Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 375

Random Musings –

Not mine, though. I mean: Random Musings of a Bibliophile, who is doing a giveaway of all her favorite books so far this year.

I mention this because a) lots of good books being featured, naturally; and b) BLACK DOG is one of those books, so hey.

Also, here, a post on “Gateway Books” — the books that got her hooked on reading particular genres.

For me it was most likely Patricia McKillip for Fantasy, I have no idea who it could have been for SF. I bet it was Rex Stout for mysteries.

My tastes have broadened over the years, though. Let’s see, it was Laura Florand who made me willing to try contemporary romance, THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE made me much more willing to try contemporary YA, Sarah Prineas got me more interested in modern MG fantasy . . . hmm. Not sure what else.

I notice Brandy pins it down to GAUDY NIGHT as her intro to mysteries. Yeah, that would do it. Out of curiosity, can anyone think of ANY other mysteries where no one gets killed?

Puppy update

Style plus cuteness:

This puppy almost has it all: proportion, topline, angulation, bone, movement. Also a fabulous temperament. Also, after a mere two days of misunderstandings and tears, he now reliably trots over and uses the pee pad I put in the living room, thus requiring essentially no supervision, thus becoming reliable at slightly less than eight weeks old.

Marks against him are minor: he has slightly high tail carriage. He has two tiny, unobtrusive freckles between his eyes. His pigment could stand to be darker, and the pigment of his sclera could also be darker. All of this is minor. He could definitely be a future AKC Champion and I think it’s possible he might even have a shot at earning a CKCSC Championship.

Alas, he is also now officially late in bringing down his other testicle. Two more weeks are all I’m giving him, though yes, I know, the other one COULD come down in a month or two or three. Ten weeks already implies a problem, and a problem that is rather likely to be passed on — and I hate to hold onto him, hoping, and at six months finally conclude that no, it’s not going to happen. Especially when a wonderful family is waiting and hoping he will be theirs.

So this little guy may be one of those truly fabulous pets who will turn heads, and would turn more heads if everyone knew Cavaliers well enough to recognize his sheer quality. Two weeks, and we’ll see.

If I keep him, I will breed him probably twice.

If I don’t keep him, I don’t know if I have the fortitude to try again. But I can see myself trying just One. More. Time. to get the perfect male puppy. Except I am not a very emotional person in general, but I can tell you, I have not even begun to recover from losing that little girl.

Spinach-Dip Pull Apart Bread

So, if you are saying to yourself, “Wow, Spinach-Dip Pull Apart Bread sounds like an absolutely insane thing to make if you are trying to get lots of writing done and are actually in the mood for writing,” you are right.

But I really needed something to go with the cumin-coriander rubbed pork chops I was making, and I had everything I needed for the bread, which really did involve lots of spinach so it was almost like serving a vegetable. Or even two vegetables, because you serve the bread with a marinara sauce, so there you go, tomatoes.

The good: It was extremely tasty!

The insanity: It took about forty minutes to put together, forty minutes which I did not magically get back when I turned on the laptop. Might even have been an hour.

The bad: The biscuits were tough and stuck together too much. I will suggest what you might do about that in a minute.

I got this recipe from somewhere, but I don’t remember where, sorry.

NEARLY FABULOUS SPINACH DIP PULL APART BREAD

8 oz cream cheese

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 tsp pepper

10 oz frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1/2 C shredded mozzarella

1/4 C grated Parmesan

1/4 C mayonnaise

18 oz canned buttermilk biscuits, but the exact type was not specified, so I should say that what I used was two 7 oz cans of Pillsbury Buttermilk Biscuits, the ones that are ten to a can.

Melted butter

Marinara or other tomato sauce

Combine all the filling ingredients. The recipe then says to cut the biscuits in half horizontally to make two thin biscuits each. I thought that sounded nuts and just squished each biscuit flat. This probably contributed to making them tough, but in fact if I was doing this again, I would skip the canned biscuits entirely and use little balls of yeast bread dough, adding a second rise of 20 minutes or so after filling the balls of dough and putting them in the pan. That should also solve the problem and would not require anybody to cut canned biscuits in half horizontally, because jeez.

Okay, so whatever you are using, fold each bit of dough around about 1 Tbsp of filling and pinch closed, then form into a ball and place in a tube pan or a Bundt pan, or if you don’t have either, then a regular casserole dish with a big ramekin set upside down in the center to keep all the balls of dough around the edges (monkey bread style, I’m sure you can visualize this, right? You do it because if you just pile everything in a heap, the balls in the middle won’t bake through.)

Now, my baked biscuits stuck together and ripped in half rather than pulling neatly apart, so I would suggest dipping each ball of dough in melted butter before you put it in the pan. Nothing can really make the diet-unsafeness of this recipe worse anyway, because of the cream cheese, so try this with butter and I bet it will make the pull-apartness of the bread work much better.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Cool 8 minutes in the pan and turn out onto a warm plate or rack or whatever you like. Serve warm with marinara sauce. Try not to burn your mouth on the extremely! tasty! filling. There’s no reason in particular I need to issue that warning, because I’m sure none of you would be impatient enough to burn your mouth as I did.

This was well worth making, people, despite the issues. I would totally make this again, for company, only as I said, I would use yeast bread. Or, I would simply make this as a stromboli: roll out the bread dough, spread the filling on half, fold over and pinch closed, slash top, bake until the bread is golden-brown. You could add cooked crumbled sausage to the filling and I bet that would be tasty, too.

And yes, I still got quite a lot of work done, too. But I will get a lot more work done tonight because I won’t need to cook, AND OH LOOK there is another important secondary character I really like who needs to disappear. I believe the endgame is going to have to change quite a bit, more than I hoped, and taking out this character will add to that problem, but still, I think he needs to go.

I think I can legitimately call this whole re-write a learning exercise, because I am being forced to think so much about whether two characters should be combined into the same person, and whether a character can disappear and the one thing he really MUST do be taken over by another character, and why did I even have these two minor characters in the story in the first place because my God what a clutter, and on and on.

I should add — I don’t believe I made this clear in my earlier post — one of the original protagonists, at least one important secondary character, one important worldbuilding element, one important plotline are all likely to find themselves in a different world and a different story. That is another project for, perhaps, next year.

Weasel words

It seems hard on the poor little weasel, which is quite cute, you will agree.

I suppose it is just barely possible that a writer will suddenly discover that every single “very” should be removed from his or her writing, but most of them, or at least some, might actually be playing a useful role in the text.

Okay, did I get every single “weasel word” in the above sentence? Here they are:

Just

That

Suddenly

Very

Every

Some

Most

But

Did any of them bother any of you in the above sentence? I am actually not very bothered by any of these words, though that might suddenly change if I find myself just really overusing one or another of them, I suppose.

I would include “really” and “actually” and “quite” in this list, btw. But I would exclude “but.”

My favorite post about this topic was Gary Corbey’s explanation of how he got autocorrect to change “just” to “NO! NO! NO!” Now that is hilarious. Also, it would sure train you to quit using the word “just” in your writing.

Does “sure” count as another little weasel?

I will admit that I do sometimes find it necessary to go through and remove about half my “very’s”. But one thing I appreciate about the “weasel word” post linked above is this:

“Sometimes if a weasel word is used within dialogue, it should stay. Ask yourself if the sentence would sound weird or out of character if you took it out. Weasel words are usually acceptable if a specific character is using them. Usually.”

Because, yes. In the sequel to BLACK DOG, one character says “just” fairly often — I hope not often enough to annoy readers — but I tried to make sure it was him and not everyone.

And yes, this is something to think about after completing and even polishing a draft. I would not suggest derailing your writing efforts by worrying about it during the actual writing process.

When the plot stalls

Martha Wells has a nice post about skidding to a halt.

“A plot problem, or plot stall, or writing yourself into a corner, is when you’re going along pretty good, writing your story, and you suddenly get stuck. You don’t know what’s going to happen next. Or the thing you wanted to have happen next doesn’t seem to make sense anymore. The story was going along smoothly, now it’s all awkward and bumpy and wrong.”

Yeah, yeah, been there, done that. This is what happened to make me pause with the H of S sequel, though I’m pretty sure I know the problem (wrong climax) which by some strange coincidence is the same thing that happened with HOUSE OF SHADOWS itself, where I wrote about forty pages leading up to and then right into the climactic scene and none of it worked and I took it back out and took the book in a completely different direction.

And then had to go back and lead up to the new climactic scene.

Which I expect I will have to do again, though not forty pages worth this time because this time I recognized the feeling of stuckness as a probable wrong direction. Plus I believe I have a reasonable idea what should happen instead, maybe.

Anyway, Martha Wells also works in a GAUDY NIGHT reference, so you should click through and read her post just for that. Because you’ve all read GAUDY NIGHT, yes?

One baby step forward, three giant steps sideways

So, yeah, I’ve suddenly realized certain obvious things about the later plot of the current WIP, which is good. I will call this one KERI after the main character just to help us all keep straight which WIP is which. KERI is a work under contract, though I haven’t actually signed the contract yet, but I am assured that someday the contract will appear and then I will sign it (I presume), after which I will be able to tell you all about this particular WIP in more detail.

I have about 75 pp of KERI written, plus a loose outline that might be sort of accurate, plus a good idea of the next couple of things that might happen — drawing a blank on the thing after next, though — plus a nice scene that recently occurred to me but that would require an important secondary character to step up and take the pov. Which I think makes sense, but I had planned to have only one pov character (for a change). But I sure can’t see how to get the original protagonist into this particular scene, where the secondary character is crucial. If he does become a pov character, then I’m going to need a Chapter Two where he gets to be the protagonist and I’m going to need it to happen before we get 75 pages in.

So whatever, I’ll figure I out.

All the above constitutes the baby step.

What unexpectedly took me off sideways was, I suddenly figured out how to handle basically everything about revising this very early work of mine that I wanted to eventually self-publish. By revise, I mean:

1. Remove two of the three protagonists completely, along with at least two important secondary characters (including one I really, really like).

2. Take a different secondary character and make him an actual protagonist, adding material about his earlier life.

3. Remove one major plot thread and one major worldbuilding element.

4. Smooth out the remaining plot, in the process cutting 350 pages.

5. Yes, really. This was a trilogy to begin with, if you can’t tell, and even after selecting the characters and plot threads to keep, it is almost exactly twice as long as it should be.

6. In combination with cutting, revise every single paragraph on a sentence-by-sentence level.

And at this point, you may well be asking yourself, But wouldn’t it be less work just to ditch this and write a new book from scratch?

And the answer is: Why, no. Writing a book from scratch is, in fact, a lot of work. Having a basic plot that goes straight through from front to back, and the important characters with their personal character arcs, and the essential worldbuilding all in place means that even a truly huge revision is actually a lot less work than writing a new book. The main thing is suddenly deciding you want to bother, which I guess I have.

So that’s been my weekend so far. It’s a shame to kill writerly enthusiasm when it turns on, so unless I lose interest or get stuck — and it’s hard to see what I could get stuck ON, since the whole thing has come pretty well into focus at this point — maybe I’ll just finish this right now, in one straight shot. I estimate that it will take . . . about three weeks to a month, given the ordinary interruptions of life during April — work, gardening, the need to take dogs hiking, all the standard things.

This puts me in the odd position, as we finish up the first quarter of 2014, of having three WIP that I plan to finish this year:

A. The HOUSE OF SHADOWS sequel, which is about, oh, 80% done. I stalled out on that in January and set it aside, but it should not take more than a month to finish, if that. Right now it’s taking a back seat to both the others.

B. KERI, which is more like 20% done, but is under contract (I’m assured) and therefore technically ought to have priority. I expect its deadline to be about September of this year. I’ve written books from scratch in two months before (though I prefer not to have to), and summer is a good time for me to get work done, so I don’t anticipate any problems.

C. This big revision, which I’ll call KEHERA for now (yes, again, main character’s name), which honestly even given everything . . . I have to say, I would count it as at least 85% done. Maybe 90%. I swear, I think the rest of this one will be all downhill.

I would actually like to see both the HoS sequel and KEHERA come out this year, say in September and November. (No promises, stuff could happen). KERI of course, being under contract, will come out according to the publisher’s schedule, which is to say, 2016 if I remember correctly. Speeding up the timing is one big reason to shift some of my titles to self-publication. So, September and November. Cover art, copy editing, formatting, it will all be a new universe to explore.

So, yeah, that’s why I don’t know how long it may take to get to most of the books piling up on my TBR shelves. A while. The rest of you, enjoy spring’s new releases!

The March Madness Continues

I don’t know, is it the time of year? Crocuses bloom, sap rises, and you feel you must buy a lot of books?

Three more on the TBR pile for me:

Actually, I didn’t buy KATYA’S WORLD. I have had that for a while. I bought the sequel, KATYA’S WAR. But I thought I would show the cover of the first one. I’m hearing pretty good things about this series, plus I kind of like to support other Strange Chem authors, especially new authors, so, yeah, just broke a pretty firm and sensible rule and bought the second book without even reading the first. This review at Books Without Any Pictures, was the one that made me willing to take a risk, because no love triangle? No romance? Makes a nice change. Grace has the good taste to like my books, judging from her other reviews we are more or less on the same page with our reading tastes, so why not. Given my book acquisition / book reading ratio, it’s not impossible I’ll be buying the third book without reading the first, too. But I would like to get to this series this year if I can.

I almost wish I had bought the first book in paper, because I do like the covers. Both for this one and for the second book.

Anyway, moving on: Patricia Briggs’ newest Mercy Thompson story.

Obviously a must have! I will probably read this one the minute it arrives. Familiar world, familiar characters, it will be easy to slip into and out of. Sometimes that makes all the difference when deciding what to read. Plus I know it will be a quick read.

Okay, and also, I had forgotten about this, but you may remember that Barbara Hambly’s latest Ysidro novel is out, right?

This series is a auto-buy for me. I could describe it, but why, when Liz Bourke took care of that here.

I never set an actual book budget per month because keeping to it would be hopeless. But I kind of hope I don’t think of any other books that I must buy this month, because honestly, this is plenty.

Spring!

Well, it’s sort of spring, more or less. I suppose. Like this:

Spring outdoors vs spring indoors: This was actually last Sunday, the snow didn’t last, but you get the idea. But by late March, I have faith in the idea of spring, thus starting seeds. These are petunias (about fifty), annual vinca (about a hundred and thirty, you can never have too much vinca), melampodium (about thirty and then I ran out of seeds, but this was a great plant for me last year, both resistant to drought and immune to deer), a handful of eggplants and peppers, and four rosemary cuttings that I started under lights last fall in case the big plant outdoors died over the winter. Which, given our winter, I expect it did.

I still want to start these little marigolds I like, with tiny single flowers, and maybe this and that, but not juuuust yet. Some annuals do better planted out when they are still tiny, like just-three-leaves tiny. Even with the petunias, I started them six weeks “late” by the book, because somehow I am expecting a cold, lingering spring and though petunias are tough, I want them small and non-flowering when I put them out, if possible. And Melampodium is not at all hardy (it says on the packet) and needs it warm, not iffy.

Meanwhile, here is a plant that has already flowered this spring:

Anybody recognize this? At least by family?

This is a Yulan magnolia. Most magnolias flower when they are little tiny babies, but this particular tree is twenty feet tall and this is the first year it flowered. So naturally the flower buds opened and we instantly had snow and temps that dropped down to 27 F. So tedious and annoying. Pity the Yulan wants to flower so early. Even the ordinary saucer magnolia was only just barely cracking its flower buds, though it might have gotten zapped, too, I’m not too eager to walk down there and view the damage.

Well, we accept these risks when we plant magnolias, I guess. All my other magnolias are still wisely zipped up tight — the star magnolia and the stellate x loebneri cross and ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Ann’ and ‘Butterflies’ are my other spring-flowering magnolias. I hope they have the sense to wait till about mid-April.

Magnolia sieboldii, btw, flowers in midsummer, so if you are not into risks but do love magnolias, that is one to think about. Mine is still tiny, but put a handful of blossoms on last year. And of course the big southern magnolia flowers in the summer as well, but it is a Real Tree and not something to plant in a tiny yard. Plus it doesn’t really put on a big show because it opens fewer flowers and not all at once. Also, I’ve seen some young southern magnolias that died outright this winter, though I think ours is okay. It’s established and also a more cold-tolerant variety.

Next week I bet the daffodils will be flowering. That will really mean it’s spring — even if it snows again.

Recent reading & the exploding TBR

So, here I am, switching from the world and tone of BLACK DOG to a more fairy-tale YA tone. It’s awkward. I don’t know how other writers do it, but I do it by taking a few days or a week and reading books that have a tone more similar to the new WIP. At the moment, I’m also a bit stuck on how to move forward, or, well, I mean, I do know what happens next. It’s the scene after next that I’m not sure about, and this is making me reluctant to try to press forward. The way to get unstuck involves the same process: reading books by someone else until suddenly a future scene presents itself forcefully for the WIP.

Taking a brief break to read books by other people is not a hardship. What is a hardship: suddenly stacking up lots of new books that are not right to read right now, but that I really want to read. Not sure yet how the tension between wanting to put off reading so I can work on my own stuff / wanting to put off work so I can read is going to work out. Probably some of one, some of the other. I guess we’ll see.

So, recent reading:

Contemporary, yet lyrical. Unfortunately, I agree with Angie on this one: it’s as though Allen deliberately decided as an experiment to try letting every single character have pov time, and as a result the reader’s emotional attachment to any one character gets diluted. So, while charming, this title is far (far) from Allen’s best.

The writing is beautiful. “Matthew climbed a spar of ancient rock and posed there. Massed clouds created an eerie light in which the greens of spring turned luminous against an iron-grey sky. . . . on this side, the hillside behind them was bleak. The grass was wiry, the soil fragrant with peat. Clusters of rock thrust out of the ground, wreathed in bracken. On the long, rugged backbone of the summit, there stood a house. It was built of granite and looked like a fortress. The roof was black slate. Behind it, rain clouds massed angrily.”

So, beautiful writing. However, for a long time I didn’t think this would be a keeper for me, because nearly every character is SUCH A LOSER, each in his or her own way. The protagonist measurably less so, granted, though still, mooning for years after someone who plainly doesn’t care about you is, well, yeah. They basically all improve by the end, so I wound up liking the book after all, but I don’t think it’ll wind up on my top-ten-for-the-year list.

This is the one I’m reading now. Again, beautiful writing, which won’t surprise you, because Cat Valente, right? Of course IN THE NIGHT GARDEN is specifically a fairy tale, or actually a whole lot of nested fairy tales. I am finding this creates a weird kind of extra tension, as I keep feeling I want to know what’s going on with the original tale, or the second one that was introduced, and there are MANY side trails and little extra stories. Mostly a bit dark, because, as I said, Cat Valente.

I’m also finding that I don’t really connect to this one emotionally, because it’s a bit too much a fairy tale — the characters are rather flat, as in real fairy tales, and because of the nested storylines, the reader is continually being forced to shift from one protagonist to another and back again rather than sticking with one or a few main points of view. So on an intellectual level, this is a beautiful and satisfying book, but on an emotional level, it is not very compelling (to me).

Okay, the expanding TBR pile is distracting, but not helpful, because I’m not sure that ANY of the new arrivals are going to suit my reading needs just at the moment. I mean, for example, we have Peacemaker and this new book by Brian Katcher, Everyone Dies at the End.

As it happens, CJ Cherryh has, for me, the single most invasive writing style EVER. I can’t read her books while working on one of mine. I expect this one will have to wait for a while. Which is fine, not like there’s a huge rush.

Brian Katcher’s book is a contemporary, completely wrong for what I want to be reading right now. Comparatively short, so I could in theory read it right now. But then I believe I will want to read his earlier book PLAYING WITH MATCHES, too, and I don’t want to commit to that. So I expect this will sit on the TBR pile for a bit. The virtual TBR pile, because I did wind up getting this one on my Kindle.

This one can wait, but I will enjoy looking at it on my shelf. Such a beautiful physical book. Emphatically not one to get in e-form. But it may just sit here waiting until the third book is out. Or the series is complete, however long that turns out to be. I don’t feel much of a rush to get to it. I would just as soon wait until I feel like re-reading the first book and then swoosh through the whole finished series in one go. Lovely book, did I mention?

Totally looking forward to starting over with Book 1 and then diving straight into Book 2, which I’ve been saving, and then straight into Book 3, The Steles of the Sky. This series was one of my favorite discoveries last year, via a strong recommendation from Kristen at Fantasy Book Café. Also, great horse! From the cover of Steles, I’m guessing more than one great horse may appear in this book, too.

This series is, however, a sweeping epic fantasy, broad scope, complex settings, wonderful characters, but not necessarily something I want to read right now. Though I won’t know what I will end up making an exception for until I wind up making an exception for it.

Finally picked up Turn of Light by Julie Czerneda. I’ve kind of wanted this for a while . . . where did I see a review that made me want it? Hmm, yes, it was this guest post, I believe. Anyway, it’s been kind of in the back of my mind for some time, so I finally picked it up.

Okay, and last (for the moment):

Hearing great things about this book, which (as you may recall) is by Sarah Monette writing as Katherine Addison. Now, Monette’s earlier series, the one that starts with Melusine, not my favorite. Beautifully written, truly fabulous voice, but awfully grim. Not grimdark, nothing like that reductionist a worldview, but grim. From what I’m hearing, though, this one has a different and less-grim tone. I picked it up on the strength of reviews by Sherwood Smith and, as I recollect, Liz Bourke. Yes, Liz, that’s right, because Liz said: “It should be emphasised right up front that while the worldbuilding is every bit as detailed and baroque as her previous solo novels under her other name, the mood leans far less toward the noir than The Doctrine of Labyrinths. The tone is overall much more hopeful, and the main character here far more likable, than in any of her previous novels.” Okay, then, there you go. Count me in.

Also, you may recall, Sarah Monette is involved with the really excellent Shadow Unit shared-world series, which is very much worth picking up in its entirety, btw. So that makes me want to try something else by her anyway. So, I preordered The Goblin Emperor. I think. If it doesn’t show up on my Kindle on April 1 (which is as I remember it’s official release date), then I’ll order it then. But I think I preordered it. My dreadful memory.

Anyway! That’s my most recent reading / acquisitions. How about you, what have you tried / what are you excited about?

A Positive Circle

Okay, people! Here at last is AKH’s own guest post. I had no idea how The Touchstone Trilogy actually came to be written, and I bet you didn’t either. Check it out!

Without further ado:

* * *

The received wisdom about becoming an author is that you have to be tough. A thick skin, some judicious padding, a solid suit of iron and perhaps even a mirrored shield. Expect rejection, and don’t read your reviews.

I say reviews are one of the best things about being an author.

Yes, there are negative reviews. There are also handy little stars that make them easy to avoid, or to read only after deciding you feel the need for a ‘learning experience’. Your mileage might vary on the worth of learning experiences, since the one consistent thing reviews have told me is that every reader is unique, and the exact same passage in a story can be complete dreck, or the shining jewel that a reader hoards in the deepest part of their heart, to take out and clutch when Measures are needed to get through the day.

There was a time when I was completely unread. I don’t mean unpublished, I mean I wrote but showed my books to no-one. Not beta readers, not friends, not the slush pile. That was a withdrawal born of too long on the submission-go-round. Feeling like I was beating my head against a wall, I stopped giving my books even to the people who wanted to read them. I almost stopped writing altogether.

I cured myself with a fiction blog, something I would write for exactly one year, putting up regular entries, but where I felt I could forget “good writing” and just say whatever I liked, because I was writing entirely for me, even if it was possible for the whole world to see.

Fallen out of the World had one regular reader. I called them “New Jersey”, since their IP was the only thing I knew about them. I was enjoying writing my fiction blog, and I expect I would have kept on for the year without New Jersey, but boy did they make a difference! Each day I’d put up a blog entry, and each day New Jersey would show up and read it and I would imagine their reaction, and wonder if this entry would be enough to keep their attention, and make them want to come back tomorrow.

New Jersey did give up eventually, but after the year was over, and I was only posting the occasional frothy monthly updates about weddings. And the mere fact that for an entire year I had kept the attention of a complete stranger, who knew absolutely nothing of me except the words appearing on the internet, was a lovely warm weight on the positive side of the writing scale. And that fiction blog went on to become Touchstone, and every week it brings me fresh joys.

When I create a world, and people, and give them a story, they exist only to me – and the stories give me great enjoyment. When those stories open to readers, and readers write about their favourite moments, and who they ship, and the bits they didn’t like, and the bits they love, and the moments they go NO! and the other moments they go YES!, that enjoyment is magnified and reflected back a thousand fold.

I love reading reviews. I particularly love reading the status updates people make on my books on Goodreads, especially when they react to THAT moment at 80% in And All the Stars (*evil grin*). Reviews, and the discussion of people who have become my audience, is the up-draft that keeps me sailing across the first draft ocean, because now when I write I’m looking forward not to the submission grind, but to how MY readers will react to THAT scene, and if they will love THIS couple, and how many will spot the clever thing behind the mystery, or be as delighted-revolted as I am by the scene with the hand.

And it’s scary as well, of course, because I don’t want to let people down, but that is merely a spur to be better, so I can keep on enjoying what has become a shared adventure.

So to my readers, to all readers, to New Jersey: thank you. [I'll try to get a book out this year!]

* * *

So, did anybody of you guess that Touchstone was written basically one day at a time? I expect there was some Continuity Cleanup later, but still, wow. I believe Sorcery and Cecilia was written as a letter game between Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, but I don’t offhand know of any other books written like that, though no doubt there are some. I bet few work out as well.

I can certainly say I absolutely agree about reviews and about the value of the little stars. I personally have never wanted a Learning Experience enough to deliberately read a negative review. Positive reviews have enough of those little moments, not to mention that it’s so true that the same character or scene is perceived so differently by different readers that there’s no way to sort out Stuff You Did Right — everything is right for some people, and all wrong for other people. So you write for yourself and for your fans. And believe me, you cherish every. single. fan. who lets you know that he or she loved one of your books.

Thank you all for participating this week. I enjoyed it, I hope all of you did, and a big after-the-fact Thank You to New Jersey, for giving Andrea the oomph to keep going through a tough time, thus making this week possible for us all.