Kim Harrison's Blog, page 94

I had a plan

I had a plan last night for today’s drama box, but I can’t remember what it is for the life of me.  I think it had something to do with proofing and how that’s where a lot of writer’s work shifts from rambling to crisp and clean.  I did a lot of tossing of phrases this week, and took a hard look at my style.  It was odd, since I worked on a huge chunk of one style (Ever-after) and then a handful of other styles (in INTO THE WOODS)  Trent’s voice naturally has more complex sentence structures and phrases stuck in everywhere.  (Million Dollar Baby) The most interesting voice in the collection to me is Lilly’s, which is a tired mom of two young girls, living with her mother in a farm house.  (Spiderweb) She’s angry and a little unbalanced, and seeing her sanity laying next to her madness is fascinating.  Unfortunately it wouldn’t be her voice I continued to work with, though the fairy tale feel would hopefully remain.  The voice I liked working with the most was the young man in the pet shop finding out his world has been on the cusp for a long time, but this one doesn’t have a story I want to follow much.  His voice was fun, though. (Pet Shop Boys)  My easiest voice was Grace, since she is so much like Rachel, but the voice she has here, and the one I’d use if I followed her story further would be drastically different.  What I found most interesting in proofing the collection was how they all needed a slightly different hand.

Things that make you go mmmm.

INTO THE WOODS should be available in e-book and audio, and is currently available for preorder from

Indibooks

Barnes and Noble

Books-A-Million

Harper Collins

Amazon

Three Months of Sunshine

Three months of sunshine.  It sounds like a title for a block buster book, doesn’t it?  Sunshine is good, something we take for granted, and by tacking that three-month limiter on there, it adds an element of questioning tension.  Three Months of Sunshine.  Like 50 Shades of Gray, or Three Cups of Tea.  Yeah.  But really, it’s what I’m looking for in my yard–a spot that gets sun for at least three months so I can put in my tomatoes and pumpkins.  The angle of the sun has shifted high, creating a few spots where I get a smidgen more sun than in any other time of year, and I’ve been watching them.  Unfortunately it’s right where I wanted to move the grill.  sigh.

Three Months of Sunshine.  I think it would be easier to write the book then find that in my garden.

Hummingbirds are back!

I’ve had my hummer feeders up for about two weeks, but only one, and it was kind of tucked away where it would be hard to find–not really in my line of sight.  But this last Friday, I was startled at the small hovering shape zipping from the slice of orange I have out for the orioles  I wasn’t sure if it was a hummer or not.  (It could have been a pixy, you know.  :-) )  But I put out the real, serious feeders, and sure enough, one showed up yesterday, sipping from the two feeders outside my window, then darting immediately around to the side yard where I had one up as well.  It was a nice, bright male, and he’s setting up territory for the coming females.

I’ve not had a lot of success with birds since moving, mostly, I think, because the yard has been bare of low bushes and shrubs, and seeing a returning bird who knew where all the old feeders were last year is a great feeling.

Work is going good, and I should finish up the editorial rewrite for EVER-AFTER today.  It’s been kicking my ass, but I won in the end because I’m in charge of the muse, not the other way around.  I’m taking Friday off ’cause I broke my rule and worked through entirety of last weekend on this.  (I felt like such a bad mom/wife, but they were both understanding.)  And guess what?  It’s supposed to be . . . sunny!  I.  Can.  Not.  Wait!  Both for the weekend and turning this back in so I can get right into the next.  I made some major changes in EVER-AFTER, with new chapters that gave more depth and maturity to a raw story, and I want to see what I did impacts the last two books.  Took someone out, beefed up someone I originally wanted as walkon-walkoff.  It got a little big for my liking, but I’m trying to cut as I go through it this last time this week.  I can trim an entire page from a 20 page chapter just by taking out unnecessary words and phrases, which can add up to 20 pages over the course of a manuscript, and I’m anxious to get to “the end” and see how well I did, word count wise.

Spring?

I think it’s spring now.  Not really sure.  But we’re almost at the calendar day where we usually have our last frost, though I wouldn’t trust it till the end of the month.   I took a couple of hours this weekend and put some of the seedlings I started a month ago in the ground, and I do believe I’m going to put my squash and pumpkins in this weekend.  Oh, and I’m going to try beans again this year after a long hiatus.  I had one bush last summer, and my dog kept eating the beans . . .  She eats a lot of stuff that isn’t good for her, so I just let her go on the beans.

 

January 22, 2013

I’m moving!  But not my house.  I’ve got some great news for all of you who have read A PERFECT BLOOD and are chomping for the next installment.  After a long time with my publishing date being the last Tuesday in February, we are shifting it up in the schedule to January!  Whoo-hoo!  Look for EVER-AFTER the fourth Tuesday in January.  :-)   That January 22, 2013.   I’m hoping that we get a few more southerly stops this year.

If you’re used to getting your tour T for Valentine’s day, you need to re-think your plans as we will be offering them starting Halloween, and ending before Christmas.

Happy Friday!

Yay!  It’s Friday!

That is all . . .

Have a good one!

Transitional Writers

People love to categorize in order to understand, and though the writing field doesn’t have many recognizable periods like art does with its Renaissance, Romanticism, Modern, Contemporary, and whatnot, I think that there might eventually be a name for a short span, maybe a decade or so, of writers that wrote, or more importantly, got their start, in the two decades to either side of this century.  Call them transitional writers of the 21st century, maybe?  See, I got to thinking this morning.

I learned to type on a typewriter, but delivered my first manuscript on paper run through a printer, and my latest delivery was by email.  Research was done in the library or book store, now it is on the web using questionable sources.  Promotion was the realm of the NY professional when I began, and now if a writer doesn’t have an internet outreach of their own, she is considered impersonal or perhaps hard to market.

When I first published, bookstores would allow you to come into their store and sit for two hours and sell eight books–now if you can’t move a book a minute, you can’t come in.  Bookstores were brick and mortar when I began–all of them.  There was no Amazon, no electronic book, no self-publishing that wasn’t looked down upon.  You wrote a book and hoped to God that someone in NY liked it enough to push it through their marketing system.

Agents were mostly men, and they did their deals over martini lunches with other men.  Now your average agent and editor in genre fiction is young, female, and probably got her start doing what she did for those old guys, old guys who are becoming as hard to find as a bookstore in a mall.

Writing used to be a civilized situation for the introvert you needed to be to write the book in the first place.  You wrote the book.  You gave the book to an agent.  Agent sold the book.  You did a book tour if you were lucky.  You got a big/small screen deal for the movie of the week if you had been in the industry forever and your name was in everyone’s lexicon.  Today it’s a bit different as household names are often made in six months, not developed over twenty years, and that works too.  Perhaps that’s the point.  Publishing has changed, but it still works.

Still . . . there are only going to be a limited number of writers who worked in the old system and adapted to the realm of websites, electronic books, virtual tours, book trailers, and entire manuscripts lost because of a bad hard drive.   I slipped into this group as I usually do, by the skin of my teeth, right at the end when the turnover in NY began with the advent of personal computers becoming more personal.  Did I see it all?  Heck no, but I did deliver my first manuscript using the US postal system with no electronic copy attached.  I did have the luxury of being able to develop my website myself slowly over time because back then, no one expected much.  I have had the chance to work with an old school agent, a new school editor, and an aggressive publishing house, thereby getting the best of both worlds.

Was it harder to become published in this transitional phase?  I have no idea.  It’s never been easy, but with all the changes that have occurred, it’s clear that there are more ways to accomplish it.  Me, I’m glad I got a taste of history, because there was a beauty there that I’m seeing slowly slip away under the crass quickness that the internet and computer foster.  But you can still find islands of calm professionalism, and it’s the islands that will endure, adapt, and continue to shape through and beyond the transitional writers.

Slow and Steady Spring

I had a great couple of days in the garden this weekend, spending my time doing hour jobs that had been collecting, stuff like changing out the batteries in the landscape lighting, clearing out the leaves from the pond, repotting the seeds I started a while back.  But there were new things, too, like a landscape tree settled into the spot we took a broken porch down last fall, and I put in 25 strawberry roots under the cherry tree.  Sure, they will have to be moved eventually, but for the next ten years, they’re going to look good.  I’ve only got so much sun, and everything is placed for it.

Today I’m paying for it, though, being physically tired and ready to sit and let my fingers move me.  It’s finally raining, too, which is great.  We’re behind on our rain.  I’m still trying to decide if I lost a few above-ground hosta or not.  They looked a bit transparent when I pulled the frost guards off Sunday.  I’m giving them a few days before I cut them off and make them start from the ground up again.  I think they are okay . . .

My pond is looking posh again, and the frogs have taken up spring residence.  I had it cleaned it out–splashing and dipping–before I saw this guy inches from the edge.   I think he was either too warm or too cold to want to move, trusting his hiding spot to keep him safe.  The water lily is sending up little leaves, and the reed overwintered great at the bottom and is now again half in, half out in one of the upper levels.  I’m hoping that we’ve seen the last freezing temps, but I know that we’re at risk until the end of May.  It’s going to be a long four weeks. . .

I kicked my keyboard’s butt Friday, and am moving forward into old/new material.  I’m not sure I like what I wrote Friday, but it can stay for now until I get a little deeper.

It’s not foggy. I just need to clean my glasses

Seriously, I’m not speaking in metaphors.  My glasses were so filmy I thought for a second it was foggy.  Today’s words are TGIF and why-did-the-recycling-truck-miss-us-yesterday?

Yesterday’s expected chapter and a half turned into a solid chapter, no half, so I’ll be smacking that keyboard into submission today to get my new chapter written in its entirety before I call it quits for the week.  I like the changes I put in yesterday, simplifying the plot and setting up a conflect that wasn’t there before but should have been.  Today will be one of choices, so I’ll probably be using a pencil and paper for a chunk of time before I dive in and start some dialog.  My temptation is to do dialog and then sit on it the rest of the weekend, but I am feeling pinched, so will risk having to rewrite this one again and try to get it all on paper today.

Garden watch:  I don’t know . . .  I don’t think it got as cold as they said it would, but I’m glad I covered my hosta anyway.  As Mud said, everything else can handle a little frost, but some of my hosta are heirloom size and variety, and I didn’t want them to start from scratch.  Besides, if they die from frost, what will the deer eat?  -snerk-   I might just leave them covered since they’re still getting light/moisture, but the ones under buckets I did open.  There was condensation on them, so maybe I saved them after all.  Oh!  And my cherry tree does have fruit coming.  Not a lot, but some.  Yay!

P.S.  Why did my blog program suggest I tag this post with vacation, travel, and yoga?  Yoga?  Really?  Was it the word pinched?

Todays words are stressful and frustrating

Made good progress yesterday on the editorial rewrite, as expected.  Today should be a mix as I breeze through another chapter and then everything screeches to a halt while I write a new chapter.  Should be interesting in that I’ve not seen this character for a longtime and there aroe bound to be some changes.  Today is going to be stressful . . .

Tonight is going to be worse, though, as we are dead center of the latest freeze warning.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  I’ve got two plants I will definitely cover, but the rest?  Frustrating.