Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 53

The Right Book at the Right Time

Good post by Molly Templeton at tor.com: Every Book in the Right Time

Books come to us when they come, and it’s either their time or it’s not.  … You can build the perfect moment, but you have to have some idea what it is. And you have to have the time and inclination to design it, rather than taking the moment that you get. … Still, sometimes the books are late. Or early. Or just off. A friend and I were talking recently about The Secret History, a book I still haven’t read but have, for at least a decade, intended to. She said that most people she knows who first read it as adults hated it. (Did I take this as a challenge? Only slightly.) Those who read it younger, on the other hand, are passionate. Another friend has told me more than once that you have to read The Secret History in the wintertime. Maybe this cold, dark, gloomy start of the year is exactly my time—or exactly the book’s time.

It’s a good post. I’m not reading anything right now, but perhaps soon.

Have you heard of this book Templeton mentions, The Secret History? By Donna Tartt. I had not heard of it. It turns out it’s literary. Here’s the description: Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.

My instant reaction: Wow, rush right out. /sarc

I have zero sympathy for the oh-so-sensitive, oh-so-special alienated misfits who just can’t bear the banality of modern life. I have deeply negative sympathy to these superior individuals who discard “human constructs of morality.” I will add that I felt just as strongly repulsed by this sort of protagonist thirty years ago; it wouldn’t matter how old I was when I read this, I would be dropping in the trash the moment a protagonist moaned about the banality of ordinary people and how painful existence is for someone with such special, delicate sensibilities. My reaction to Steppenwolf was For heaven’s sake, get a grip. And see a shrink because you’re obviously clinically depressed.

In fact! You know what this brief description of The Secret History reminds me of? It reminds me of From All False Doctrine, where the charismatic classics professor’s special manuscript is a hoax and the cult based on that manuscript is completely misguided; where the clever, eccentric misfits who get pulled into his cult certainly get led down a dangerous path beyond human constructs of morality; and this that is not at all something desirable.

Templeton finishes:

This year, I am trying—trying!—to alternate old and new. Writing about books means there is always something new I should be reading. But there is also always something old that I should understand—there are always books whose moment I might have thought slid past me, but it didn’t, or books I just never saw before. Or books like The Night Circus, which sat right in front of me, waiting.

Yeah, it would be nice if I finally read some of the books that have been on my TBR pile for a decade or so, including The Night Circus, in fact. Realistically, I probably won’t get to it this year either, but who knows?

Anybody got a book you have kind of wanted to get to for years and years but haven’t? Drop them in the comments and maybe someone will give you an emphatic thumbs up that finally makes you open that book, or a vehement thumbs down that makes you decide not to bother. Either would be valuable!

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post The Right Book at the Right Time appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Get up out of your chair, take your hands off the keyboard

From Jane Friedman’s blog: Beyond BICHOK: How, When and Why Getting Your Butt Out of the Chair Can Make You a Better Writer

I hit this paragraph and laughed:

You’re driving on a long stretch of highway when you have an insight about your main character’s childhood. Or you’re mid-hair-rinse in the shower, when you suddenly understand how to bring together the braided strands of your novel. Or you wake up at 2 a.m. with the resolution to that thorny plot issue you’ve been wrestling.

Have you ever noticed how many ideas arise when you’re not sitting at the keyboard? 

So true. I particularly like these examples because it’s awkward to stop and take notes in all these situations. At least, not coherent notes of more than a few words. I will add, sometimes this is very fast. You close your laptop and go to get the dog’s leashes and BEFORE YOU EVEN GET TO THE DOOR, suddenly you figure out what you should do with that next scene or that you were just starting to go in the wrong direction.

For decades, writers have been told the most important thing to do is to put “butt in chair, hands on keyboard.” As acronyms emerged with USENET forums in the 1990s, this became abbreviated “BICHOK.”

Which I still think is good advice a lot of the time! Most of the time! But it’s definitely true that taking the dogs for a walk … or just going downstairs to get a lightbulb … getting up out of the chair AT ALL can definitely help kick you past a problem scene.

Okay, the rest of the article is all about the subconscious and the creative mind and so forth. Then this:

Conventional writing advice suggests taking a break when you know what’s coming next. That presumes that only your writing time is productive and that all look-away time is unproductive.

But in Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, the late sci-fi author wrote: “As soon as things get difficult, I walk away. That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” He clarifies by saying that when you move toward cats, they tend to move away, but if you ignore them, then they become interested.

If you move properly, your cat won’t move away from you when you move toward her. But still, yes.

Lots of tips about when to take a break and what kind of break is good.

Long article, not as shallow and facile as so many seem to be, certainly worth a read if you’re interested.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Get up out of your chair, take your hands off the keyboard appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Something New: Patreon

Okay, so, I will be trying something new this year!

Have I mentioned I dislike figuring out how to do new things online? I really hate figuring out how to do new things online. But! I think there are some really obvious, really big advantages to trying out Patreon:

* Patreon appears to be the simplest way to make ebooks available to all readers everywhere before dropping each ebook into KU and making it exclusive to Amazon. Unlike distributing ebooks through Draft to Digital, I should be able to make each new ebook available via Patreon and then make it unavailable, click, done, without worrying about some platform failing to unpublish it and thus causing potentially serious problems with KU terms of service. My intention is to drop each new book into Patreon for two weeks or a month before it becomes available via Amazon.

* Patreon gives me a way to make the stories otherwise available only in my newsletter available to anybody. This is especially important as I’m bringing out stories in installments. What if someone subscribes to my newsletter now and gets only parts 4 and 5 of Ryo’s story about stealing the tiger pelt? That isn’t great, and it’s not what I intended when I thought of putting stories in the newsletter.

* Patreon takes 8% off the top rather than 30%, so it would be nice to have people subscribe to Patreon.

SO, what I have up now are the following:

A) The complete story about the fox and the boy –> Word file –> Tier One

B) The complete story about young Ryo stealing the tiger pet –> Word file –> Tier One

C) The ebook of The Year’s Midnight –> epub file –> Tier Two

And what I really, really need to know are the following:

DOES THE LINK WORK? Everything blue in this post has the same link. If you click on the link, does it take you to the right place?

DOES THE PAGE LOOK OKAY? Do you see anything obvious that I plainly did wrong or failed to do with this page? I looked carefully at multiple Patreon pages and I think I did this right, but maybe not!

DO THE FILES DOWNLOAD PROPERLY? If anybody who joins at any tier would kindly check whether the Word files download properly, I would be grateful. If anyone who joins at the middle tier would kindly try downloading The Year’s Midnight to make sure the epub file downloads properly, I would be even more grateful. Patreon SAY it supports epub files, but I would like to make sure.

If all of this works properly, then my goal is to drop an epub of MARAG into Patreon in March and then unpublish it there and drop it into Amazon / KU in April. If something doesn’t work properly on Patreon, my goal is to fix it and follow the same schedule, but if it takes longer to get something fixed than I hope, that would be awkward. That’s why I’m putting The Year’s Midnight there right now, to check and see if epub files work before I try it with MARAG. This is also why I haven’t picked a preorder date for MARAG on Amazon. I can’t do that until I can see if all the rest of this is going to work properly.

ALSO

I’m going to pull the Death’s Lady ebooks everywhere else and drop them into KU. I have hit the unpublish buttons everywhere. What I’m going to do, if all goes well, is drop all four of the Death’s Lady books into Patreon until maybe the end of March, then nix them there and drop them into KU and run a sale on them once they’re on KU.

At the end of the year, I’m going to assess how the Death’s Lady series did exclusive versus how it did wide, but my very strong presumption is that royalties on this series will be much, much higher exclusive. If I didn’t think that was going to happen, I’d leave them wide.

ALSO

Many thanks to commenter Allan S, who told me about Glynn Stewart using Patreon this way. I’m not doing it exactly the way Glynn does it, but I wouldn’t have thought of Patreon at all except for Allan’s comment.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Something New: Patreon appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

SFF Whodunnits

A post at Crime Reads: 9 GREAT SPECULATIVE WHODUNNITS

I’ve got one that they probably missed, and one or two more that might possibly be included, but let’s see! This post begins this way:

I love a great whodunnit, and one with sorcery or sentient spaceships is even better. In my debut novel, The Longest Autumn, priestess Tirne must solve just such a mystery. As one of four seasonal Heralds, it is her job to escort the deity Autumn between the human and godly realms each year for his season. But this time, the magic mirror separating their worlds shatters after they pass through. Tirne is accused of sabotage, and her title of Herald is stripped from her. The world is trapped in endless autumn. While sorcerers and priests work to repair the mirror, crops fail and plague sweeps through the populace. Time runs out as Tirne dives into her temple’s intrigues to find the true culprit, clear her name, and regain her prestigious position as Herald.

This does not sound appealing to me, and why not? A specific common trope is centered in this story, and it’s one I particularly dislike. I’m not sure I identified this as a trope, and in particular a trope I hate, until now, when I said to myself, I just flinched away from this book; why did that happen?

It’s this line: Tirne is accused of sabotage, and her title of Herald is stripped from her.

I really, truly dislike the trope of false accusation, particularly of humiliation that comes from false accusation. This is not a rare trope! This is common! Then the person works hard, clears their name, triumphs over the bad guy, and everyone celebrates. That’s all very well, but the dark period that comes after the false accusation, especially public and underserved humiliation, is very difficult for me to get through. If I see that a story has this plot element, I am unlikely to pick up the book. Even if the novel has glowing reviews — even if people here tell me it’s great –– I will remain reluctant to pick up that novel. If I hit that trope in the middle of a novel, I may stop reading. This is true even if I know for certain the person clears their name. I hate it that much.

However, obviously not all Whodunnits have this element. Most don’t. I wonder what SFF mysteries this post is going to pick out? Let’s see:

The Death I Gave Him by Em X Liu. This unique spin on Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a closed-circle, futuristic murder mystery set at Elsinore Labs.

Okay, that sounds interesting! A Hamlet retelling! Didn’t see that coming.

Told through fictional memoir excerpts, phone transcripts, and descriptions of security footage, it’s the perfect blend of the literary and science fiction genres.

Still interesting! I enjoy epistolary novels. I don’t particularly like tragedies, of course, but a take on Hamlet? That really does sound interesting.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. Ivy Gamble is a hard-drinking loner of a private investigator, hired to solve a grisly murder at a magical high school. Her estranged sister is a teacher there, and the story perfectly balances Ivy’s personal stakes and fractured relationships alongside the murder case.

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty. In a world where cloning allows anyone to extend their lifespan indefinitely, the six-person crew of a spaceship all wake up as fresh clones in their ship’s lab. They emerge into their own murder scene. Their previous bodies are obviously decades older, but all memories of their time on the ship are missing. Together, they must discover what happened over the past years and solve the mystery. Complicating matters, every one of them has past crimes they’d prefer to keep hidden.

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White. Twelve magical heirs of a kingdom–one from each province–embarking on a luxury ship for a pilgrimage to their sacred mountain. On the first night, one of their number is murdered.

Even Though I Knew the End by CL Polk. Helen Brandt … made a deal with a demon ten years ago. The collection date for her soul is only days away when she receives an offer she can’t refuse. A new demon offers to return her soul if she uses her mystical abilities to track down the White City Vampire, a serial killer who’s been stalking the streets.

This book has a great cover:

But although I love this cover, I am also pushed away by the obvious horror vibe. I know Polk writes dark. That plus this cover means I am unlikely to try this book. Thus we see that a cover can be amazing and cool and evocative and so on, but still signal a reader: NO.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Alex Stern [is] a young woman with the rare and extraordinary ability to see ghosts. This gift earns her an invitation to attend Yale University, where she uses this talent to monitor the university’s mystical secret societies. The upper-class students use various forms of magic to charm their way into politics, manipulate the stock market, and climb the social ladder even higher. But when a girl is murdered and the underground societies are possible culprits, Alex must find the killer. 

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei. In the past, the protagonist Asuka struggles with questions of identity, belonging, and family on a dying Earth, all while competing with other hopefuls for a place on the mission. In the present, an explosion during the journey kills three people and knocks the ship off-course. Asuka is the lone survivor of the explosion and accused of the crime. 

Winters Orbit by Everina Maxwell. Set in a fictional high-tech solar system, a prince dies suddenly. His cousin Kiem is tasked with marrying the prince’s widower Jainan to secure political alliances. When it’s revealed that the prince was murdered, Jainan is the prime suspect. He and Kiem search for the truth behind the crime while they grow ever closer to one another. 

Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang. Isabeau Agarwal is a monster hunter seeking her latest quarry at a quaint roadside inn. The beast can hide in human form, and she must determine which of the residents is actually the inhuman creature. But the investigation is made even more complicated when one of the guests is killed.

Okay, those are the nine from this post, and I have to say, almost all of them sound good! That’s unexpected! More extensive comments for each book if you would like to click through to the post at Crime Reads. I tried to pull out a good teaser from each.

I have of course already read Winter’s Orbit, and while I thought it was flawed, I also thought it was amazingly catchy and I liked it a lot. Of the other’s, I’m shying away from The Deep Sky, ,and of course it’s obvious why, right? Of course. It’s the false accusation.

Lafferty’s setup sounds amazing; a lot of these do sound really promising, I hardly know which sounds the most intriguing. That last one looks light and fun. What are some more SFF Whodunnits? A few did immediately leap to mind for me:

Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shin. Here are my comments about this book, which I took as a mystery, but which Sharon told me she thought of as kind of a Western. I think it works both ways.

The City and the City by China Mieville. Have you all read this? It’s my favorite of Mieville’s.

Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart. I have not read this, though it’s on my TBR pile. Someday, someday …

***

All right, comments? Have any of you read anything here? Or do you have another SFF Whodunnit you’d like to add ot the list? Drop ’em in the comments!

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post SFF Whodunnits appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Update: Allllmost there with MARAG

Okay, so I thought it might take several days to complete the basic revision pass for MARAG. But, oh look, a snow day! (Ice, actually.)

That’s good timing in several ways, rather annoying in other ways, but the basic result of having a three-day weekend right now is that I will probably complete this revision pass today. I have eight notes left. They are the most annoying notes because when it comes to revision, I do the easiest stuff first. Changing names I have decided I don’t like to different names, stuff like that. Things like “Complete this subplot” and “Read through the whole story and see if Marag’s fundamental character comes through clearly enough” comes dead last.

I started to say “character arc” there. But Marag doesn’t really have a character arc. Neither does Sinowa, come to think of it. Minimal arcs, anyway. The whole basic story unrolls rather fast, the pace gets intense. If you exclude the lead-in and the denouement, then … three days, I think, for the basic story. The relationship arc is, as you probably expect, getting to see each other at their best and falling for each other. Without ever using the word “love” because the Ugaro don’t think of it that way.

Both Marag and Sinowa start off pretty sure of themselves. The exact kind of confidence each of them has is different, but they’re both pretty confident. They don’t become more confident of themselves during this story, or not much. I mean, how could they? Marag has been a singer since she was twelve. She knows she going to become a truly exceptional singer — this has been obvious to everyone for a good while; that’s why her marriage is so important. Sinowa has had high standing among his people for a long time; he’s tremendously confident because of course he is.

During the story, they don’t become more confident of themselves. They both become much more confident of each other. That’s the arc. I didn’t really think about it that way until now, but that’s what this story shows: it’s a combined arc, not two different individual arcs. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. The plot is pretty straightforward. It’s not really a mystery story. Some of the details are murky even at the end (and may serve as plot hooks for some other story). The point isn’t the mystery, it’s the sheer difficulty of solving the problem. A singer couldn’t have done it alone. A warrior couldn’t have done it at all. That’s pretty much the point.

I’m very much looking forward to comments from early readers! I am still doing stuff with subplots and I do want to read through the whole thing again from the tope, but barring random disasters such as power outages from the ice or whatever, I will probably be ready to send it out later this week.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Update: Allllmost there with MARAG appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

ChatGPT generates Ugaro names

Okay, so I thought sure, I’d try generating names using ChatGPT. 

Here’s what I told it: “Generate names that are three, four, five, or six letters long; that alternate consonants and vowels; that use only the letters w, e, r, t, y, u, i, o, p, a, s, d, g, h, k, l, v, b, and n; that end in a, o, or u.”

Can anybody immediately see what I did wrong? I shouldn’t have used the word “names” because naturally ChatGPT generated lists of actual names. Of course it did! Totally my fault. I immediately said, “Same criteria, but the words should be meaningless in English.”

Too many of the resultant words looked silly, and also ChatGPT had trouble keeping all the rules in mind, so I got names like

NivakLurtyHosea

And isn’t it interesting that ChatGPT couldn’t keep track of the rules? I reminded it that the names must end with a, o, or u. Then I reminded it that vowels and consonants must alternate. I actually got a handful of names that might work, maybe with tweaking. But here’s what happened when I asked for names that fit the same criteria, began with vowels, and were five letters long:

ArovaUtieuEsofiIralaOvitoEniwoUruwaIsiouOvulaAneia

ChatGPT could not remember that words cannot end in “i” or that vowels must alternate with consonants. Isn’t that interesting? I think that’s interesting.

A few of the names I got might be okay, but honestly, it’s probably easier just to generate names myself and then fiddle with them.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

MARAG

Okay, so I’m doing revision and stuff now, but I don’t think I ever showed you the cover, did I? Here it is:

As you see, I chose to make the full moon central here, rather than adding an animal.

This seemed suitable because (a) coming up with animals isn’t that easy; and (b) come on, this is Marag we’re talking about here. The Moon is as central to her as the Sun is central to Suelen — you may recall that the rising Sun was featured on his cover. I will add that I’m taking some artistic license here. This book doesn’t take place in the great forest; it takes place right below the great northern mountains. That’s important because, well, it’s important. Maybe I’ll set the epilogue in the forest, but regardless, this is a liberty I’m willing to take because the winter forest looks spectacular and showy.

Now, of course, I also need to come up with back cover copy. And pick a preorder date, which I am dithering about a bit for various reasons. The point right now is: back cover description. Here’s my first attempt at the basic framework for this description:

***

Sinowa inGara cherished his first wife. He does not truly want to marry again. But he has no choice. He needs to step forward among his people; he has to have higher standing; he needs to achieve that soon. He knows exactly what he must do: he must marry a singer. Best of all if he marries an inKarano singer.

Only one inKarano singer is unmarried: Marag inKarano, already a respected singer, daughter and niece and great-niece of respected singers.

For ten winters, Marag inKarano has turned aside every warrior and every poet who has approached her. She knows she will become one of the foremost singers of all the tribes. She knows whomever she marries will gain great standing through that marriage; his tribe will gain standing among the other tribes. Her choice is important — too important to leave to chance. For all these winters, Marag has asked the gods to send her a sign when the right man comes to sit by her fire and ask for her favor.

The gods have never sent her that sign.

This winter, Sinowa catches Marag’s attention the moment he arrives at the Convocation grounds, far to the east of inGara lands. But almost at the same moment, a different problem compels her attention — and his.

Wolves have been singing in the mountains since the Convocation began, bringing good luck and showing the favor of the gods. But for five nights now, every evening, one more wolf has been missing from that chorus. Some mysterious curse has come upon the wolves … and now that ill luck may be spreading downward, carried from the mountains on a bitter wind that cries with the voices of the lost wolves. As the curse strengthens and strengthens again, even all the strength of a warrior and all the deep understanding of a singer may be hard-pressed to turn the ill luck away from the gathered people and the world.

***

Comments, please!

Also, I will just note that something I realized just as I finished this story is that here, the man solves a problem having to do with family relationships, while the woman solves the problem having to do with the curse. I think that’s kind of amusing. It just sort of happened that way, but I guess that wasn’t exactly chance, as that division of labor totally suits Ugaro society and the metaphysics of the world.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post MARAG appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Beta Reader Do’s and Don’ts

This is from Patricia Wrede’s blog: Beta Reader Do’s and Don’ts

At the suggestion of a friend, whose Yuletide fanfic I am currently beta-ing, I’m going to talk about do’s and don’ts for beta readers. …  I have, at different times, beta-read stories for two different writers who have some degree of dyslexia. One of them absolutely wants their spelling, syntax, and punctuation corrected; homonyms, malapropisms, and questionable word choices flagged; and typos marked. The other emphatically does not want any of that—they are of the opinion that those things should be corrected in the penultimate draft, when there won’t be a lot of major changes that are likely to add a bunch of new typos and spelling errors.

Thence to a post about do’s and don’ts for beta reading, and it’s kind of an interesting topic. I’ve beta read for Sherwood Smith and others at BVC. I don’t think I’ve had anyone who emphatically does not want typos marked; but on the other hand, I’ve never beta read anything that wasn’t pretty clean.

In this post, Patricia Wrede is only looking at this from the beta reader’s pov, so even though I’ve said this before, here’s what I think a reader should specifically ask for:

a) Character stupidity; plot stupidity

b) Plot too predictable

c) Anything seem too deus ex?

d) Any character ever do anything they wouldn’t do?

e) Do you ever feel confused?

f) Do you ever feel bored?

g) Do the characters and the relationships work for you?

h) Does the ending work for you?

That’s not meant to be a complete list, and what I personally ask specific readers to look at depends on their specific proclivities.

Character stupidity / plot stupidity? –> Craig.

Relationships? –> Mary Beth.

Plot/Pacing/Worldbuilding? –> Kim.

And so on. For me, I don’t want proofing at the beta stage. I don’t mind having typos pointed out at any stage because it’s completely impossible to overdo proofreading, so why not. But as far as I’m concerned, focusing on bigger issues is much, much more important during the beta stage. This is the stage where, after reading comments, I revamp the plot, combine two characters or swap their roles, change the age of a character, add direction and time cues for the reader, pull subtext up into text … big stuff.

I expect I’ll be asking various of you to beta read MARAG shortly. (You should always, always feel free to say no if you don’t have time or aren’t in the mood or whatever.) I think it’s going to be a clean draft, without a lot of important revision. We’ll see!

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Beta Reader Do’s and Don’ts appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Writer’s income

A post at Kill Zone Blog on this perennial topic: Why Do You Do This?

The basic take-home here is: You’d better do it for fun.

In 2022, according to 5,699 published authors who responded [to this Publisher’s Weekly survey] the median gross pre-tax income from their books was $2,000. If you combine that with other writing-related income, it jumped to $5,000. That’s actually up 9% from the year before, adjusted for inflation. Most that increase came from full-time authors. (Their income was up 20% vs part-timers who saw a 4% decline.)

And so forth and so on. One interesting contrast here would be to the 2023 Written Word Media survey, which is here, because survey participants are self-selected for both, but almost certainly drawn from different pools of authors. WWM breaks income into blocks by number of titles published, which is sensible.

Anyway, I think there are a couple things to keep in mind:

A) If you’re going to spend time on a hobby, writing novels is potentially going to bring in income, whereas most other hobbies will not, so, I mean, if you’re deciding whether to spend free time writing vs binge-watching tv shows, there’s that.

B) I’ve been paying attention while writing MARAG, and for me, the experience of writing this book has been honestly quite similar to the experience of reading an absorbing novel. Just much, much slower. This is why I like writing.

C) Personally, my income from writing in 2023 was within close-ish shouting distance of my income from my job. Even though self-employment taxes, which are evil btw, are going to take a big chunk out of that income, and even though I directed another good chunk of this income back into writing expenses, even so, I continue to maintain –>

D) That if you’re willing to build income gradually, you can build a solid income from self-publishing.

However, basically I agree with this KZB post: if you’re going to write at all, it’s definitely best if “doing it for fun” is at the top of your list of motivations.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Writer’s income appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Update: Okay, I think I’m past worrying about jinxing MARAG

You know what, there’s a reason I really love writing the Tuyo-world books. I mean, maybe someday one will be difficult, but I’m happy to say that this is not that day.

Anyway, I’m not finished — quite. I won’t finish MARAG today — quite. But I should be well into the final chapter by tonight, and I should be writing the epilogue tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday. Even if I don’t finish it quite that fast, this will still be the fastest Tuyo-world novel so far. January before classes start is SO EXCELLENT as a time to write, especially a book I’m enjoying. Until Morgan threw a spanner into the works, I was averaging 8000 words a day and I got back to that level yesterday.

I’ve accumulated a couple dozen notes about stuff to do during the first basic revision pass.

–>I started a subplot, so I want to complete that.

–>I want to combine two very minor characters.

–>I may put a character list at the end. (I should probably put a character list at the end.) (Fine, I’ll put a character list at the end.)

–>I want to give a currently unimportant character a more important role in order to increase tension.

–> Connected with the above, I need to think about whether there is enough tension in the relationship part — not too much, not the wrong kind, but enough tension of the right kind. There is plenty of tension in the action plot, and by the way, there is a lot more action than I expected. I thought this would be almost entirely a relationship story, but it is actually an adventure story with a strong relationship component.

And then there are a bunch of very minor tweaks. Plus the tedious business of going through and creating a timeline to see where everyone is when everything happens, so I can make sure that works.

Plus I need to look carefully at all the names. We know only a few familiar characters here — Sinowa, Marag, Garoyo (he’s fourteen here), Koro (he became king fairly recently). I think that’s it. Oh, there’s a reference to Royova inVotaro, but he isn’t going to appear on stage. So obviously there are a lot of new characters and obviously they’re all Ugaro, which means all the names are Ugaro names, and honestly it’s a good thing I have the Tuyo World Companion so I can check and see what names I’ve used before.

I haven’t actually sat down and worked out how many six-letter words you can create by alternating consonants and vowels, always ending with a vowel, never ending with “i” or “e,” never starting with “o” or “i,” never using “j” or “q” or “c” or “x” or “z.” I think those are the constraints for male Ugaro names. Female names are even more constrained, as apparently the only letters that can end female names are “a” and “g.” Anyway: I’m sure the number of possible names is very large, but creating enough names that look okay to me and don’t look too similar to other names is REALLY HARD, and I guess I could have thought ahead a bit before putting those constraints into the language, but who knew I’d be writing literally over a million words in this world? (So far.)

Let me see, what else? Okay, you might like to know that this book is at 94,000 words and should go to about 110,000 words, maybe a little more. I think I’ve (finally) figured out one reason everything goes half again as long as I expect: it takes a stunning number of words to do transitions and movement. I knew that, but I really noticed it this time. Every single time you start a chapter, you have to establish the scene, and that takes a lot more words than seems reasonable, but it just does. I think that adds as many words as suddenly deciding to pick up a secondary character and do a real subplot around that character, which is the other thing that increases word count. If this book goes much past 110K, that will be why.

Chapters strictly alternate in viewpoint, beginning with Sinowa’s pov in a brief prologue type of chapter that takes place a few months before the story really begins. I really like that prologue. You can see what you think. Marag takes the first chapter of the real story, and the last chapter. Sinowa will take the epilogue. Everyone is going to like the epilogue, I’m pretty sure.

By this time next week, I should be about ready to send this book to first readers.

I may or may not take a week off before I begin RIHASI. I’ve been looking forward to that one so long that I may just not want to take a break. You know what I’ve realized? That the experience of writing a book “in flow” is honestly very similar to immersive reading. That sure explains why I am torn between plunging straight into RIHASI versus “taking a break” — it doesn’t feel like taking a break, it feels like tearing myself away.

It’s very, very satisfying to begin the year with a book that’s just about ready to go.

Extra update: I’ll probably be sending out the next newsletter later this week. Sorry, I totally forgot about it even though I’ve finished the story about young Ryo stealing the tiger pelt. That story grew to 20,000 words and therefore there will be three more parts to it. I’m going to arrange to make those stories available before I do the second Tuyo World Companion, so that should happen later this month, probably.

If you have comments about any of the stories that appear in the newsletter, drop those comments in a post here or email me. I’ll want to do a bit of revision before I put them anywhere in final form.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Update: Okay, I think I’m past worrying about jinxing MARAG appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.