Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 34

Publishing Isn't for Sissies: Dorchester Guest Bloggers in May

So many exciting things are coming in May for my sci-fi/fantasy Secret Legacy release, most of which I'm partnering with the amazing associates at Dorchester to make happen:

Look for exciting FREE DOWNLOAD offers for Dark Legacy on sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and Deisel books from May 2nd – May 9th. From May 9th – May 23rd, Dark Legacy will be a .99 cent download, then 2.99 through June 6th. All to, as you might suspect,build momentum and interest in Book 2 in my psychic fantasy series,  Secret Legacy.
Guest blogs and giveaways at cool siteslike Night Owl Scifi, Dreams and Speculation, ScifiGuy, etc.
Features in ITW's Big Thrill newsletter and other places like a May spotlight and Free Friday Download  on Barnes and Noble's Unbound blog.
Cool Author Interview and Cover Story book book trailers coming from Circle of Seven, complete with great bonus discount offers from Dorchester.
And more…

All of which is the kind of promo being done all over the place by authors hoping to plug into the viral marketing that makes Internet buzz happen. But having my Dorchester team behind me and Secret Legacy in a powerful way has opened so many more doors than I could have myself.

Hannah Wolfsonhas already shared some of the details behind Dorchester's NetGalley partnership and what Secret Legacy's feature there might mean for promoting the release.

I have five more great Dorchester guest posts scheduled for May and early June. Mark them on your calender (and come back in between, where I'll share more of my personal experience in the midst of the mania that will be my life as Secret Legacy launches and we see where all this might get us):

Friday, May 6th–Editor Chris Keesler talks about the Benefits a Traditional Publisher Offers Authors Targeting a Digital Release
Thursday, May 19th–Vice President Tim DeYoung talks about Industry Trends and Dorchesters Switch To a Digital/Trade Paperback Model, specifically discussing the disappearing channels for midlist mass market book releases
Thursday, May 26th–Renee Yewdeav, Dorchester's Production and Art Supervisor will discuss The Technical Reality of Digital Publishing and all the hidden kinds andthings to consider that lurk behind the scenes that make surviving this seemingly convenient technological revolution for authors more complicated than it first appears.
Thursday, June 2nd–Hannah's back to talk more about the Brainstorming and Promotion Planning that's gone into so much of what's being done to help Secret Legacy and other Dorchester spring releases find their digital and trade paperback legs.
Thursday June 9th–Allison Carrol, Editorial and Web Coordinator, wraps things up with a big picture perspective of Coordinating a Digital Release like Secret Legacy and the value that a "traditional" publisher like Dorchester offers its authors as it moves strongly into the digital market.

I'll be posting about Dream Theories andthe Psychic realm almost daily leading into Secret Legacy's launch. Things are going to get pretty fantastical around the blog for a while, because I just can't help myself. I'm so damn excited that this novel is FINALLY coming out.

But Publishing Isn't For Sissies (and How We Write Wednesdays) will be going strong, too, so if that's your think, keep coming back ;o)

How We Write Wednesday: Discovering What You Don't Know

Revision is discovery? Yes. Revision, once your manuscript is complete, is about understanding, FINALLY, what you didn't fully realize about your novel while you were planning and drafting. Revision is getting it. It's triumphing over the unknown that threatened to overwhelming your story while the big picture once eluded you.

Jenni has the reins today, and her HoWW blog post is a triumph of inspiration and mining deeper into her process. Which, I assure you, will be different than your revision process and my revision process and your critique partner's revision process. But she's as committed to revision as I am. As we hope you will become. We both see as much value in rewriting as we do planning and drafting. We both hope you'll make it as much a part of your process as you can.

Don't fear what you don't yet know about your story. Embrace it. Dig deeper. Discover the revision adventure you're about to embark on with your WIP. Understand more with each pass through your manuscript and your writing process. Make your creation even better. So your books will be even more amazing. So we, the readers, will take a more breath-taking ride with you than ever before!

Embrace what you don't know at the end of your rough draft. It's your greatest opportunity to create magic. Your instincts are honed. Your characters and plots and settings are finally on the page. All the raw ingredients are primed. It's time to season everything and add just a dash more of what you held back your first pass through the story. Basically, to add just one more metaphor ;o)–when you revise, you're cooking with gas! 

Don't miss the power of this vital step to your writing process. Make the time. Revise and discover the amazing things you've yet to write in your WIP!

Once you're finished reading Jenni's post, catch up on the rest of our  HoWW lessons. The come back next Wednesday, when I'll be wrapping up our revision discussion here and talking about what's coming in May ;o)

April's Revision Adventures:

The nitty gritty: The No More Excuses Approach to Rewriting
Ouch–Critique and Editorial Revsions Hurt, but they're essential
Stream of Conscious Revisions (your beta reader's first thoughts are the most valuable)
Rewriting–The Real Work Begins

March's HoWW plot speak:

Intro to the importance of Narrative Structure: Even the Best Characters Need a Plot
A closer look at how hard this can be for a character-driven writer: Plot THIS…
Intro to Conflict Lock: No Conflict, No Story and External Conflict: Lock and Load
A character-driven author goes deeper into the Conflict Box: Failing and Fixing
The REAL secret to plotting best selling novels

February's Character (and critique/brainstorming) posts:

Mining for motivation
Layering motivation into plot
The Character Chart
Making characters realistic YOUR way
Character is just the beginning

Dream Theories: Lucid Dreaming Techniques Behind the Legacy

What do you dream? How much do you know about what you know, when you're dreaming? And if you know…does that mean you're still really dreaming?

I can't remember a time when I wasn't, on a regular basis, conscious on some level when I was dreaming. Maybe it's because all my life my imagination has crossed easily from the not-quite-there into my reality and back again. Maybe it's that sometimes my dreams seemed more real than my awake–like my novels do when I'm heavy into plotting and drafting and revising them. Maybe it's just that when I was little and began learning how to see the world, I was too young to know that seeing that way wasn't normal. That everyone doesn't so enthusiastically embrace the same escape from the here and now.

I've always remembered flashes of dreams, some more than others. And the ones I could remember, I've at times found myself slipping back into again and again.

Cool?

Odd?

Either way, that's not really lucid dreaming. That's not bringing conscious intention into a dream, the way my psychics do in the first two books of my Legacy Series.

It's nowhere near the techniques dream scientists like the Stephen LaBerge, Ph. D. have developed (using relaxation and autosuggestion and hypnosis) to target the mind to be aware and focused on predetermined concepts, and then to empower the mind to remember what has been dreamed. If you're truly intent on knowing more about your dream world and interacting more with that reflection of your waking life, I highly recommend checking out his book,  Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming.

Of course I took creative license with the science behind the world building I did for Secret Legacy and Dark Legacy, creating their Psychic Realm. I had to, to solve some of the trickier challenges I faced with the dream modeling my characters do (targeting and projecting dreams). Otherwise, I'd have had to get too technical explaining the science everything was based on.

But I was able to work in some of the really cool stuff I learned along the way as I researched lucid dream science.

Things like:

Choosing that the projected dreams would begin as DILD (Dream Induced Lucid Dreams). And then as the Center's fictitious Dream Weaver program progressed the dream "host" whose mind was being targeted would be programmed to perform behavior in a daydream state–a variation of WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams) that I took creative license with. Both terms, WILD and DILD, are based in scientific reality, then I let my imagination take a stroll while not getting too technical within the boundaries of my fictional world–though setting up the basics in Dark Legacy without losing the reader was definitely a challenge.

Playing with the basic principles of muscular paralysis, sensory stimuli blockage and activation of the key areas of the brain while dreaming in REM state: the fact that you shouldn't be able to move while dreaming that you're falling or whatever; that what's happening around you when you sleep shouldn't be breaking through to a conscious state; and that you should break free of the dreaming world's model once you leave REM state. But, of course we all know people who sleep walk, we've probably all had something from our environment bleed through into a dream, and who hasn't jerked himself from a dream a time or two, limbs flailing, or woken suddenly and been unable to move for a few terrifying seconds (something known as sleep paralysis, where your mind is on the verge of REM sleep and ripped away)? I had fun with all of these, doing my own thing with real scientific concepts.

Working with the brain's body model–which became a key part of Maddie Temple's discovery in Dark Legacy that she could use her empathic abilities to heal. She, I discovered one day while plotting, could assimilate another person's body image into her own lucid dream state and in that altered reality direct the host body to heal itself. That all started with lucid dream research.

Manipulating the guidelines about how damage done to the body in a dream doesn't correlate to real-world injury, though psychological impact can be experienced from the shock and fear of a particularly horrible dream. Then, of course, as soon as I set this principle up as a guideline for my Psychic Realm I went about planning how to blow that constant out of the water once Sarah Temple and the secret child she's hunting in Secret Legacy reach the height of their psychic power and mania.

There's so much more, behind the "real" science that feeds my make believe. There always has been, since I was that little girl who craved both fantasy and complex reality. Both dreams and cold-hard science. My logical mind and creativity crave both as I write.

And so far, the Legacy series has been my most exciting adventure yet!

Secret Legacy Review and TWO GIVEAWAYS!!!

A lucid dream post is next, but first, this just in fro Fresh Fiction:

Secret Legacy is "An action packed psychic thriller that never seems to stop… a true psychic thriller with deeply complex plots and never-ending twists and turns, Secret Legacy is sure to please."

Cool!

Don't miss my Fresh Fiction contest, running through the end of April, where you can win a digital copy of Secret Legacy or a $20 Amazon Gift Certificate.

And, to help celebrate the fact that Dark Legacy, Book 1 in my psychic fantasy series, will be a FREE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD starting May 2nd on Amazon, B&N, Borders and Diesel Books, I'm running a contest on the International Thriller Writer's "Big Thrill" site through the end of May, where you can win a digital download of Secret Legacy or a signed mass market copy of Dark Legacy!

Sign up for both. Good luck! And check out Secret Legacy ;o)

The Psychic Realm: Shared Dreaming, Shared Lives

Dreams are windows into the unconscious mind–into the knowledge within. Sharing that wisdom and knowledge, shared dreaming, is a breathless connection few have experienced. But there are studies that tell us that people who are close enough to one another and share a deep enough bond can indeed find themselves linked to one another's dream patterns.

We've talked before that dreams communicate with us and the waking world through emotions. Waves of feelings feed the dreams and flow back into our lives from them. These same emotions speak to others in our waking lives. When things are particularly challenging and chaotic or amazing and wonderful, those close to us share part of our experience, as feelings surge through us and our lives. So it's no so far fetched to imageine that someone who understands us deeply (a close sibling, a mate, a nurturing parent) might at times carry something of our emotional patterns into their own dream states.

Taking it one step further, let's assume that you discuss some of the images you see in the dreams you remember with those who wonder what's troubling you, or perhaps they're as excited as you are by something wonderful that's occurring in your life.  Since our dream symbols and settings are touchstones that often reflect a portion of our everyday reality, those images will seem as familiar to those close to us as the emotional states that drive them. Making it possible, when you think about it, that some of those same images might become shared experiences with others dreaming alongside our lives.

Pretty reasonable, right? You know me better than that.

My psychic twins in Dark Legacy and Secret Legacy don't just compare notes and realize they're seeing and feeling some of the same things when they sleep. They're often driving each other's demented dreams, and when they're giving each other a break, someone else even more demented is pushing their sleeping minds to the brink of insanity. Oh, and their magical family legacy gives them the ability to channel theirs and others emotions, and those feelings give Sarah and Maddie Temple access to others unconscious minds through their dreams, both sleeping and day dreams. Enter the government scientists determined to turn the Temples gifts into direct-strike psychic weapons that can be remote programmed and triggered at will, with the dreamer never knowing their mind has become a host to another…

So, what's up with that? Surely something like that is total make believe.

Except there are dream scientists like Montague Ullman working in laboratories to understand the mind's ability to dream share.And not just sharing tidbits of emotions and images. Actual dream experiences. There are those who believe that married couples and twins and those in other close relationships do have the capability, if properlly prepared, to share entire dream journeys. And that these states of shared consciousness can be achieved because dreams, at their core, are merely another way to we can communicate with one another.

Theories about shared dreaming are, in layman's terms, based on interpreting the metaphors we find in our dreams and how those same themes can appear on the unconsciousness and dreams of others. Or in the collective unconsciousness at large. I took things to a much more literal place in my Legacy series–as did the movie Inception, where multiple minds are joined in a mission to drive someone's waking behavior and choices by leading the person's sleeping mind through a series of carefully targeted dream experiences. The basic premise both my books and the movie present is that more than one person can become involved in the lucid dreaming techniques we've already discussed her in the Psychic Realm.

Techniques in dream science suggest that by discussing and interpreting and sharing our dream experiences with those we trust, we can move to a place where we're also communicating about the same experiences while we're sleeping. That our dreams can share the same stage. That by focusing on common emotions and images and experiences just before sleep, we can in fact set up a lucid connection for our unconscious mind to slip into along with another. I've never personally experienced this, but I'd LOVE to. What an amazing, near-psychic connection. How totally cool would that be?

Well, unless the images stalking you through your twins psychic dreams are a dangerous wolf and an avenging ravens and a deadly ocean trying to drown you in  its deepest depths… Good thing that only happens in Sarah and Maddie Temple's connection, right? Bwahahahahaha…

How We Write: The No More Excuses Approach to Rewriting

Anyone–ANYONE–can deconstruct and rewrite a manuscript. Anyone can learn to rework a story one scene at a time. And we're talking rewriting–NOT copy editing a manuscript to catch punctuation or grammar mistakes, or line editing to make sure prose flows beautifully. These techniques are important, but only after an author has dissected the first draft and rewoven it's parts into the best story possible.

Today in How We Write Wednesday, I'll do my best to cover the highpoints of a technique it takes me a two-day weekend workshop to teach properly. This is interactive stuff that I love to work with writes on, while they're applying what I'm showing them to a work in progress. The result of one of these weekend retreats that I hope you'll get after reading this post, too, is–

No more excuses for not rewriting.
No more hiding behind "not seeing" what needs to be changed in your story.
No more big, scary book that's too complicated to rework.
You feeling in control of your creativity as you rewrite!

Once your draft is completed, the story can seem too complex to tackle, right? You feel too close to your work to be able to analyze and re-craft it. There's just too much there, and it's impossible to see where each change will take the story. It's easy to find yourself rewriting in circles, never really getting anywhere. And who has that kind of time?

So, let's talk revision technique. Not HOW to do the revisions themselves–that will be for later posts this week.  Jenni and I have already shares a little the nuts and bolts of rewriting and there's more to come (and, frankly, teaching how to revise a scene or a chapter or an act or an entire novel would take even more time than we've given ourselves in April) But how to deconstruct what you have, so you can get to work on what needs to be done–THAT I can get us through today ;o)

My goal today is to show you how to challenge each story component in your draft. Whether you think you've nailed it or not, whether you love what's there as a whole or not, you need to take your draft apart and look at its pieces to be sure you're getting the most from them individually and then as a whole. You want to layer as much as possible into each moment in your story right? To do that, you need to look individually at–

The pieces of your plot:

Story Structure (inciting incident, turning points, midpoints, black moment, climax/resolution)
Secondary Plots
Chapter and Scene Openings and Endings
Conflict and Motivation

The characters in in your story:

Protagonist's Arc
Antagonist's Arc
Secondary Characters' Arcs
Point of View
Conflict and Motivation
Backstory

And that's just to start ;o)

You can challenge these and many other parts of your story by visually "flagging" each piece, every time it appears in the novel. I use post-it note flags.Those colorful things that you tag pages with. Pick one color for a single piece of your plot or a character trait, etc. Then do the following. Pay careful attention…it's a VERY difficult technique to learn:

(Let's assume you want to "see" the protagonist's character arc)

Each scene that character is in POV (assuming you're working with a multiple POV book), flag it. All the way through the book. This gives a visual representation of each place the character's point of view appears, so you can flip back and forth between those scenes alone. Congratulations, you're deconstructing your novel.
Read only the scenes you've flagged (no others) in order from the beginning of the novel to the end. Congratulations, you've isolated a single aspect of your novel.

Complicated, right?

Okay, that's not what I spend a weekend teaching students. We're getting to that. But the point I wanted to make was that the basics of deconstructing your work is just that simple. Pick what you want to work on, pluck it out of your story, focus on only that part of the draft, then get to work!

How, you ask? Well, let's continue with the protagonist example. With your POV scenes flagged, you're now ready to–

Look at how often that character is in point of view. Are there large stretches when we're in the antagonist's POV or a secondary characters'? Is there not enough variety, and you need to work in more alternative looks at the action in your story and show things more from the perspective outside your protagonist's head?

Look at how you open each POV scene. Is it always in dialogue? Always in narrative? Always in action? Always coming or going from somewhere? This may seem simple, but it's the type of pattern we follow can get into in drafting and not even realize it. Mixing things up from a single character's perspective at times can add a fresh look to a scene.
You can go deeper by first skimming all the character's POV scenes. Do you see a lot of dialogue with no external observations or internal thoughts? Too much internal dialogue and only sparse dialogue. This kind of review can give you an immediate feel for what might need work for a single character, no matter what you're doing with the rest.
Go deeper still by reading each of the protagonist's scenes in the first half of the draft. Can you clearly see his/her build up to and reaction to the inciting incident first turning point and midpoint of the story? Is he/she changing in each key place in the story, and is that clear in from his/her POV?
Do the same for the key turning points in the second half of the story.
THEN (this is more story structure detail than I usually summarize, but here goes), look at his/her emotional reality at the Inciting Incident. Look at it at the Black Moment, Climax and Resolution. Has he/she changed significantly? Have you been working with the same core values and emotional arc throughout? Are you showing a full character arc that will satisfy the reader?
And if that's not enough to have your head spinning yet, you can read back through each POV scene in sequence (reading NONE of the other scenes in between, remember) and see if the protagonist's point of view experience is seamless and uninterrupted. Can you understand his/her story without having to resort to reading other scenes? Is he/she reaction and responding to the rest of the story in a believable way with escalating conflict and goals?

I could go on, but I'm suspecting you're starting to see why this might take a weekend workshop to teach fully, and I don't want to completely short-circuit your attention span.

Especially when you stop to realize that all we've talked about so far is a single character's point of view and arc. The idea would be to do this for your antagonist, too. And for each secondary character. And not just for POV. You could pull out their conflict individually, and their motivation, too. See how each arcs on their own. And what about their backstories and how each are set up and woven individually into the story. AND THEN there are all the plot elements listed above that you could pluck out and deal with in the same detail.

Then, once your plot and character elements are deconstructed, it's time to rewrite based on what you've learned. And after all that's done, you might be wondering if you're done yet. Because you have to put it all back together into a cohesive novel, right?

Like I said at the start, the overall process itself takes time to teach because it can begin to seem too complicated. Too much. When in fact, remember, that the idea is very simple. Isolate and challenge one thing about your story. Work on that. Then move on to the next thing. And only when you have gotten the most out of each piece and put it all back together again do you say, there, it's rewritten. It's the best I can make it.

Of course there's not always time to do everything. In which case you do the best you can with what you have. But what I hope you won't say after today's HoWW post is that you don't know how to rewrite, or your story is too complex, or you just get lost when you try.

Rewriting is hard work and takes a lot of time to do well, but the HoWW mantra for the day is…anyone can do it. ANYONE. I'm actually working on a non-fiction book dealing with this topic, so don't get me wrong. I know I've just a lot of stuff at you. But please start with the basics (and perhaps try it for just the first quarter or half of your draft your first time out) and give it a shot. Take control of the beautiful thing you've done with your current novel. Give yourself permission to make it even better. No more excuses. No more hiding.

And by all means, ask whatever questions you have in the comments!

Next week, Jenni will take us deeper into what she does when she gets into the nitty gritty of rewriting. You don't want to miss it ;o)

Dream Theories: The Fantasies You Hide From

Can we impact our waking worlds through dreams? Does being conscious while we sleep make us more aware when we wake? Does what we imagine challenge what is real? According to lucid dreaming concepts–yes. Dream stories reflect our waking emotions and hopes and fears. Embracing our fantasies inspires us to resolve our real-world challenges. It's all connected. It's all "truth." It's all us.

In Secret Legacy and Dark Legacy, I take this concept to the extreme. I send psychics into unsuspecting innocents minds to program and test dream behavior the sleeper is unaware is taking place, laying the seeds for homicidal daydreams to later be remote-triggered, making  the "host" mind a walking, untracable time bomb.

Not so uplifting a concept, but it was a totally cool variation to write ;o) And in both books, Sarah and Maddie Temple's dream work is not only personal, but spinning out of control. They can't save their waking minds, their legacy, or an innocent child whose gifts are being manipulated by government scientists, until Sarah confronts and conquers the deadly dream images she's run from since she was a little girl.

Luckily, the challenges we face are less dire, but there's still power in our dreams. There's power in being aware and in control of our sleeping minds' journeys and messages. Realistic or normal or fantastical, there's the potential for great revelations waiting for us in our sleeping worlds. Plugging into our dreams more lucidly can be exhilarating.

I'm one of those people who realized early in life that I could be conscious in dreams. There were times, even as a child, when I knew I was thinking and feeling in an altered, virtual place that was only a reflection of my waking life, and all the while I somehow knew I was asleep.It started out as fun. Freeing. There was a dreamlike quality to everything, and for a girl with a vivid, overactive imagination, what could be better!

Then, around the time I was in college and my computer programming and math classes kept me up late most nights with advanced algorithms and problem sets to puzzle through, I realized that my dreams were working overtime for me even after my conscious mind turned off.I'd fall asleep with an unsolved problem on my mind, and too often to be a coincidence would wake the next morning with the next piece of the puzzle waiting for me.

Not every time, and at this point I was too tired and over scheduled to be aware of what my mind was doing. I didn't remember the dreams, but that part wasn't important.I began to believe in what was happening, and it became part of my process–shutting down when I was too wired to do any more conscious good, and trusting that the process would keep working unconsciously while my brain rested.

It was an emotional connection, that trust. And it's become part of my creative routine for novel writing now. I feed my mind while awake and believe in whatever new ideas are waiting for me on the other side of sleep. And now, years later, I write about the same type of emotional connection between the conscious and the unconscious mind in the first two books of my Legacy series. Who knew that's where all of this was headed, back when I was a little girl, dreaming of oceans and waterfalls and flying free above crystal clear waves?

I will forever take the time to embrace the imagination and creativity that it takes to harness my dreams. There will never be a time when I'm not aware of all that is unseen and yet infinitely powerful around me. Because I've experienced how powerful they can be–I work to remember and participate actively in my dreams. Fears and anxieties and hopes and desires and warnings come to me as I sleep. And my lifelong comfort level with my unconscious, dreaming mind allows me to process them.

Just like my Legacy Series characters learn to, I tell myself that the fantasies that come to me when I sleep aren't real, even though they're valuable. I watch them unfold and participate and even guide their progress as much as they'll let me, through the emotions and the unknown that I'm not always capable of dealing with when I'm awake. And through it all, I ask questions and experiment, confident the whole time that the journey will end with me safely on the other side, back in the reality waiting for me there.

I don't hide from the magic waiting for me when my conscious mind rests.

I'll get more technical about lucid dreaming in my next Dream Theory post. Both about the dreaming techniques I created for the Legacy Series, and their foundation in modern parapsychology. But for today, I'm challenging you to think about your own dream work. Your connection to your sleeping mind's power. Your awareness that there's more feeding your conscious behavior than you're aware of.

What's holding you back from exploring the amazing worlds waiting for you as you dream?

Things My Teenager Says: Yu-Gi-Oh! and Me, Kid

The King of Games. That's one translation forYu-Gi0-Oh!, the Magic & Wizards dueling card game and anime show my teen has been fascinated with in various incarnations since he was five or six years old. The magical world that fired his imagination and a unique bond between the two of us from the very beginning…

"I'll never be a writer like you, Mom,"he says to me one day when he's in second grade, when we're in between leaving  the book store (back when Mall's still had book stores) after buying a collection of Calvin and Hobbs he's been wanting and heading for the trading card store we always stop at when we're there, no matter what. "I don't want to do that."

"Writing novels?"I glance down at the Borders (because this is seven years ago, sniffle) bag filled, with a book that used to be hundreds of individual cartoons that he'd read once a day, but put together in an anthology have become something more. "No, I don't necessarily see you writing a novel. But telling stories? You already are, with your imagination."

"No I"m not," he says, "I like math."

And just that simple, just that young, the lines have been drawn.

Then we turn the corner into his favorite store and he pulls out his newest "winning" deck of magic cards and gets lost in the stories he creates each time he plays.

He's not just a collector, even at this age. Even though he searches each display case he stumbles across for the magician or the dragon he's missing. It's not just about having something that a friend doesn't have, even though for birthdays and Christmases for years he'll as for one of the "rare" cards that costs us more than a top-end video game to snag for him. It's how you put the cards together to battle and defend and the strategy that goes with which type of deck you build, until any game someone plays with you becomes a unique story–HIS story.

"It's a magic deck." He says a few years later, when he's about to start Middle School and most of his friends have stopped playing. Stopped dreaming. Stopped dueling with vivid cards filled with characters that have strengths and weaknesses and  powers and realities that rush back each time you bring them to life again.

"But I thought you liked the Dragons," I say, because I do. They seem so fierce and powerful and grrrr…

"Everyone does the dragons. People don't know how to defend against  a magic deck."

It's about being unique and different at this age. It's about playing and winning his way, and surprising the older kids he duels with. And, evidently, about keeping it quiet that he still dreams and tells stories this way. My kid is aware and doesn't so much care that some of the things he likes (computers and math and chemistry, vintage TV, tennis instead of football and baseball, and, yes, cool fantasy/role-playing games) aren't what everyone thinks is cool. But he knows I do. Everything he is and wants and dreams is cool with me. And not just because he's my kid. I share some of his off-center fascination with life, and that's becoming cool, too.

"After all," I admit at, "I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. I wasn't very good at it, but I was a tree sprite. I loved playing."

"That's weird," he says, but he's smiling and showing me more of his cards and explaining how each one works and how the deck works together. "You're so weird, mom. Here. Why don't you take one."

It was a Soul of Purity and Light card, and I have it in my wallet to this day…

We arrive at the moment when my soon-to-be-teen decided I should have all the girl cards he didn't think fit into his deck, because I'd like them. Just like he'd decided at six years of age that pink was my favorite color, even though I'm more of a red or a tranquil blue girl. Didn't matter. Every pink think he's bought me has been the most beautiful gift I've ever received. And every Yu-Gi-Oh! fairy and warrior princess and whatever he's given me has been a prize. Like this cool one–the Deal of Phantom. What mom who's a closet fantasy fan would love this!

I was "in," from that moment on. Accepted into the fantasy and the story my son was spinning,as someone who belonged, rather than someone my soon worried might make fun or ridicule. I have a collection of my own now. Nothing I could play with, even if I understood how. But in my desk and my bedside table, the storage area in my car, and my wallet and various other cubbies that I turn to on a daily basis, are small stack full of cards, all fey and fabulous, that my son's given me. All a reflection of who and what he sees when he looks at me.

Characters like Aussa the Earth Charmer…

And the amazing Wingweaver…

And Hibikime…

And, one of personal favorites, Dreamsprite

And even though he stopped playing in middle school, he kept his collection and occasionally got the decks he'd collected out to add to them and keep them current. Now, in his gifted high school for other math and science kids (his "people" as he calls them ;o), he's a freshman invited to hang with the juniors and seniors at lunch, because the upperclassmen are dueling with their own decks that they've collected all their lives, too, and–wait for it–no one else has a magic deck like his.

My magical kid. My dreamer. My story teller who's accepted me into his imagination and trusted me to understand. Every time he wants to buy a new card, now on Amazon or Ebay instead of a funky store at the mall, we sit and search together and find just the right one at just the right price. And more often than not, when a card has to be removed from his playing deck to make room for something new, and that card is some fantastical female character, it's automatically mine.

He doesn't tease me anymore, to make it seem less weird that I love the same off-center things he does. He no longer has to. We're somehow telling this story together now. Our story. Him and me. And Yu-Gi-Oh!

"The seniors think my deck's totally cool," he says after school one day., excited about being who he is and not having to worry that others besides me won't accept him. "They think it's cool that I still like to play."

"Of course they do." And I'm getting a little misty as I drive us home from carpool, while I hope and pray he and I both have the courage to keep playing at whatever we love, no matter what others think, for the rest of our lives. "Just don't forget who thought you and your deck were cool first, kid…"

Publishing Isn't for Sissies: I'm A Recovering PR Wuss

Modern authors must promote. Even the top dogs. But what if you're a writer who cringes at the thought of sell, sell, selling yourself to your audience? Suck it up, TPTBs say.  And, well, they're mostly right. Mostly. Because not everyone will promote effectively the same way. And too much of the advice we hear these days is that THIS or THAT are the only ways to really entice more potential readers to give your stories a try.

Bull.

Don't drink the Kool-Aide.

Yes, a writer's business must include a healthy dose of consistent promotion planning an execution. And unless you're one of the lucky few "branded" authors out there, what you affectionately refer to as your PR Department will be comprised primarily of you and you alone.

But, where I see most hard-working, business savvy writers flounder (myself included) is when they attempt to force themselves into a promotion mold that doesn't fit their personality, strengths, writing genre and time/lifestyle demands. We're not all natural sales or marketing persons.We don't all have time to travel or the gifts of public speaking. Some of us cringe when confronted with crowds, can't introduce ourselves to strangers without breaking out in hives, and don't have a knack for the quick and prolific writing schedule demanded of a daily blogger.

So what do we do, when we're told that one or more of of these missing traits are THE ONLY WAY WE'LL BE SUCCESSFUL as a modern writer?

First of all, we remind ourselves that it's the quality of the story and our passion for what we're writing that's most important. Ignore the PR/Marketing guru that tells you to promote first, write second. If you don't believe your story is the best it can be, if you don't absolutely love what you've done and if you're not prouder of it than anything else you've ever written, how the hell are you going to honestly, authentically promote it to readers? Do the work first. Do it well. Protect the writing.

Second, we take inventory of what we do well, or more importantly what we DON'T do well. Me? I don't hand sell.I can't go up to a stranger and say, "Hi, read this. I wrote it." Not at a book signing, a conference, in an email newsletter, a FaceBook status or a Tweet. I feel like I'm going to hurl every time I try.

I admire folks who can do this, and I don't have a problem when someone approaches me with a genuine interest in sharing their work without doing the hard-sell, used car dealer thing. But I can't do it and not feel the need to slink under the nearest piece of furniture. So, you won't see the hard sell at the bottom of any of my blog posts, urging you to buy my latest creation because It's PERFECT for you.

What you will see me do is come at the same opportunity to introduce myself and my writing to new people from a different angle–one I'm very comfortable with that others might not be. I'm good with sharing what I'm excited about, and I've discovered I'm good at it.I love to teach. I write short articles on various topics quickly and use doing so as a daily exercise to keep my daily writing process fresh and new. So I blog about the basis for my stories, whether it's the parapsychology behind dream theory, psychic phenomenon, family dynamics, the well being I find in spending time in nature with water, or my rant/rave posts on the crazy things I hear. And since I can't travel as much as I'd like to to teach, and teaching is one of my top passions, I also blog about writing craft and the publishing industry trends and topics that most interest me on my own journey.

And that's the key, I think. Yes, I'm releasing regular content that I hope will interest readers and fellow writers (who read) in my work enough to sample it. Yes, it's a marketing/PR tool that works for me because I'm comfortable with the form and the process of consistently building my blog audience. But, most importantly, I'm sharing not just my latest book release (which is displayed strategically on my blog). I'm not saying, buy this because I say it's great. I'm sharing my journey and my perspective, and I'm talking about a lot of topics that if you find interesting, you'll likely feel the same about my books.

I'm sharing me. Just like I am when I write.

I'm giving a new piece of me away and asking others to join in the conversation and share something of themselves. I want to know more about things that interest me, and I'm networking with others who like the same things. And then once that door's open, let's talk books. Let me share with you this really cool story I wrote that I'm so excited about I can hardly stand myself. Let me show you how my love for dream science and almost-reality psychic activity lead me to write Dark Legacy and Secret Legacy the way I have. Let me show you how I used my own writing craft and revision and drafting techniques to write 15 novels in six years. Let's share a workshop together, where I'm learning as much from you during our time together, as I'm teaching to the group. Let's talk about what I see happening in publishing and how you see things, and let's figure this crazy ride out together…

Watching me at in-person events you'd most likely think I LOVE promotion, because I'm thrilled to talk with anyone who stops by about anything they want to discuss, and I love people.I'm the chatty, fun girl. As long as you're excited about what we're discussing. As long as you're engaged and loving the conversation, too. Put me at a table next to a writer who grabs total strangers who pass by and says, "You have to read this book I just wrote…" and I'm breaking out in hives while looking for the nearest exit to escape through.

I'm the same with social media/online marketing. I avoid the promoters who stand on their heads to get attention. I'm much more comfortable offering content I think you will benefit from or be entertained by, then I hope you'll notice the rest of my story once you're engaged on my site or blog. I'd frankly rather not make a new contact, if doing so requires me to hard-sell or be someone I'm not, to get your attention. Because enduring that kind of lack of authenticity is hell for me. I just can't do it.

So, I'm promoting. I have to, to continue to brand myself and claim whatever edge I can in the publishing market. But I'm doing it by having conversations with people that aren't beating them over the head with MY MAY 2011 SECRET LEGACY RELEASE…or whatever book comes next. Because that's what I needed to do to stop being a PR wuss.

It's part of my job, this marketing thing. And I take care of my business, just like I nurture my writing and creativity every day. But I've learned enough over the years to know the damage I can do to both my career and my writing productivity if I try to force myself to do what doesn't feel natural to me (yes, I've burned out a time or two along the way, exhausted and dismayed and cynical beyond the ability to do or write one more thing).

Publishing Isn't For Sissies is about to get very specific in May/June. I and the other professionals helping me promote Secret Legacy's release will share the tactics and PR techniques we're attempting for my first significant digital promotion push. We'll even talk about moving into the Sci-Fi/Fantasy world of print publishing and what it means to market to that audience of independent and dwindling chain book sellers who stock the trade paperbacks sci-fi/fantasy readers still love.

I'll be honest about why and how I'm executing each piece of the plan we're putting the finishing touches on this week. I'll share what works and what doesn't. And, as always, I'll be open to any thoughts and suggestions (positive or negative) that you have. But remember, this is the way I'm choosing for this moment in  my career. YOU have to figure out which pieces of my PR process and the next author's and the next author's will work for you, given your place in the industry.

In the end, writers have always been responsible for promoting their own work, even those of us who don't like the marketing part of our jobs.Unless we're very lucky, putting ourselves out there publicly is a huge part of our jobs if we want our books to sell to people beyond our network of family and friends. So, tough love time, it's time to stop being a wuss and discover your own marketing strengths and weaknesses.

I hope reading PIFS helps you on your path! And if it does, you know…look around the blog  and my website a bit. You might just find something else you like just as much ;o)

To catch you up if you're new to this blog series, here are some of the most recent PIFS posts:

 

 

 

Literary Agent Michelle Grajkowski rides the Digital Wave
Best Selling Authors' take on the Indie Wave
Build Your Own Community
A Reality Check
A Team Approach
NetGalley
Borders, Dorchester and You
Embracing the Obvious

 

 

 

 

 

How We Write Wednesday: OUCH!!! Critique and Editorial Revisons

Ouch! Other people's revision notes hurt. A lot. No writer loves being told that what they've crafted doesn't work for the reader. Even light critique or editorial revision comments can be painful to work through,  but WE NEED THEM. Eh-hem. Yeah, this is going to be one of those tough love HoWW posts I know you love so much…

Don't think I don't sympathize with a writer's sensitivity to hearing constructive criticism.It's never easy for me, turning a manuscript over to a beta reader (akin to dropping my creative pants in public) or my agent or editor and asking them to show me where the story breaks down (where I need to get back to the gym and work on the gushy parts). But I do it. Because I'm a professional writer, and I adore my readers, and I want every book to be the very best it can be. AND I can't get the story and plot and characters and setting and theme and symbol and narrative structure, etc. there completely on my own.I know that while I draft, everything's not always going to be perfect the minute my creativity poops it out ;o)

We're too close to our work once we're in the thick of the writing. We're no longer seeing the story's journey from a reader's perspective. At some point, our writer's experience becomes the tunnel we see through. Which means, we're in the tall grass (yes, I'm having fun with metaphor today, since Jenni's doing the bulk of the HoWW post work), losing our way even as we write something unique to our voice that we want readers to love.

To be worthy of that love, we have to be willing to let go of a little of our creative control. At least long enough to ask the writing professionals we trust where we're not getting the story right.

Enter the very necessary critique and editorial revision phases of your creative process.After which, in both cases we have to be ready to go back and deconstruct (or as Jenni calls it, DESTRUCT) our story all over again, based on someone else's fresh take on what we've done. We'll talk editorial during a later post (and I'm taking the HoWW reins back next week to focus on deconstructing drafts that you need to revise). Which means the rest of this post will be my very brief take on working with a critique.

Jenni's talking today  about something I call her "stream of consciousness" critique style. When she reads for me, she gives me her immediate impression whenever she's pulled from the story. She tells me in that instant what is and isn't working, then she continues that conversation with herself and me in future edit notes in the same critique, as she discovers the rest of the story and further issues. I LOVE this technique, because I'm seeing exactly what's happening in her story experience the first time she reads every part of the book. It's a running summary, but she doesn't go back and pretty comments up. It might seem harsh to some, because she's not pulling her punches at any (and I mean any ;o) point in her read, but it's invaluable feedback to me.

BTW, she doesn't tell me how to fix things (an expectation of a lot of novice writers is that a critiquer will be giving them paint by numbers instructions on how to fix each problem–uh, no). She doesn't over explain what's not working in the writing of the story. Instead, she tells me what's not working for her in the reading of the story.

It's then my job to hear what she experienced, incorporate it into my vision for the manuscript, then figure out what's broken (often not exactly what she's pointing at in a critique note, because what she's experiencing in a particular place in the story is confusion resulting from something else I need to fix sooner).

 

It's my job to go back and fix things, because she's respecting me as the creator of the world she's reading. It's my job to pull up my big girl panties and get back to work, because I asked for her feedback, however giving it works best for her, because I wanted the broken bits I've left in the story cleaned up long before my agent or editor or readers get their eyeballs on what I've created.

And, yes, it can hurt. But so can going to the doctor or the gym or even visiting the dentist we're not overly fond of having poking around in our mouths. Still, we do all these things, because they're good for us. And we don't blame the professionals who help us or the treadmill that firms our thighs, because it's not a birthday party every time we see them. They're doing their jobs. We're lucky to have them in our lives. And it's up to us, once we leave them, to keep the work going and follow whatever of their advice we choose to (or not).

And here's the thing about handling less-than-flattering critiques that we'll come back to in a week or so. If you're too thinned skin to deal with a critique partner's not-always-flattering notes on your work, how on earth are you going to have the skills you need to work with that publishing house editor you hope to write for one day? You know, the publishing professional who isn't a friend, who really isn't invested in whether or not he/she's hurting your feelings, and who potentially holds your next book contract in his/her grasp, while they're telling you to fix something you don't want to go back and mess with again…

So, to sum up. Scoot over to Jenni's blog   to read more about how we write/critique. Come back here next Wednesday, and I'll lead you through an overview of the nitty gritty of deconstructing a manuscript once you have your own or someone else's revision notes to work from, and stick with us throughout the month for more motivational tough love ;o)

And until you missed them, here are HoWW series topics and posts for you to catch up on:

April's Revision Adventures:

The Real Work Begins
The Stream of Consciousness Crtique

March's HoWW plot speak:

Intro to the importance of Narrative Structure: Even the Best Characters Need a Plot
A closer look at how hard this can be for a character-driven writer: Plot THIS…
Intro to Conflict Lock: No Conflict, No Story and External Conflict: Lock and Load
A character-driven author goes deeper into the Conflict Box: Failing and Fixing
The REAL secret to plotting best selling novels

February's Character (and critique/brainstorming) posts:

Mining for motivation
Layering motivation into plot
The Character Chart
Making characters realistic YOUR way
Character is just the beginning