Mia Darien's Blog, page 3

Book Review: ‘Devolution’ by Max Brooks

“Devolution” Cover Art

One of the more unfortunate side effects of being an editor for a living alongside also being a writer is that I don’t read as many books as I used to. I did, however, see that Max Brooks had a new book out and I had to grab it. I found World War Z to be an amazing piece of fiction, but not only that, this book dealt with one of my favorite places–Mount Rainier–and an ever-intriguing monster–Bigfoot. It sounded tailor-made for me.

When my state had a power outage for a few days follow Tropical Storm Isaias, what better time to read?

I read Devolution in one evening/night. It was just as engaging and gripping as Brooks’ zombie book, and it was nice to have something to focus on other than the lack of fans in the middle of summer.

One of the things that smacked me around while reading was the same thing I had felt and through reading World War Z, and that is to simply sit back and marvel at Brooks’ ability to examine not only the human condition in a psychological way, but in political-social ways. In cultural ways. To look at all these concepts, in the immediate and overtime, and translate those into fiction. Into setting, plot/events, and the insight of different characters.

When you learn that Max Brooks is in fact the son of the legendary Mel Brooks, one thinks the two’s chosen paths couldn’t be more different. Father makes satirical moviles while son writes horror novels, and yet when you think about it, they are brilliant in the same ways. They use the lenses of their chosen media to examine humanity, and do so in a way that I could only hope to ever achieve.

Devolution itself primarily follows the firsthand, journal account of Kate Holland. It shows what happens when humans are suddenly bumped a few rungs down on the ladder and the food chain, and how adversity affects different people in different ways. It shows both evolution and devolution in different characters, different settings, and different ways. I’d recommend this highly to any fan of the genre. It’s not a happy book, I’ll warn you of that, but anything describing a “massacre” generally wouldn’t be…but it’s a good read.

I look forward to his next novel.

5 Stars for Devolution by Max Brooks (Buy Here!)

The Cost of Editing

Being an editor isn’t the easiest of jobs, and part of the problem is that a lot of authors don’t see the “need” for us. (At least until bad reviews because of editing start coming in.) Many do, and I’m grateful for them–as are their readers, I’m sure–but many see what we do as a luxury. I get it. It can be expensive! But so can publishing an unedited book.

I asked Joylynn Ross, literary consultant and publishing coach, who I have had the pleasure to work with over the past couple of years, to offer her insights on this topic, and frankly, I think she has said it better than I could have!

“What’s the fricken rush? That’s a question self-published authors need to ask themselves. I know it’s a question I wish I’d asked myself prior to putting out my first book. Had I, then my very first self-published novel, that was littered with errors, would have never seen the light of day…not that day anyway; the day it came off the printer a hot mess! But instead, I would have waited, learned more about the craft and the full writing process, as well as the different types of editors, and saved up enough money or set up payment arrangements with professional editors (not an English teacher or someone who did “good” in English class), but professional editors who can be vetted throughout the industry.

“Readers were forgiving with my first novel (thank God). “Yes, it had errors, but the story line was so good I got past them,” said one forgiving reader. Well, I’ve never forgiven myself for allowing life gurus to manipulate me into thinking that my “good enough” was good enough to hit the publish button on. I learned that it’s never fair to charge a reader for anything less than my best, no matter how eager I am to get that story out of my head and share it with the world. And even though I was given grace almost two decades ago when I didn’t have nearly the amount of resources and technology an author does now, I’m not giving it to today’s authors, who know better but refuse to do better, especially the ones who use the cost of editing as the reason why they bypass what’s only the most important part of the writing process.

“If you can’t afford to edit your book, then you can’t afford to publish it, because, trust me, whether it’s horrible reviews or no reviews at all simply because a reader couldn’t get through the book, it’s gonna cost you. One way or another…it’s gonna cost you. Majority says writers have to have thick skin, so shame on the other writers who baby, coddle, and join the pity party of those complaining they can’t afford to get editing done. Be honest with your fellow literary artists and tell them like it is. Tell them the truth! When they start whining about not being able to afford to edit their books, let them know that they can’t afford not to, then offer them ways and suggestions, such as saving up and payment plans, so that they don’t put out their “good enough,” but instead, put out their “best.” I mean, what’s the fricken rush?”

Yeah, editing can cost a lot…but as a reader as well as writer and editor, it’s not a luxury! Put as much effort into the production as you do the writing and the advertising. A lot of editors–myself included–are happy to work with authors to make it easier, such as payment plans.

So if you’re worried about affording to get your book edited, I ask if you can really afford not to.

Why Are Vampires Sexy?

Once upon a time, I was asked to write about why fangs in fiction are so popular. Why are vampires so sexy?

The problem was that I don’t know! So, I traveled to Adelheid to ask the experts. Also known as the preternatural employees of the Stanton Agency.

Bellator: An Anthology of Warriors of Space and Time

Do you want to read great stories AND help a great charity? Then check out Bellator! All author proceeds go to the Wounded Warrior Project, and with this purchase, you get twelve sci-fi and fantasy stories!

Bellator was originally released today in 2014!

Here’s an one-question interview done when it was released with its twelve amazing authors.

Bad Blood is Live!

This is the go-live post for book one.

The Genesis of Adelheid

The road to the creation of Adelheid and what is now the Blood Rights Series has been a long one, and with more than its share of potholes. While I’ve already talked about the city building specifics (and touch briefly on them again here), this is more about the evolution of me and the series on the whole.

Some authors have an idea and can type out their stories to perfection inside of a few months. For others, it takes more work. For me and the Blood Rights Series, it’s been almost two decades in the making. Here’s a look at where and how it started, and where it’s ended up.

You could say that an examination of the series is to look at the evolution of a story and an idea.

When I was younger, I read the first three Anne Rice vampire stories, I devoured the Vampire Files by P. N. Elrod (and still count her among my favorite authors), and I loved the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton. Of course, I fell off the wagon with Anita Blake when she turned into a raging hypocrite, but she was still a strong influence early on.

I also loved Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta, Janet Evanovich and Stephanie Plum, and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone. (Again, all of them lost me later on in the series, but I inhaled their earlier books.)

So, it was really no surprise when I decided to write a vampire story called “This Shade of Night” as an older teenager.

I believe I was ultimately inspired by Anita Blake and the idea of preternatural legality, though I thought at the time that she was missing a lot of marks she could have been hitting with it. So, I did what many authors do and decided to fix what I didn’t like. I wrote my own story.

At sixteen, what do we really know, though?

I started the series in Salem, Massachusetts, though I don’t live there. (Visited several times, having grown up two hours away.) I made Sadie an investigator for an agency called Preternatural, Unlimited. She was half vampire, half were-tiger. It was set in 2018, fifteen years after the law. (This was around 2003 in my world.) I mangled a half-dozen bits of lore into the story because I thought they were cool, as well as the mystery and romance.

I even self-published through iUniverse. And believe it or not, it met with a decent reception from a magazine reviewer. Of course, that magazine was a trade publication now gone defunct, but still, the story had potential. I wrote two more books in the series, one featuring Dakota the theriomorph hunter and the third back to Sadie. These never went further than friends and family.

Life caught up with me. Marriage, divorce, marriage, changing jobs, changing houses, having a child… You get the idea. I stopped writing for a while and didn’t pick it up again, for good, until my son was born. I had to return to my roots, but this time, I was going to do it right. I decided that more needed to go into it.

I decided to create a new town. I gave it a history. I created a private listing of the location, the businesses, the population, who founded it, and so on.

I researched the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and modeled the path of the Preternatural Rights Act of 2010 after it, calling it Cameron’s Law after the Harvard law student and werewolf (Cameron St John) who pioneered it. I gave the law a history. I moved it all to our timeline to achieve the affect on the setting I had always intended but didn’t make as much sense before.

I brainstormed with a biologist friend to come up with preternatural biology, and chose what lore I’d use. I wrote a guide to the preternatural, which was originally published at the end of every story but now is linked to my website.

I made Sadie the owner of the agency, because she had always been the “anchor” character. I gave her history with Cameron St John, and more about her efforts in bringing the law into being. I put Cameron’s sister Madison as the agency’s secretary and Sadie’s best friend to anchor that history. I made her all vampire, because the half-breed thing just seemed silly. I re-plotted and rewrote, taking elements of the previous drafts but streamlining, tweaking, and making it work better.

Just like a writer, a story can mature. I might have had an okay, or even a good, story when it started but once it had matured and grown along with me, it’s become a better story. And now hopefully it’s a more “on point” one out there in the book market with its new fresh look.

Everything and everything grows up eventually, right? Even vampires.

Redundancy, Part 2

Even if you’re not writing an action-packed, fast-paced book, a smooth and quick flow to your words is very important. You want your book to “carry” your reader along, which means minimizing places where the reader might get bogged down or tripped up. This is why editing is important, but not just in terms of spelling and grammar. It’s also about word choice and streamlining. Get the most “bang for your buck” for the words you use.

Sometimes more words that aren’t exactly needed are used for drama or emphasis, but oftentimes, they are just redundant. When that’s the case, you want to trim those down to make everything smooth. It’s just like taking a file to a ragged fingernail.

1) When someone shouts or yells something, you almost never need to add “out.” They don’t need to shout out or yell out; they can just shout or yell. Sometimes “call out” is better than just “call,” but always read it aloud to yourself and see if you need it.

2) You never enter out of something, so you don’t need to write “entered inside.” They just entered.

3) Sometimes, there’s an assumption that readers will make. If you say someone shrugged, they will assume it was with shoulders. If you say ‘point,’ they will assume it was a finger. Only if it’s NOT done the assumed way–they pointed with a toe–should you put it in. Don’t write, “pointed with a finger” or “shrugged their shoulders.” (Shrugging with one shoulder is different. That’s just outside assumption.)

4) Do people every actually nod with anything but their heads? Or clap with their hands apart? “Clapped their hands together” is usually unnecessary. I call it my “as opposed to what” rule. “They nodded their heads.” As opposed to what… Nodding with feet?

5) Unless you have telepathy in your book, you don’t need to write “to herself/himself/myself” after a “he/she thought.”

I am going to enjoy this, he thought. (See? You don’t need “to himself.”)

6) “Reborn again” ~ How many times is one reborn? At least that they’re aware of. People usually mean either “reborn” or “born again.” Reborn again tends to be redundant.

7) This feels similar although not quite redundant, but doing a 360 lands you where you were. Most people mean to say they turned it around/changed, so please, you did a 180.

This list is not exhaustive, but it’s some of the most common examples I’ve come across over the years. When you’re doing your self-editing, always keep an eye out for things that are redundant, excessive, or so obvious as to be unnecessary.

Building a City

The Blood Rights Series (formerly known as the Adelheid Series) is built on one basic premise: that a law has been passed that makes all preternatural creatures (vampires, werewolves and more) legal citizens. They don’t have to “play human” to have the same rights and privileges as everyone else in the United States.

The series is based around the fictional city of Adelheid, CT, where a lot of preternatural beings live.

Growing up in New England, I’ve always known that this area’s long history is rife with paranormal fodder. Salem, MA, is just a couple of hours away from me and the history of that city is well known.

When I first conceived this series forever ago, I set it in Salem. (It was called the Preternatural, Unlimited Series then.) I was sixteen and had just visited Salem for the third time in my life. I originally chose to use it because it is so rich in history, lore, and personality.

Unfortunately, I don’t live there, so I started to feel like I couldn’t write about the city and do it the justice that it deserved.

Years later when I began to work on the series again and overhauled it, I wanted to get my world and setting straight before I even wrote the first book. I decided to make my own city and plant it in my home state of Connecticut. I modeled it slightly after the town I grew up in, but expanded on it to accommodate all I needed it to do.

I decided to give it a short history. Even if I never used that history in a book, I liked having it written for my own knowledge. I decided the town was founded by an immigrant who came over in the mid-1800s. After a little research, I learned that the most common nationalities immigrating into Connecticut in the 1840s were from Germany and Ireland. So, the founder of my town was German.

This is the official history of Adelheid: “Historically, it was founded by a man named Martin who emigrated from Germany in 1848 and brought his wife over in 1851. He was a farmer who fought in the Civil War. He founded the town several years after that, and it was established as Adelheid (named for his late wife) in 1897.”

The unofficial history — at least so far as the human world was concerned — of the city is that there is a strong source of power there. Martin was Turned to a vampire some years after the death of his wife and was attracted to the power of Adelheid, which is why he founded the city there and why it has so long attracted other preternaturals.

I chose to place it in Connecticut, because I am most familiar with it and because this area of New England has a lot of forest. There’s a lot of rural land out this way and Adelheid needs it. It’s full of shapeshifters who need to change at least once a month into their animal forms and run free. (Many of them choose to do so even when it’s not a full moon!) I needed lots of land for them to do this.

New England having its old, rich history also would make it a comfortable place for vampires, because many of them are old and rich too.

I even went so far as to establish other details, such as: “It currently covers approximately sixty square miles and has a population of approximately ten thousand people, as of the 2000 census. It’s located near the I-95 corridor towards the coast of Long Island Sound.”

I maintain a rough list of businesses in the city, to help keep track of the thriving little community I’ve created.

Creating the city has helped cement it better in my mind and given me freedom in writing it. Since it’s planned to be a long series, I want to make sure I’m comfortable living there and can write it accurately. To anyone in the area, I would recommend the part of the state near the Sound, though I wish I could say you’d find a real Adelheid there! Still, if you do find one, be sure to say hello to Sadie for me.

Department of Redundancy Department

(As both author and editor, this post is part of the writing tips and helpful thoughts from an editor that you might find useful in your own writing!)

Being redundant or repetitive in your writing can really bog down your readers’ ease-of-reading, and it can also make your story downright boring. The repetition itself becomes distracting, and you never want to take your readers’ attention off the story itself and instead make them focus on the mechanics.

You want them to see the picture, not the way it was made.

1) Repetition of Words
Be careful how often you use the same word inside of a paragraph, and especially inside of a sentence, with the exception of pronouns and basic sentence structure words like “the” or “and.”

“They walked carefully down the hallway, which was dimly lit. Once at the end of the hallway, they paused to look around. Was it this hallway or the other hallway?“

Do you see what I mean? By the time you reach the end of the paragraph, the word ‘hallway’ isn’t making as much sense as it had at the beginning!

2) Repetition of Names
This one is especially rough in dialogue, but it affects the exposition as well. If your character’s name is Bob, you want to make sure you don’t use that name for every single reference.

“Bob walked carefully down the hallway, which was dimly lit. Once at the end of the hall, Bob paused to look around. Bob wondered, was it this one or the other one?“

Trade out for pronouns usually, but always think outside the box for ways you can keep it lively!

Dialogue is particularly tricky, though.

“Hi, Bob.”
“Hi, Dave.”
“What do you think about this, Bob?”
“Well, I don’t know, Dave. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a good idea, Bob.”
“I’m glad for that, Dave.”

When you have conversations in “real life,” do you say your listener’s name in every sentence? Chances are not. Most people don’t.

3) Redundancy
As I’ve written about before, read-flow can be bogged down by other sorts of excess words. There’s the “as opposed to what” rule that I wrote about previously, but here are some other examples I’ve come across during editing that I’m going to share and share what parts are redundant.

“always in a state of constant“
Redundancy: “Always” and “constant” are saying the same thing.

“at least fifteen feet or so“
Redundancy: The “or so” is implied by “at least.”

“the sight she was seeing“
Redundancy: If it’s a sight, we already know she’s seeing it.

“bellow a roar“
Redundancy: ‘Bellow’ and ‘roar’ are their own highly-descriptive verbs.

“saw the monster in front of him“
Redundancy: Unless it’s stated that this person has eyes in the back of their head or are looking in a mirror, they can generally only see what’s in front of them. (Maybe to the side, but “saw the monster” is still enough for a reader.)

“made her feel so happy“
Redundancy: Happy is a feeling, so something can just make you happy.

“said in agreement“
Redundancy: Agreement can be an act, as in “he agreed.”

4) In Conclusion…

Repetition can come in many forms, and by keeping it to a minimum, you can really improve your writing’s readability!

More than Writing

In addition to writing, I edit for other indie (self-publishing and small press) authors. So I’ll also be talking about editing things, writing things, tips for other writers, and stuff across both spectrums! A few words on the editing thing to get us kicked off…

Sometimes, I think that being an editor is not like most other jobs. The digital age has at least cut down on fingers soaked in red ink and looking bloodied, but the feeling is pretty much the same! You’ll never look at any words the same again. Hell, you’ll want to correct people when they speak. Everyone in the world is suddenly going around with speech bubbles over their heads, and you have to restrain yourself in the supermarket from tackling your husband and scribbling corrections over his head…

Or…maybe that’s just me. Either way.

You’ll correct subtitles on the television, and wonder how books were released from Random House with so many typos.

I can at least rest easy knowing that my work can help other writers make their books ready for the world, and I’ll try to offer insight that will help the book before it gets to me and then make things easier for me too. From time to time, I’ll even share some funny stories and typos I’ve caught. (You’d be surprised how funny the job can be at times!)

So, grab your red pen and edit life along with me from time to time.