainly deliberately trying to do something I hadn’t done before. First contemporary setting I ever tried, too.

Here’s a previous post about intuitive writers.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post The Intuitive Writer appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Revision

A post at Patricia Wrede’s blog: Revision, revision

It’s a good post. Here’s the beginning:

Let’s deal with the “when” first. “Rolling revisions” happen during the course of drafting. Some writers start a new day’s work by revising the previous day’s work as a sort of warm-up. Other times, you get to a point where you suddenly realize that you need to make changes in a scene three chapters ago in order for what’s currently going on to work properly.

Next, there’s the major mid-story redo, where you’re halfway (or more) through the novel and you suddenly realize that chapters have to be rearranged, subplots combined or significantly altered, structure reworked, characters dropped or added, or other major alterations made that mean the whole manuscript has to be restarted from the beginning. …

I paused here. The whole thing, restarted from the beginning? Maybe it would be easier just to write something else. That was my initial reaction. Then I thought, well, I guess that’s like turning “The Ghost Trilogy” into The White Road of the Moon and Winter of Ice and Iron. That entailed starting over from the beginning, though to be fair White Road did involve straight-up cannibalization of a lot of the early part of the “The Ghost Trilogy.”

Anyway:

I’m one of those writers who starts a new day by reading over — not necessarily revising, but tweaking — some of the pages written the previous day. Not always, but usually. This kind of tweaking adds up to substantial sentence-level revision by the end, so as a rule, by the time I get to the end, the front half of a book doesn’t need as much tweaking as the back half.

I’m not sure I’ve ever significantly altered subplots. Every now and then, I introduce a character, do nothing with that character, find that his role is not developing as I thought it might, and go back to take him out of the story.

Much more often, I realize a chapter ought to be cut — the whole thing, or nearly — and as a rule I will put that off for a while, but eventually the awareness that this job is waiting gets on my nerves and I drop everything and do the cut. I think I mentioned that I hit some bit in Silver Circle where I cut the largest part of a chapter, but didn’t bother stitching the ends back together and then had to do that during primary revision. What a pain that sort of thing can be.

Like Patricia Wrede, I make a list of Things That Need Tweaking. Unlike Wrede, I don’t sort these things into categories; they just get added to a list in the order I think of them. But, again like Wrede, I do the easiest tweaks first. That means anything where it’s just adding a sentence or scattered to set something up. You do it, it’s done, you cross it off your list and move on. This is like, oh … okay, it’s like adding Marag’s mother to the back half of the novel. It’s not hard at all. Place her in a scene, give her a couple of lines. Place her in another scene, give her a couple of lines. Place her in a scene right toward the end and give her a few important lines. Half an hour, done, cross off that item and move on. I do sometimes use the strikethrough button to cross things off a list. Other times, I just delete items so I can watch the list get shorter.

The hardest things, I leave for last, just because it’s easier to tackle a big thing when you’re ALMOST FINISHED than when you’re at the beginning of revision. Hard things include tweaking a character all the way through the manuscript. Anything that involves having to do things all the way through the manuscript is by definition hard. Age a character up a bit, or down a bit. You won’t remember this, I expect, even if I’ve mentioned it, but Natividad, Alejandro, Miguel, and Ezekiel were all in their twenties in the first version. The publisher wanted me to age them down substantially, and this gave me fits later, as I kept needing to find ways to drag my feet with Natividad rather than letting her relationship with Ezekiel move forward. Anyway, the initial job of dropping her from about twenty to fifteen was one of those super-annoying jobs that I usually put off till the end.

Wrede ends her post this way:

The main thing is to find a method that will not get you bogged down and resistant. I find that starting with the easy ones builds momentum, and by the time I get to the tough stuff, it feels like “Yes, this one is bad, but then there’s only one more and I’ll be done!” (Barn door syndrome for the win.) Other writers prefer to knock off the toughest problems first and then coast through the others as things get easier and easier. Or they work on the hard problems until they find themselves avoiding doing anything, and then spend some time knocking off a few easy ones to get their oomph back before they tackle the next tough one.

What works for you, works for you. There Is No One True Way. Try stuff until you find the thing that works. (Note that “works for you” unfortunately does not mean “makes it all easy to do.” “Works” only means that you can get it done, not that it’s easy.)

Which made me chuckle. Yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if “works for you” meant “easy.”

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Revision appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Just letting you know —

So, some time ago, I mentioned a novel I liked quite a bit, The Tally-Master.

Here are my comments about the first book in this duology; here are my comments about the second book, Sovereign Night.

The author’s got a new novella in this series, which is available free here:

It’s currently available only as a free download on BookFunnel, here.

BookFunnel is one of those tools I haven’t ever used, but keep meaning to look at if and when I have something short I might be able to use effectively this way. “Midwinter,” maybe, when I finish that. I would need to do the editing and proofing and get a cover and also look into using BookFunnel, but what I can say right now is: given the above novella, which is the first thing I’ve ever downloaded via BookFunnel, it’s easy from the reader’s end. Just click through, click Get My Book, and there you go.

If you pick up this novella, you’re almost certain to read it before I do, given that I’m not reading anything whatsoever, NOT EVEN THE RECOMMENDED FANFIC, mostly, as yet, and I’m dying to get to that. Anyway, if you read this one, let me know what you think!

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Just letting you know — appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Clever Solutions That Aren’t Clever

From Mythcreants: Five Clever Solutions That Aren’t Really Clever

Characters need to save the day by doing something impressive, not by pretending to.

I mean, yes? But I’m not sure where this post could be going. What are these five solutions that aren’t really clever?

1. Employing Easily Abusable Tech

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every time we get a new iteration of Star Trek, someone in the writers’ room thinks it’s clever to use the transporter as a weapon. The crew will be in a desperate battle, then, boom, they beam a torpedo onto the enemy bridge. Easy victory, and everyone gets to congratulate themselves on how clever they are. This is really frustrating, partly because everyone with even a passing knowledge of Star Trek has already thought of it. More importantly, if transporters can be used as weapons, nothing about Star Trek works anymore. It means there’s no need for phasers, shields, or any kind of exciting space battle. Characters can just reach out and beam the important parts off an enemy ship. For Star Trek stories to work, we all need to pretend that transporters can’t be used this way. 

Maybe I’m behind the times. It’s true I haven’t watched any of the more recent ST iterations. Does this really happen in each ST series?

Anyway:

When writers try to use obvious exploits in their technology or magic, all it does is damage their story’s consistency. There’s no cleverness, because the solution was apparent to everyone; we just ignored it because that was the polite thing to do. 

Or the writers can come up with reasons that weaponized uses of the technology don’t work. Energy cost is too high. Shields block transporter use. The target to be transported needs to carry a signal device or the transporter can’t lock on. I don’t remember if some or all of those limitations applied in various ST franchises, but coming up with limitations to transporter use isn’t hard, or it seems to me it isn’t hard.

The problem isn’t that the solution to the battle is obvious (“transport the engine out of the ship”) and the viewers have to agree to ignore that, the problem is that TV show writers might change the rules to make the plot of a particular episode work. That’s very specifically a TV show thing. That has nothing to do with novels, where the author can be way more consistent.

2. Using Tools as Intended 

Hmm.

In the previous section, we looked at supposedly novel uses of technology that are more story damaging than clever, but there’s a weird flip side: stories acting like it’s clever when characters use something the way it’s meant to be used. 

Okay …

In Attack of the Clones, Anakin goes from getting his butt kicked to holding his own against Dooku when Obi-Wan tosses over a second lightsaber. But if Anakin is really that much better at fighting with two weapons at once, why didn’t he carry a second to begin with? 

Because it’s annoying to carry two weapons? Because two weapons get in your way during normal daily activities? Granted, maybe not lightsabers, which are very small until triggered. But it’s definitely easy to imagine that carrying two swords could be annoying when someone is, say, walking through a crowd or mounting a horse. Eric Lowe points out that it might be illegal or against custom for people to carry two swords or polearms in cities, and idea I use in the Tuyo series. Those can be perfectly good reasons the character isn’t carrying the type of weaponry that might be most effective in a specific type of altercation.

3. The Secret Look

There’s an episode of The Next Generation where Picard has just been freed from an alien prison cell and he wants to teach these aliens an ironic lesson about imprisonment. Somehow, he communicates all of this to Riker, who in turn communicates it to Worf and Data via two more looks. This results in the aliens being briefly trapped in a force field as a taste of their own medicine. …

I don’t remember that, but first, that isn’t a secret look, that’s a communicative look; and second, under the right circumstances, I bet you can realistically communicate a lot with a look. Maybe not all the stuff in the example above. Is there some reason we’re using nothing but TV examples? I didn’t realize this post was going to be so TV-centered. Honestly, I don’t expect total plausibility from ST series. Though as I recall, DS9 did pretty well.

4. Exploiting an Obvious Weakness

The key here is that for the hero to seem clever, the weakness must be hidden. If it’s obvious, then anyone could figure it out. This is why arguments over how Batman would fight Superman are so boring. Is he gonna use kryptonite? The kryptonite that is a weakness for Superman? The weakness designed especially to beat Superman? That weakness? You know, I bet he probably will. 

Yeah, probably. You know what would be clever? For Superman to plan ahead to counter the deployment of kryptonite, and for Batman to anticipate that Superman would plan ahead and counter the counter. That would make for a neat climactic battle, if, I mean, you want to have Superman and Batman face off. Not my favorite notion. I prefer the good guys to be on the same side by the time they reach the climactic battle. But if you set that up just right, it would be fine, and then I personally would suggest iterations of both opponents thinking ahead.

5. Fake surrender

That’s not clever-but-stupid. That’s just iffy when it comes to ever getting the opponent to accept other ships’ surrendering in the future. Which, to be fair, the linked post does point out, along with this good idea for how to handle a fake surrender properly:

In Babylon 5, Captain Sheridan’s backstory sees him destroy a Minbari cruiser after luring it in with a false distress signal. Sounds bad, right? Except the show establishes that the Minbari made a point of destroying any Earth ship that tried to surrender. The cruiser did let its guard down, but only because it expected an easy kill, not because it was trying to preserve life. If your hero is ever in Sheridan’s position, they have both the dramatic and moral right to fire at will.

That’s a great situation to set up. I mean, that’s a great way for the author to arrange the situation.

***

Okay, what novels showcase really clever ways to save the day?

1) The Thousand Ways by Wexler

The reason this works so well is that Janus is constitutionally unable to explain what he’s planning. That certainly does lead to unnecessary stress in his subordinates, and occasional real problems. Winter also showcases of fast thinking and clever tactics when faced with small-scale disasters and problems. You know what, I should re-read this book.

2) The Vor Game by Bujold. I know Miles is smart all the time. I’m thinking of the scene in this book where he pulls Gregor out of the bad guy’s hands — remember that? And of course Gregor is the one who seizes the moment and saves himself, when it comes right to it. It’s just a fun scene in every way.

3) The Death of the Necromancer by Wells. I just love Nicholas Valiarde. And Ronsarde. But the two of them together. But PARTICULARLY Valiarde, who is the best kind of ruthless protagonist. Remember how he finally nails the guy on whom he wants revenge? He had to come up with a new way to do that because by that time he’d worked too closely with Ronsarde for his original plan to work.

4) Scholomance trilogy by Novik. Lots of great problem solving here, and I was so so struck by how the pieces clicked into place in the climax.

5) Your suggestion here.

What’s a great book where at the ending, the characters save the day in some clever way that’s really and truly clever?

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Clever Solutions That Aren’t Clever appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Update: A Lot Going On

First, I leaped off the preorder cliff, at least part way: Silver Circle: Scattered Sparks is now available at Amazon for preorder. I set the release date for October 31 because, I mean, it’s just suitable to toss it out into the world on Halloween. This is a dramatic move because it also means I’m committed to releasing it no later than October 16 at my Patreon. That means one week and two days, which is super tight, obviously. It’s out with proofreaders now, and I’m proofreading too, of course, and it’s all very intense.

This means the book will be available at my Patreon for only two weeks, but that ought to be ample for people to download it. I’ll need to send out a newsletter to make sure people do know about it. I don’t have time to write the next bit of “Midwinter,” alas. That shouldn’t be a problem in November.

Second, I’m now working my way through updating all the Black Dog books, but they’re not all updated yet because I haven’t had time to complete the process. By the end of the week, they will be. Want to know what slowed this down? Because, since I want to complain about it, I’ll tell you. Some years ago, Amazon folded CreateSpace, the paperback arm of their self-publishing platform, into KDP. One of the Black Dog books got caught in that transition and ever since it’s been really difficult to update that specific book, because the file was made to fit CreateSpace, not KDP. So, now, finally, I re-formatted the dratted file, ran into unexpected complications with that, and the whole thing took days instead of minutes. I will, today, click through the whole paperback preview again, every single page, and then, I hope, I will hit publish and update that paperback edition as well. Then the rest of the series ought to be much easier.

Third, I need to set up promos for the Black Dog series and the Griffin Mage trilogy, but I don’t have time to deal with it, so whatever, I’ll do it when I can.

Fourth, I’m doing some tedious revision to Silver Circle Part II, and Alison, this is your fault, so don’t complain when you don’t see it arrive in your inbox today or tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday. Or Thursday.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Update: A Lot Going On appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Epigraphs

A post at Kill Zone Blog: Epigraphs

I love epigraphs, those sparkling word gems that a writer places at the beginning of the novel. The epigraph is a chance for the author to share what was on his/her mind when writing the book, or perhaps an intriguing hint of what’s to come. If done well, it will compel the reader to turn the page and begin reading.

So do I. I’ve never put any into a novel. I’m not sure why not. I guess it seems weird to me in secondary world fantasy. I do like epigraphs, though!

Ten examples at the linked post, of which my favorite isn’t a quote from a novel, but this one:

THE END GAMES by T. Michael Martin

“Everything not saved will be lost”. –Nintendo “Quit Screen” message

Now, that is just brilliant. I swear, it makes me want to buy the book solely because that’s such a fantastic epigraph! Maybe. Because obviously it’s horror. Is that obvious? It looks like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, with zombies. That’s what the cover looks like. What is it really? Here’s the description:

John Green meets Stephen King in this original take on the zombie apocalypse by author T. Michael Martin, which ALA Booklist called “the best of the undead bunch” in a starred review.

Seventeen-year-old Michael and his five-year-old brother, Patrick, have been battling monsters in the Game for weeks. In the rural mountains of West Virginia—armed with only their rifle and their love for each other—the brothers follow Instructions from the mysterious Game Master. They spend their days searching for survivors, their nights fighting endless hordes of “Bellows”—creatures that roam the dark, roaring for flesh. And at this Game, Michael and Patrick are very good. But the Game is changing. The Bellows are evolving. The Game Master is leading Michael and Patrick to other survivors—survivors who don’t play by the rules. And the brothers will never be the same.

Yep, zombies.

But, back to epigraphs. An epigraph sets the tone for the novel, right? And implies the theme, or an important theme. In SF novels, you can have epigraphs for the whole novel or at the beginning of each chapter that are from fictional future works, which can be neat. Who’s done great epigraphs? Well, here’s a good example: My Enemy My Ally by Duane — one of my favorite Star Trek novels. Duane used real quotes about Classical Rome plus fictional quotes from Rihansu works, which was a fantastic idea.

From Horatius:

Then none was for a party;
    Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
    And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
    Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
    In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman
    More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
    And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
    In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
    In the brave days of old.

vs

Of the chief parts of the Ruling Passion, only this can be said:

Hate has a reason for everything, but love is unreasonable.

I’m not going to type the Rihansu words because that would be a pain, but Diane Duane developed the concept of Mnhei’sahe, which I really noticed and liked at the time. I didn’t realize till just now how CJC’s man’chi is rather similar — I mean the words are rather similar — and the idea that this is an important emotional concept that doesn’t map onto ordinary human emotions is similar.

How about fantasy novels? The Night Circus has a good one:

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. — Oscar Wilde

Piranesi has two:

I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on.  — CS Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

People call me a philosopher or a scientist or an anthropologist. I am none of those things. I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things. I am really more of a magician than anything else. — Laurence Arne-Sayles, interview in The Secret Garden, May 1976”

I love those! You know what, I really love epigraphs, I’m deciding. Honestly, I still think they’re hard to do well in secondary world fantasy, but I do love them and maybe eventually I’ll think of adding an epigraph or two in the front of a book.

Here’s a related post at Reactor, and though I still dislike the name of the site, fine, it’s still a related post: Always Read the Epigraph: A Lesson for Fantasy Readers.

I don’t expect you to just take my word for it. Instead, I’m going to talk to you now about two particular fantasy novels—Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels—that I think illustrate the value of epigraphs. Why these two? Because they demonstrate two opposite but equally effective ways in which an epigraph or two can really spice up a story. …

Click through to check out those epigraphs; it’s a good post.

I actually think, sure, you should pause and read the epigraph before you read the novel. It’s true the epigraph often captures the tone of the coming story.

But you should also come back to it and read it again later, after you’ve finished the novel. That’s when it’ll resonate.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Epigraphs appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Reading bad novels

A post at Writer Unboxed: How reading bad novels can improve your writing.

I think it’s super obvious that reading flawed novels can improve your writing. The more clear-cut the flaw, the better, and if the novel is great in other ways, that’s better still, especially if you genuinely enjoy the novel, because that way you aren’t wasting your time reading novels you don’t like.

There’s nothing like reading a GREAT novel with some implausible plot element to may you think, (a) wow, this would be better if the author had made this plot element plausible, and (b) but it’s still a great book though. The first draws your attention to something you may need to work on yourself and the second is reassuring: a novel doesn’t have to be perfect in every way to be really good.

Or, suppose you’re reading a novel that actually isn’t very good and that you sort of like anyway. Maybe you’ll find yourself saying, “This could be SO MUCH BETTER if only the author had actually spent time turning his stick figures into real characters with actual depth!” And that’s worth noticing too, especially if you think, So, what do I even mean by “actual depth” here?

But is this the kind of thing the author of the linked post has in mind? Let’s take a look!

Let me count the ways—six of them, anyway, as I’m sure there are more—that you can move a disappointing novel from the “I didn’t like it” column to the “This book was a good teacher” column.

So, yes, this is the same idea: You can learn things from novels that showcase some kind of failure, always noting that “didn’t work for me” isn’t the same thing as “doesn’t work period.”

Why did this story fail to engage me? asks the linked post. Why couldn’t I relate to this protagonist? What prose patterns ground on my nerves? What weighed down story movement to the point that setting the novel aside occurred to me in the first place?

Those are good questions. Now I’m thinking of a literary novel that didn’t really work for me. I read it, or parts of it, a few years ago. It was about racing. Racehorses and the people who own them, jockeys and trainers. I read bits of it and I remember thinking: I don’t care about this character … or this character … or this character … but I do want to know how things work out for this other character, and this one, and especially for this horse.

This novel — I don’t remember the title or author — fine, let me see if I can figure it out. Google, tell me, what are some recent-ish literary novels about racehorses and the world of racing? Oh, look, that wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was. The book I’m thinking of is Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley. Okay, Horse Heaven failed for me in a specific way: too many pov characters, too many I didn’t care about or considered unpleasant or both. I wound up skimming lots of chapters, keeping an eye out for the characters I cared about more. So, lots of laudatory quotes listed for this book, but for me it was mostly a failure.

Various other ways a book can fail … this post is another in the category of “incoherent posts that cram disparate things into one list,” because the last item here is The production quality was so poor. That is totally different from failures of the writing craft. It doesn’t belong here at all. That should be a different post.

Even so, sure, it’s not a bad post — overall, anyway! Noting a point of failure is no doubt useful in improving my own blog posts!

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Reading bad novels appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Scattered Sparks: Back Cover Description

Thank you VERY much for your comments. I’m fairly satisfied with this version:

The destruction of the vampires marked the ending of an age.

As the vampire miasma faded, Dimilioc led the way toward an alliance of black dogs and ordinary humans against monsters deadlier than either.

Yet not all monsters are easy to recognize. Practitioners of black magic hide in plain sight, spinning webs of confusion and madness, determined that the age now dawning will be theirs.

Dimilioc isn’t going to let that happen. But black dog strength, Pure magic, and human intelligence may not be enough to stand against enemies far more subtle and terrifying than any Dimilioc has faced before …

***

It’s short, it doesn’t recapitulate too much that readers can be presumed to know, it points toward the central problem without giving much of anything away. It doesn’t name any characters specifically, but I think I’m okay with that. I think this is sufficient to move forward with scheduling a preorder — I will never forget scheduling a preorder with “Add Description Here” in the description box. (I swear I didn’t realize anyone would actually SEE the preorder, since I definitely did not point it out myself, meaning to add the description first. Thus I learned that Amazon will sometimes show a new preorder to readers without waiting for the author to do it, and also that some readers will preorder a book with “Add Description Here” as the sole description.)

Anyway, I’ve added the above to the description box for now, and I think it’s fine to put this on the back of the paperback, which means I can now ask the cover artist to complete the paperback cover.

***

I still haven’t totally decided about whether to schedule the Amazon release for late October or sometime in November or when. But, even though I’m not ready to send Part I to proofreaders today, I should be tomorrow, honestly.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Scattered Sparks: Back Cover Description appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

A different kind of “true crime” story

From Crime Reads, this: A Failed Utopian Settlement and a Lingering Historical Mystery

“A woman who doesn’t lie,” wrote Agatha Christie, “is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.” I’ve thought often of this passage while writing my new nonfiction book,  Eden Undone . Told largely through the perspectives of two female protagonists,  Eden Undone  is the true story of a group of European exiles who tried to create a utopia on a remote Galápagos island. While I was fortunate to have a surfeit of primary sources—both women wrote detailed memoirs and letters about their experiences—the material also presented a unique challenge: How could I craft a true crime narrative based on conflicting, and sometimes deliberately deceitful, accounts?

First, this sounds like a remarkable historical incident. Second, this sounds like an appalling look at an illustration of how delusion is not a great foundation on which to build a new life. Third, this does not sound like a true crime story, exactly. But maybe it is. Let’s read a little more of the post …

We begin in 1929 with Dore Strauch, a 26-year-old German woman who had grown disillusioned with her life. Trapped in a tedious marriage and suffering from multiple sclerosis, she checked herself into a Berlin hospital. It was a decision with far-reaching consequences, thanks to presence of a certain Dr. Friedrich Ritter, who took a special interest in her case. Fifteen years her senior, profoundly eccentric, with many unconventional ideas about medicine and health, Friedrich insisted Dore could heal herself simply by using the power of her mind. … He intended to live for at least 150 years, he said … he trusted nothing civilization had to offer and had long been desperate to flee it. Dore, he announced, must move with him to Floreana, an uninhabited island in the southern part of the Galápagos archipelago.

Ah, yes, this is pretty much what I saw coming when I said delusion is not a great foundation for a new life. This does sound rather painful to read about. Interesting, in a psychological sense. But painful. It gets a lot more complex and frankly somewhat eye-opening in the realm of what people do. I honestly wouldn’t find this account believable if it were presented as fiction. I could excerpt the wildest bit, but you really ought to click through and read the whole post from the top.

It really is a true crime story! The true crime part appears rather late, along with the conflicting and deceitful accounts.

Using numerous unbiased accounts from visitors to the island, I was able to deduce—much like a prosecutor presenting a closing argument to the jury—the most likely chain of events during those fateful, and fatal, months on Floreana. …

Still, I wonder what I might be missing, and what mysteries will be forever lost to time. I’m haunted by something Margret often said to visitors, decades after the other exiles were gone: En boca cerrada, no entran moscas—“a closed mouth omits no flies.” She died in 2000, taking the secrets of Floreana to her grave. But it seems safe to assume that—much like the group who assemble on Soldier Island in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None—all of the Floreana exiles were guilty of something.

The thing that puzzles me, purely about the writing of the above, is “omits,” really? Asking Google to translate, I get “flies do not enter a closed mouth,” which seems MUCH MORE LIKELY than “omits no flies.” I think the author of this post probably meant “admits,” not “omits,” and when I see something like this, I do hesitate to look further at the author’s book, even though I’m not very critical of typos in social media or blog posts or whatever. Even so, “omits”?

Well, the whole thing seems rather dark and disturbing, and while I guess I expect that in a true crime narrative, this one sounds more disturbing than most. Kind of a cross between Then There Were None and the Jonestown massacre. But definitely an interesting post!

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post A different kind of “true crime” story appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Silver Circle: Back Cover Copy I, II, III

Well, gosh, suddenly here I am, realizing that I’m going to need back cover description for Silver Circle.

Fine, let me take a stab at this. Here are all three books. Comments welcome! You always notice things I missed completely.

SILVER CIRCLE #1: Scattered Sparks

The destruction of the vampires marked the ending of an age.

The black dogs of Dimilioc barely survived their Pyrrhic victory against the vampires. Then the failure of the vampiric miasma brought new challenges, as ordinary humans suddenly gained the ability to see everything once hidden out of sight in the dark places of the world. Dimilioc led the way toward a new way of living among ordinary people, black dogs allying with humans against monsters deadlier than either.

But practitioners of black magic look just like anyone. Black witches hide in plain sight, spinning webs of confusion and madness, determined that the new age now dawning will be theirs.

Dimilioc isn’t going to let that happen. But all Natividad’s magic, all Alejandro’s strength, all Miguel’s intelligence, all the determination of every Dimilioc black dog, may not be enough to stand against enemies far more subtle and deadly than any they have faced before.

***

SILVER CIRCLE #2: Rising Winds

The war has begun.

Grayson Lanning, Master of Dimilioc, intends to defeat and destroy every practitioner of black magic in North America. His first target: Gossamer, the black witch who has made herself his enemy and an enemy of Dimilioc and of the ordinary human world.

Grayson has lined up every necessary ally, from General Herrod of the Special Forces to every important black dog House in North America. He holds every shield Pure magic can provide, every weapon black dog strength can wield, all the cleverness human allies can bring to the trial, and unshakable determination.

But as the storm winds rise, every plan begins to unravel …

***

SILVER CIRCLE #3: Shattered Skies

When the storm breaks, nothing is safe.

Natividad’s plan: protect everyone she loves, no matter the cost. Miguel’s plan: hold together the alliance between black dogs and humans, whatever it takes. Alejandro’s plan: follow orders without fail, lest all Dimilioc’s most dangerous enemies escape.

But Gossamer’s webs, already spun and waiting, lie before them all …

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Silver Circle: Back Cover Copy I, II, III appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.