Beth Alvarez's Blog, page 36

The Second Annual Mid-South Renaissance Faire

It was a sweltering day, not unusual for late August in the Mid-South. The sun was brutal even at nine in the morning, driving us to slather on extra sunscreen before we got in the car.

I’ve always heard my friends raving about the wonderful experience of visiting a Renaissance Faire. I’d always wanted to attend, but until last year, visiting one meant travel, and that was hard to do with a little one. When I heard about the first faire, I was thrilled, so you can imagine my disappointment when my very first faire experience was mired in mud and doused with torrential rain that drove every scheduled entertainment event off the open stages and into the tents for shelter.

It wasn’t exactly fun.

This year, the weather promised to be clear, if hot. Most of August was over 100 degrees, so we expected a scorcher but planned to attend anyway.

The faire was bigger the second year, but a lack of coordination on our part meant we still missed most of the programming we were interested in. But there were lots of vendors, and me and the little one left with flower crowns, while the king of our castle returned home with a bow.

It’s always hit and miss in the first few years of an event. Our local convention scene has been steadily growing and while the faire was put together better this year and had many more vendors, it still felt like entertainment was lacking; the shopping was the best part, though we enjoyed the music in in a pirate-themed hideaway, even if the parrots weren’t the best singers.

We attended the joust, which was much more enjoyable this year, since it wasn’t raining. Though it’s not a proper joust and is more like a show of horseback finesse, it was interesting to see.

Though the fragrance of turkey legs was tantalizing, we cut out early due to the heat. None of us tolerate it well, so a cold glass of lemonade back home started calling my name at lunch time. We headed home, but not before little bit had a chance to say hello to the fine jousting steeds.

Next year I hope to see more vendors and have a bigger budget; there was a lot of jewelry I loved, including bronze pendants forged on the spot using medieval methods. But I’d also like to see more programming, more stages, and more seating for people to actually watch events.

It was still a fun experience, and I left happily inspired to get back to work on my fantasy stories, which I expect to pick up again in October, now that Midnight Cowboy is finished and moving to queries.

But first, a small break… and perhaps a glass of lemonade.

Project wrap-up: Midnight Cowboy

In early June, I’d written myself into a corner in the novel I’d been working on since the beginning of the year. I knew right away that I’d failed with my outline. I didn’t have anywhere to go without making some major changes to where the story was headed. It could be saved, of course; stories are rarely so far gone they can’t be salvaged. But I needed time off to figure out where it needed to go to get back on track.

I try to make a point of writing frequently. Every day, if I can. I have a hard time building momentum, so keeping it once I’m in the groove is vital for my productivity as a writer. So how to keep my momentum while working on a plot overhaul, which might take weeks to work out? The answer was simple enough.

Just work on a different story.

I don’t like jumping between projects. I was a chronic project-hopper for many years, and until I made myself quit jumping back and forth, I never finished anything. I had some reservations about changing gears, but I did it anyway, and learned a few things in the process.

A book planner was a good idea.

In early August, I shared a bit about setting up my writing planner. This is something I think I’ll maintain for all my writing projects from here on out. The character profile sheets I set up were an incredible help. No more losing the names of minor characters or forgetting the color of someone’s eyes. Having the outline handy and space for notes was wonderful, but my favorite part ended up being the calendar.

Keeping track of a book’s timeline can be difficult, which was why I printed calendar pages to put in my planner with the outline. As I wrote important events in the story, I wrote them down on the calendar. This helped me keep everything straight, and refer back to it in a realistic manner. I’m looking forward to implementing this in future projects, and I’m glad I experimented with it now.

I fall into patterns, then overuse certain phrases.

They came and went in spells. The only consistent issue through the whole book was my use of the word turned, because apparently everything got turned. Heads turned, people turned, they turned again, they turned pancakes, they turned left, they turned something over. I’ll have to be mindful of this word affinity in the next book. I spent a lot of time weeding that word in editing.

I also went through phases of everybody crossing their arms all the time. Then everyone was wearing tasty Chapstick, I guess, because they kept licking their lips. People also frowned an awful lot, then they all shook their heads. It’s impossible to catch all cases of repetition, but finding the actions and words I get stuck using will help me keep them from reaching the paper next time.

I write much faster than I used to.

From start to finish, it took me ten weeks to write Midnight Cowboy, as opposed to the year it took me to write Death of the Sun–which was a slightly shorter book. I never thought I’d be able to write an entire novel that fast. Even better is that the overall quality of my writing has improved, so I’m not just writing more words faster, I’m writing better words faster.

Of course, it’s also worth  note that I’m only counting the weeks I actually wrote. I lost one and a half weeks out of July, and half of one in August, due to travel and other obligations. Fortunately, this didn’t seem to hinder my progress once I was back to it. Counting those weeks means it took just shy of 3 months to finish the book–which still isn’t too bad.

My highest word count was 2,846 words on the second day of the project. My lowest word count was 356 words, which happened approximately two weeks in. That’s still a good portion of a page, and better than I’d been averaging on my days writing my other project. After two and a half editing passes, the manuscript is just over 80,000 words.

Overall, I’m happy with the project.

As always, I learned a lot about writing, learned more about myself as a writer, and I feel good about the book I have at the end of it.

I’ll have more to say about it in the future, I’m sure, but for now, I’m working on finishing a query letter to go with it.

What’s the latest lesson you’ve learned from writing?

How branding dates your book

Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a lot of time out to read books. It’s been great, but in all of them I’ve picked up, I’ve noticed a recurring issue. Name-dropping brands and franchises in your book lends it a certain real-world appeal, but you encounter an immediate problem: It dates your work.

Now, if you’re setting your novel in a specific time frame, the use of brand names can help create immersion. Children of the 90s never called them in-line skates; everyone had Roller Blades. And while they first emerged in the 1800s, a zipper was called a ‘clasp locker’ or ‘separatable fastener’ until 1923. Using the proper terminology creates realism in your fiction.

But it can destroy it, too.

One of the books I read was published in 2008 and was designed as a “near future” kind of fiction. Everyone was still using radios and gasoline, but we had self-driving cars and tablets instead of desktop PCs. It was all pretty plausible, but one mistake broke the illusion.

The main character referred to a Borders bookstore.

Now, you might not think this a major issue, but in the context of the book, she could have easily just referred to the place as a “franchise bookstore” or “major bookseller” instead. It was–ironically–the only time in the entire book that the author referred to a franchise or brand, but it was enough to make the context crumple. Instead remaining of a vague “near future” that we haven’t quite reached even now, almost a decade later, the book became dated when Borders folded and closed all stores in 2011, not even 3 full years after this novel’s release.

It’s still plausible as an alternate universe, of course, a world where bookstores don’t fail and find themselves forced to close, but it’s a shame it has to come to that when dropping one word would have preserved the realism for years to come.

As technology permeates our lives, it’s something I see crop up more and more often, too. References to Netflix, iPods, iPads and eBay will only have as much lasting length as those brands, but they litter modern books alongside names of soft drinks and coffee shops.

Omitting the brands in favor of a generic lends your writing longevity, shifting it from an obvious era to an ambiguous “some time in ___ century” window. It might be more difficult or require more vigilance in editing, but it’s worth it, in the end.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, that book reminded me I have an old Borders card I need to throw away.

Tea review: Tazo Cinnamon Chalet bagged tea

Exploring more bagged tea options, this blend was what ended up next on my list. I decided to try it on an unseasonably pleasant day, figuring the cinnamon would make it too warming to enjoy in the high summer temperatures we’ve had.

Tazo’s Cinnamon Chalet is a rooibos blend, something I’m incredibly grateful for, since something came up right in the middle of brewing my tea and I didn’t get back to it until well after the five minute maximum recommended brewing time. Fortunately, rooibos holds up well to over-steeping, and without tannin, my cup of tea wasn’t bitter–just incredibly orange.

The fragrance of this blend is overpowered by cinnamon, making it hard to pick up any hint of the other ingredients. Despite the advertised mix of rooibos with apple, cranberry, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and clove, most of these flavors fall by the wayside. Cinnamon is the most pronounced, followed by a strong flavor of sweet apple. Cranberry provides a pleasant tartness that helps offset the cinnamon, but I didn’t find it quite enough to balance the flavors to my liking.

The cardamom was a subtle tone beneath the cinnamon, but mostly invisible. I didn’t notice the taste of ginger or clove at all, nor did I detect them in the aroma.

Since cinnamon isn’t high on my list of preferred spices, I cut my cup with a bit of milk and found the flavor much improved and better balanced. The sweetness of the apple was a little more pronounced, while the cinnamon settled to more of a warming taste than the biting flavor it bore when I tried this tea straight. This would be a pleasant drink to serve in cooler fall days, especially if served with coffee cake.

Are you sure your book is finished?

It’s been a long-standing source of frustration for me as a reader: reading a book that doesn’t give me any sense of closure.

In some cases, it’s small oversights, forgotten characters, plot threads that weren’t tied up to my satisfaction. And sometimes it’s something else entirely.

Books need more than just an ending. They need resolution, something that makes you feel like the story accomplished something. Cliffhanger endings aren’t uncommon in books meant to be a series, but even those frustrate me for various reasons. Middle books in a trilogy are especially guilty of this, giving rise to a rule I’ve established for myself. Even in a series, every book needs an ending. Enough threads dangling that you want to see what happens next, but enough of an ending that if I died in a fiery plane crash on my way to a major book signing (it could happen!) I’ll have left my readers with enough of a resolution that they’re satisfied.

No one teetering on the verge of death. No societies about to collapse. And these are things now common in books. The YA genre is particularly guilty of it; The Hunger Games committed this foul, which annoyed me to no end.

But the problem of starting things and not finishing them is especially prevalent in romance novels.

I don’t enjoy most romance because a lot of books put out by mainstream romance publishers don’t get the time and attention they need to make the story solid. I’ve heard this justified on the basis that in a romance, the story is the relationship, nothing else. But there’s no excuse for the relationship not to unfold so that the happy resolution comes with the resolution of the rest of the plot. Sometimes, there can’t even be a happy resolution without seeing the plot through to the end.

I joked about a handful of romance novels facing this problem on Facebook, sharing a laugh with some friends over what I called the “doesn’t matter, had sex” effect–a book’s plot coming to a screeching halt as soon as the characters make a commitment to one another. The joke downplays the seriousness of the problem, though: if you have a cliffhanger like this, where there’s obviously never going to be a follow-up to finish the tale, you don’t have a very good book.

Case in point is one romance I read at the end of July. The overarching plot was the hero and heroine working together to try to catch a drug lord. Not only was the smuggling operation running through the heroine’s private property, they found out who the drug lord was and he attempted to have the heroine kidnapped and murdered.

What happened next? Good question–the main characters ended up in bed and that was the end of the book. Never mind that their lives and livelihoods are still at risk. The plot was dropped like a hot potato and it was implied nothing mattered except they were together. I don’t know about you, but if someone had tried to kidnap and murder my husband, I wouldn’t be distracted by picking flowers for my wedding.

If you can’t rework a story to resolve the plot and still get your happily-ever-after ending, you probably need to put it back in the oven for a while, because your story is half baked. In many cases, especially for casual reads, a book is only as good as its ending.

Has an unfinished book ever left you unsatisfied?

Free printable inserts for your Recollections planner

As great as planners are, they can be cost prohibitive–especially when many sizes are proprietary, meaning brands can’t be mixed.

Last week, I mentioned buying a Recollections brand planner from my local Michaels to organize my writing, and I have to say I love the planner. Recollections is a Michaels store brand, meaning the empty planners are cheaper right out the gate than some alternatives. They’re sturdy, most have nice rings and good snaps, and since they use a standard six ring arrangement, they can be used with Filofax inserts.

The only problem there is that the Recollections planner is wider, meaning Filofax inserts look weirdly narrow, waste precious space, and are more expensive than the Recollections brand inserts, which I found limiting in selection. So what are you to do?

Make your own inserts, of course.

Recollections planners take a sheet that’s 4 x 6.75 inches. Many print shops can cut a standard sheet of computer paper to this size for you, though I cut my own at home. An 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper will yield 3 pieces for this planner, if cut properly; two sheets aligned vertically and one sheet aligned horizontally.

Once you have the right size of paper, you can print these PDF files at home, saving yourself a bundle in the process. So here are the templates I’ve created, with images to show what they look like. Links to the PDFs will be at the bottom of the post. Most templates include front and back versions of the pages to align margins correctly, because my printer, um… doesn’t. To print front and back, just print x number of copies of page 1, flip them over, and repeat with page 2.

The To-Do list

Month on two pages

Days are unmarked because some people prefer to start the week with Monday instead of Sunday, or want the notes column on the left, so this offers built-in versatility.

Year on two pages

Numbered lined pages

Front is 1-29, back is 30-58. I wanted 30 on each page, but it didn’t fit. Oh well.

Lined note pages

Graph paper

Quarter inch square graph paper.

Basic character reference sheet

This one’s for writers. On this one I decided to keep it to the bare minimum. The “notes” section leaves plenty of room for special commentary. I omitted a space for character gender because if you really need to write it down, you likely have bigger problems.

Basic setting reference sheet

Another one for writers. Pretty self-explanatory; can be used for made-up regions or real ones. Again, the notes section leaves plenty of space for any forms missing.

That’s all for right now, but I’m sure I’ll make more in the future.

PDFs to download

To-do list
Month on two pages
Year on two pages
Numbered lined page 1
Numbered lined page 2
Lined pages
Graph paper
Basic character reference sheet
Basic setting reference sheet

Happy planning!

Using a planner to organize writing

Considering my well-known love of lists, it surprised no one when last year, I also fell in love with my first day planner. It let me organize all my work and projects and, with the improvements it made to my time management, it helped me accomplish more things faster. With such a productivity boost, I immediately wanted to expand my planner usage to make differences in my writing life, too.

I started by adding a section to my normal planner, where I compiled ideas and information, notes for editing, and overall schedules I wanted to adhere to with my projects. The problem was I didn’t have enough space. My planner was already bulging with all the organizational charts and notes I kept inside, so there just wasn’t room for anything else. The solution? Well, for me, it was getting another planner.

Planners can be cost prohibitive, which is why several of my friends who’ve started using them opted for a regular 3-ring binder with home-printed pages. That’s a great approach, especially if you aren’t sure you’ll like a planner system enough to invest in it. For me, though, I knew I needed something small and portable. I take my writing projects with me when I travel, so something small enough to fit into my purse or the diaper bag was ideal. When the local Michaels introduced their new line of planners, I decided it would be ideal for my needs. I picked green, one of my two favorite colors, and got started as soon as I got home.

I didn’t purchase any of their inserts, creating my own at home instead. Already owning a paper cutter and an adjustable 3-ring hole punch, I had everything I needed to customize my planner. It came with 3 sections, which was perfect, since I had 2 stories I was working on and that would leave me room to develop plans for one more, or just take random notes. As soon as I got home, I started working on what I wanted my writing planner to include.

There are lots of options for printable planner sheets for writers. Unfortunately, few of them are free. Those that are tend to be run-of-the-mill and not so useful to me. Most are charts for creating character profiles, which is something I don’t typically do. I prefer my characters to be more organic, and I prefer my planner pages to be devoted to the things I use often. I started simple with things I knew I needed:

An outline for the novel
A checklist sheet for notes I can mark off as I edit and address them
Lined note paper for things that don’t fit in the margins
Graph paper for tracking plot high and low points by chapter

And then I started by creating those for the two books I’d be putting in the planner right away. One of them was already half done, so I color-coded the text in the outline to show what I’d already covered, what I’d missed or decided to move, and what hadn’t been touched or considered yet. This quickly showed me another benefit of working with physical paper: it was easy to take a single page out and move it farther into the outline, effectively rearranging events.

Once the outlines and the first few necessities were printed, punched, and tucked into the planner, this was enough for me to get started. I made flags out of stickers attached to paperclips and used them to mark my place on each outline. Then I made a list of what else I’d want to add over time.

A basic character template with vital information only
A simple template for the setting
A printed map of the worlds I’d created or real-world region I used
A numbered, lined sheet for planning chapter titles and major edits
Calendar sheets for tracking timelines
A zippered pouch with colored gel pens and highlighters for outline notes

As of yet, I haven’t added these pages to my writing planner, mostly because I’ve not found any premade templates that suit what I need–with the exception of the zipper pouch, which just hasn’t been added because I haven’t found one I like that fits into my new planner. I’ve made a few templates of my own, which I’ll share here and explain the choices I made for each sheet. PDFs will be provided so you can assemble your own printable novel planner of the same make if you like the way I organized mine.

In the meantime, converse with me! What kind of pages would you want in your novel planner?

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Tea review: Tazo Refresh Mint green bagged tea

Thus far, I’ve devoted all my reviews to loose leaf teas. They’re definitely my tea of choice, but it’d be unfair to overlook other options as well. Bagged tea is the kind most commonly sold and consumed, and it’s readily available in supermarkets in a wide variety of flavors. Some tea fans don’t even own the infusers necessary to enjoy a cup of loose leaf tea, and they’re perfectly happy with their pre-mixed blends and bagged varieties.

One of my husband’s coworkers is a tea drinker like me, but his choices are selected out of the grocery store aisles. Knowing I like teas, he occasionally sends individually wrapped tea bags home with the mister for me to try. Today’s review is one of those.

Tazo is one of the slightly pricier brands found in supermarkets, and they offer a wide variety of flavors. Though the company is owned by Starbucks, who also owns Teavana, Tazo’s line of teas is distinct from Teavana’s. Both lines take a new-age marketing approach, though it’s more prevalent in Tazo’s line, and is sometimes reflected in their flavor namings.

The individual Tazo bags have a thin plastic lining inside the bags, making them waterproof and airtight, keeping the tea fresh for longer. The packaging is simplistic but attractive, and the backs of the bags offer steeping instructions, just in case the tea became separated from its box. I found the directions on the Refresh Mint flavor to be dubious, however, calling for 212 degree water and a steeping time of five minutes. Too hot and too long for a green tea, as far as I knew. I opted to brew mine for about two or two and a half minutes, using 170 degree water.

It brewed bright and fragrant, though even brewing for the shorter period of time I did, I caught the faintest hints of bitterness beneath the flavor of the mint.

The green tea is a subdued taste, meaning the mint stands out. It’s really more a mint herbal with touches of green tea than green with mint, but the flavor is pleasant. Its mix of spearmint, peppermint, and tarragon make it a unique mint blend, especially since the spearmint is what stands out most. I didn’t detect any of the tarragon flavor, which is a plus for me, as I’m not a fan of anything that tastes like anise.

Because most mint teas tend to taste like candy if sweetened, I left this mix alone, drinking it straight. There was plenty of robust flavor, and the cooling sensation of the mint did make it very refreshing on the hot and humid day I drank it. It’d be an excellent mix to add to a pitcher of iced tea for something just a little more cooling, and that’s something I think I’ll be trying later this afternoon.

Overall, it lacks the robust tea taste you might get with a loose leaf tea blend, but it definitely holds its own as far as enjoyability and unique flavor goes, which just goes to prove that loose leaf isn’t the only way to enjoy tea.

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Changing gears in the middle of a project

At the beginning of June, I hit the halfway point in my major WIP and discovered I’d written myself into a corner. Despite using a detailed outline, things became derailed enough that I had to do some serious work rearranging plot points and adding new ones to get to the ending I had in mind. This took days, but I didn’t want to lose momentum by not writing every day, so I decided to start working on something else while I worked out the problems.

Unfortunately, this became a problem on its own. The new project took off beautifully, and by the time I had the half-finished book’s issues worked out well enough to let me get back to writing, I didn’t want to put it down. I don’t have time to work on two projects at once, so this presented a tough decision. Which book gets put aside?

It’s a plight many writers share, and there are never any good solutions.

On one hand, pushing too hard on a difficult project puts you at risk of burning out. On the other hand, if we wait to write only when we feel inspired, we’d never make any progress.

Even worse is the idea of only writing when inspiration strikes for a certain project. I’ve been the writer with a half dozen projects going at once, none of them finished, none of them even remotely close.

Project-hopping can be fatal to all projects involved, but sometimes, it works out for the best. For my projects, I ultimately decided the new project was the one that needed my full attention. There were a few reasons for it.

1. The new project was shorter.

I love my epic fantasies, but writing several books in a row that break the 150k word mark, with little hope of cutting them down in size, takes a lot out of you. There’s a lot of work to be done to ensure they stay orderly and don’t contradict earlier installments in the series. My smaller side project was also a stand-alone novel, meaning I only had to keep the timeline straight for one book worth of content. Being simple, compared to what I’d been writing, I realized I’d be able to complete this book much faster than the epic, even though it was already halfway complete.

2. Having a complete story meant less wasted time.

Ideally, I’d like to get to the point where I have books in every stage of completion so I can work in a steady cycle. I’d have one in the writing stage, one being edited, and one being sent for queries. This isn’t very realistic though, since it takes me less time to edit a book than to write one, so I wouldn’t be done writing by the time the book being edited was ready to move on to queries. The next best thing I can manage is having one book in the process of being written, and one in the process of querying. Since I could finish this one faster, it’d give me something to query for while finishing the writing stage for the bigger book, meaning I’d be wasting less time between production and presentation.

3. It was a better fit for its genre expectations.

This is a big problem I’ve encountered in my work. Either it doesn’t fit the genre cleanly enough it to be desirable to traditional publishers, or it’s a great fit for the genre, but longer than what they’ll accept from an author without previous publishing credits in said genre. The side project I picked up worked out ideally for fitting into its genre label, and its projected length fell around 75,000-80,000 words, when the idea length in its genre is right around 80,000 words. It meant chances of publication were better from the get-go. The other project is more important to me on a personal level, but it’s also the third book in a series where the first hasn’t yet found representation. On the whole, the side project stood a better chance of furthering my career.

4. It was easier to write.

As I mentioned in the first point, it’s easier to write something that’s a standard length, stand-alone novel. But it’s also easier to write because it’s a modern setting, so there aren’t any times when my writing is interrupted by the need to determine whether or not a particular phrase or object is out of place in a historical timeline. It used concepts I was already familiar with and didn’t need much ground work, and the only references I’d need were in encyclopedias I already had on my bookshelf. Without these extra constraints, it just wasn’t as taxing to write it, letting me work fast without exhausting myself. My word counts each day averaged much higher, one of the reasons I’d be able to knock the book out fast, even though the word count I’d have at the end was the same as what I’d have if I finished the fantasy story.

With all that said, I won’t talk much about the project yet. It’s inching closer toward being complete, at which point I’ll give it a thorough editing, and then we’ll talk about what I’ve done.

Have you ever dropped a project midway through?

Tea review: Self Care blend tea from Plum Deluxe

On a particularly stressful day, I decided it was finally time to break out the sample packet containing Plum Deluxe’s Self Care tea blend. It was my first time trying a honeybush tea, so I was interested in seeing how it compared to the rooibos base people often compare it to.

Like the other blends I received from Plum Deluxe, it was an attractive mix, rich in warm color and filled with fruit bits and bright marigold petals. However, when I opened the packet, I had my doubts about this one. I’ve never had a batch of samples where I liked all of them, and the smell of apricot overpowered everything else when I gave this blend a sniff test. Since my doubts about the Reading Nook blend were proven unnecessary, this had to be the one that didn’t do it for me, right?

Personally speaking, I didn’t see much resemblance between the flavor of the honeybush tea base and the flavor of rooibos. While rooibos has a bit of a cinnamon flavor, the honeybush tea provided a slightly herbal and naturally sweet taste, which was accented nicely by the flavors of fruit. Despite the overwhelming apricot fragrance, I found that flavor to be much more subtle. Likewise, the typical tartness of elderberries was masked nicely by the sweet taste of apple.

The apple was the flavor I found most prominent, and it made the brew sweet and smooth. While the company recommends this tea with honey and cream, I drank most of it straight, only experimenting at the end of the cup for sake of this posting.

Sweetening the tea brings out the flavor of the apricot, while a bit of milk toned down the flavor of the sweet fruits, bringing out the honeybush base and a hint of tartness from the berries. Both pleasant changes, but I think drinking it straight is still my preferred way of enjoying this tea–especially since as an herbal blend, a strong brew won’t be bitter.

Honestly, I’m surprised to have found all four blends I received so delightful, as there’s always been one that struck out for me.  With this experience under my belt, though, I’m looking forward to trying more teas from Plum Deluxe in the future.

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