Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 4

Happiness is a Low Bar

You know, it’s good to stop sometimes and say, “Why?”

I have so many Musts in my life, all of them put there by me, and I never stop to think about them, they’re just things I have to do. Like get my Argh posts up by 5AM. Today, I realized it was Sunday and thought, “Oh, hell, I screwed up again.” But today for the first time, I thought, “Why?” Who cares if this goes up at 5AM; nobody’s waiting with bated breath for a happiness post. Or any Argh post. (Well, maybe, TGBT.) It’s a beautiful day, my dog is happy, the book I’m working on is going well, I have excellent friends and really nice clothes (been cleaning closets) and enough food to keep me going for a week (well, the ice cream is running low), why the hell am I blanketing all that good stuff with gloom because I missed a self-imposed deadline?

I’m safe and healthy, my family and friends are safe and mostly healthy, my dog is perfect, my writing partner has not threatened to rip our book from my hands (yet), the sun is shining, for crap’s sake, Jenny, stop raining on your own parade.

How did you lower the bar for happiness to sane levels this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday: The Lazy Summer Edition

This week I read polite, wonderful English mysteries (Leave it to Psmith, Michael Gilbert mysteries) and ate sugar free popsicles. Nothing like careful murderers and flavored ice in ninety-degree temps.

What did you cool off reading (and eating/drinking) this week?

Working Wednesday: The Third Act Edition

I’m working on the third act of the book that still doesn’t have a title (is that a bad sign?) and I forgot it was Wednesday. That’s okay, I don’t know what day it is in the book, either. Note to self: Get your act together.

What did you work on this week?

Happiness is Realizing How Much Better Things Are Now

Not in general; my country is still going down the tubes because it’s being run by heartless morons, but for me personally, it’s better. One of the keys: self-publishing. I was reminded of this when Chirp put an old audio of mine on sale, Trust Me On This. There’s a lot of back story attached to that book, but the one that always comes back to me is about when the publisher showed me the book cover.

“That’s not going to work,” I said. “There’s no dog in this book.”

“Books with dogs on the covers sell better,” they said.

“But there’s no dog in the book,” I said, “so it’s misleading. Readers are going to be annoyed.”

“Books with dogs on the covers sell better,” they said.

“BUT THERE’S NO DAMN DOG IN THE BOOK!” I said.

“Do you want to do a final edit on the galleys?” they said.

“Yes,” I said, and rewrote the damn book to put a dog in it.

Have I mentioned how much self-publishing (with Bob doing all the work) makes me happy?

What made you happy this week? Was there a dog in it?

Focusing Act One

So it was a rough spring, and June wasn’t that great, either, but now I am back in the zone (Bob never left the zone, Bob has put down roots in the zone).We had 70,000 first draft words done, but I wasn’t happy because I couldn’t see the focus. So I did what I always do, split it into smaller parts (acts) so I could see the pattern. (This stuff makes Bob crazy, but he knew the job was dangerous when he took it.). So in case you wanted to know why I’ve been so silent, I’ve been panicking.

The first act was 25,000 words, which is short for one of my first acts (usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 33,000 words) but that’s no big deal. Faster start. The first act is where the trouble starts, the conflict starts, the protagonist is introduced, the setting is introduced (that’s place, time, community), all of it propelling the protagonist into the second act where things get much worse. And since we each have a protagonist, the second scene is Bob’s set-up scene. So it’s at this point that I take the 25,000 words that I separated from the draft and separate it some more into scene sequences.

A Scene Sequence is a sequence of scenes that taken together form a complete narrative, like a chapter in a book. In this case, Chapters One and Two show first Anna and then Nate having a bad start to their day as the people around them (community) who are on their side, thwart them. And because readers are good at reading into things, they’re also developing expectations, such as that even though Anna’s in NJ and Nate is in NYC, they’re gonna meet.

The second scene sequence is Things get worse when their individual bosses saddle them with jobs they don’t want and send them to Atlantic separately. Chapters three and four.

The third scene sequence is each of them in AC, where their jobs go even more wrong than they’d anticipated. Chapters five and six.

Okay, that’s six chapters without them meeting, which I was worried about, but I sent the first act to Anne Stuart and she said it was moving fast enough and besides the reader knows what’s coming, so no worries. That helped. (Thank you, Krissie!)

Then finally, Chapters Seven through Thirteen, they’re both so frustrated and annoyed by their very bad days, that Anna picks up Nate and they have a one night stand using fake names, figuring they’re not taking any chances because they’ll never see each other again. I was worried about that, too. That’s a very long scene sequence, and the sex is not very explicit–here’s a surprise, it’s mostly dialogue–but Krissie said no problem again, so moving on . . .

The next scene sequence is the Aftermath when Nate finds out he slept with the woman he’s supposed to be surveilling, and Anna finds out the FBI is after her because of the package she dropped off in AC, and they meet again, for real this time, real names and everything. That’s the turning point, the place where the story turns a corner and becomes something new.

Okay, with that done, I could move on to the second act, which is what I’m working on now, The second act starts off with the aftermath of what they did in AC–neither of their bosses is happy–and moves on through scene sequences that arc their new relationship to the midpoint where they have to decide to trust each other or not. Then the third act is the two of them working together to find the Big Bad, and the fourth act is the climax, a big party scene where they bring down the antagonist and Nate suggests they try dating for real.

I am happy with this plot. We still don’t have a good title, but that’ll come; we still have two more books to write. And the great thing is, when you’re doing a series, you do the heavy lifting in Book One and then build on that in the next two. So I’m hopeful the next two will go fast.

Once I figure out the pattern. (Somewhere Bob is sighing.). Anyway, that and the health stuff is the reason I have been absent. I apologize. I will do better. Noting but good times ahead.

This is a Good Book Thursday: The New Rivers Edition

This week I read the new (tenth) Rivers of London book, Stone and Sky. It gave me interesting thoughts about series books, among them how happy I was that our series are three books and not ten, which is not a criticism of Stone and Sky. I’ll pretty much read whatever Abramovitch writes.

What did you read this week?

Working Wednesday: Analyzing is a Good Thing

I wrote a fairly long post about analyzing the first and second act of the story we’re working on and accidentally erased it. Not feeling the need to type it again. But the book is progressing so all is good.

What did you work on this week?

Argh Author: Jeanne Oates Estridge writing as Opal Mason in Harold’s Harmonance

Our own Argher Jeanne Oates Estridge has a new pen name—Opal Mason—and a new series—Ice Planet Octogenarians. A quartet of sci-fi romcoms, the first book in the series, Haroom’s Harmonance, released July 1.

Retired teacher Ginny Robinson is on the way to the casino to celebrate her birthday with her three best friends when she cuts off a convertible full of pretty young girls in traffic and gets caught up in an alien tractor beam.

You’d think being eighty-five years old would protect you from being kidnapped by sex-trafficking space aliens. But you’d be wrong.

Because my friends and I took out the slave traders only to crash-land on an ice-ball of a planet called “Oog.”

The natives here are huge and purple, with feet like beaver tails, two thumbs on each broad hand, and towering antlers. You wouldn’t think they’d be interested in a quartet of eighty-somethings, but their tribe is really short on females.

Also, their saliva contains a chemical that, when applied to the right location, turns back the clock on these rickety old bodies.

Before you judge us, let me ask you this: What if you were standing so close to the Grim Reaper you could see the whites of his eyes? And what if a strapping young fellow came along and offered you the chance to be twenty-five again?

Do you really think you’d turn that down?

Available in print and ebook: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F92YTP5W/

Happiness is Accomplishment

After weeks of not being able to get into the book we’re writing, I went off on a tangent and wrote two scenes we hadn’t planned on. Then I sent them to Bob and braced myself, but he wrote back, “These are really good.” I’m still on a high from that.

What made you happy this week?

Argh Author: Barbara Monajem’s Lady Rosamund Confesses

Our own Barbara Monajem has a new novella in her Regency Mystery series, “Lady Rosamund Confesses.”

After the terrifying experience of confronting a murderer, Lady Rosamund retreats, along with her father and McBrae, to the home of friends in the country for some much-needed relaxation.

But before long, they find themselves embroiled in the affairs of a neighboring family, and soon this involves a corpse.

If this isn’t trouble enough, Rosie can’t figure out what McBrae’s intentions are—not to mention her own. Will he ask her to marry him? What will she reply? And what more must she confess before daring to say yes?

This novella takes place immediately after Lady Rosamund and the Plague of Suitors.

https://books2read.com/Lady-Rosamund-...