Mel Todd's Blog, page 2

I have the best friends

I’m one of those people who have a few friends but I tell you, they rock.  One of my best friends had to move, so she isn’t in town anymore and we only see each other about 1-2 times a year which isn’t enough. But she sent my my Christmas present Monday (12-13) and I’ve been walking about with a grin ever since.  Take a look and you’ll see why.

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Squee!

20 Books to 50K Vegas

Vegas was interesting. Loud, bright, smokey, but I got to meet a bunch of authors in person that I had wanted to meet. Plus I got to hang with old friends and restrengthen connections.  All of this was great. I’m still torn as to what else I learned, some of it is things I need to let soak into my brain. But hands down it was the connections I got to make.

Long Term I think this was probably worth it. Short Term I need to process and gods work on my to do list. I need a super comprehensive To Do List to try and make sure I can get my brain going in the right direction. I like working with people and brainstorming, but mostly I think I need to write and be focused. That has been hard lately.

But I’m back and I have things to finish up. Hey everyone – more books coming, promise.

 

Book Review

There is something cool about someone talking about your book on TV.  Check it out – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrY8w...

Drafted Luck

I’ve been pretty quiet about what is going, mainly because I’m so BUSY! Really. I’m trying to write a reader magnet, get Faded Luck up and going well, trying to decide if I want to whip together a short story, and deal with editing Drafted Luck. Down time is what again?I don’t know how I get everything done that I need to do. But I will get Faded Luck done by the end of the year and I will get Drafted Luck posted. Really I will.
Laughs – though staying sane while pulling this all off is questionable. But on the bright side, I have a blurb and cover to share with you. Let me know what you think.Doctorate achieved! Now onto serving my draft for the next decade. Joy-not. But hey a job is a good thing, right?I didn’t think it would be all rainbows and sprinkles, but neither did I expect to be lumped in with all the other misfits. The last thing I expected in orientation was making a decision to let someone die or try to prevent it, when keeping them alive is breaking the law.You’d think with my skills they’d put me in a lab somewhere or maybe a research place. No, I get stuck with the state department and working with Japan. Don’t these people read? But when Carelian decides the Dragon of China needs a friend my personal problems get eclipsed by international incidents, centered around me. Being a trouble magnet is one thing, starting World War III is something else. How in the world do I get myself into these situations? And why didn’t they just stick me someplace where I wouldn’t be the center of political drama?Having twisted luck is one thing, how do I broker peace between three countries that all want to use me?

 

See this live soonish!

Another DragonCon21 post and Public Service Announcement

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As Mel stated in her last post, Bad Ash Publishing has returned from DragonCon 2021. We clocked some serious mileage this year moving between panels. I landed somewhere in the ~32 miles range according to my fitness tracker. For this years DC panelist slots I landed in Fantasy, Apocalypse as well as the Science track this year. It was a total blast to be included in all of them and the track leads really outdid themselves in managing to pull everything off with the Covid restrictions in place. Such a great group of volunteers. I meet several new authors, received some fan and peer feedback, as well as sold some books and hopefully made even more new fans. Fingers crossed that Butler fellow giving me a shout out was noticed. Virtual hugs to you all. So now, back to driving hard on Blood War: Alliance while Mel is also in the final edits of getting book #5 of her My Luck series out in the next few weeks. My 2021 year’s convention attendance cycle is now coming to a close, but I will be looking for opportunities for more con attendance starting up again in the spring and will keep you posted.

Thank you all for a great DC2021!

Doug Burbey

Dragoncon Survived!

Dragoncon After Action Report.

Wow – just wow. I’ve been going to Dragoncon since 2003 I think. And while I’ve always had fun, this year I achieved all my goals and then some.

Full disclosure, the past 15 years or so (figure until about 2015) I was going to have fun, maybe sit in on a writer track or five. Since then I’ve been trying to go as a professional and learn and network and become “somebody”. Granted, I’m still not sure who that “somebody” is, but this year I got a LOT closer to it.

I was on nine panels and had a blast. I met some AWESOME people that way, that otherwise I might not have. Here’s the list – John Scalzi, Steve Saffel, Jay Boyce, Jennifer Blackstream, and Davis Ashera. I also got to catch up with friends, though I swear DJ Butler and Megan Mackie were stalking me all weekend or I was stalking them. Friends I got to catch back up with were Marisa Wolf, Griffin Barber, Robert E Hampson, Christopher Woods, Robert Reed, John Hartness, Toni Weisskopf, MonaLisa Foster, Katie Cross, Alexi Vandenburg, David Boop, Terry Maggert, Patricia Briggs, argh so many people! I had just so much fun and it went so fast.

Squee – I got to meet Autumn Juliet – this is the narrator of my Twisted Luck books.  We’ve talked on the phone and chat, but I finally got to meet her. I am/was so excited.

Highlights – getting to know Ben Yalow – oh my gosh. This man is a walking history of fandom. If you are a fan of science fiction/fantasy and want to know about the early days of fandom, this is the man. Being on a panel with John Scalzi, I wish I had time to actually talk to him. David Boop asking me to submit to an anthology. And just getting to hang with friends, I already miss Marisa.

I think this year I walked more than normal (From Wed-Monday 33.9 miles) and talked way more than I normally do. I only spent $18 on me, but did great on Christmas and birthday presents for others. I never even made it to the Walk of Fame and there are still things about Dragoncon I’m finding out. But really it was great. I met a bunch of people that I will see at SuperStars and I hope to get to know better.

Call outs to the AWESOME Dragoncon staff: Cisca Smalls, Melissa Witt, Sue Philips, Regina Kirby, Su Abbott, David M, and so many more. Thank you for all you do. Dragoncon is lucky as all get out to have you on staff.

All I can say is I hope next year will be just as good. Now to the to do list I came home with. Though I should probably unpack first.

My Writing Life

There is a large chunk of us that remember a TV series called “My So-Called Life” and it was where we first met the actress Claire Danes. I will freely admit I don’t need to worry about …. Okay I was going to say if my parents like my boyfriend or peer pressure but…. Wow, I’m still a teenager. This is disturbing.

I’ve given up on dating for multiple reasons. And I have a bad case of I wanna be like Larry or David or Mercedes or Patricia. AKA Larry Correia, David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, Patricia Briggs. And the only way to do that is write – which means no dating, no worrying about what is popular now, no spending time on things that don’t relate to my writing. Luckily I can justify cons, which is what is keeping me sane.

I still have a day job and I aim for 2k a day. Most days I can hit 1500. But if I can get that 2k plus you’d get stories almost a month earlier. I’ve had several people tell me to do a Patreon, but what would I provide? Rough unedited chapters? Meh. Worried about that. Though I could do raw audio of the books being records. I’m trying but only so much I can do in a day.

Drafted Luck is at 90k and will probably come in much closer to 120k than 100k, ugh. I hope you like it because it is fighting me for every word. Stupid dragons and Cath and gorgons. They do NOT listen.
Let me know your thoughts and I’ll get back to writing!

Mel

FantaSci

I don’t normally do after action reports for conventions. Conventions or a chance for me to spread the gospel of my awesome stories, talk to other authors, and have some fun. Usually I’m on a panel or three and I’m staying up way too late and pretending I’m an extrovert–Spoiler, I’m not.

I was at Fantasci last weekend (March 21-23rd). It is the con’s second year and my first time. And I can’t express how much fun I had. A huge percentage of that was that there were people there I knew that I missed, other authors, friends, fans, and mostly my con family. But it was also getting hugs, getting to talk to people face to face, and mostly feel human.

Often I think we forget at the heart of it all we are social creatures and the last year has really been hard on all of us. But just getting to talk, to tease, to get hugs, and see people I’ve missed over the last year was just what I needed.

I could list people for hours and still not include everyone. I learned a new game, I got to talk to authors I want to emulate, I traded marketing tips with others, visited Baen offices, and mostly I recharged that battery I hadn’t realized I had drained. Networking is never going to be something I do effortlessly, but I’m going to keep working on trying to be a good author that other authors want to have in their networks.
Otherwise I just finished another short story, which means there should be two up for sale here in the next month or so and I’m writing away on Draft Luck. I’ll get back to work now.

Hair

Yes I know, a weird topic, but let’s talk about hair. My co-author Doug Burbey just shaves his head bald and no one even blinks. But if you are my age you vividly remember the drama when Sinead O’Connor shaved her head. I would love, LOVE, to have hair down to my knees, glorious, thick, silky hair that I could braid in thousands of styles.

But when I turned forty, my hair that was about to the middle of my waist started falling out by the handful because of the weight. I chopped it off. So then I had hair about to my chin. Meh, it’s everywhere and it’s BORING. So I colored it. Purple streaks, red, burgundy, pink and/or blue. I love having my hair all these wild colors. I had fun doing things and just playing with it. But then we got isolated, and bleh. No one sees me, why bother?

Which brings us to now. I thought I wanted it long but you know all the coloring? Yeah my hair is fried, or I think it is. It is straw like and bleh. Granted I can put it in a pony tail, but it is always in my face and is just a pain in the rear-end.

So next week (5-15-21 for your completionists) I’m chopping it off very short and doing some wild colors, which people at FantaSci will get to see. But mostly, I’m hoping I’ll feel secure and fun and interesting again.

There is my treatise on hair. I hope you enjoyed.

Reviews

For an author reviews are this double edged sword. I love to see someone enjoys my books, it can make me squee to have someone babble how good they are. And then you get the negative review and it makes you feel like someone just shoved a knife in your back.

I do not believe in a perfect story. Everyone likes different things in story just like everyone likes different foods. I hate avocados. Blech. But if you like them cool. Same thing with story. I think The Great Gatsby was boring. Lord of the Flies was stupid. And why in the world does anyone think James Joyces Ulysses is worth reading? But – other people love them and that is okay.

So this means telling me you thought the plot was slow, the characters boring, the world stupid might make me sad, it doesn’t hurt cause other people love exactly what you didn’t like. But other reviews, oh they hurt.

Here is my normal process. I write the blasted book. I try to edit as I go as it makes me less likely to scream. I think export it as a whole document (and note most of my stories are 100k+) and I go through to check for spelling errors, grammar errors, typos, and always the dreaded comma. Seriously people why do we have one little piece of ink “,” that does like twenty things? English is annoying. But that is besides the point or is the point, one of the two.

Once I’ve done that I send it to my betas. They read it, point out my many mistakes. I fix those and then send to my editor. She goes through it once, sends it back and I go through and fix everything again (by this point I want to scream how can I make so many errors?) then I format it and send it back to her. She edits it again and sends it back. I fix them all again and then I’m done. By this time I hate the story and everything about it. I upload it and move on.

Back to the reviews. The ones that hurt are the “poorly edited” or “too many typos” or “needs a proofreader.” Those make me want to sob in horror. At this point I’ve spent a thousand or so on editing and we STILL miss things. But when you lose stars because of those issues (and we all know stars on Goodreads and Amazon means everything) it hurts.

So what do I do? Mostly I really do try to avoid all reviews. They either pump up my ego or make me want to cry, neither of which is healthy. But when I see them and they are about editing or grammar or something that I should fix it hurts.

Now I am not saying don’t ding an author for that it is valid, but take a long look. How many errors are we talking about? Hundreds? Okay there is an issue. Ten? In a 100k book? I’ve seen worse in NYT bestsellers. Understand the author is trying and decide how much it upset you. And then if you need to give a negative review do it. But I beg you, for the soul of the poor author–don’t do a 1 star if there are no other reviews at all. Give it a week, then go back when there are reviews that liked it and be honest. Just remember we are trying and this is mostly one person trying to manage everything.

Okay headed back to write now. Enjoy!