Chantal Boudreau's Blog, page 29

A Current Endeavor – The Gloom Is Lifting

Despite the fact that this hasn’t been the best of years so far, I’ve been feeling happier this week. I have a Guild of Dreams posting on the way tomorrow that explains why, but I’m also often happy when I get to release new work, like Providence. I have to admit though, I haven’t been working hard on promotion in the last few months, but that will change soon I hope. I have a few things up my sleeve and a few new ideas. I just have to see if I can make them work for me.

Weather-wise, I’m still not seeing much sun, but I saw something on the bus today that warmed my spirits. A couple of young travellers got on the express bus I ride home from work. They could barely speak English (they were French) and they were a little lost. They had money, but no change, and the buses here don’t make change for passengers. The other passengers rallied and not only helped them figure out where they had to get off to get where they were going, but also passed forward change and bus tickets to make sure their fare was covered. It’s nice to know you live in a place where people will do that for complete strangers.

When they sat down there was a lively buzz on the bus. Those who could speak French (even a little) were chatting with the travellers until their stop. One of the other passengers had her cat there that would meow on occasion to add to the happy chaos. There was a strange sense of community for the few minutes they were there, everyone on the bus taking an interest. I stopped my typing to listen in – I thought it was all pretty cool.

It doesn’t take much to get someone feeling more positive about their day. Little gestures can mean a whole lot.

Anyway, now I’m back to reviewing a contract for a new acceptance (something to make my day brighter) and contemplating how I’m going to come up with extra money so I can go to the World Horror Convention next year (I reaaaaalllly want to go.) It is now an official objective for me. I’ll try to think positive about getting there.

That and the sun is going to come out tomorrow…seriously.

A Current Endeavor – They Have to Grow Up?

I never intended my Fervor series to be in any way YA typical. It wasn’t meant to be YA at all, with more of a “Lord of the Flies” vibe. But I also wrote it without any plans to write anything beyond the initial book, and by the end of Fervor #1 my protagonist, Sam, was thirteen. He hadn’t quite reached puberty, hovering on the edge. He had no interest in girls – yet, but that was about to change. I couldn’t ignore the fact that as I kept writing a second, third, fourth and now fifth book, and Sam went from thirteen to fourteen, now nearing fifteen, he would start having more mature responses. I have nine books planned in total, so there will be room for much more.

With Sam, however, things are much more complicated than with an ordinary teenager. Sam had never lived a conventional life. He is unnaturally intelligent, gifted in ways the average person would find hard to imagine. He had spent all of his life either being studied or on the run, and had a hard time identifying with anyone other than his direct peers. Throw telepathy into the mix and what will happen when his hormones and emotions start going a little crazy?

I did find a few ways of introducing some of the complications being Connected might create for a young adult into the Fervor series, without putting Sam through the works first. I guess I had to prepare myself for what would be coming. I also burdened him with a typical boyhood crush – choosing an older girl who would prove to be beyond his reach. Limit the availability of girls his age (who aren’t blood kin) and I could put things off a little more. But that wouldn’t last.

So now I have to let him tackle the real threat of romance, without sinking into the usual YA love triangles and melodrama (not that what he does have to deal with is in any way simple). I’m trying to ease him into it. He is clever and pragmatic and his mind is far more mature than his body or his psyche. That actually makes things more awkward and uncomfortable, not just for him, but for me.

As a parent I can tell you that watching your kids get to this stage in life is a real challenge, but apparently it can work that way for a writer and their characters too. Just like your kids, you can’t stop this from happening (aside from offing that fictional character altogether.) I guess I’m just going to have to grit my teeth and bear it. Hopefully I can nudge Sam toward making the best choices, whatever those will happen to be for him.

A Current Endeavor – Revving Up

You would think with not one but three books soon to be released (one just out – Providence, one waiting on cover art and a few final touches, and one in final edits also waiting on cover art) I would focus all my efforts on that, but the short stories I have out in submission land don’t just go away while I’m busy. So while I rev up for releases, I have to juggle everything else that comes my way. Sometimes I drop the ball. I allowed myself to be tempted into starting a second book when halfway through reading a first one for review purposes. I ended up with two half finished books yesterday, which meant no review.

Nevertheless, even though it can be overwhelming, when I have so many things coming at me, I seem to get much more done. I’ve been tackling illustrations, a short story by request, a short story rewrite based on publisher feedback, blog posts in advance, work on a teaser tale for Prisoners of Fate and promo work. I can keep up this pace for a couple of months, but by August I’ll be needing a break – good thing I have vacation time then.

For promotion, May December Publications has a few things on the go. They have dropped the prices for print copies of books 1-3 in the Fervor series (Fervor, Elevation, Transcendence) and reduced price for Kindle version of Magic University, the intro novel of my Masters & Renegades series, to $0.99. I have my fingers crossed that folks will give my work a go. My fantasy novels have managed to win over some non-fantasy fans. I consider that a solid accomplishment.

Submission blitz update – While I did not get an official letter, I did get another rejection. The ToC was posted for one of the anthologies before all letters had been sent, and my story didn’t make the cut. “The Storyteller’s Affliction” goes back on the shelf for now.

A Current Endeavor – Crazy Busy

I eked out a little Chapter 6 today but the last few days have been frantic. I attended a CMA conference on Thursday and Friday with some pretty incredible speakers and I’m still trying to process everything they had to say. Amanda Lang’s views on the necessity of changing how we think and how we educate our children so we all ask more questions and become more innovative sounded pretty sensible to me, and Bill Strickland’s keynote speech about treating people like assets and recognizing the value of generating hope where hope is lacking was very inspirational. I liked his notion that hope is the cure to spiritual cancer, and he ought to know considering the miraculous things he has accomplished in his life. I’ll be dedicating next month’s blog posts to him. I think after a year that has been pretty dismal to this point, I could use a little more hope in my life.

Yesterday was the date of my children’s school’s spring fair. In addition to baking a few things for their bake sale, I donated a copy of Casualties of War and The Blood Is Strong. The books went into one of the raffle prizes and I’m hoping someone will end up reading them. After the fair, I was planning a weekend of gardening, writing and rewriting when two e-mails popped up. I found myself spending eight hours reviewing the edits for Prisoners of Fate (followed by a quick proofread of a short story’s final edits) and now I can’t shake Ebon, Urwick, Shetland and Anna from running around in my head.

I’m very proud of my plot for that book. It is dizzyingly convoluted, in a good way, and an excellent example of the type of story – one with circular logic in places and multiple timeline cross-references – where an outline was absolutely required. As my hubby said: “without one, you would have definitely gotten lost.” But we’ll let the critics judge for themselves once it has been published. I’ll be offering up a teaser tale, “The Phoenix Egg,” for that book in the near future, once the book’s release is drawing near.

The Blurb on Other People’s Words – Friday Edition

This is normally my Monday thing, but for timing reasons, I’m doing a Friday edition. Not a review in this instance…

This is Autumn.

Not the season – I’m well aware it’s spring – the person. To be specific the writer.

Autumn is a travel and fiction writer currently based in Maine where she lives in a yurt with her husband and lovable Cairn Terriers. Her work is featured on the adventure travel website No Map Nomads where she is the co-editor and writer (and also known as Weifarer). Her writing blog is at Weifarer’s Wandering, where she talks about the fun and trials of being a writer as well as upcoming releases. She is also a member of Guild of Dreams, which features her blog posts as well as those of eleven other fantasy writers. She is an indie author with two other books currently available: the adventure fantasy novel Born of Water and Born of Water’s Novel Companion. The sequel to Born of Water, Rule of Fire, is scheduled for release in June of 2013. She has plans for many more novels. Check out Weifarer’s Wandering and her Facebook page for updates.

With a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bucknell University in Studio Arts and English, Autumn once considered a career in illustration. After a few years of selling paintings while working as the manager of a gallery and custom framing store, a party and fine gifts store in Virginia, working retail at a gourmet kitchen store, being the head embroiderer at a college clothing store, and finally waitressing for a year, she decided to head back to University. After two years of intense science courses, this career path change led to a Master of Science degree in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine in Orono. Since graduating with her M.S., Autumn has worked for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

A wanderer at heart, Autumn’s desire to travel has led her to France while still in high school, a year abroad in Manchester, UK which led to excursions in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and around many parts of England, and more recent trips with family to Mexico (both the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico sides), US Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Costa Rica, Saba, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, and four Canadian provinces. She has plans for many further adventures both real and fictional.

And this is Autumn’s new cover!

Pretty special, eh? She’s a talented graphic designer.

And this is what the fuss is all about…

Rule of Fire:

Six friends stand alone against the combined Orders of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, protecting a girl whose forbidden abilities have condemn her to death. Now they are joined by a man who was once the Curse, the Church’s most powerful weapon and Ria’s greatest threat. Left with no name and no memory, the decision to aid this stranger will cost friendships and more as the group of friends journey north to seek a tribe of people lost to time amid an ancient war. The path home is riddled with dangers as the Church of Four Orders still seeks Ria and the former Water Priestess Nirine. For one High Priest, the desire for vengeance is personal.

Ria must unravel the mysteries of her power to find acceptance in a world where her abilities are considered a taint. Is the strange gift of magic an aberration that should be destroyed or something far more, related to the skills held by the Elementals who rule Myrrah?

The sequel to Born of Water, Rule of Fire is book 2 in the epic fantasy trilogy, the Rise of the Fifth Order. Return to the world of Myrrah ruled by the Church of Four Orders. Release is scheduled for June 21st!

Learn more about the world of Myrrah and book 1, Born of Water, on Autumn’s blog, Weifarer’s Wandering.

Any questions?

A Current Endeavor – Skipped

You may have noticed I skipped my Monday review. I wanted to review the novel I had just finished. I struggled with this. I actually enjoyed the last two thirds of the book, but I can’t in good conscience give it a good review, and therefore, I won’t review it at all.

Don’t get me wrong. The author has a very readable writing style. Her characters and world-building were quite interesting, and even though I didn’t like the protagonist in the beginning and I felt like the story lacked a proper intro (many books do nowadays), these are not the reasons I can’t give that book a good review.

The major problem I had with the book was a terrible event, or rather series of terrible events, that happen to the protagonist who is a minor at the time. My issue with this isn’t that the situation happens in the story – these sorts of things happen in real life, unfortunately. It is not condoned behaviour in the story either. Pretending these things don’t happen doesn’t help anyone, so I don’t think it is wrong to build it into the tragic history of a character…I’ve done that much myself. No, my problem was the detail with which these events were described. It wasn’t just unnecessary; it was reprehensible in my opinion.

It is quite clear what sort of terrible things are happening to this girl without the author going into great detail. The only reason for doing so would be for the sake of shock value and/or the titillation factor and as far as I see things, considering the character’s age, that is very, very wrong. I’m surprised the book wasn’t turned away at the border. I certainly wasn’t expecting that kind of content when I bought it at a well-known bookstore chain.

I’m not going to name names or point elbows; I’m just explaining why I skipped my Monday review. I hope I never have cause to skip a review for this reason again.

Submission blitz update: I’m in the middle of a rewrite requested for one story, and I received both a rejection (for one of my weirder stories) and one new “maybe” for “In too Deep.” That’s a lot of maybes so far – hopefully a couple will turn into yeses.

A Current Endeavor – Can’t?!

OMG – I am so tired of people who don’t know me trying to tell me what I can or can’t do. Yes, I’m a woman, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write horror, SF, westerns, war stories or any other flipping genre that some moron with dangly bits has decided should be an exclusively male genre. I also don’t want to be told that just because my brain processes information differently than the average pantser that “I’m doing it all wrong” because I use an outline and like to have a solid goal (also known as an ending) in mind when I write. That doesn’t make me less creative, less spontaneous or *less *anything.

Mr. Misogynist – it is wrong to stereotype, it is wrong to judge the entire world by your limited experiences and your ignorantly selective standards, or decide that because one member of group A hasn’t met those standards none of the members of group A can do so. Try expanding your immature and outdated perspectives a little.

Mr. Pantser – you don’t see me trying to tell you your way of doing things is wrong because when I pants I run off on stupid, unnecessary tangents and all of my endings, if I manage to get there at all, end up flimsy. Guess what? I know better. What works for you works for you and I’m not about to suggest otherwise just because they don’t work for me. Simply because you find success with that methodology, it doesn’t mean you are god of all things written and get to decide it is the only way everybody else must write. I’m sorry your creativity and spontaneity are hampered by order and direction – but that’s you, not everybody else in existence.

I’m going to write what I want to write the way that works for me – despite having breasts and despite the fact that some of you out there want to force your right-sided brain methodology down my throat.

Okay – that part of the rant is over.

What Instigated this? Well aside from the fact that I had to look into the bias directed towards woman by some people involved in the horror genre for this post, I also ran into an article today about the nastiness woman SF writers are having to deal with here. It makes me seriously angry to think that the men mentioned have the nerve to call themselves professionals.

I also ran into a few posts by a successful and prolific horror writer who insisted the only proper way to write is by pantsing, and if you aren’t doing it his way, you are doing it wrong.

The thing I think some people are forgetting here?

Mind your own damn business.

For those who don’t, here’s *my* opinion: If you don’t like what you’ve read by certain female writers – fine, don’t like it. Express your opinions if you must, but note that they are your opinions, not fact, and try using a little respect and compassion when you do so. Nobody made you the voice for the entire genre, and how dare you impose your bigoted impressions based on one or two female writers of a certain genre upon all female writers of that genre?

If I based all my opinions of men on my worst encounters with those of that gender, you all had better start running. I’m just saying.

Lighten up. Live and let live.

You aren’t perfect either.

A Current Endeavor – Moving On

I’ve declared defeat for the moment with Sifting the Ashes. I had no idea when I started working on it how bad my timing was – a gloomy story with a narrative choice that was a huge challenge for me (I had never written a novel in first person before…and from the perspective of a crow?) I could have managed it the same time last year, but not now. So I’ve stopped at chapter 7 and I’m setting it aside until things pick up so that I have renewed enthusiasm for the story. That means I either have to find a new beta reader whose opinion I trust or things have to improve so that they are running smoothly enough in my life that I’m jazzed to really push myself. I’m not sure when or if one of those things might happen.

Instead, I’m returning to the familiar, just to keep me going in the face of discouraging events. I just finished Chapter 3 of Endeavor, the fifth book in my Fervor series, and I’m pretty sure I can see this one through to the end without my usual chapter-by-chapter feedback. I still feel a little like a blind woman fumbling around in the dark because I haven’t had that since the end of 2012, but there’s nothing I can do to change this right now.

Submission blitz update – I got a maybe on “Flash!” but they want me to rewrite the ending. I have a possible idea but I’m waiting for some specific direction from them first. We’ll see if I can turn this “maybe” into a “yes”.

Edit Fest – In a Hard Place

I think I’ve probably reached that point in the journey of a struggling writer that might be one of the hardest to deal with. In the beginning, writing was all about fun – with wild ideas of getting published someday (and making money from it), a lot of output with not much to show for it, a sense that all of it is pretty much a silly unachievable dream and for the most part making a game of everything. Then somebody that I didn’t know very well took an interest in my writing – several people, actually – and I got my first story sale at semi-pro rates. Suddenly, I felt like I had a real chance.

It wasn’t long before the first small press novel contract came along, then another and another, and more story sales. Suddenly it wasn’t funny or silly anymore. I was published. I had sales … not enough to throw a party, but enough to justify my efforts somewhat. The semi-pro sales have added up, I’ve had a few maybes from pro-rate venues (although no yeses yet), and some of the fun has become work: careful editing, promotion, the whole submission process, and more.

But I kind of feel like I’m teetering on a point. My confidence is building, but not enough to support me on its own, and not enough to convince me that I’m not deluding myself, that I can hope for something more. For all the people I know who have encouraged me, I’ve had more than as many kick me in the face – metaphorically speaking. I have no agent, no big publisher contract and no pro-rate sale…nothing solid that can allow me to say “look – here’s proof.” Maybe all I’ll ever be is a wanna-be and that’s a tough notion to swallow. It’s hard to push for the surface when one day you feel like a fighter and the next you feel like a fake.

Submission blitz update – another rejection, this one from the podcast I was hesitant to submit to. The good news is that this time their critique was directed at the story and not a personal attack. However, while I’m pleased it wasn’t a form letter or an insult, I’m disappointed by the fact that I didn’t merit a proofread, with an obvious typo in the middle of a very short letter. Also, based on the comments, I doubt I’ll ever have anything of mine they’ll find acceptable. The few negatives they listed suggest my type of story just isn’t their cup of tea. I may try them again the next time I blitz – we’ll see.

Edit Fest – I Have Gremlins

In today’s high tech world, no writer wants gremlins, but I’m plagued by them every day. Just a few examples? Yesterday morning I got in the elevator with another woman. She pressed her floor button and it lit up. I pressed mine, directly below hers, mine lit up and hers went out. She had to press it all over again – and I’m sure it was my fault. Two microwaves I used often died in rapid succession of one another. I haven’t ever been able to wear a digital/battery-operated watch as they die within a couple of months after I start wearing them (but a clockwork watch I had to wind to operate lasted seven years.) Both Kindles I owned died within three months of their receipt, the electro-magnetism in their screens malfunctioning in exactly the same way. My netbook crashes without warning on a regular basis – the error message telling me it’s a hardware issue – and has since practically day one. My computers at work glitch out for no reason, much more than anyone else’s. My cars never behave quite the way they’re supposed to. I refuse to own a cell phone. Given my history with technology, what’s the point?

My publisher tells me it’s gremlins, and I’m tempted to agree with him. If you think the above mentioned problems are bad, they can be worse -enough at times to make me want to go back to an old-fashioned typewriter. I make a point to back things up threefold, but I still ended up pulling out my hair out over a format file that went missing the other day. I searched for the original and all three back-ups many times over (we’re talking hours of hunting), but it had disappeared from everywhere. I couldn’t explain it. After doing what I had decided would be my last full search of my netbook, which proved to be unsuccessful, I was preparing to start the work on the file over from scratch, when suddenly, the file was there again. I immediately backed it up my usual places.

How did this happen? Where did the file go and how did it manage to come back again?

All I can do is scratch my head. My best guess? – - – I have gremlins.