Cate Morgan's Blog, page 9

Author’s Log: Where The Tired Things Are (#ROW80, #amwriting)

Grrrr…Argh…

Seriously, though, it’s nice to be more or less caught up at the day job, so I can turn my attention other (and, to my mind, more important) things. Fortunately, I got hit with a large project at work that involves the downloading of many large reports, so I’m back to multi-tasking wherever possible. (I love my job.)

I am deep in the abyss of revisions on Blood & Steam #1. So deep, in fact, I might be in danger of being poked in the eye, never mind the creepy-pants watching. (Seriously, Nietzsche? Where did you come up with this stuff?!) I really should have brought spelunking gear, including one of those helmets with the flashlights built in.

I’m taking care of the small stuff first, to allow my subconscious the time and space to work out the progressively bigger stuff. There’s a LOT of work involved with this one, so much so I’m more than likely going to have to send it back to the Pink Hammer for a second round of pounding and shaping. The pacing on this one is definitely a departure from my previous, tightly-plotted Action & Adventure books, and so requires some serious tightening around the middle.

I still love this story though. I love the world and the characters. But this is what happens when I don’t follow my regular pre-production routine and let my imagination run away with me. Pantsing may be footloose and fancy-free and good enough for a first, messy draft, but it does NOT a book make. Lesson learned.

So while I’m chipping and carving away at Blood & Steam #1, I’m also working out the details for the second book. So I’m way behind on my drafting schedule this quarter, but that’s okay. Keepers 4 is still with Editor Awesome at my publisher, MINSTREL’S DAUGHTER is still being reviewed and queried with various agent-y type people, and so the only book anyone’s waiting on me for is the first installment of Blood & Steam. Sometimes taking a break is good for the ol’ creative juices.

Speaking of which, I’ll be gearing up for Convention Season pretty soon, which means…Costumes!! *haz a happy*

DRAGON’S HEART (Fantasy Novel): Draft ACT I (22,500 words)

This one is a little more rough going during the setup portion than I would like. Usually, my problems come right after Midpoint, in the third 25% of the book, not in the first 25%. But it’s getting there. I’ve been pushing through as best I can, and then going back to fix what I’ve done once I realize what the solution is. It helps that I finally realized what the theme/spine of the story is something that’s been eluding me for awhile. This is important, as it’s the spine that gives a story its voice. And a story’s voice is its soul, because that’s where the music is.

BLOOD & STEAM #1 (Steampunk Novella): In Revision

Or should I say “In Revision HELL”?

Actually, it’s not too bad. Just a LOT of work. Everything’s been pretty much put on hold until I get through a couple more drafts of this one. Hopefully, time and space will open up this next week. And by space, I mean brain power. Because all the time in the world doesn’t do me any good in the abyss of mental exhaustion. MY BRAIN HURTS!

WAKING MUSE (Contemporary Romance Novellas): Rebrand and Re-Release

LADY TENNANT has already been recovered and released widely across platforms at Perma-Free, although I think I want to rewrite my cover copy. In fact, I think I want to rewrite ALL of my cover copy, which I think might help with sales. This week I plan to ready Libby Hawker’s Gotta Read It in preparation of this Herculean task.

This is all just a first couple of things in optimizing everything, so I don’t spend so much time tinkering and poking around the business side of my writing like an iffy car engine that refuses to play nice with an even iffier transmission.

Okay, guys–time to check in. How’s your pre-summer writing going?

 

Author’s Log: I’m Baaa-aaaaack!! (#ROW80, #amwriting)

Soooooo….I’m back.

Kinda. Mainly this has been a week of Catch The Hell Up. It’s not working very well, as I seem to still be on California time.

California was surprisingly cool for this time of year. Usually it’s around 10-15 degrees hotter than my part of Florida, but it was unseasonably mild.

The part of California I was in should be pretty. It’s surrounded by three mountain ranges and a multitude canyons. Instead what happens is the pollution produced by LA meanders down to the Inland Empire, creating a constant haze of smog. What should be a clear blue day isn’t, really. Coming back to Florida was almost blinding with all the vivid blues and greens. Also, what had once been a lovely neighborhood surrounded by fields in the sixties is now surrounded by ghetto. Yuck.

(You can keep your White Christmases, Midwest. I’ll take clear blue skies and palm trees on Christmas morning.)

I did, however, get to go to Disneyland for the first time in 20+ years, with my one cousin from that side of my family. She’s all grown up now, so we had tons of fun. We were beyond exhausted by the end of the day, but it was entirely worth it. There was a lot a new things for me to see (having been away for so long), but all the classics were still there. This makes me happy.

Updates!

I did get a little writing while I was away, though not a lot. I mainly honed my outline for DRAGON’S HEART. This weekend, I’m deep into revisions/rewrites for Blood & Steam 1, which should lead me write into the second book. I’d like to get Books 2 and 3 outlined asap.

After that, it’s off to Keepers: Origins 4 and 5, and Keepers of the Flame 5. (I’m on five books already? How the heck did THAT happen?! O.O)

As far as drafting is concerned, I have no idea how many words I have right now, because they are not yet in the computer. I’m hoping to have a better idea of where I stand later in the week. I’m almost literally buried in words and manuscripts in various stages of progression. I’m still digging myself out, with pickaxe and spelunking helmet in tow.

So what have you guys been up to since I’ve been away? How’s the writing going?

 

 

Author’s Log: On Haitus, California Edition

Your regularly scheduled blog programming will return Sunday, May 17.

The Power Of A Sympathetic Villain (#IWSG)

REALLY REALLY BUSY this week, between the Not-So-Evil Day Job, preparing to travel to California next week, and trying to catch up on my drafting and revisions. Also, I’ve had recurring knee problems recently that has slowed me down a bit (literally), which has caused me to hobble around like Quasimoto. So I seem to be falling behind at EVERYTHING lately. *sigh*

I did finally get around to watching Netflix’s Daredevil. I liked it well enough, but the thing I was most impressed with was the writing for Fisk/Kingpin. He was a true antagonist for Daredevil, because the two of them actually want the same thing–they’re just both coming at their mutual goals from opposite sides of the alignment spectrum. (Also, Holy Wow to Vincent d’Onofrio’s portrayal of the character.)

In honor of my appreciation of the sympathetic or redeemable villain–what I call a True Antagonist, because Villain tends to be a bit of a misnomer in a lot of scenarios–here’s a list of other favorite Bad Guys and other antagonists with an arc as defined as the hero’s (and, sometimes, more interesting):

The Agent, Serenity
The Warlord The Dragon Star trilogy (Melanie Rawn)
Darth Vader, Star Wars
Loghain, Dragon Age: Origins 
Lucien, Underworld
Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter
Warner, Shatter Me Series (Tahereh Mafi)

I know there’s loads more, most of which I’m certain will smack me between the eyes at 3:00am, but that’s all I could squeeze from my Gray Matters for the mo’

Your turn! Who are your favorite antagonists?

Author’s Log: Out Of The Mire (#amwriting, #ROW80)

Last week, I was all tangled up like a kitten in yarn in the setup of my latest fantasy novel, DRAGON’S HEART. So I went back to my Save the Cat plot outline, and realized I was missing one or two critical things.

Conflict to the Protagonist’s Want: This goes back to that age-old actor’s cliché of “What’s my motivation?” What my protagonist wants is to be a good leader for her people, when the time comes (of course it never once occurs to her that her time may come before she’s ready). She has a lot of pride (her flaw), plenty of intelligence (her strength), but there was no immediate conflict or stakes working against her at this point. In other words, no compelling hook or question for the reader.

The Solution: I had to do a bit more world-building here. I had to create an immediate threat to my heroine’s people, otherwise the events that come after won’t be nearly as impactful as I need them to be. So I created a bit of world history that will lead to her father’s controversial decision to make her a leader in her own right—one that she necessarily doesn’t agree with, though she loves and trusts her father. However, she neglects to see him as human.

Wrong Pacing: In going over my Save the Cat worksheet, it occurred to me that I needed to rearrange a few of my plot points. Specifically, I realized that what I had for my Midpoint is actually my First Plot Point (approx. 25% earlier), and my Second Plot Point was my Midpoint. This also satisfies the mythic hero’s journey structure. After that, the rest more or less fell into place.

The Solution: This means I don’t necessarily need 30K words for the First Act, but at least 22K and change (the way I write, it will still probably be between 27K-30K), and now that I have a series of events that makes more sense, it’s much clearer where I’m headed. But I’m shooting for 22,500 words at this point, which gets me back on track without a lot of lollygagging. Huzzah!

Now that I’ve broken through the latest brick wall like the Kool-Aid Man, it’s back to business as usual. This week I redid cover art and formatting for THE LADY TENNANT (Waking Muse #1) and re-released it for wide distribution, under the heading of “Better Late Than Never”. I’m working on getting it established as a perma-free, first book in a series.

Goals!

 

Drafting: DRAGON’S ART—Act I

My goal is to hit at least 22,500 words by the time I leave for California on May 10. I should be able to do this by hitting around 1,700 words per day.

Pre-Production: BLOOD & STEAM #2 There’s a lot I’m looking to do with this one. I know it takes place in London, but there’s some research involved, regarding the naval laws of the time behind mutiny (it was tantamount to treason, no matter the circumstances). And I want to look into current and cultural events of the time to aid toward my world building. Becca loves and admires her sister dearly, but resents her a little as well, because Acacia so blithely gets away with thumbing her nose at convention and does precisely what she pleases—trapping Becca in a more conventional role. But Becca’s whip-smart as well as proper, and I’m looking forward to writing her

Post-Production: WAKING MUSE #2 I’m going back in on post on HEARTH & HOME to give it the same rebranding and reformatting treatment I gave Book 1. Then I’ll redistribute widely. I’m having trouble finding a second foreground picture I like, but I’ll get there in the end.

BLOOD & STEAM #1–Now Available For Pre-Order! (#steampunk)

PRE-ORDER AT AMAZON

Author’s Log: Back At The Story Board (#amwriting, #ROW80)

So I struggled somewhat this week in getting the first act of DRAGON’S HEART started. I restarted my first chapter at least three times before finally hitting upon what I think is the proper beginning, but it took more doing than I would like. Generally, I have a very clear picture of my setup, so I found this more than mildly frustrating.

I came to the understanding that this was going to be the most complex story I’ve written, and that it’s going to need some more development work. It looks like I’m going to need three main POV characters instead of one. I also haven’t tapped into the “voice” of it yet. It’s rhythm and cadences aren’t coming to me as easily as it does with most of my other projects. I think because it hasn’t percolated enough up from my subconscious yet, which means I’m going to have to coax it further.

Usually, it’s the other way around. I have the voice of the story, but the story itself has to be pulled up from the dark dreaming of my creative mind, usually getting stuck at least once, usually in the same place. This time I know the story, but I’m not feeling the soul of it yet.

It’s slowly coming to me that what I’m writing, really, is history. Of this world I’m making of whole cloth, with clashing cultures vying for supremacy, struggling with ferocious cultural pride warring with the compromise necessary to ensure their own people’s prosperity. In the middle of this three would-be leaders come to fruition and power.

Coming at it from the angle of history, I think, allows me to come at the story from the right frame of mind. History is people doing things for certain reasons, not always immediately accessible, and far-ranging consequences of those few influential individuals’ actions. It’s also about what led them to those actions, so that posterity can understand.

These three characters then, are rising to power and clashing and forming alliances and making enemies and the effect all this has on their people. But, in the end, these leaders are people, too. And they’re all trying to do what they see as the right thing, often at cross-purposes.

Part of the problem is that things were busy for me a the day job this week, so I didn’t have a lot of mental energy to spare. Hopefully, this week will be a little easier.

One thing I did manage to finish this week was the cover art for Blood & Steam #1, which turned out so incredibly pretty. I want to hang it on my wall, which is generally a good sign. It makes me happy to look at.  The manuscript is still with my independent editor, aka The Pink Hammer, and I’m looking at getting a pre-order up later this week.

As soon as I a get my projected 30K in on DRAGON’S HEART, I get to launch into Book 2, which will be about middle sister Becca getting her brother off of mutiny charges with the assistance of a barrister. I’m not sure what the actual adventure will be, but I know Becca Carlisle well by now, so I know whatever she does will resonate with readers.

1. Draft DRAGON’S HEART Act I (27K-30K Words): Failed dismally on this one, for reasons mentioned above, so this week I’m working hard to get back on track. This is my only goal for this week, so it’s head down, nose to the grindstone. I want three chapters in by the end of the week, so I can build up enough momentum to get me going on a chapter every one or two days. Before I can do that, however, I need to solve my current story problems.

How’d you guys do this week? Hopefully better that I did!

 

Author’s Log: Running To Catch Up (#ROW80, #amwriting)

Whew! What a week!

So I’m back on track again. I finish a rough draft of THIRTEEN WITCHES, clocking in at a little over 30K words. I still need to fold in Michael’s back story here and there to give it that extra layer of conflict, but all in all I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

This coming I start the first Act of my new fantasy novel THE DRAGON’S HEART. It will, I hope, be epic on multiple levels.

This week, I watched a great documentarty on storytelling in TV called Showrunners. There wasn’t as much Joss Whedon in it as I would have liked, but he does make a really great point about the difference between “moments” and “moves”, and how he’ll take a great moment over a big move any day. I’m summarizing here, but basically he pointed out that moments are geared toward making your audience resonate with your characters, where moves like “Gasp! It was his evil twin all along!” give us nothing in the Feels department on their own.

With an eye toward gearing my heroes more toward having something in common with my readers that they can easily connect to (and therefore getting invested in), I’ve been reading Libbie Hawker’s Take Off Your Pants, a book about a different way to outline your story based on character arc rather than plot events.

In my spare moments I’ve been trolling The Internets for costume ideas for my local Comic Con in Tamba Bay this summer. I think I’ve pretty much decided on going Browncoat on Friday and Sunday, and then for the Big Day (Saturday) I’m going to cosplay as Constantine, because I love the show and it seems like a pretty comfortable idea to manage to Florida heat and crowd. Also, I have most of the pieces already, so YAY!

There’s going to be some great guests this year: Carrie Fisher, Iain Glenn, Freema Agyeman (where my Dr. Who fans at?), and, yes, Matt Ryan, who plays Constantine on TV. SO EXCITED.

1. Draft 30K on DRAGON’S HEART. That equates to 9-10K words/week for the next three weeks.

2. Re-release THE LADY TENNANT (Waking Muse #1) for wide distribution. This includes new cover art and updated formatting. I may even be able to add some platforms, like Google Play.

3. Start Planning my launch for BLOOD & STEAM #1, which is due out for release at the end of June. I want to start getting things lined up now, which includes my Amazon Pre-Order and polishing up my cover art.

Author’s Log: That Thing I Meant To Do (#ROW80, #amwriting)

[image error]Hey, guys! I hope you had a safe, fun, and happy Easter last weekend. Just a quickie check-in today, since I’m in the final stretch of a draft, which invariably makes me feel vague Cheshire Cat-like.

So I didn’t end up getting much in the way of new words drafted this weekend, despite all my lofty plans. I think my brain just needed a rest, honestly. I did, however, end up muscling my way through a plot problem in THIRTEEN WITCHES.

It occured to me the character arc for Michael was okay, but not great. So I added another layer to his backstory to make him more three-dimensional, so I’ll start folding that in now and then go back during revisions to lay in the ground work. Now he and Kat both have something to work toward on a personal level, with deeper character development. It only goes to show that no matter how much you think you know about a character, it never hurts to know more before you start drafting, no matter what you end up using in the end.

I also sketched out the plot of a new fantasy novel, which I am calling DRAGON’S HEART. I also outlined the first act, and even penned a short prologue to this ambitious piece. So there’s that. All in all, it was a good weekend to let my subconscious do the heavy lifting while my forebrain indulged in a Netflix marathon.

The other thing I did was complete a proof for the cover art for Blood & Steam #1. IT’S SO PRETTY! In fact, I’d say it’s my best/favorite cover to date. It all came about because I was trying to do this Thing, which would not work for me no matter what I tried, so I did this Other Thing instead, and it turned out differently than I anticipated, but Much Cooler in the end. (So, like writing, basically.)

I played a bit more, and ended up with Awesome Cover. Now I just need to do the textifying (titling, etc), and we’re good to go. Book the First is due to be released at the end of June. I’m playing around with the idea of pre-orders, and whether I should go Kindle Select the first 90 days.

Let’s take a took at what I’m aiming to draft this quarter/round:

1. DRAGON’S HEART (Act I): 30k Words

2. KEEPERS: ORIGINS 5: 10-15k Words

3. KEEPERS OF THE FLAME #5: 27-30k Words

4. BLOOD & STEAM #2: 27-30k Words

Naturally, this includes all the pre-production work as well, and post-production for some of the Quarter 1 stuff: re-releasing the Waking Muse collection across platforms, re-releasing Keepers: Origins with the new formatting, launching Blood & Steam #1. Also, revisions and BETA testing on THIRTEEN WITCHES so I can submit it to Samhain in July.

Whew!

So, fresh round, fresh season. What are you guys looking to get done?

 

 

Lessons I’ve Learned From Lindsey Stirling (#iwsg, #amwriting, #lindseystirling)

Hey, guys! I’m a little busy finishing up a draft and getting a manuscript to one of my editors, so I thought I’d give you something a little different this month for the Insecure Writers Support Group.

1. Just because the people that love you think they know what’s best for you, doesn’t make them right. Many moons ago, in the Long Before Times of the Deep Dark, I was told a lot of things by family who were genuinely looking out for me that I couldn’t do certain things. Or, at least, that I shouldn’t. It wasn’t practical. I needed a get a “real job”. You can’t make a living as a Creative. Can’t, can’t, can’t. This was borne out by my mother, a writer, who has yet to make a concerted go of it despite all her hard work, and who hasn’t yet jumped on the indie publishing bandwagon. The Magical Dawn of the Internet was still a few years away, so this outlet wasn’t yet available to me.

But the fact of the matter is, despite their genuine concern, they couldn’t tell the future. I won’t say I wasted all those years, because everything happens for a reason, and I spent that time honing my craft. But it did undermine my confidence, and that’s one thing no one, no matter how much they love us, has the right to do. I’m amazed at some of the confidence and empowerment some of these high school kids have today.

This didn’t happen to Lindsey, but I suspect it’s happened to quite a lot of us at one point or another. Which segues to:

2. Persistence is key. Lindsey Stirling’s family couldn’t afford violin lessons for her, and her mom spent something like two years looking for someone willing to give her fifteen-minute lessons. Everyone said it couldn’t be done. Until one teacher was willing to try.

3. Critics Don’t Know Everything. Lindsey wowed everyone on America’s Got Talent, but then the judges ordered her to do more, play faster, dance more, bigger, bad-assier. Instead of remaining true to herself she listened, and ended up eviserated on National TV. (I’ve seen her live–and I can tell you the judges were blind as well as deaf.) They told her she wasn’t good enough to be a solo artist, and to stay in the background.

But she learned her lesson. She did her own thing, her way, and became a You Tube sensation. She’s sold millions of albums. (Around the release of her second album she received an invitation from America’s Got Talent to appear on their show, citing that she was exactly the sort of artist they were looking to spotlight, as though they hadn’t already put her through the wringer–some intern didn’t do their homework!)

4. Don’t work so hard that you forget what’s truly important. There was a point when Lindsey was working so hard she sort of let family and friends by the way side. As a result she wasn’t recharging as much as she should have been, and it affected her health. As someone with a stress-related condition, this is something I can attest to. Sometimes you just need to rest. So rest. You’re not letting anyone down by checking in with yourself and taking stock.