Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 87

Wrapping it up and putting a bow on top

Holy cow, the edits on A Lonely Magic have been immense. I wish I knew whether they’d made the book better. At this point, I am so close to it that I definitely can’t see the forest for the trees–the trees that are made of words like “looked” and “seemed” and “eyes narrowed” and “nodded” and “sighed.”

I have to turn it over to the editor tonight (or possibly tomorrow–I told him I’d send it on April 29th, so he’s not expecting it until then and I know he’s been in the middle of a big project himself.) If I had more time, I would definitely use it. More edits and more edits and more edits! But maybe it’s better this way. I can let go of it for a while and let other people look at it and work on it.

I’m in an interesting mental space about it, though. With Ghosts, I felt like I’d written a nice little story. Sure, it could be better, but it was the best I could do at the time, and good enough to share with the people I thought would have fun reading it. I figured my family and friends would buy it out of loyalty (probably not ever read it, though!), and my dozen or so Eureka fanfiction friends would read it out of interest and that would be it. With Thought, I felt a lot more pressure, but my life was also a complete mess and I felt obligated to finish it somewhere within the range of time that I’d said it would be done. I let go of it feeling satisfied that I’d done the best I could do in the circumstances and that it was a fair value to a reader at the price. With Time, I might very well have stuck the manuscript onto a hard drive and in a drawer somewhere were it not for my lovely beta readers. If people hadn’t liked it, I wouldn’t have kept working on it.

With ALM–well, technically, I’m done. I could publish it within a couple of weeks pretty easily if I felt so inclined. But I might not. I might keep revising. I might add more scenes. I might delete scenes. I might move characters around. For the first time, I’m not thinking “good enough” and “the best I can do” are sufficient. I feel like I’ve imagined a world which could be so much fun to play in for such a long time that I really, really want it to be as amazing on the page as it is in my head. Good enough isn’t, I want it to be great. And if it’s not, then I think I want to keep trying to make it better. I might have to become a better writer first, though, and that’s sort of easier said than done.

Meanwhile, though, I should get back to it. I’ve got one chapter half-finished with minor rewrites, one that needs major, major work and two more that I think are close to done. That’s a lot to do today!

Happy Monday

I was walking the dogs this morning–on a rather beautiful, slightly cool, very green April day–when I realized that my mind was telling me stories again, specifically a conversation between Fen and Javier which is going to make Ch25 so much better. Yay!

For the past few weeks, my brain has been caught on a hamster wheel of college plotting and planning and financial calculations and frustration. In the daydream-y moments when I’m usually lost in my story-world, I’ve been stuck in a not very pleasant set of realities. Most days I still worked on the book, but it’s been slow and painful, the words dragging and dull. Yesterday, though, we paid the deposit for New College of Florida and filled out the financial aid paperwork and stuck the forms in the mail, and now my brain appears to have jumped off that unpleasant hamster wheel and moved back to Syl Var. Whee!

This week, I’m going to finish the revisions, one way or another. Next Monday, the book goes off to the editor. Next Tuesday, I start writing the next one. This month has been a rough spell, but that thought makes me happy!

Parenting 101

Parenting 101: A parent’s job is not to make her child happy.

Apart from the difficulty of making other people happy, anyway–trying to control other people’s emotions is pretty much always doomed to failure–happiness, as a goal, is much too transient, much too shallow.

R was probably no more than two years old the first time I had to suffer through this lesson. He needed to take antibiotics. He refused to. Brute force wasn’t working anymore and was also really, seriously unpleasant. So I waited him out. Sixteen years later it still sticks in my memory as some of the most miserable hours of my life. It took about two, maybe three, hours of me saying, “The next thing that I am going to do is help you take your medicine,” and “no, sweetheart, you may not have a snack (story, playtime, walk, video, diaper change, NAP!) until you’ve taken your medicine,” until it was finally in him and we never had to do it again. I spent a lot of time wondering in the moment whether maybe threatening to spank him and/or actually spanking him would be less like torture, but in the long run, I had no regrets. He took his medicine after that, every time it came up.

When he was nine or so, I got to be the mean parent again. We moved to Florida. I can vividly remember being in the car with him as he told me that Florida was a place where people came to die and that he didn’t belong here. It made me laugh, but I did feel bad. But we didn’t move here because I thought he’d be happier here–I thought he had a better chance of getting a better education in a state where I could afford a private school for kids with learning disabilities. I was right. But he wasn’t happy about it.

And then when we moved to our current house, he told me no. He didn’t want to go to the school I’d found for him. He didn’t want to move again. I told him I was sorry he felt that way. Because I’m the mom and it wasn’t my job to say, “let me give you everything you want, let me do what you think will make you happy.” It was my job to look at the choices and do my best with my adult knowledge to do the thing that would help him most in his journey to adulthood.

All that ought to be comforting. And it sort of is. But sometimes being the parent is really hard. I wish I could just make him happy.

Hampshire College in Massachusetts is his first choice of school. But they didn’t come through with the kind of financial aid that would make it possible without him accumulating many, many thousands of dollars in debt — well over the $20K that might be reasonable and up into the $50K range or higher. Part of me wants to be a wishful thinker about it — someday maybe I’ll start earning serious money again and be able to help him pay off those debts — but a lot more of me thinks bankrupting your future because you liked the college town environment is absurd. And so I’m being the bad guy.

It’s really hard.

But Parenting 101: It *is* my job to raise him to be a smart, responsible, independent adult, capable of making realistic choices. My wishful thinking would not serve him well. I will survive being the bad guy this one more time. I do hope it’s the last, though. I’m sick of being the bad guy.

Saying Good-bye

I keep trying to let this go without words.

It doesn’t work for me.

The last couple of weeks have sucked. I wonder if they always will? Every day I kept thinking of what was happening two years ago. The arrangements. The plane flight. The car ride. The beach. And then the birthday.

Twenty-five years ago, I didn’t celebrate my birthday.

I thought then that it would be the worst birthday of my life. Yeah, so far, I was right. But two years ago, my birthday came a week after Michelle’s memorial service. I don’t know why her death sent me into such a death-spiral of grief and sorrow. Maybe it was just because it was the fourth death in six months. Maybe if she’d died at some safer time in my life it wouldn’t have hit me so hard. But no. No.

She was–is–the only person that I’ve ever thought truly understood me, down to my core, and loved me for who I am. Lots of people love me for who they think I am. I’ve got plenty of love. (Of course I do–I’m crazily co-dependent, tell me you need something and I will do my best to give it to you, no questions asked. It’s the recipe for love.) But Michelle–she saw all of me. And she didn’t ask for anything. She just loved.

Yesterday was her birthday. She would have been 47. She died when she was 44. Her birthday is 4/4. My birthday is 4/7. I want to believe that it will be a magical year–that my birthday year, my 47th, will be special, crazily wonderful in some way I can’t imagine. On your birthday year, all your wishes should come true. But I sort of think that Michelle would have wished for the cancer to go away, once and for all. And instead she died. And me… well, for the past couple of weeks I have just been captured by the sad. I know that there are worse things in life. Hell, all those people in Syria are pretty damn miserable right now. This week, a former colleague of mine got to tell his five-year-old daughter that the bad rocks in her head were back and she was probably going to die. I have nothing, NOTHING, to be sad about.

But I still miss Michelle. I still wish I could talk to her. I still want her to be here, somewhere. I still want to believe that I could reach out and find her somewhere. I’m still… just so sad.

Moving between worlds

So I spent the week in Tassamara. And it was lovely.

But, having finished my subscription bonus short story and sent it out to subscribers and then spent a couple hours obsessively checking my email to be sure at least a couple of them liked it enough to tell me so (YES! they did! YAY!), I was so ready to get back to A Lonely Magic.

Point One: Sia Mara and Tassamara? What was I thinking? Two names that are so close are almost sure to be confusing. But… sigh… the name is too solidly in my head now. I don’t think I can change it. Ah, well.

Point Two: Oh, it is so much fun to be back with the Sia Mara. SO fun! I’ve spent the afternoon reading reviews and comments, collecting them for the editing document that I create for every book. It’s a list of changes that I know I need to make and items that I want to check. My usual editing process is to work my way down it before sending the file out to some beta reviewers and creating a second editing list. So this is maybe my alpha editing list? Anyway, I’m reading all the reviews in order to collate all the suggestions people made along the way and make sure that I’ve at least considered them, whether or not I made the change, and it’s been so fun. The number of times people wrote “What a twist!” or “OMG, didn’t see that one coming” pleases me greatly. Sia Mara is just really, really entertaining to me.

Ah, which brings us to the point of this post: if you’re interested in being a beta reader for the next draft–it’ll be at least a week from now, because there’s a lot I want to add–please leave a comment. I know some of you have read the first draft while it’s been happening, so I understand if you don’t want to look at the second version, plus I have every intention of posting more revisions to wattpad, which is much easier if you don’t actually like looking for places to criticize. But if you do like to be critical and would like to read the closer to final draft, please do let me know!

This book is getting a real editor. I’ve hired him already, even sent him some money, but he’s not available until the end of April, so I’ve got about a month to make it as perfect as I can on my own. I’m excited to see how the more-perfect-than-my-own-level-of-perfect process goes.

Rough draft help

Okay, here’s the first draft of the short story: comments, feedback, corrections, and title suggestions appreciated, and if you don’t like reading rough drafts and want to wait for the final version (probably reasonably similar), stop reading now. Oh, and sign up for the mailing list, because I’m only going to be sending this to mailing list subscribers.

Although I guess if you don’t want to be on my mailing list but do want to read the final story, you can leave a comment and I’ll email it to you directly–I don’t mind. (This post will probably get taken down once the story is final, since it defeats the purpose of a subscription bonus if the story is easily available online, I think.)

Thanks for your help!

**************

Welcome to Tassamara

The guy stumbling his way down to the bathroom in the back of the bus reeked of beer and stale cigarettes.

Egg salad, Maggie thought, shifting in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position, her head propped on her folded jacket against the window. Like his mom used to make, with sweet pickle relish, on toast. But good bread—he’d like a nice, crunchy wheat better than the white spongy stuff he’d grown up with.

She sighed and closed her eyes again.

She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d made a simple egg salad. There’d been that smoked salmon involtini stuffed with an herbed egg mixture, but that was made with crème fraiche and fresh dill and chives—about as far from the drunk guy’s sandwich as an Egg McMuffin was from the Eggs Benedict she used to prepare for Sunday brunch.

Would Robert keep that on the menu? He’d always argued that it was too bland for their restaurant, not ‘fresh’ enough.

Fresh.

His favorite adjective.

What an asshole he was.

But the hole in her heart still hurt.

Impatiently, she stuffed her jacket into a tighter ball and squeezed her eyes shut.

Sleep, damn it, why couldn’t she sleep?

The motion of the bus in the quiet night should have been soothing, the hum of the engine taking her away, away, away, but instead she felt stifled, too warm, too uncomfortable.

Too sad.

She was supposed to be over it. Over him. The divorce was final. She’d walked away, not empty-handed, but without any part of the restaurant they’d worked so hard to build.

She didn’t regret it.

Maybe it had been their baby once, but from the night she’d walked back in two hours after her shift ended and found Robert screwing their head waitress against the bar, she hadn’t been able to bear the place.

Every memory—every moment of joy and satisfaction, of finding a perfect seasonal menu, of an experimental recipe working out just right, of the look of delight on a customer’s face as they bit into her vanilla dessert soufflé—all those achievements were gone, wiped away by the bitterness of seeing her husband moaning as he buried himself in Veronica.

Maggie wished she could find it in herself to hate Veronica. But she couldn’t. They’d been friends. And Robert… well, she knew only too well how persuasive he could be.

She only made it through the divorce by refusing to talk to him. All communication through lawyers. Fortunately, he cared about the restaurant too much to push after the first and only time that she’d thrown her apron onto the floor of the kitchen and stalked out. Surviving the dinner rush mattered more to him than talking to her. And he’d probably thought she’d balk at his proposed divorce terms, enough to start arguing.

Instead, she’d signed the papers and headed to the nearest Greyhound station.

By now he would have had a hell of a night. A Friday night with a full reservation list was rough enough when the cook showed up for work. Still, if he hadn’t realized she’d be gone, more fool him. It was the least he deserved.

The bus slowed and stopped.

It was pitch-black outside.

Still, she’d screwed up, too. A bus to nowhere was not nearly as romantic as it sounded. Instead, it was tedious motion and miserable seating and way, way, way too many people. She kept her eyes tight shut even as she felt the weight of someone taking the seat next to her.

Her new seatmate promptly fell asleep.

Of course, he snored.

Of course.

The sky lightened as the sun rose and Maggie stared out the window, eyes aching with tiredness, listening to the snoring sleeper next to her.

By ten, she couldn’t bear it anymore. The bus was slowing to a stop, bumping its way down some Podunk town’s main street. She stood and stepped over Sleeping Beauty, grabbing her duffel bag from the overhead rack. She’d get off here. Find some breakfast more interesting than the homemade oatmeal bars she had in her bag, walk around and stretch her legs a little, then catch the next bus south.

The bus stopped for a bare second and the driver was already starting to close the doors. “Hang on,” she called out. “Getting off here.”

He looked startled. “You sure? You’re ticketed to Miami, aren’t you?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “I’ll grab a later bus.”

“But, miss,” he started to protest as she hopped off the bus.

“I know I’ll have to buy a new ticket,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“But…”

She ignored his further words as she looked around.

Okay, she’d found the middle of nowhere. But the air was warm, a pleasant change from the chill New York winter, and it smelled of green things and flowers, which was an even nicer change from the exhaust fumes she was used to. And the town wasn’t plastic, not just another series of strip malls and fast food restaurants, like some they’d passed through the previous day. The small shops and houses looked like a cozy, run-down, pastel version of Disneyworld’s Main Street USA.

“Are you the cook?”

A voice interrupted her assessment as the bus pulled away, the driver apparently giving up on her.

“Excuse me?” she responded, glancing over her shoulder in the direction the voice had come from.

Huh. Hot guy alert. Not that she was interested but she wasn’t blind, either.

Ah, and he wore a wedding ring.

Okay, not hot. Married guys, never her thing, even more so since Robert decided their wedding vows meant for better or worse as long as he could have a bit on the side.

Still, she wasn’t blind. Dark hair, deep blue eyes, fine wrinkles that said he laughed a lot, a build that said he stayed on the move, and a smile that somehow managed to be disarming despite the fact that he was a strange guy approaching her at a bus stop, a move that ought to send her every instinct into high alert.

“The cook?” he repeated.

“I—yeah, I cook.” She frowned, puzzled. She hadn’t slept much for the past few days and she was floating in the slightly surreal glaze of over-exhaustion, colors seeming brighter than usual, sounds more grating. But it was weird that she was being asked about cooking, wasn’t it? At a bus stop?

“Good, good,” he responded, sounding relieved. “You weren’t what I was expecting.”

She looked down at herself. What had he expected?

Wait, expected?

“Um, I don’t think you’re looking for me,” she said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Oh, really? Where are you supposed to be?” He sounded so authentically interested that for a second tears burned in her eyes and she wanted to blurt it all out to him, the whole horrible story.

Where should she be? She should be at home, in the apartment she and Robert had found with its incredibly good light and incredibly bad plumbing, planning out the dinner menu for the restaurant that once meant the world to her.

But no, that wasn’t her home anymore. Or her world. “Nowhere.”

“Great. You’ve found it then,” he said cheerfully. “Or pretty close, anyway.”

She blinked at him.

She was dreaming. That was the explanation that made the most sense. Despite snoring dude, she’d managed to fall asleep and the bus was driving on to Miami while she snoozed on the window. She hoped she wasn’t drooling.

The guy gestured toward the sidewalk with an open hand. “Shall we?”

“No,” she responded with an automatic roll of the eyes. “What am I, stupid? I’m not going anywhere with some total stranger.”

“Oh, right,” he replied. He stuck out his hand. “Max Latimer.”

“Does your wife know you’re picking up strange women at the bus stop?” Maggie asked, voice acid.

He laughed. A nice laugh. Maggie didn’t shiver, but she felt it hit her, running along her spine. How long had it been since she’d heard an honest laugh or laughed herself?

Married, she reminded herself. Off limits. Now and forever, off limits.

Not that she needed the reminder as he said easily, “Eleanor’s used to me. And she knows that my occasional erratic moments always turn out well. In this case, she’d like a good cook in town as much as I would. Not her favorite activity, cooking.”

Maggie rubbed her eyes. She was tired, definitely, but she felt awake. It wasn’t one of those dreams where everything seemed unreal. The air, the smells, the sights—no, she was awake.

A boy on a red bike cycled down the middle of the road and came to a stop next to them. Maggie wasn’t good with kids’ ages but she’d guess he was around ten or eleven. His dark brown hair spilled into bright blue eyes, as he asked, “Hey, grandpa, can I go to the springs?”

Grandpa? Maggie’s eyebrows arched. Okay, that was unexpected.

“Manners, Dillon?” The words were a gentle reminder, not a reproof, but the boy flushed.

“Sorry,” he muttered. He gave Maggie a polite nod. “Good morning, ma’am.”

“Good morning,” she repeated automatically.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It’s beautiful,” she agreed.

“Okay?” The boy turned to his grandfather, who nodded at him. “So, can I go to the springs?”

“Have fun.”

“Thanks!” The boy stood on the pedals, sending the bike swooshing away.

Max Latimer watched him go, shaking his head, his smile fond. “We may have to work on the polite good-byes.”

“He’s your grandson?” Maggie asked, trying to reconcile their respective ages and their interaction—surely more fatherly than grandfatherly?—with the boy’s words.

“A long story,” Max answered. “And I’m sure you’d rather see the restaurant.”

What restaurant? Who was this guy? And how did he know her? How had he been waiting for her? She didn’t realize she’d spoken her thoughts aloud until Max answered.

“Oh, I don’t. I just had a feeling that we might find a cook today. And you’re the only one who got off the bus.”

Maggie blinked at him. Okay, he was crazy. That was the explanation for this entire interaction. “Maybe you should wait for the next bus,” she suggested.

“Well, I could.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But the bus only comes through once a day and it doesn’t run on Sundays. It’d be a long wait. No, I think you’re the one I’m looking for.”

Maggie felt her mouth fall open as she took in his words. She closed it with a snap, looking down the street after the long-gone bus. That was what the driver had been trying to tell her. Hell and double-hell.

Two days.

She was going to be stuck in Podunkville for two whole days.

Well, that was a pisser.

“I don’t even know where I am,” she said, shaking her head, still in shock.

“Welcome to Tassamara,” Max answered. “I think you’re going to like it here.”

Which character should get a short story?

So, I finished the first draft of A Lonely Magic last night. 49 days since I started. Whee!

Conventional writer wisdom says to put the draft away for a month or so to give yourself time to get a fresh perspective. I’m hoping to last a week. I’m already itching to dig into the revisions. There are things that I know need fixing, parts that I want to expand upon, threads that slipped away–and I haven’t even read the complete manuscript yet. But I’m going to try to give it a week.

So one of the things that I’ve been wanting to do is write a short story or a missing scene to give away to mailing list subscribers. I think that’d be a worthy way to spend a week. I know it should be set in Tassamara but I have more ideas than I know what to do with, so I thought I’d throw some options out there:

1) Dillon helping out Sylvie and Lucas.

2) Maggie’s arrival in Tassamara.

3) A wedding scene, possibly when Akira throws up on the minister at the reception.

4) A wedding scene, possibly Mitchell and Michael blaming one another for losing the ring at Natalya’s wedding.

5) The boys’ discovery that a ghost is haunting their movie theater.

Is there a character that you want to learn more about or see again? Share here or on Facebook!

Active reviewers list

As part of my new marketing initiatives, I’ve decided to establish an active reviewers mailing list.

Reviews are a weird ethical area for a lot of authors and there’s much controversy about what’s okay and what’s not. Some authors have paid for reviews. That can mean hiring people on fiverr to post reviews on Amazon–a violation of Amazon’s terms of service and not okay, IMO–or spending hundreds of dollars for coverage in publications like Publisher’s Weekly or Kirkus Indies. I don’t think that there’s anything unethical (or at least no different than publishing business as usual) in the latter, but it’s basically buying an ad that you don’t control. I’m not excited about spending my money that way.

But publishers have always given away books for free to people that they thought were potential reviewers. When I worked in publishing, our marketing department had lists of people who got books for free when they released. As my own marketing department, I need to create that list–my own list of active reviewers.

The hard way would be to flog my books to every book reviewer I can find: send messages to active reviewers on Amazon, send emails to book bloggers, search for reader-reviewers on Goodreads and Library Thing and Shelfari, etc. That would be a lot of work. I’d basically be trying to sort through a huge pool of potential reviewers to find the ones who might be interested in me so that they can get a free copy of my book for promotional purposes.

I’m too lazy for that.

Instead, I’m going for opt-in reviewing. When I updated the book covers, I added this note to the back of all the books:

If you’re an active reviewer and want a free review copy of either the next book in the series or the next book I release, please send an email to reviews@sarahwynde.com with a link to a review you’ve written about one of my books, and let me know which title you’d like to receive and in what format (epub, mobi, or pdf). The review can be on any site, including a retailer, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, your personal blog or a group blog, and it definitely doesn’t have to be nice. Be as critical as you like, but please write at least a few sentences—two-word reviews don’t count!

I’ll be trying to grow that list as large as is feasible–since these are ebooks, I’d be perfectly happy to have it reach 1000 subscribers, maybe more–but I’d like to make sure that it includes the people who have already reviewed my books and will therefore never see that note. If, dear reader, that includes you, feel free to shoot the email my way.

Series Redesign

a series re-design

So one of the things that I’ve been doing/worrying about/working on/driving myself insane over is the decision to take publishing more seriously.

Here’s the overall picture: I quit my job (editor) in 2011 to go to graduate school. I had everything carefully calculated. Enough savings to get my master’s degree and then spend several months job-searching while I made it to R’s high school graduation before I needed to find a job. After his high school graduation, I, of course, would be more or less free to move anywhere, so if counseling wasn’t working out, I could get myself a non-telecommuting job as an editor anywhere–maybe Berkeley, Indiana, New Jersey. Wherever the jobs were, there I could go. (As long as I could bring Zelda, of course.)

Doesn’t that sound well-planned? Self-publishing was irrelevant, just a fun little side deal. Unexpected, however, was that 2011-2012 would be the worst years of my life and I would drop out of graduate school and wallow in… nope, not being mean to myself. That I would drop out of graduate school and spend a rocky year struggling with bereavement-induced severe depression.

In June, R graduates high school. I will not have my master’s degree. Every sensible bone in my body tells me it’s time to start looking for a job as an editor and be ready to move where it takes me. All the less-sensible bones are stubbornly saying, no, no, no. Not going to do that. I like Florida. I like my house. I want to stay here. And I don’t want to edit anymore. I want to write.

So the completely crazy bones–they’re investing money that I don’t really have and time that I could be spending working on my resume into starting up a publishing business and thinking about actually marketing my books.

The first step was to hire a designer to make me the covers above.

Tell me you love them.

Tell me they’d make you more likely to buy my books (despite the fact that if you’re reading my blog, it’s kinda a sure thing that you already got at least one of them).

Tell that I haven’t wasted my money and that I don’t need to be spending my time polishing my resume instead of sending my cover designer emails that say, “okay, that’s nice but what if…”

Don’t tell me how you’d make them better, because that ship has sailed, these are the final designs. And yes, I could have done lots of rounds of looking for feedback and maybe I should have but when I’m in an insecure space, having lots of people tell me what I could be doing better is actually more likely to send me crawling under the covers for a day or two than be productive.

But if you have an editor job for me… well, we could talk.

Or if you want to say lovely things about those covers, well, that would work, too.

PS A Lonely Magic–still going well. I made myself cry today–always a good sign!

A Lonely Magic

Up to 25K words on A Lonely Magic and… I’m not even sure how to explain it. I’m completely crazily amusing myself. I love Fen. I love the way she thinks, I love the way she swears, and I love, love, love the experience she’s having.

I don’t want to keep spoiling people who aren’t reading, so I’m not going to post more quotes. But the rough draft is going up on fictionpress in real time–on other words, I’m posting at least 1000 words a day there, so if you want to read it in progress, you can check out the link from my contact page. Oh, and I meant to keep posting it to wattpad, too. Yeah, I forgot about that. But maybe I’ll try. Wattpad actually is a nicer reading experience, except that no one reads anything I post over there, making it not so motivating to make the effort.

Anyway, Fen… I’m pretty sure that if A Lonely Magic keeps its title (it might not) and sells a few copies, one called A Precarious Balance might follow it someday.