A.M. Hodgson's Blog, page 5

"If you use magic in fiction, the first thing you have to do is put barriers up. There must be limits..."

“"If you use magic in fiction, the first thing you have to do is put barriers up. There must be limits to magic. If you can snap your fingers and make anything happen, where’s the fun in that? … The story really starts when you put limits on magic. Where fantasy gets a bad name is when anything can happen because a wizard snaps his fingers. Magic has to come with a cost, probably a much bigger cost than when things are done by what is usually called ‘the hard way.’””

- Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, on writing magic. (via theticklishpear)

Photo

http://yeahwriters.tumblr.com/post/85...

http://yeahwriters.tumblr.com/post/85085692399:

disneysmermaids:

cherribalm:

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST…

Love Lies Bleeding: The Amaranth

How dorky am I? So dorky I’m planting a flower that one of my characters is named for. The amaranth. (Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the fictional flower the amaranthe that can cure any poison. Perhaps someday.)

Here’s a potato quality picture of my little seedlings:

And what I can expect them to look like someday:

I’m pretty stoked about the whole thing. Though Amaranthe isn’t a very ‘pink’ person. Still, the name suits her.

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What'cha Writing?

So since Sonata’s been released for a whopping week, it’s time for me to buckle down and really work on the next project.

Which is… Tryst!

I know, I know. Caprice has an entire year before it’s release. And before you yell, let me tell you why:

I just can’t keep that pace up anymore. I like to make a point of making the Rhapsody Quartet as polished as possible, and that is incredibly time consuming.

I’m not complaining. I love working on my books. It’s my favorite thing. I love being in that world, I love where the characters lead things, I love gently steering the story back to its intended course. But my books are pretty long— Prelude was about 90,000 words and Sonata was 115,000. Caprice will probably be at least the length of Sonata, and Nocturne (that big, scary, hopefully epic conclusion) will likely be around 150,000 by the time it’s finished (but there’s so much that needs to be done on that manuscript, I’m not promising anything about word counts).

There’s a few phases to my books:
1.  Rough draft. This is where I basically vomit up a half-baked idea onto the screen. There’s some good ideas in there, somewhere, but oh, man are there problems.

2.  Revisions. My absolute favorite. The story gets refined. I read through, ID the major problems, chuck out the bad and write new, good content. At the end of this I have something somewhat resembling a book in my hands. The most bang for my buck, as it were.

3. Beta reading!!! Shipped off to betas to make sure that pacing, flow, characters, etc are decent. I get real feedback, and that makes me all warm and tingly.

4. Hail mary revisions. Sort of the last ditch “Oh, so and so thought that Y leading up to X is that my intention? Maybe I should refine this/Clarify this/Change this.” 

5. Line edits. This is as time consuming as the initial draft is. Ugh. As the name implies, I take it line-by-line with my trusty editor. This is done chapter by chapter, and every scene can take anywhere from 1 hour to 8 depending on how things go. But in the end, I have a copy in my hands that is almost finished with solid grammar and good word-smithing. We take turns reading it aloud so we can catch things that just plain sound funny, too. My line editor deserves a medal for this part, because seriously, it can be PAINFUL.

6. Final read-through/AR copies. I add in my backend material and my front end stuff (contents, dedication, title page) and send it off to my Advanced Copy Readers so I can have at least one day 1 review. I also do another quick read through to make sure that there is decent flow, character voice, and that I didn’t miss anything during the line edit phase.

7. Release. Which really means promote, promote, promote!

As you can see, it’s kind of an involved process, and every step is vital to creating a good book. Caprice is, at this moment, at step 4. But I don’t have time to work on my late revisions, because I have Tryst.

And you should be excited about Tryst! It’s a book from Marin’s perspective detailing what was going on while the events of Sonata were happening. It’s still pretty long (50,000 words!) and it’s one of my very favorite stories.

So right now I’m working on that. Then in the late summer I can start seriously working on Caprice again. <3

- Ang

Sonata's debut and other stuff...

Um… so my promo did a lot better this time. I’m not even going to discuss numbers, but mostly I’m just surprised and excited. It’s still in the low range compared to other authors, but holy crap.

So, in an effort to chronicle my emotional journey during this crazy time, here’s the run-down of my overall feels. (Actually cut/pasted from an email with slight edits to remove numbers):

"The promotion was a huge shock to my system. I half-heartedly submitted Prelude to 3 websites this time instead of the 70+ I did last time. One of the higher-profile ones hand-picked it for promo, so I think that’s part of the difference. I’m not sure, though. I posted it on Reddit, too (because that’s what you do when things are free) and last time it got a tepid response. This time someone randomly came forward to comment that it was worth reading and she liked it. (Which made me feel all warm and fuzzy since I have a fan, apparently.) A few more people thanked for the submission, and another person asked if they could buy it off amazon because it looked interesting and they wanted to check it out.

I posted a screenshot on FB while it was ranked high because it was so completely baffling to me yesterday to just see it climb so fast. 

So after a day of gratitude tears (which I didn’t know are a thing, but they totally are and I was in the middle of them), I am now sitting around anxious because this means that people are going to, you know, read it. Which is also nerve wracking in an entire other way.”

Amazon.com: Sonata (The Rhapsody Quartet) eBook: A.M. Hodgson: Kindle Store

Amazon.com: Sonata (The Rhapsody Quartet) eBook: A.M. Hodgson: Kindle Store:

Sonata has been released today! It’s been kind of a blur the past couple days. The build-up to the launch is always a little hectic, and that last moment is… weird. It’s really putting yourself out there and asking to be judged.

In celebration of this achievement (and trust me, putting two books out within 6 months of each other is an achievement) I’m making Prelude free for a couple days. You can pick it up on Amazon at the link below.

http://www.amazon.com/Prelude-Rhapsody-Quartet-M-Hodgson-ebook/dp/B00GO4VUPK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384465248&sr=1-1&keywords=prelude+rhapsody

amandaonwriting:Writing Quote - Isaac AsimovAfter finishing...

amandaonwriting:

Writing Quote - Isaac Asimov

After finishing Allegiant last night, THIS. A thousand times, THIS.

Just a simple PSA

parenyzia:

kankripeixes:

cant-ride-a-quesadilla:

Cannon = thing that goes boom

Canon = an event that occurs within a published story

they both destroy ships tho

Did you just