Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 167
November 18, 2014
Coming Attractions
I got the proofreading done yesterday. Now to edit my notes and send back to the editor. I may leave in some of the snark for entertainment value (since I'm sure going over all this stuff is even less fun for the editor than it is for me).
My calendar is filling with book stuff.
December 2 is the release date for the Enchanted Inc. series audiobooks on CD. I imagine most people these days are just doing the digital downloads from Audible, so this won't be a huge deal, but it does make the audiobooks available for libraries. So, if you want to hear the audiobooks but don't have an Audible membership or don't want to buy them, you can request that your library purchase them.
December 3 is the release date for A Fairy Tale, the first book in my new series. Things seem to be in order for the e-book, the trade paperback and the audiobook to be available that day, though it may vary by sales outlet. I'm pretty sure it will all be in place at Amazon and Apple. There can be a bit of a lag at other places. If a lot of people buy on release day, that increases the chances of making a bestseller list, so that then more people can see it.
On December 12, Random House is going to start a promotion to price the e-book of Enchanted, Inc. at 99 cents, and that will last until the day after Christmas. So, if someone you know gets an e-reader or tablet for Christmas, there will be something handy for them to try out. And then they will be hooked and want all the books. Mwa ha ha haaaaa! And then I will rule the world!
We're looking at getting the sequel to A Fairy Tale, To Catch a Queen, published around February. The cover art is done and the book is with the copyeditor. We'll just have to sync up with the audio people once the text is final so we can set a release date. And now I really need to get to work on book 3, which doesn't yet have a name.
Then Rebel Mechanics is coming in July, in hardcover and e-book, and I sold the audio rights, so it should be in audio, and with this much lead time it really should come out in audio at the same time.
That's what I have on my plate at the moment. I have two sequels to Rebel Mechanics planned, and I will write them and get them published whether or not the publisher wants to continue the series (and that will depend on how well it does, and possibly whether the other books boost my profile). The Fairy Tale series is pretty open-ended. Most of the "arc" stuff is wrapped up in book 2, and from there it will likely become more like a mystery series, with a "case" in each book and the personal stories and relationships arcing between books.
And then I have a lot of other ideas bouncing around, but I'll figure out what to write when I get to that point. But in the meantime I'm hoping to get my house on the market early next year and buy a new one and then get moved and settled in, which will likely hamper my writing for at least a month (and this process will be helped if the books sell well enough that I can let myself just hire professionals to do the hard work).
My calendar is filling with book stuff.
December 2 is the release date for the Enchanted Inc. series audiobooks on CD. I imagine most people these days are just doing the digital downloads from Audible, so this won't be a huge deal, but it does make the audiobooks available for libraries. So, if you want to hear the audiobooks but don't have an Audible membership or don't want to buy them, you can request that your library purchase them.
December 3 is the release date for A Fairy Tale, the first book in my new series. Things seem to be in order for the e-book, the trade paperback and the audiobook to be available that day, though it may vary by sales outlet. I'm pretty sure it will all be in place at Amazon and Apple. There can be a bit of a lag at other places. If a lot of people buy on release day, that increases the chances of making a bestseller list, so that then more people can see it.
On December 12, Random House is going to start a promotion to price the e-book of Enchanted, Inc. at 99 cents, and that will last until the day after Christmas. So, if someone you know gets an e-reader or tablet for Christmas, there will be something handy for them to try out. And then they will be hooked and want all the books. Mwa ha ha haaaaa! And then I will rule the world!
We're looking at getting the sequel to A Fairy Tale, To Catch a Queen, published around February. The cover art is done and the book is with the copyeditor. We'll just have to sync up with the audio people once the text is final so we can set a release date. And now I really need to get to work on book 3, which doesn't yet have a name.
Then Rebel Mechanics is coming in July, in hardcover and e-book, and I sold the audio rights, so it should be in audio, and with this much lead time it really should come out in audio at the same time.
That's what I have on my plate at the moment. I have two sequels to Rebel Mechanics planned, and I will write them and get them published whether or not the publisher wants to continue the series (and that will depend on how well it does, and possibly whether the other books boost my profile). The Fairy Tale series is pretty open-ended. Most of the "arc" stuff is wrapped up in book 2, and from there it will likely become more like a mystery series, with a "case" in each book and the personal stories and relationships arcing between books.
And then I have a lot of other ideas bouncing around, but I'll figure out what to write when I get to that point. But in the meantime I'm hoping to get my house on the market early next year and buy a new one and then get moved and settled in, which will likely hamper my writing for at least a month (and this process will be helped if the books sell well enough that I can let myself just hire professionals to do the hard work).
November 17, 2014
Nitpicking
Ah, Monday. It was kind of a cold, dreary weekend, but we had our first (very light) snow and my choir sang Vivaldi's "Gloria." It's supposed to warm up a bit this week, but then be rainy next weekend, which I am totally okay with. It looks like I might have a no plans, no obligations weekend on the horizon, which will be good for leading up to Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, I have work to do. On Friday, I got the "first pass" page edits from the proofreader. This isn't a phase I've had to go through before. Normally, I see the copyedits and get to go over them and accept or argue with the copyeditor and make any other changes. Then those changes are input and the manuscript is typeset. I get to see the typeset manuscript and notice any actual errors (because changing things at this point is bad). Meanwhile, there's also a professional proofreader going over the typeset book. Well, this time I get to see what the proofreader said. This one did catch a few things that I can't believe made it this far without anyone noticing (and a thousand blessings for doing so). But she (?) also was trying to play editor and even attempting some rewriting at this point, asking worldbuilding questions (mostly for stuff that doesn't even really matter and that isn't important to the story -- I do have answers for the questions, but those answers don't need to be in the book) or mentioning if the same word shows up more than once on a page (or in some cases, every 20 pages). So I'm going through the book and either accepting suggested changes or explaining why the change would be a bad idea. And apparently there will be another pass of proofreading after these changes are inserted, mostly to make sure that making the changes didn't mess up something else, which does happen.
And, you know, even after this many people going over the book with a fine-toothed comb, I can just about guarantee you that within days of the release of the book, I'll get an email from a reader pointing out a typo or punctuation error somewhere in the book (I will definitely get at least one email pointing out a perceived error that isn't actually wrong).
It's a good thing I love this book because I went through at least four drafts on my own, a couple of rounds with my agent, four rounds of revisions with my editor, copyedits, page proofs, and now proofreader questions before probably one more pass. Then I may never want to read it again, though I will still look at the cover and sigh blissfully.
In the meantime, I have work to do. On Friday, I got the "first pass" page edits from the proofreader. This isn't a phase I've had to go through before. Normally, I see the copyedits and get to go over them and accept or argue with the copyeditor and make any other changes. Then those changes are input and the manuscript is typeset. I get to see the typeset manuscript and notice any actual errors (because changing things at this point is bad). Meanwhile, there's also a professional proofreader going over the typeset book. Well, this time I get to see what the proofreader said. This one did catch a few things that I can't believe made it this far without anyone noticing (and a thousand blessings for doing so). But she (?) also was trying to play editor and even attempting some rewriting at this point, asking worldbuilding questions (mostly for stuff that doesn't even really matter and that isn't important to the story -- I do have answers for the questions, but those answers don't need to be in the book) or mentioning if the same word shows up more than once on a page (or in some cases, every 20 pages). So I'm going through the book and either accepting suggested changes or explaining why the change would be a bad idea. And apparently there will be another pass of proofreading after these changes are inserted, mostly to make sure that making the changes didn't mess up something else, which does happen.
And, you know, even after this many people going over the book with a fine-toothed comb, I can just about guarantee you that within days of the release of the book, I'll get an email from a reader pointing out a typo or punctuation error somewhere in the book (I will definitely get at least one email pointing out a perceived error that isn't actually wrong).
It's a good thing I love this book because I went through at least four drafts on my own, a couple of rounds with my agent, four rounds of revisions with my editor, copyedits, page proofs, and now proofreader questions before probably one more pass. Then I may never want to read it again, though I will still look at the cover and sigh blissfully.
November 14, 2014
Chapters Three and Four
I don't know that the new book is going to get started today, after all. It still feels kind of unbaked in my head. I may play around with some possible openings and see if it starts shaping up. However, I've learned that there are some questions from the proofreader on the steampunk book coming, so I'm likely to have distractions anyway. I swear, that book is the jealous younger sibling who has to jump up and demand attention exactly when I'm about to work on something else. I also didn't get as much work on the web site done as I wanted. I updated some of the information, but I'm going to need to entirely rework the opening page, and I'm not sure how I want to do that yet. The Enchanted Inc. series covers are the main graphic on the page, but do I want to entirely replace them with the new book, or should I keep them in some way while highlighting the new one, offering some continuity? I'll have to think about it.
In the meantime, the Enchanted, Inc. reread continues, with chapters three and four.
It was a real blast from the past to reread chapter three, the one where Katie first really meets Owen during that informal job interview meeting. I'm pretty critical of my own work, but I really like the writing for that scene. That was also the scene where Owen came to life and started taking over. I really didn't have grand plans for him at that point. He mostly existed to contrast with Rod, the unattractive guy everyone else seemed to find irresistible, as the attractive guy no one noticed. But once he appeared in the scene, he really came to life and I fell a bit in love. That was a case of sheer character alchemy because I did next to no pre-writing character development on him, no planning. He just stepped onstage and came to life. I did more work on him later, but it was more about teasing out what already seemed to be there than about creating it. I knew I had something when the friend I was sending chapters to responded rather strongly and wanted to know all about him.
The magically somewhat hidden office building was another detail that came from my research trip. I wanted the company to be based in lower Manhattan, as it would have been the kind of thing there from some of the earlier settlement. There are some old buildings in that part of town, and I did a lot of wandering and taking pictures. But I didn't find the building itself until I got home and got my film developed (yes, this was in the Dark Ages). I'd been taking photos at the park in front of City Hall because there were actual gaslights, and I thought that was cool. But in the background of those photos was a building on a narrow side street that had actual turrets. I'd walked past it and had taken all those photos without even seeing it. It's actually a fairly modern building built in an old style, but I figure that's just the cover the real world sees. A building I only saw when I looked in the background of a photo I took of something else seemed like the perfect candidate for my headquarters.
The magical farmers' market was an addition that came in copyedits. I'd visited the market during my research trip and wrote in that visit. Then after I sold the book, I took another trip to New York for additional research and to meet my new editor, and I headed to the market, only to find that it was closed that day of the week -- which was the day of the week I had Katie visiting it. I told my editor about this when we met, and we decided that, duh, it was a magical market the rest of the world didn't see, so I added that bit when I got the copyedits, and I think it even strengthened Katie's decision to make the leap to the new job, since she'd learned enough to realize what was really going on and knew she'd never really be "normal" again.
In the meantime, the Enchanted, Inc. reread continues, with chapters three and four.
It was a real blast from the past to reread chapter three, the one where Katie first really meets Owen during that informal job interview meeting. I'm pretty critical of my own work, but I really like the writing for that scene. That was also the scene where Owen came to life and started taking over. I really didn't have grand plans for him at that point. He mostly existed to contrast with Rod, the unattractive guy everyone else seemed to find irresistible, as the attractive guy no one noticed. But once he appeared in the scene, he really came to life and I fell a bit in love. That was a case of sheer character alchemy because I did next to no pre-writing character development on him, no planning. He just stepped onstage and came to life. I did more work on him later, but it was more about teasing out what already seemed to be there than about creating it. I knew I had something when the friend I was sending chapters to responded rather strongly and wanted to know all about him.
The magically somewhat hidden office building was another detail that came from my research trip. I wanted the company to be based in lower Manhattan, as it would have been the kind of thing there from some of the earlier settlement. There are some old buildings in that part of town, and I did a lot of wandering and taking pictures. But I didn't find the building itself until I got home and got my film developed (yes, this was in the Dark Ages). I'd been taking photos at the park in front of City Hall because there were actual gaslights, and I thought that was cool. But in the background of those photos was a building on a narrow side street that had actual turrets. I'd walked past it and had taken all those photos without even seeing it. It's actually a fairly modern building built in an old style, but I figure that's just the cover the real world sees. A building I only saw when I looked in the background of a photo I took of something else seemed like the perfect candidate for my headquarters.
The magical farmers' market was an addition that came in copyedits. I'd visited the market during my research trip and wrote in that visit. Then after I sold the book, I took another trip to New York for additional research and to meet my new editor, and I headed to the market, only to find that it was closed that day of the week -- which was the day of the week I had Katie visiting it. I told my editor about this when we met, and we decided that, duh, it was a magical market the rest of the world didn't see, so I added that bit when I got the copyedits, and I think it even strengthened Katie's decision to make the leap to the new job, since she'd learned enough to realize what was really going on and knew she'd never really be "normal" again.
November 13, 2014
Winter Has Come
I'm letting myself have one more day of preparing and brainstorming before I actually start writing the new book. I'm normally a big plotter, but I've learned with this particular series that I have no idea what it's about until I start actually writing each book, and then I have to go back and rewrite it, so I may as well start writing and get a sense of it instead of spending time planning that will end up being redone.
Otherwise, today's big task is to update my web site to reflect all the new stuff. I don't know if I'm yet up for a big redesign. That may come later in the month after I figure out how I want to incorporate the new series, since the current design was built around the previous series.
I've decided not to take that New York trip I was thinking about. I kept putting off pulling the trigger on it, and it turns out that would have been the week of all the Perfect Storm stuff -- the release of the new book, the CD release of the Enchanted Inc. series audiobooks and possibly the price promotion on the digital version of Enchanted, Inc. There's not as much to do with a primarily digital release as for a traditional release, as there's no visiting bookstores, but I do hope to have some promo opportunities. And there's always obsessing over Amazon rankings. Meanwhile, that's also a busy time, holiday-wise. I figured it was a sign when I made one last check and couldn't get the hotel I wanted on those days, and then I felt relieved. I've done a research trip at that time of year, so it wasn't critical, and I think the idea of the trip did its job in inspiring the idea for the book. Actually going wasn't really necessary.
Besides, I'm getting my fill of cold weather right now. There was sleet last night. Today it's just bitter. I went walking briefly yesterday and came back with a numb face. Fortunately, I had an emergency pair of knit gloves in my coat pockets. We seem to have skipped fall entirely and gone straight from summer to winter. But I'm sure fall will be back soon.
Otherwise, today's big task is to update my web site to reflect all the new stuff. I don't know if I'm yet up for a big redesign. That may come later in the month after I figure out how I want to incorporate the new series, since the current design was built around the previous series.
I've decided not to take that New York trip I was thinking about. I kept putting off pulling the trigger on it, and it turns out that would have been the week of all the Perfect Storm stuff -- the release of the new book, the CD release of the Enchanted Inc. series audiobooks and possibly the price promotion on the digital version of Enchanted, Inc. There's not as much to do with a primarily digital release as for a traditional release, as there's no visiting bookstores, but I do hope to have some promo opportunities. And there's always obsessing over Amazon rankings. Meanwhile, that's also a busy time, holiday-wise. I figured it was a sign when I made one last check and couldn't get the hotel I wanted on those days, and then I felt relieved. I've done a research trip at that time of year, so it wasn't critical, and I think the idea of the trip did its job in inspiring the idea for the book. Actually going wasn't really necessary.
Besides, I'm getting my fill of cold weather right now. There was sleet last night. Today it's just bitter. I went walking briefly yesterday and came back with a numb face. Fortunately, I had an emergency pair of knit gloves in my coat pockets. We seem to have skipped fall entirely and gone straight from summer to winter. But I'm sure fall will be back soon.
November 12, 2014
No Sympathy for the Devil
Winter has arrived here. At least, some cold weather has, and as usual around here, it was very drastic, going from nearly 80 degrees one day to 40 degrees the next. I went from going out in short sleeves one day to having to wear my winter coat on the next day. I think we got a freeze last night -- my outdoor thermometer gave the low as 36, but it's in a sheltered location close to the house. This being Texas, it will probably be in the 70s next week. The good news about a freeze is that it makes hiking a lot safer. We can get off the paths without worrying too much about things lurking in the underbrush. And since it's supposed to be cold all week, there will likely be some serious baking going on. Not today, since I have choir, but tomorrow night's dinner will be chicken pot pie, and I may make apple turnovers because there was a sale on all varieties of apples and I have a bunch I need to use. Ever since the heavens opened and the secrets of pastry appeared to me, I'm looking for excuses to make pastry.
The first review for the upcoming book has come in, and it got five stars (out of five), with some very positive comments. This was from a librarian, so I hope that bodes well. I've been nervous about this book because it's different from my previous series and is a bit of an oddball. Seeing some positive feedback helps.
Meanwhile, I'm developing the next book in this series. I was plotting yesterday, trying to come up with possibilities of things that could happen in each stage, when I suddenly realized that although I knew the things that were going on and what the good guys were doing about them, I didn't know who the villain was or what the villain was trying to achieve.
I guess that says a lot about my mindset. I'm definitely not a "sympathy for the devil" person. I don't generally care about the villains in a story other than as someone for the heroes to push against. I don't care if the villains are charismatic or sexy. I tend to think of the "misunderstood" thing as them just making excuses (it's very, very rare for a villain to truly be totally misunderstood and not actually bad at all), especially since the heroes usually have had just as sad a backstory as the villain but didn't respond by doing bad things. As far as I'm concerned, the perfect villain stirs up trouble for the heroes to deal with in ways that really challenge them to rise to the occasion, but mostly stays offscreen so we don't have to waste any actual story time on him/her. The villain needs just enough character development to make some sense, but I care more about what his/her plans are because of how that affects the heroes.
And I realize this apparently puts me in the minority these days, when even the writers are more excited about their villains than their heroes, the villains get the sympathetic backstories, heroes get torn down to make the villains look better or provide some moral relativism (we're all just gray, no black or white), and the villains have the most vocal fanbases. It's cool to cheer on the villains, to want to be in Slytherin House, to be hypercritical of the heroes. So I'm very, very uncool. But that's okay. I don't think I write very good villains because I can't get into that mindset and I can't make myself care about them or be sympathetic toward them, so it's probably for the best that I keep mine offstage most of the time.
I did figure out who the villain is and what he/she wants. And it's not at all misunderstood or sympathetic. This person may be on stage more than my usual villains because this person is kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing and will really challenge the heroes in personal ways, but I hope no one will come away from this book liking this person or wanting this person to get a happy ending. It's rather amazing how much better the plot started falling together once I knew who the villain was. Duh.
I may one day redeem a villain, but it will require a real redemption arc that puts them through hell first.
The first review for the upcoming book has come in, and it got five stars (out of five), with some very positive comments. This was from a librarian, so I hope that bodes well. I've been nervous about this book because it's different from my previous series and is a bit of an oddball. Seeing some positive feedback helps.
Meanwhile, I'm developing the next book in this series. I was plotting yesterday, trying to come up with possibilities of things that could happen in each stage, when I suddenly realized that although I knew the things that were going on and what the good guys were doing about them, I didn't know who the villain was or what the villain was trying to achieve.
I guess that says a lot about my mindset. I'm definitely not a "sympathy for the devil" person. I don't generally care about the villains in a story other than as someone for the heroes to push against. I don't care if the villains are charismatic or sexy. I tend to think of the "misunderstood" thing as them just making excuses (it's very, very rare for a villain to truly be totally misunderstood and not actually bad at all), especially since the heroes usually have had just as sad a backstory as the villain but didn't respond by doing bad things. As far as I'm concerned, the perfect villain stirs up trouble for the heroes to deal with in ways that really challenge them to rise to the occasion, but mostly stays offscreen so we don't have to waste any actual story time on him/her. The villain needs just enough character development to make some sense, but I care more about what his/her plans are because of how that affects the heroes.
And I realize this apparently puts me in the minority these days, when even the writers are more excited about their villains than their heroes, the villains get the sympathetic backstories, heroes get torn down to make the villains look better or provide some moral relativism (we're all just gray, no black or white), and the villains have the most vocal fanbases. It's cool to cheer on the villains, to want to be in Slytherin House, to be hypercritical of the heroes. So I'm very, very uncool. But that's okay. I don't think I write very good villains because I can't get into that mindset and I can't make myself care about them or be sympathetic toward them, so it's probably for the best that I keep mine offstage most of the time.
I did figure out who the villain is and what he/she wants. And it's not at all misunderstood or sympathetic. This person may be on stage more than my usual villains because this person is kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing and will really challenge the heroes in personal ways, but I hope no one will come away from this book liking this person or wanting this person to get a happy ending. It's rather amazing how much better the plot started falling together once I knew who the villain was. Duh.
I may one day redeem a villain, but it will require a real redemption arc that puts them through hell first.
November 11, 2014
Vacation Reading
It's been a while since I talked about books, but I have done some reading recently, so here's a quick roundup:
A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn -- YA fantasy
This is a very fairy-tale feeling book, though not based on any actual tale I'm aware of. The heroine and her grandfather live a quiet life on the edge of a forest, with the only excitement coming when various nobles from the court come to visit or when mystical creatures in the woods encounter our heroine. It turns out that the grandfather is actually a former king in exile and that his daughter was one of many young women who went missing in the woods -- but the only one who came back (and came back pregnant). Now the heroine's father is looking for her, and it might give her a chance to get her revenge on the person who destroyed her family.
This book combined a lot of things I love -- fairy tales, dragons, mysterious birthrights and even some of the fae lore. It got a little oppressive at times because of the really tense situation the heroine was in, but I loved the way she handled it. There's a hint of romance that doesn't go quite the way you'd expect. It's very much a magical coming of age book, and while the plot is resolved, there's enough left unanswered or incomplete that I'm wondering if there will be a sequel.
Winterspell by Claire Legrand -- YA fantasy
This is sort of a bizarroland retelling of The Nutcracker. Or perhaps "inspired by" would be a better way of putting it. On Christmas Eve, the statue in her godfather's shop comes to life and carries Clara to a magical land, where it turns out he's a lost prince who was enchanted and exiled, and in his absence an evil fairy has taken over.
I might not have been quite the right audience for this book. I think I'd have eaten it up as a teen because it has all the teen catnip in it, but as an adult I noticed the teen catnip and found it kind of distracting because it sent me off down mental rabbit trails remembering some of the crazy things I found exciting as a teen that boggle the mind now. There's also this weird thing where the evil fairies taking over means the world got more industrialized, with trains and iron and steel everywhere, but iron is supposed to be poison to fairies and they're generally considered to be on the side of nature against industrialization. I suppose since fairies are fictional, that doesn't have to be true for fairies in every fictional universe, but since I've done a lot of research on that, I found it distracting. But if you know a teen who's enough into ballet to recognize the elements of the Nutcracker story and who likes steampunky fantasy adventure with a kickass heroine, this might be something she'd like.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison -- fantasy
When the emperor of the fairy realm and his sons are killed in an airship crash, the unlikely heir to the throne is the son the emperor tried to ignore, the one born to his goblin wife from an ill-fated political marriage. The half-breed boy has grown up in exile (hmm, exile seems to have been a reading theme), hidden away, but now he finds himself the emperor, and woefully underprepared for the job.
I picked this one up because it's had a lot of buzz, but I wasn't expecting to like it too much because it's mostly about political/court intrigue, and I really dislike that sort of thing. But it really grew on me because of the characters. I do like a good unlikely heir story, and it was fun reading about this character as he gradually figured out his role and how to carry it out. By the end, I was cheering for him and caught up in his story. Although there was a lot of court politics, it was all through his perspective, so it was really about survival and figuring out how to maintain his integrity. It ended up being a very feel-good story about a good person rising to an occasion. It wrapped up pretty well, but I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel because I'd like to see more about what this character does.
A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn -- YA fantasy
This is a very fairy-tale feeling book, though not based on any actual tale I'm aware of. The heroine and her grandfather live a quiet life on the edge of a forest, with the only excitement coming when various nobles from the court come to visit or when mystical creatures in the woods encounter our heroine. It turns out that the grandfather is actually a former king in exile and that his daughter was one of many young women who went missing in the woods -- but the only one who came back (and came back pregnant). Now the heroine's father is looking for her, and it might give her a chance to get her revenge on the person who destroyed her family.
This book combined a lot of things I love -- fairy tales, dragons, mysterious birthrights and even some of the fae lore. It got a little oppressive at times because of the really tense situation the heroine was in, but I loved the way she handled it. There's a hint of romance that doesn't go quite the way you'd expect. It's very much a magical coming of age book, and while the plot is resolved, there's enough left unanswered or incomplete that I'm wondering if there will be a sequel.
Winterspell by Claire Legrand -- YA fantasy
This is sort of a bizarroland retelling of The Nutcracker. Or perhaps "inspired by" would be a better way of putting it. On Christmas Eve, the statue in her godfather's shop comes to life and carries Clara to a magical land, where it turns out he's a lost prince who was enchanted and exiled, and in his absence an evil fairy has taken over.
I might not have been quite the right audience for this book. I think I'd have eaten it up as a teen because it has all the teen catnip in it, but as an adult I noticed the teen catnip and found it kind of distracting because it sent me off down mental rabbit trails remembering some of the crazy things I found exciting as a teen that boggle the mind now. There's also this weird thing where the evil fairies taking over means the world got more industrialized, with trains and iron and steel everywhere, but iron is supposed to be poison to fairies and they're generally considered to be on the side of nature against industrialization. I suppose since fairies are fictional, that doesn't have to be true for fairies in every fictional universe, but since I've done a lot of research on that, I found it distracting. But if you know a teen who's enough into ballet to recognize the elements of the Nutcracker story and who likes steampunky fantasy adventure with a kickass heroine, this might be something she'd like.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison -- fantasy
When the emperor of the fairy realm and his sons are killed in an airship crash, the unlikely heir to the throne is the son the emperor tried to ignore, the one born to his goblin wife from an ill-fated political marriage. The half-breed boy has grown up in exile (hmm, exile seems to have been a reading theme), hidden away, but now he finds himself the emperor, and woefully underprepared for the job.
I picked this one up because it's had a lot of buzz, but I wasn't expecting to like it too much because it's mostly about political/court intrigue, and I really dislike that sort of thing. But it really grew on me because of the characters. I do like a good unlikely heir story, and it was fun reading about this character as he gradually figured out his role and how to carry it out. By the end, I was cheering for him and caught up in his story. Although there was a lot of court politics, it was all through his perspective, so it was really about survival and figuring out how to maintain his integrity. It ended up being a very feel-good story about a good person rising to an occasion. It wrapped up pretty well, but I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel because I'd like to see more about what this character does.
November 10, 2014
Small Indulgences
My big accomplishment of the weekend was perfecting my technique for a chocolate pecan pie. My friends approved of it, so now I'm ready for my contribution to Thanksgiving. The final touch to perfecting the pastry came inadvertently, courtesy of the guy doing my annual heater check-up. I was already refrigerating the shortening before cutting it into the flour and refrigerating the dough before rolling it out. This time, I'd just cut the shortening into the flour when the heater guy showed up, so I threw the bowl into the refrigerator until he was gone before I mixed in the water. It turned out to be the lightest, flakiest crust I've ever made, and it cut beautifully. So I'll be adding that step on purpose the next time. We're getting a cold snap this week, so I'm planning on some chicken pot pies.
This has been a really successful year for me, but it's been hard to get out of the mindset I had during the years that weren't so successful. I've been trying to remember that I can indulge a little. So here are the kind of things I've considered indulgences: A new pair of walking shoes that are nice and squishy. Two new pairs of jeans that I got when I went into the Levi's store and let the salesperson help me find the kinds that fit me best (rather than just grabbing something in my size from the clearance rack). A little porcelain creamer so I don't have to try to pour milk from a gallon jug into my teacup. A new backpack for hiking so I don't have to use the backpack from college (it seems modern ones have innovations like an outside pocket for a water bottle and a secure pocket for a phone). Real maple syrup (instead of store brand generic "syrup") for my waffles. Oh, and a vacation.
But I'm trying not to get too crazy because for one thing, taxes are going to kill me this year, and for another, I still need to fix up this house to sell and want to be able to afford exactly what I want in a new house. And I have no idea how next year will go. But for now, I'm letting myself have fun in small ways that make me happier than something like a fancy car would.
This has been a really successful year for me, but it's been hard to get out of the mindset I had during the years that weren't so successful. I've been trying to remember that I can indulge a little. So here are the kind of things I've considered indulgences: A new pair of walking shoes that are nice and squishy. Two new pairs of jeans that I got when I went into the Levi's store and let the salesperson help me find the kinds that fit me best (rather than just grabbing something in my size from the clearance rack). A little porcelain creamer so I don't have to try to pour milk from a gallon jug into my teacup. A new backpack for hiking so I don't have to use the backpack from college (it seems modern ones have innovations like an outside pocket for a water bottle and a secure pocket for a phone). Real maple syrup (instead of store brand generic "syrup") for my waffles. Oh, and a vacation.
But I'm trying not to get too crazy because for one thing, taxes are going to kill me this year, and for another, I still need to fix up this house to sell and want to be able to afford exactly what I want in a new house. And I have no idea how next year will go. But for now, I'm letting myself have fun in small ways that make me happier than something like a fancy car would.
November 7, 2014
Enchanted, Inc.: The Opening
A while ago, I proposed doing a kind of DVD commentary/re-read of the Enchanted, Inc. series. And then I promptly forgot about it or got sidetracked. But I actually went through the first couple of chapters yesterday, so here we go!
I wrote the opening line around the time I started plotting -- and a lot of that work was done in an airplane on the way to a meetup of Firefly fans. We were gathering in Wildwood, NJ, and my plan was to get a ride afterward to Philadelphia and take the train from there to New York so I could do my research. There ended up being a couple of people who'd driven down from New York, so they gave me a ride and dropped me off in Queens, where I could catch a train (it's elevated in Queens but becomes the subway in Manhattan) to my hotel. On that train ride, at one point the connecting door between cars opened and an entire mariachi band came onto the car and started playing -- and no one else on the car so much as looked at them. They were kind of hard to ignore, but you'd have thought they were invisible. I've since learned that these kinds of buskers are common and the best strategy is to ignore them because giving them any attention just makes things uncomfortable, but at the time, it struck me as really odd. I felt like I was the only person on the train who could see them. And that inspired the incident on the subway in the opening chapter. I figured that if something real and odd happened and nobody else noticed it, then it would set the stage for something magical and odd happening and no one else noticing. That way we don't think Katie's incredibly dense for not noticing the magic stuff.
A lot of that trip was going around and finding locations for the story. I knew I wanted Katie to be working in lower Manhattan, so I took the subway down there and wandered around until I found an appropriately soulless office tower. Then I walked back to where her home would be so I could time the walk and take note of what she'd pass along the way. In the first draft, that section was a lot more detailed because I wanted to fit in all those observations, but ended up cutting it because, really, it was just walking home from work and we needed to get on with the story.
I'd been in that area before, which was why I'd chosen it for the setting, but since I hadn't been planning on writing a book set there the last time I'd been there, there were a lot of details I hadn't noticed. I'd originally planned for Sam to be one of the gargoyles at Grace Church, which is so very gothic-looking that it must have gargoyles, but when I stopped by there to see what the gargoyles looked like, I discovered that there weren't any. Oops. But then I had the big "duh" moment and realized that there would be gargoyles only Katie would see. There really is a magic shop around the corner from the church, and since I was there in late September, there was also a Halloween costume shop nearby.
The recruitment e-mail was the idea that sparked the whole story, when I was wishing I'd get an e-mail for a magical job offer, but I tried to play it somewhat realistically in the book. Would you really jump at such a vague overture, or would you be leery of it? So I then had to set up a situation so awful that she'd end up taking the bait. Sadly, that miserable meeting wasn't too far from so many I've sat through, and the evil boss Mimi is based on some people I've worked with -- a client and a co-worker. Both people had a bad habit of changing their minds and then rewriting their mental history so that the new thing they wanted was always what they wanted, and therefore when you gave them exactly what they'd asked for earlier, you were doing it wrong.
All the stuff with the roommates and going out for drinks came from me trying to hew close to the line of the chick-lit genre. In a way, I was writing this as a spoof, but I also wanted it to be a good example of the genre itself. I needed to balance the magic stuff with the normal girl-in-the-city stuff, so I gave her friends who allowed for those chick-litty scenes. That was also part of me trying to be somewhat realistic and grounding the "real" part of the story to contrast with the magic. The company I'd worked for had an office in New York, and I'd heard the people from that office talking about their living situations. I based the idea of these three women crammed into a small apartment on what I heard about the life of 20-something professionals in New York. I even tried to do some research on rents and floorplans to make sure it was somewhat feasible. Actually, this sounds pretty luxurious compared to some of the stories I heard. I think the group of roommates was also somewhat inspired by some people I knew in college. There was a group of people a year ahead of me in the journalism program who'd decided that if they didn't go to New York right after college, they might never do so, so as graduation neared, they were hunting for jobs and apartments. There were four of them, and they were all going to cram into a small apartment, using sofabeds so that the living room would also be a bedroom. That's where I got the group from college in Texas going to New York together.
So, that's where some of the stuff in the opening of the book came from.
I wrote the opening line around the time I started plotting -- and a lot of that work was done in an airplane on the way to a meetup of Firefly fans. We were gathering in Wildwood, NJ, and my plan was to get a ride afterward to Philadelphia and take the train from there to New York so I could do my research. There ended up being a couple of people who'd driven down from New York, so they gave me a ride and dropped me off in Queens, where I could catch a train (it's elevated in Queens but becomes the subway in Manhattan) to my hotel. On that train ride, at one point the connecting door between cars opened and an entire mariachi band came onto the car and started playing -- and no one else on the car so much as looked at them. They were kind of hard to ignore, but you'd have thought they were invisible. I've since learned that these kinds of buskers are common and the best strategy is to ignore them because giving them any attention just makes things uncomfortable, but at the time, it struck me as really odd. I felt like I was the only person on the train who could see them. And that inspired the incident on the subway in the opening chapter. I figured that if something real and odd happened and nobody else noticed it, then it would set the stage for something magical and odd happening and no one else noticing. That way we don't think Katie's incredibly dense for not noticing the magic stuff.
A lot of that trip was going around and finding locations for the story. I knew I wanted Katie to be working in lower Manhattan, so I took the subway down there and wandered around until I found an appropriately soulless office tower. Then I walked back to where her home would be so I could time the walk and take note of what she'd pass along the way. In the first draft, that section was a lot more detailed because I wanted to fit in all those observations, but ended up cutting it because, really, it was just walking home from work and we needed to get on with the story.
I'd been in that area before, which was why I'd chosen it for the setting, but since I hadn't been planning on writing a book set there the last time I'd been there, there were a lot of details I hadn't noticed. I'd originally planned for Sam to be one of the gargoyles at Grace Church, which is so very gothic-looking that it must have gargoyles, but when I stopped by there to see what the gargoyles looked like, I discovered that there weren't any. Oops. But then I had the big "duh" moment and realized that there would be gargoyles only Katie would see. There really is a magic shop around the corner from the church, and since I was there in late September, there was also a Halloween costume shop nearby.
The recruitment e-mail was the idea that sparked the whole story, when I was wishing I'd get an e-mail for a magical job offer, but I tried to play it somewhat realistically in the book. Would you really jump at such a vague overture, or would you be leery of it? So I then had to set up a situation so awful that she'd end up taking the bait. Sadly, that miserable meeting wasn't too far from so many I've sat through, and the evil boss Mimi is based on some people I've worked with -- a client and a co-worker. Both people had a bad habit of changing their minds and then rewriting their mental history so that the new thing they wanted was always what they wanted, and therefore when you gave them exactly what they'd asked for earlier, you were doing it wrong.
All the stuff with the roommates and going out for drinks came from me trying to hew close to the line of the chick-lit genre. In a way, I was writing this as a spoof, but I also wanted it to be a good example of the genre itself. I needed to balance the magic stuff with the normal girl-in-the-city stuff, so I gave her friends who allowed for those chick-litty scenes. That was also part of me trying to be somewhat realistic and grounding the "real" part of the story to contrast with the magic. The company I'd worked for had an office in New York, and I'd heard the people from that office talking about their living situations. I based the idea of these three women crammed into a small apartment on what I heard about the life of 20-something professionals in New York. I even tried to do some research on rents and floorplans to make sure it was somewhat feasible. Actually, this sounds pretty luxurious compared to some of the stories I heard. I think the group of roommates was also somewhat inspired by some people I knew in college. There was a group of people a year ahead of me in the journalism program who'd decided that if they didn't go to New York right after college, they might never do so, so as graduation neared, they were hunting for jobs and apartments. There were four of them, and they were all going to cram into a small apartment, using sofabeds so that the living room would also be a bedroom. That's where I got the group from college in Texas going to New York together.
So, that's where some of the stuff in the opening of the book came from.
November 6, 2014
New Cover, Old Computer
I'm afraid the old computer really is close to dead. It's really weird what's happening. It starts (slowly) and I can open applications, but the Finder (it's a Mac) doesn't launch. There's no Finder bar across the top, and there's no little light on under that icon in the Dashboard. I've been able to save files within applications onto a thumb drive by opening each file and doing "save as," but I can't open Finder windows and just drag things across. I can get the Apple menu icon for stuff like restart, Force Quit and Shut Down from within an application, but if no application is up, I can't. I ran the hardware test diagnostic disk, and it says all the hardware is okay, but then I ran the disk repair utility from the install disk, and it quit out of the assessment and then quit out of the disk repair. I tried reinstalling the OS, but it quit out of that. I might be able to just reformat the hard drive and salvage the machine somewhat, but I'm not sure it's worth it at this point because there's a lot of stuff I'd have to reinstall to return it to its usual functions, and then I'm not sure how much I'd really trust it. I wrote on it because I liked that version of Word and because it wasn't connected to the Internet. That generally meant I had a computer downstairs and one upstairs and didn't have to haul one around if I wanted to write elsewhere. And I could plug it into the stereo and use it as a jukebox when I was cooking or working in the living room. It was handy for dealing with copyedits because I could have the copyeditor's version on one computer and my version on the other.
But I can replace the jukebox function by getting a tablet (which I've been saying I wanted to do for a while) or by replacing my phone. I have a four-year-old Sony/Ericsson Android phone that I kind of loathe. I think I'm too much of a Mac person to really be able to deal with Android, so if I get an iPhone, I could sync that with the iTunes on my computer and then use the phone as a music player that plugs into my stereo (it even has a dock, though I think I'd need an adaptor because it's for older iPhones/Pods) or to my car. With a tablet, I could have similar jukebox capability in syncing iTunes from my computer, and then I'd also finally have true e-reader capability. This is when I have to remind myself that I have money now. I can indulge a little bit.
Meanwhile, there's been book stuff going on. When I went to Amazon to check on the new book being there and ready for pre-order, I discovered this. I'd been holding off on revealing the cover because I didn't know how final/official it was, but if it's ready for pre-order, I guess it's official. I am so madly in love with this cover.
Ooh, and A Fairy Tale is already on an Amazon bestseller list, at #61 for Women's Fiction--Fantasy. In case you haven't followed the link, here's the cover, with art by the brilliant Kirbi Fagan.
Expect to hear a lot more about this book in the coming month.
But I can replace the jukebox function by getting a tablet (which I've been saying I wanted to do for a while) or by replacing my phone. I have a four-year-old Sony/Ericsson Android phone that I kind of loathe. I think I'm too much of a Mac person to really be able to deal with Android, so if I get an iPhone, I could sync that with the iTunes on my computer and then use the phone as a music player that plugs into my stereo (it even has a dock, though I think I'd need an adaptor because it's for older iPhones/Pods) or to my car. With a tablet, I could have similar jukebox capability in syncing iTunes from my computer, and then I'd also finally have true e-reader capability. This is when I have to remind myself that I have money now. I can indulge a little bit.
Meanwhile, there's been book stuff going on. When I went to Amazon to check on the new book being there and ready for pre-order, I discovered this. I'd been holding off on revealing the cover because I didn't know how final/official it was, but if it's ready for pre-order, I guess it's official. I am so madly in love with this cover.
Ooh, and A Fairy Tale is already on an Amazon bestseller list, at #61 for Women's Fiction--Fantasy. In case you haven't followed the link, here's the cover, with art by the brilliant Kirbi Fagan.
Expect to hear a lot more about this book in the coming month.
November 5, 2014
Promotion in the Social Media Era
I was asked by a reader to discuss book promotion, and since that's the phase I've got gearing up, I thought it would be a good topic for today's writing post.
I have to say that this is one area that's constantly changing. My day job career was in public relations, and that world has changed almost entirely since I left twelve years ago. Back then, it was all about the traditional media and possibly their Internet presence. Now the traditional media are on a downswing and social media is the current emphasis.
But one thing remains true: the best way to promote something is to find ways to reach the people most likely to be interested in it. That means you need to figure out your target market and then figure out how to reach them. For the kind of publicity you can do yourself for a book (unless you have a huge budget), reaching the market of "readers" is too big a task. You need to slice that up a bit. For example, I generally think of the target audience for my books to be primarily women who like fantasy, romance or mystery and who have a hard time finding books to read because they don't like a lot of sex or dark grittiness. There are certainly other people who would like my books, but I think this group is the most likely to glom on to them.
The next step is reaching them. I go to a lot of science fiction conventions because that's a good place to find readers who like fantasy (one section of my readership), and I find that there's a lot of crossover with romance and mystery among those readers. People who go to conventions are obviously passionate about their interests, and they're social about it, since they're connecting with others. That means they're likely connected away from conventions, so they're probably talking about books elsewhere. I don't ever directly sell enough books at a convention to cover my cost of attending, but I figure there's a multiplier effect if the people who discover me at a convention go on to talk about my books away from the convention, either online or in person. This doesn't necessarily directly hit that more narrow slice of "not finding the books I want because I want something without a lot of sex or gore" group, but there's a good chance they'll be in the greater audience, and once those people find something they like, they get really excited about it and share it with other people they know.
Reaching people via social media can be a challenge because there's so much noise out there. I blog and use Facebook but haven't yet delved into Twitter because I find it overwhelming. What I think is more effective than an author presence on social media is getting readers who have a presence there to talk about your book. Really, the best way to do that is to write something people want to talk about, but even so, people have to discover it. With my self-published books, I've been using NetGalley. There's some cost to this, but it ends up being a fairly easy way to get copies in the hands of reviewers and people who talk about books on social media.
I'm very picky and targeted about selecting who gets copies, though. I've found that way too many reviewers/bloggers don't give the info I need to help me make a decision, or they give the wrong info. A lot of the people will go on and on in their profile about how much they love books, what their favorite reading day is like, etc., without telling anything about what giving them a copy will do for me. It's great that you love to read, but I'm passing out galleys for publicity purposes, not to support someone's reading habit. So I look for someone who has a blog or who contributes to one. I check the blog to see how frequently it's been updated. If there's a book review at least once a week, that looks good. If the last posted review was from six months ago, I generally stop considering. I like it when they list their various social media outlets and what their readership is likely to be -- average daily/weekly/monthly page hits, number of friends or followers, etc. Once I have a sense of how legitimate this person is, I look at the targeting -- does the reviewer cover other books that might appeal to the same people who might like mine? Someone who writes about gardening books or whose reviews are all for erotica probably isn't a good fit.
In addition to reviews, I might look around for places that would like me to do guest posts or interviews. I'm probably not as aggressive about this kind of thing as I need to be, but I'm fortunate to be in a position where people often come to me.
Really, all of publicity is more of a marathon than a sprint. It's about building relationships over time. It's about word of mouth spreading from reader to reader. The most an author can do is make sure enough readers have heard about it so they can talk about it.
I have to say that this is one area that's constantly changing. My day job career was in public relations, and that world has changed almost entirely since I left twelve years ago. Back then, it was all about the traditional media and possibly their Internet presence. Now the traditional media are on a downswing and social media is the current emphasis.
But one thing remains true: the best way to promote something is to find ways to reach the people most likely to be interested in it. That means you need to figure out your target market and then figure out how to reach them. For the kind of publicity you can do yourself for a book (unless you have a huge budget), reaching the market of "readers" is too big a task. You need to slice that up a bit. For example, I generally think of the target audience for my books to be primarily women who like fantasy, romance or mystery and who have a hard time finding books to read because they don't like a lot of sex or dark grittiness. There are certainly other people who would like my books, but I think this group is the most likely to glom on to them.
The next step is reaching them. I go to a lot of science fiction conventions because that's a good place to find readers who like fantasy (one section of my readership), and I find that there's a lot of crossover with romance and mystery among those readers. People who go to conventions are obviously passionate about their interests, and they're social about it, since they're connecting with others. That means they're likely connected away from conventions, so they're probably talking about books elsewhere. I don't ever directly sell enough books at a convention to cover my cost of attending, but I figure there's a multiplier effect if the people who discover me at a convention go on to talk about my books away from the convention, either online or in person. This doesn't necessarily directly hit that more narrow slice of "not finding the books I want because I want something without a lot of sex or gore" group, but there's a good chance they'll be in the greater audience, and once those people find something they like, they get really excited about it and share it with other people they know.
Reaching people via social media can be a challenge because there's so much noise out there. I blog and use Facebook but haven't yet delved into Twitter because I find it overwhelming. What I think is more effective than an author presence on social media is getting readers who have a presence there to talk about your book. Really, the best way to do that is to write something people want to talk about, but even so, people have to discover it. With my self-published books, I've been using NetGalley. There's some cost to this, but it ends up being a fairly easy way to get copies in the hands of reviewers and people who talk about books on social media.
I'm very picky and targeted about selecting who gets copies, though. I've found that way too many reviewers/bloggers don't give the info I need to help me make a decision, or they give the wrong info. A lot of the people will go on and on in their profile about how much they love books, what their favorite reading day is like, etc., without telling anything about what giving them a copy will do for me. It's great that you love to read, but I'm passing out galleys for publicity purposes, not to support someone's reading habit. So I look for someone who has a blog or who contributes to one. I check the blog to see how frequently it's been updated. If there's a book review at least once a week, that looks good. If the last posted review was from six months ago, I generally stop considering. I like it when they list their various social media outlets and what their readership is likely to be -- average daily/weekly/monthly page hits, number of friends or followers, etc. Once I have a sense of how legitimate this person is, I look at the targeting -- does the reviewer cover other books that might appeal to the same people who might like mine? Someone who writes about gardening books or whose reviews are all for erotica probably isn't a good fit.
In addition to reviews, I might look around for places that would like me to do guest posts or interviews. I'm probably not as aggressive about this kind of thing as I need to be, but I'm fortunate to be in a position where people often come to me.
Really, all of publicity is more of a marathon than a sprint. It's about building relationships over time. It's about word of mouth spreading from reader to reader. The most an author can do is make sure enough readers have heard about it so they can talk about it.
