Kim Harrison's Blog, page 95

Happy hump day

It’s mid-week, and I’m ready to rock and roll on the rewrite, having finished a great deal of the brand new chapters.  I still have to go over them again, but they are done and I’m moving forward.  I’ve got at least two days of light editing, so by this time tomorrow, I’ll feel a lot better about where I am.  April is almost gone, and that’s not a bad thing.  I’ve been watching the weather very closely, and though we are dipping down very close to freezing, we’re not quite getting there.  Everything is out now, and I would hate to have the vegetation damaged by frost and have to start over.

Today I’ve got a picture of the puppies chillin on their chair in my office.  They like my new space as much as me, and can crab at squirrels and chipmunks all day.

Also, Dead WItch Walking read by Ms. Gavin is on Sirius XM 80.  I thought it was for one week, but no!  It seems they’re going to read the entire thing!  DWW has the 9:00-10:00 am slot M-F, and the midnight hour 7 days a week.  Weekends have multiple chapters at midnight.  If you have Sirius, you can set it to record and listen at your leisure. Rock on, Rachel! ()

Went to bed late

I intentionally went to bed late last night in the hopes that I would be exhausted enough to fall asleep fast  and stay there.  It’s that time in my editorial rewrite where I’m feeling as if I should be moving faster, and I’m not, so I tend to lay awake in bed and stew about what comes next.  When I break it down and look at what I’m doing, my pace makes sense (lots of new material in the beginning) and I truly am making progress, but when I see the chapter number I’m at, I look at the calendar and cringe.  Today is the last of the brand new chapters I have to create for a while, so the rest of the week should be satasfying in terms of page count.  I hope so.  This is frustrating.

As for the new chapters?  I’m liking what I’m seeing.  There’s a good base there, but I need to go over them again and add in the small, tiny observations that pull it all together.  If it was a cake, I’d have the icing on but not the frosting flowers, the little things your eyes light upon and make you go “ooooo.”

If you put in for a Manic Monday book yesterday, chances are good that you got one or both (if you ordered both)  Guy is trying to untangle the mess of having orders on two emails, and will be sending out invoices today and probably tomorrow, so hang tight.  :-)  He’s got a lot to work through, and I plan on helping him fold boxes and such tonight.

Manic Monday-FDM and ODW hardcover

Guy’s email has changed today.  Our internet service went out at 8:30, and won’t be up till after noon.  His temp emil for this manic Monday is tcook831@gmail.com.  Sorry about this.   

Manic Monday books are gone! Thank you, everyone.  Guy has not yet emailed the “winners” with their invoice, so don’t panic if you haven’t heard from him yet.  He has been checking both emails, so if you emailed him on the vampcharms address, you’re good.  :-)

After a long hiatus, Manic Mondays are back!  I’ve got two for you today, and you can get one of each as long as supplies last.  Up for grabs today is a signed (not personalized with a note) For A Few Demons More, and a signed Outlaw Demon Wails.  These are hardcovers, so if you do order both, they will come in two packages to help reduce shipping cost.  (crazy, but true.)  The tattoo freebie for A PERFECT BLOOD will be in there, as well.

The skinny: Guy will begin taking orders at noon today, EST.  (Don’t email him now.  Wait for noon.)   The cost covers the shipping and handling.  USA shipments will take two weeks from when we ship, international will be a bit longer as there are forms to fill out and longer shipping times.

Shipping and Handling for each book is  $9.00 in the US, $16.00 to Canada, and $22.00 to Mexico, and $25.00 everywhere else.  If you are in Germany, please allow for a long shipping time as everything gets hung up in customs.  To make this as painless and fast as possible for Guy, we are taking Pay Pal only.  Unfortunately we can’t combine any other merchandise in with this, but as I mentioned, you’ll get Rachel’s pack tattoo.  Domestic will ship Media Mail.  International will go out as First Class.

If you are interested, at noon, EST today, (no earlier) send an email to Guy at tcook831@gmail.com with the words FDM in the subject line if you want For A Few Demons More, or ODW in the subject line if you want an Outlaw Demon Wails.  Do not order both in the same email, or you’ll only get one book.  If you are among the first 97 for ODW and 60 of FDM, he will send you an invoice(s), so please include your shipping address in your initial email. If you do not include your shipping address in the initial email, he can not ship you your book(s), and your order will not be acted on.  No address=no book.  PayPal doesn’t always put the address in, and it’s frustrating.  We don’t do anything with your address but ship you your book(s).  We don’t have the time to do anything wicked, and I hate it when people sell mine, so . . .

As usual, I’ll update this post when they are gone to help avoid confusion.  If you miss out, I’ll be having more shipping and handling give aways, and the tattoos are still available if you send me a SASE  Click for how to send me a SASE

Manic Mondays are back!

Vampiric Charms is closed, but there is still stuff hanging around in my house.  Look Monday for a special, one-time offer as Guy clears off another shelf.  This time it will be hard covers of FOR A FEW DEMONS MORE and THE OUTLAW DEMON WAILS.  I’ll have all the particulars for you tomorrow, but the price will include shipping.

Also, I’ve gotten a lot done in my week hiatus from posting, so I’ll be back on Monday as well.  :-)

Dead Witch Walking on Sirius XM 80

I know I said I was going to take a week off from posting, (Ask Kim a question is still open) but I wanted to let you know that Dead Witch Walking is on Sirius XM Book radio this week at 12:00-1:00am and 9:00am to 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time.  Monday is chapter one, Tuesday is chapter two, and so on until we get through chapter five.

Please feel free to pass this on!  Book Radio is channel 80. Here is a

Happy Triskaidekaphobia Day!

At first, one might thing this was the fear of being tricked, or perhaps the fear of filing your taxes, but no, it’s the fear of the number 13.  I’m going to sally forth as usual today, writing a brand new beginning to Ever-after.

New beginnings or endings are not uncommon for me, since they are arguably the most important two chapters in a book.  First chapters, especially should tell you what the entire book is about in such a way that you don’t realize it until it’s over and you circle back to it.  And since the focus has sharpened to a fine-point to me, I have to reflect that with a new beginning.  Still . . . it is changing yet, and last night while brushing my teeth I sparked on an idea to shift my new, unwritten chapter 180 degrees . . . and everything crystalized like adjusting the lens on a spy scope.  It was a good premise, now it’s shiny.

I may not post next week.  I am soooo excited about getting this on paper, and I want to use every hour of my work day–and since all I’m going to be doing is wash-rinse-repeat, the drama box will be very boring. I will however be dropping in at FB for progress comments and the like.  You don’t have to join FB to look at my reader page.

See you when I’m back!

Head was spinning

I swear, it took me almost an hour to get my head to stop spinning when I walked out of the office last night–much of it just standing in the shower to physically separate myself from the rest of my day.  A run or ride would have been better, anything physical, but it was late.   I got through the entire ms, putting down some big-block changes of what I wanted to see.  I plan to do it again today to fine tune it and make sure I'm not making a mistake or taking a hatchet to what needs a pruning.

At this stage, I don't even have the computer on.  The manuscript is papercliped into chapters, and bindercliped into days, and I'm leaning heavy on my character grid to keep organized.  I'm writing in the changes I want to see in that big white space at the beginning of each chapter, again looking at pacing, character flow from chapter to chapter, and trying to address the issues my editor brought up.  I'm liking what I'm seeing, my biggest goal being enriching character growth and trying to simplify the plot.

I spent a good hour yesterday trying to track down a chapter that I thought I wrote in rough draft and tossed before my editor ever saw it.  Turns out it was never written, but I did write out the dialog, which is probably why I see it so clearly in my head.  I'm using it, along with my original ending (again, something that my editor didn't see) but the ending is going to be split between chapter three and a dream sequence either in this book or the next.   See, despite my ugly words yesterday about dream sequences, they do have their place–especially when I want to point out something that the main character already knows but is reluctant to accept.  But trust me, you will know it's a dream from the first sentence.

P.S.  I really love my office.  This is the bestest place to work in that I've ever had.

Not much goings on

Work on the edit letter is going good.  I should get through the line edit stuff today, freeing me to start putting things on paper and trying them out in my head to see if they create more trouble than they fix.  Once I get into it, editing is one of my favorite parts of the book-writing experience, seeing how things could go differently with a glance, a touch, a new character or scene.  My first-round edits are usually pretty heavy, at least, they feel heavy to me, with more rewriting than tweaking going on.  It's not my last chance to change things, but it is my last chance to easily change characters, settings, and story path.  This one feels like it's going to take a couple of big changes, but the plot itself is fairly sound.  Pacing is off this time . . .  Characters . . .  Maybe it's worse than I thought.

It snowed yesterday, but of course nothing stuck.  Still, it's irritating.  At the time, Guy was rototilling compost into the dirt we loosened up last weekend, which made me roll my eyes.  Snow or not, we both know that next week might be worse with rain, so do the work when the soil is dry and workable.  This weather is frustrating. I did start some seeds indoors, which is something I haven't done in about ten years, I think.  You never forget how, but I do like the little peat pellets that they have now.  Talk about easy!  Maybe it's been longer than ten years . . .  Wow.

Analyzing Mode

I'm analyzing EVER-AFTER yesterday and today, looking over my edit letter and examining the manuscript as I go through it page by page and drop the line edits in. (Line edits are small questions, typos, and grammar issues that my editor found in her read through.  This is not a copy-edit, where a professional copy editor comes in and does a through search, but it does catch a lot of them.)

So even though I'm officially out of plotting mode, I'm still using a lot of the same techniques as I try to blend the story I have with the story you guys will see.  As usual, my editor pointed out where I got lazy.  (I knew it, but I didn't know how to fix it.  Still don't.)  I left two things I didn't like in there, and yes, she pointed those out, too, so I know I was on the right track when I was thinking about rewriting them with a new spin.  A third thing I wasn't sure about she liked a lot, so that stays as it is.  (Yay!)  I might be changing a character to someone else or pulling him completely if I think Rachel needs to work alone until she remembers that she works best in a team environment.  (Just a few chapters)  And how am I going to get her back in the stables for a really neat idea that I came up with?

I'm late in posting this morning because I had a rough night trying to fix my lazy spot which lead into a dream that had nothing to do with my characters but was cool enough to roll over and try to recapture.  I still don't have a clue how I'm going to fix it, so I'll be working with pencil and paper for about twenty minutes this morning before finishing up with the line edits.  Right now, my choices are a flash back (which I hate with a passion and deem more lazy than what I've got) or a dream sequence (which doesn't feel right.)  I could rip the first third all to hell, and I probably will, but as I always say, half the time spent in edits seems to be screwing my courage up to the sticking point in order to do the ugly thing I need to do.

I still have a day or two to think about it.  Line edits might take me up to Wednesday night.  By then, I'd better know what I'm doing, or it's going to get ugly.  Really ugly.

Perils of Prose

A month spent plotting two books has left my brain thinking in very dumb ways and not always clearly.  I've seen this before, so it's not anything new.  It makes for great plotting sessions as the mind has been conditioned to make fabulous jumps from very few bits of information, but it's annoying and hard to reintegrate with normal society when you move on to other work.  (An itsy bitsy schizy, anyone?) This weekend, Guy and I have been having a lot of fun as I tell him what I thought he said.  Usually it's more entertaining than reality.  "Very picturesque?  I though you said berries made her dress!"  This is either going to be a very good day or a very bad one.  I'll let you know later.