Josh Lanyon's Blog, page 11
December 4, 2022
Advent Calendar Day 4
As with all offerings from YouTube, this twenty-minute holiday offering may or may not be around for long.
Star in the Night (1945) won the Oscar for Best Short Subject. It's a (then) modern retelling of the Nativity story set in the North American Southwest desert. So it goes without saying that it is Christian, vintage Americana, and sentimental as heck. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
December 3, 2022
Advent Calendar Day 3
Good morning!
Today's holiday offering is just a lovely song: Baby Where You Are recorded by Ted Lucas in 1975. It's not exactly a holiday song, and yet it captures that nostalgic Wish-I-Were-Home-for-Christmas feel, I think.
Anyway, enjoy!
December 2, 2022
Advent Calendar Day 2
Happy Friday!
Seeing that it's the first official weekend of the holiday season, maybe you'd like to try a new cocktail tonight?
The Office Elf and I created this one for Thanksgiving. (No job is ever going to compare to this one for her, I suspect :-D) Now, the list of ingredients will probably require a trip to your nearest Bev Mo, and the instructions might seem a little complicated, but don't be intimidated. It's actually pretty simple once you get it down. That said, unless you enjoy spending the evening behind the bar, I wouldn't recommend doing what I did and try to serve it on the fly to twelve thirsty guests. This is more a leisurely evening before the fireplace while working on a jigsaw puzzle sort of beverage.
It's lovely though. Lots of delicate flavors to lace the bourbon.
Ramble Through the Bramble
Ingredients
1 oz. blackberry liqueur
2 oz. Lori's Lavender Lemonade*
1 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. orange curacao
a couple of dashes orange bitters
3-5 frozen blackberries
4 fresh basil leaves
a squirt of freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 - 2 oz. freshly squeezed orange juice
Instructions
OPTIONAL: sugar rim rocks glass
**Muddle the blackberries, basil leaves, bitters and lemon juice in the bottom of the shaker.
Add in the orange juice, lemonade, blackberry liqueur, bourbon, and orange curacao. Fill the shaker with ice.
Shake it baby, shake it all you can tonight. Strain it over the ice of your rocks glass.
Garnish with basil leaf. (er, non-muddled)
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*You can sub any lemonade (or fresh lemon juice and simple syrup) but I love this lemonade, and the hint of lavender is especially pleasing in this particular cocktail.
**"Muddle" sounds more alarming than it is. Basically, mash up the berries, basil, bitters and lemonade in the bottom of your shaker.
December 1, 2022
Advent Calendar Day 1
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
So that was 2022.
It could have been worse, right? Not the year I planned, but I've come to accept that the best laid plans, etc. Just as I've come to accept that life is never going back to the way it was pre-pandemic. (We'll just lump it all under that umbrella, shall we?) And while I can't deny that I occasionally lapse into IN MY DAY with my long-suffering nieces and nephews, I've still got my nieces and nephews and everyone else I care about, so that's the important bit.
The world turns and another page in this book of life turns with it. Which is the way it's always worked, really. That is the lesson of history. The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
AND CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR.
(And, yes, of course you may sub "Christmas" for the winter holiday of your choice, or no holiday at all. You do you.)
For the last couple of years, I've struggled with whether to do the "Advent Calendar" or not. The truth is, blogging doesn't get the engagement it once did--and Blogger is especially problematical as far as commenting on posts. But the point of the Advent Calendar isn't to get a certain number of comments or views. It's to say THANK YOU to you, my readers. The point of this calendar is simply to give you a moment or two of holiday cheer. A little bit of comfy-coziness to start your day.
In case I haven't said it enough: Thank you for buying and reading (and re-reading and re-re-reading) my books. Thank you for allowing me to earn my living doing the thing I love best. Thank you to those readers all over the world--translations in another four languages this year!--who consume my stories in languages I can't speak. Thank you to my wonderful patrons whose kindness and generosity help me through those leanish months where life gets in the way of spinning stories.
I appreciate you all very much. Full stop. Writers write for themselves, but we publish for others. I publish for YOU. I want to give you the best books I can because I want you to see the world the way I do: a place where kindness, the willingness to communicate, and the courage to love can change lives. I want you to love the way my books make you feel--ideally, kind of the way the holidays make you feel. ;-)
So what's ahead this month? As in previous years, I'll probably share a couple of favorite holiday songs or a poem or a some inspirational photos or a vintage cartoon or a cocktail recipe (or three). There will likely be codas toward the end of the month. There might be a giveaway or two. And I believe at least one of our talented and generous previous contributors will pop in with some fiction or art.
In other words, every day will be as much of a surprise to me as to you. ;-D
Happy Holidays, my friends. May all your days be merry and bright!
November 24, 2022
Happy Thanksgiving!
May you always have more reasons to be grateful for than you can remember.
November 20, 2022
Fatal Shadows: The Collector's Editon NOW IN DIGITAL!
Yes, Virginia, thanks to the gracious and timely intervention of Deb McGowan (a talented writer in her own right) at Inroad Publishing, there is a Santa Claus. Well, there is, but actually, I was going to say there is now a beautifully formatted epub version of FATAL SHADOWS: THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION.
It's up for preorder most places excepting Amazon, and it will be going live December 16th (on Amazon as well as everywhere else).
I CAN'T BEGIN TO TELL YOU WHAT A RELIEF THAT IS.
Anyway, while I continue to struggle with the concept of a collector's edition that can't actually be collected, I struggled more with the idea that a whole heck of a lot of Adrien English fans couldn't afford the collector's edition.
In short, another one gets checked off the list.
Also, I'm going to go ahead and do the Advent Calendar this year, so if anyone has any contributions, send 'em on over. I don't know for sure there will be codas from me. I hope there will be, but Lament at Loon Landing HAS to be done this year. I've already lost nearly a full week of writing due to prepping for Thanksgiving. Why do I always imagine I'm going to be able to write during a week spent doing everything from rushing to get the last fall plants in the ground to polishing silver? How does dinner for twelve turn into a marathon of what amounts to gathering nuts for the winter.
(Er, I don't mean my family are nuts. They are, but that's not my point.)
I'm sure there's other news, but that's plenty for now. I still have strings of outdoor lights to untangle, a lost birthday present to track down from Amazon, three rose bushes and one hawthorne plant to transplant, Advent Calendar posts to write... And hopefully another couple of chapters to write...
November 5, 2022
Lemme Tell You a Liddle Story...
When my sisters and I were growing up, that was one of our favorite routines when we had some long, convoluted story to relate. This announcement was always accomplished by mis-propping our chin on our hand--accompanied by elbow sliding off the edge of the table...
{You know, coz we were pretending to be drunk. Which apparently was sidesplitting stuff back in the day. (What can I say? We had a goldmine of drunk Scottish and Irish relatives to pan for material.) ;-D }
Enywhoooo. I may have bitten off more than I can chew this month, but I'm going to aprise you of the current schemes simply because it's been a while since I had an update.
There's just a lot going on right now, and I'm working around it as best I can. Please notice the lack of any firm release dates.
So I'm back to work on Lament at Loon Landing (Secrets and Scrabble 6). This is the priority project.
I'm also doing a chapter a week of Puzzle for Two on Patreon. The novel is now half-complete, so there's one for the win column.
AND because I may be writing slowly but (or maybe because) I'm going through a super-creative phase, I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year to kickstart a novella called 44.1644° North. The goal is set at 50,000 but that's way more than I'd need. This will be 35,000 words at most. Tense and tight. That's the goal.
Basically, the writing is going very well, but also it's going very slowly.
The Movie-Town Murders is due out in audio any day now. Death at the Deep Dive is supposed to be out in December, but... We'll see. Even if it's completed in December, the backlog at ACX will be horrendous.
Hide and Seek is now available in ebook, print and audio. It's a nice little Christmassy one.
Speaking of the holidays.
I'm not sure if I'll be doing the Advent Calendar this year or not. I'd like to, but it's is a LOT of work. And although the page views remain high, the engagement is low. So is it worth it? I don't know. Okay. Here's a big one.
Despite my very best efforts, I just cannot come up with an affordable print edition of Fatal Shadows: The Collector's Edition. I really did try, but the best I could manage was a paperback edition that still costs $49.99. That's... Ouch. For a lot of readers that's still prohibitive.
(OH! It's on sale right now for $33.96 at Amazon. That's the lowest I've seen it--and Amazon seems to have set that price. I have no idea how long that might last.)
Anyway, it's not very fair to have a collector's edition that a large percentage of Adrien and Jake's most devoted fans can't even afford. So I'm going to try and do it as an ebook for the holidays. I say TRY because I'm going to have to format it, and that is a very intimidating idea. UGH. But I will try. It might have to go up without the artwork? I don't know. I'll do the best I can. We all remember what happened when I tried to format the newspaper article for Slay Ride...
How the heck can it already be November? This was such an action-packed year, and yet it passed in a blip. I mean, it was a good year. It felt like a peace and prosperity year--possibly the last we'll enjoy for some time, if the elections go the way I fear. But let that go for now.
That's it for the updates. Still here. Still writing. Still doing the things. I hope you're doing well!
October 31, 2022
October 21, 2022
New(ish) Release: HIDE AND SEEK
For museum curator Andrew Allison, the sleepy little Maine village of Safehaven has always lived up to its name—until now. Fleeing an abusive relationship, Andy has returned to Safehaven for a few weeks while he figures out the future and helps his elderly Uncle Cuthbert run his antiques shop. But when Andy arrives, he learns Uncle Cuthbert is in the hospital, critically injured, the victim of a late-night break-in.
Worse, one of the first messages on the shop’s answering machine is from Marcus, Andy’s ex, demanding to know Andy’s whereabouts.
Nor does the bad news stop there. It seems whoever broke into Time in a Bottle is still looking for that mysterious whatever. Something they didn’t find the first time. Something they now believe Andy has.
Something worth killing for?
The good news is former bad boy Quinn Rafferty, Andy’s high school crush, is back in town and interested in renewing their acquaintanceship.
Quinn is not a man to run from things that go bump in the night, be they mysterious midnight prowlers or a relationship-shy, fish-out-of-water museum curator.
But Quinn has a few secrets of his own…
AVAILABLE THRU:
September 30, 2022
Spec Fiction Author SETH HADDON on Writing REFORGED
It's been a long time since I was genuinely excited about the release of a spec fiction novel. I can count my all-time favorite spec fiction writers on two hands--and Ginn Hale takes up one of those hands. :-D But from the minute I read the description of Seth Haddon's Reforged, I was hooked. And that was even before I saw the gorgeous cover art!
Granted, the book is coming out from Blind Eye Books, so you KNOW it's going to be good. Anyway, when BEB editor extraordinaire Nicole Kimberling asked if I'd like to host Seth on my blog during his launch week, I said, "You know it, milady!"
Okay, no. I didn't say that. But I was delighted.
Anyway, here's the blurb for Reforged:
Since time immemorial the warriors of the Paladin Order have harnessed arcane powers to protect their rulers. For Balen, who has given up his chance at love and fought his way to the top of the Paladin Order, there can be no greater honor than to serve his king. But when assassins annihilate the royal family, Balen suddenly finds himself sworn to serve the very man he abandoned.
Now with their nation threatened by enemies both within and outside the kingdom, Balen must fight hidden traitors and unnatural assassins, while also contending with the biting wit and dangerous charm of young King Zavrius. To save themselves and their nation they will have to put aside their past and reforge that trust they lost so long ago.
Available October 4thAND here's Seth himself on learning that magic known as PLOTTING.
Why Writing My Debut Novel Turned Me Off Pantsing
Seth Haddon
Anyone who knows me knows I am really driven by aesthetics and vibes.
Sadly, these are not enough to write a novel. But that never stopped me from trying.
All of my writing is inspired by a scene or aesthetic before I get to any plotting. For Reforged, there were two images that kickstarted the story. The first was an image of the Maximilian I gauntlets–these beautifully articulated gauntlets on a red velvet cushion–and the second was an Edward Light lute-harp from 1815. My initial pitch centered on magical armor and a tournament to be the king’s protector. But anything resembling a solid plot was non-existent.
I was still only working part time, so I had the leisure of a few days a week to formulate something plot-wise. I spent a lot of time walking down at the piers trying to conjure ideas. This wasn’t really like me–I had always pantsed my way through a plot before. But I knew I needed something solid here. Why? Reforgedwas initially pitched as a 20k word novella.
Short form writing is a whole other ball game. Before Reforged, I’d written a necromancer manuscript, and then edited it, and edited it some more. It was 100k, then 112k, and at one point it had ballooned to 150k. I tried pitching it to agents, but all my full requests fell through.
I realise now the result of my edits and credits was this amalgamated mess of a novel that is still sitting on my shelf waiting to be rewritten. But in the moment, it was really all I’d known. I wrote what came to me in the moment.
So knowing I’d have to contain my usual rambling self to 20k words, I researched and poked around the internet until I found a good spreadsheet template to flesh out. I had one that tracked the words in every scene, and I was determined to keep it under the word limit.
As you might have guessed, I failed. The first chapter of Reforged was 6k, and I’d barely gotten through the first two scenes. A novella wasn’t happening, but a tightly plotted story could be. But if I’m going to be honest, that didn’t happen either.
When I say I was turned off pantsing, I’m not saying I completely ignored flexibility and stuck to a rigid plot. I really don’t believe adaptability is something to be ignored. There’s great value in letting go of a rigid structure when the story wants to change. And that is what ended up happening in Reforged.
I was consistently getting feedback from Blind Eye Book’s editor, Nicole Kimberling. That meant, on a weekly basis, I was having plot holes and inconsistencies pointed out to me. Things were pushed in different directions. Some of the scenes I’d initially imagined never came to fruition. Half of that was because the characters were very different from how I’d first envisioned them. Zavrius in particular was less villainous, and far more witty. He really had a mind of his own half the time.
The point here is that a properly rigid plot structure was impossible. But so was pantsing. By the end of Reforged, I felt I had a firm grasp on what novel writing should be. I’d still consider vibes and aesthetics a crucial part of the process, but I’m no longer willing to rely on them and nothing more solid. In order for the novel to have a truly meaningful climax, all elements of it have to build in some specific direction. For me, a balanced pace wasn’t possible without clear markers, which were achievable with a more structured plot.
But every writer has a different way of working, and if you can do all that with only vibes and aesthetics, I take my hat off to you!
That’s all from me! Feel free to reach out with your thoughts on this!
