Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 386

The psychology of writing

A serious post from Martha Wells.

“I’ve never had a book come out that met anybody’s expectations, and I’ve always felt like a disappointment, I’ve always failed the people who bet on me. This is a job I’ve been doing for twenty years, and in one big way, I’ve never been any good at it.”

This is more or less where I live, too. I’ve had books earn out, but I’ve never had one break out. I keep hoping, though. Maybe BLACK DOG will be the one that makes it onto shelves in Wal-Mart! You never know! It could happen! Lots of readers really love werewolves!

The truth is, it’s terribly important to define success in at least some ways that have nothing to do with any measurable criteria of commercial success. Winning an award. Being shortlisted for an award, whether your book eventually wins or not. A great review from Kirkus. A great review from someone whose taste you admire. A book on the shelves that pleases your readers. Or that pleases you.

And it’s terribly important to make a real effort to be happy for other authors who win better awards than you have (yet), who get more industry buzz than you have (yet), whose books are on shelves in Wal-Mart when yours aren’t (yet). A little jealousy, eh, that’s tolerable as long as you’re also genuinely pleased by the success of great writers who aren’t you. But envy is a terrible thing.

And in a world that generally focuses on the new and shiny, let’s hear it for book bloggers and readers who keep a little bit of their attention for great authors who have not yet had the commercial success they clearly deserve.

Master’s paintings through an SF lens –

From tor.com, well worth checking out.

My favorite is actually the very last work — the Star Wars one — even though I am not a particular fan of Star Wars. Click through and pick your own favorite!

The After-Publication Roller Coaster: Laura Lam

This is a nice post on the post-publication roller coaster. I don’t think I roller-coast as much as some authors, but I still like this post.

“You sneak into a bookstore and just stare at the book on the shelf, trying not to cry. You see your Amazon rankings shoot up the lists the first couple of days. And even though you know — you know — not to get your hopes up too much, you do anyway. You get fan mail. You’re on top of the world.

And then, the buzz dies down. The rankings slip. Fewer reviews trickle in. The world has gone on to other new and shiny books. People are still reading you—but most are not reviewers. They’re not as likely to tweet to you that they enjoyed your book or post a review. They read it. They liked it. Or they didn’t. They go on to another book and you’ll never know.”

I never have an impulse to cry in bookstores. But I agree with this, basically. I do know not to hope for too much — but I hope for it anyway. I know buzz will die down, but I’m disappointed by that anyway. I expect every single author rides this particular roller coaster to some extent. I think it’s important not to take it too seriously when you find yourself on the downhill side, too.

Unlike Laura, let me add, I never worried that it might be rude to ask my publishers for sales numbers, but on the other hand, I never ask. I don’t really want to know. Eventually you find out, I don’t mean you can live permanently in that bubble. I know that THE FLOATING ISLANDS has earned out and that HOUSE OF SHADOWS hasn’t. But basically you do what you can to promote your books, and you trust that your publishers are at least making a reasonable gesture in that direction, and then the numbers are what they are, you know? You can’t do much about that. It’s better to just forget about it and write a new book. Which is Laura Lam’s conclusion, too, by the way.

Laura has a recent guest post that follows up this first roller-coaster post here. I see her PANTOMIME has been shortlisted for five awards, so that’s great for her. Hopefully that will do something to offset the falloff that plagues series. I do think the worry that PANTOMIME might draw significant anti-gay reaction was perhaps unnecessary. Surely readers can be expected to notice that Micah is not actually gay so much as unique.

Anyway, PANTOMIME ends on rather a cliffhanger, so I will be interested in how that works out in the second book, SHADOWPLAY, which is either just out now or else coming out any day. The Goodreads reviews look very strong so far. And the cover is fantastic imho — PANTOMIME had one of my favorite covers last year, and this one is also excellent. Here it is:

Do you love that? I really do. I think it is intriguing, beautiful, different and perfect for the story.

Recent listening: Julia Ecklar

So I just wondered if you all were familiar with Julia Ecklar? She does very professional filk, and has for a long time. My brother gave me one of her later cds for Christmas, “Horsetamer”. It’s an interesting contrast to a tape I’ve had for a long time — she’s moved way beyond “woman with guitar”, see. At this point, she has a whole instrumental section, backup singers, and, sometimes, voice actors to do voiceovers. Pretty impressive!

This cd includes two songs based on Elfquest, which I wouldn’t have known except my brother told me. I never read any of the Elfquest comics or graphic novels or whatever they are. Ecklar does do vengeance very, very well. She sounds really passionate about it! My favorite as far as that goes is a song from her cd “Divine Intervention”, called “Temper of Revenge.” I haven’t listened to that for a long time, but I could hardly forget some of the lyrics: “I will ride out at dawn when the sun’s in the sky so the buzzards can see where the bodies will lie.” Whoa.

Anyway, on this “Horsetamer” cd, she has a nice piece based on Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. I really like that one. Actually it keeps running through my head now. She did a great job tweaking the lyrics from Cooper’s own poems and prophecies to make them scan properly.

And there’s a song based on Dune, “Shai Halud”, that kind of makes me want to go back and re-read bits of Dune.

Most impressive of the lot is a four-song set including her older work “Tin Soldier” that probably does a better job encapsulating Ender’s Game than the movie — lots of voiceovers in that one. The set, in case you’re interested in the MP3 files, are “Ender Interlude I”, “The Battleroom”, “Ender Interlude II”, and “Tin Soldier”. You would want the ones from “Horsetamer” in order to get the right version of Tin Soldier.

Ironically, the title track, “The Horsetamer’s Daughter,” seems rather tedious to me. It goes on and on, and nothing about the story it tells seems unexpected or even very interesting. Even though I love horses as much as the next person. But then, I’m not familiar with the book it’s based on, which probably makes a difference. I had to look online even to know that it’s based on something in Darkover, which I have to admit I never read. (I know, right? But I never did.)

Anyway, if you’re not familiar with Julia Ecklar, you might try some of her songs. I see most of them are indeed available as MP3 files now. Now that I have been reminded about her, I’m going to download some of the songs I have on tape — particularly “Crimson and Crystal” and “Temper of Revenge.” Oh, and “Silver” — I always loved that one. Oh, yes, and “Terminis Est,” that, too.

Why trilogies? Or, wait, *do* trilogies actually rule?

Actually, I like trilogies probably best, as a reader. It can be difficult to commit to a neverending series if you didn’t get in on the ground floor, as it were. And if you really enjoy the characters and the world, is a single book ever enough?

Though I’ve seen a lot of reviewers particularly mention how nice it is to see a standalone novel. So I may not be in the majority in preferring trilogies. Also, I’m patient enough to simply wait till the third book is out before reading a trilogy, so then the trilogy acts for me like a single standalone. I’m not sure how many readers wait like that.

What I hate most, though, is when the publisher hides the fact that the first book is a non-standalone fragment of a larger work. I HATE that. If we are going to have a cliffhanger, can we have a clear warning about that right up front?

As a writer, the situation is more complex. In discussing the trilogy phenomenon, this post by Justin Landon at tor.com comments on why that is (among other things): on top of questions about what you want to write and about what your contract(s) say you must write, there are financial considerations about sales predictions and so forth.

Justin thinks the appeal of trilogies has to do more with deep wiring in human psychology, though: pattern recognition, right, and a tendency to see things in threes.

Or else he suspects the trilogy form isn’t really as dominant as it seems, with the appearance of dominance created by confirmation bias. Leading to a really clever last line. Yes, Justin, I think we all have that particular problem with confirmation bias.

Anyway, if you have a minute, click through and read the whole thing. Do you have a strong preference for standalones, trilogies, neverending series?

Courage in Elizabeth Wein’s work

Particularly nice post by Maureen, over at Chachic’s, about the nature of courage.

I think this is an important insight:

“Wein’s books consistently undermine the narrative of lone heroes: again and again, we see that we are saved in the company of others, that in the dark places the important thing is who stands beside you.”

That’ll certainly be in the back of my mind when I read Wein’s historical novels. I still think February will be a good month for me to take a break — meaning my current WIP is moving along fairly well. No, I did not actually work on it on Christmas day. Probably won’t today either, since tamale assembly is likely to take up quite a lot of the morning and various other things most of the rest of the day. Still, yeah, I think I’m a bit more than half done — and I’m through the difficult early middle. Onward!

But in the meantime, time to take a few minutes and see what else is going on around the internets. A whole two days without a look around! That doesn’t happen very often. If you’re also feeling like you NEED to check in around the book blogophere, then, yeah, click through and read Maureen’s post.

Yep, there’s my guest post –

Over at Chachic’s Book Nook.

Also, a guest post featuring a couple pieces of great Elizabeth Wein-related fan art! That’s a great picture of Telemakos with the lion.

Elizabeth Wein “special ops”

If you’re a fan of Elizabeth Wein — or if you’re thinking maybe you should be (and I will just add that *I* think you should be) — then drop in over the next week or so at Chachic’s Book Nook.

Chachic is hosting a “special ops” week for Wein, who is, in my not especially humble opinion, one of the very, very best YA authors out there today. These days, I mostly avoid anything even remotely connected to Arthurian retellings (I’ve overdosed, I guess). But Elizabeth Wein’s early WINTER PRINCE series is an exception. I will say, only THE WINTER PRINCE itself draws strongly on the Arthurian mythos; after that, the series departs pretty thoroughly from Arthurian canon. My own introduction to Wein’s writing was THE SUNBIRD — I’ll have a guest post about that on Chachic’s blog later in the week. And I’ll certainly be following along to see what the other guest posts are about — though carefully, because I am still trying to avoid spoilers for CODE NAME VERITY and ROSE UNDER FIRE.

Anyway — let’s hear it for Elizabeth Wein (and for Chachic)! I’m very glad to see a fine author whose first series didn’t get the buzz it deserved getting some attention now for her historical fiction.

Recent reading: Christmasy Regency Romance

“You see,” Edmund began, “certain people have entrusted their . . . er . . . trust to me. And I must fulfill that trust. And now is the time that the trust which they have entrusted –”

“Oh, stop,” Jane cut him off. “You’ll do yourself an injury if you try to end that sentence.”

I’m resisting the urge to quote all the good bits, because they’re better in context anyway, right? But if you’re looking for something light and Christmasy, but neither too fluffy nor too sentimental, then you could do lots worse than SEASON FOR SCANDAL by Theresa Romain.

Jane is a delightful protagonist: confident and bold when she borrows her cousin’s rubies and sneaks off to a gambling hell to raise a stake so she can be independent, but wistfully insecure about how to cope when her kind, considerate, unfailingly polite husband doesn’t love her.

Edmund really doesn’t feel that he has the right to love anyone, considering what a trick he played on Jane by marrying her without telling her about his clouded past.

And from there you can immediately see the broad outlines of the plot, right? The ton is glittery; the villain is quite villainous; the secret buried in Edmund’s past, when we finally learn the details, is definitely dark; the secondary characters are truly appealing; and the dialogue made me laugh out loud several times.

All that, plus holly and mistletoe and brown paper packages tied up with strings.

This was a good choice for reading while I was also working through a frustrating couple of scenes in my current WIP. I’m not actually done with the frustrating part, either — not at all to my surprise, I am fighting with Chapter Five, which is a cursed region in every. Single. Work. Ever. I think maybe next time I will just skip from Chapter Four to Chapter Seven and see if that helps.

ANYWAY, since I’m still working on that, I have now started SEASON FOR TEMPTATION. I see that poor James has gone and gotten himself engaged to quite the wrong girl. I wonder how this is going to work out, since his fiancee, Louisa, seems perfectly nice, though clearly she is all wrong for James . . .

Cookies!

Here is the platter I took to my vet and her staff today when I went in for Folly’s hip check. (Yes, I am totally bragging, but I’m proud of my cookies.)

I always take a *big* platter of cookies to my vet at Christmas, because I trust her to go above-and-beyond for me when necessary. Of course, I sometimes feel I am personally putting her son through college, so there’s that.

Folly’s hips look fine, btw, which is nice but not (in my opinion) essential for a Cavalier. You hardly ever hear of a Cavalier who has the least bit of trouble with her hips, even if x-rays show mild dysplasia. In fact, I don’t think I have *ever* heard of a Cavalier that had clinically apparent hip issues. It’s patellas that are a concern in Cavaliers, not hips — my vet just routinely re-checks patellas ever time she sees a small dog. But I haven’t quite given up doing hips myself, yet.

Anyway! The cookies, so far this year:

Chocolate pistachio slices

Madras shortbread coookies

Chocolate almond cookies

Cranberry bites

Rosemary lemon cookies

Chocolate coconut slices

Caramel swirls

Scandinavian brown-butter cardamom cookies

Honey apricot cookies

Chocolaty double crunchers

Peppermint puffs

Tea cookies

Double chocolate ginger cookies

Almond bombes

Sesame snaps

Nutella sandwich cookies

Lavender honey shortbread

Lemon glitter cookies

Lemon bars

Cathedral window candies

Cream cheese truffles

Peanut scrunch

I’ve posted some of the best of these recipes over the past couple of years, btw, so let me point out the Best Cookies In The World tag, right? Some of the least showy cookies, like the Chocolaty Double Crunchers, are actually some of the best. A few aren’t to my taste — I don’t like peppermint, having overdosed as a small child.

I’m not quite done, either. Some of my favorites haven’t been made yet — I’d like to get to another half dozen or so types, minimum! That means the *second* platter that goes to my vet — for the other half of the staff, because they trade off here close to Christmas — will be quite different from the first.