C.R. Asay's Blog, page 2

What is that Author thinking....?

The expression you get when your friend asks you how you feel about your publisher changing the title of your book right as she snaps the photo.

When you're gearing up for a book launch a lot of things go through your head.  And I mean a LOT!

You are so excited that you gush at every opportunity. Sometimes this annoys people. I mean, why can't this soon-to-be-published author talk about anything but their book? Well let me lay it out for you, hopefully so you can stop being annoyed. Since, really, the last thing I want to do is annoy anyone.

Years have gone by since I opened that word document and put the first word on the page. And they were rough years. Forget about the health problems in 2011, or the challenges of getting a special needs kid diagnosed, or any of the other brilliant, bland and memorable happenings of life over those years. Let's just discuss this silly book that I can't seem to stop talking about.

Imagine the cycle of writing, editing, revising, learning, rewriting and then doing all over again with only the small hope that this story and characters I had grown to love would ever be loved by anyone else. Imagine the excitement of thinking my humble manuscript was ready to send to agents and editors. Then the mountains of rejections that sent me back to step one. The thrill of my first contract. The devastation of years wasted on a publishing house. Of having my dreams of publication crushed when I had to leave. Then imagine, miracle of all miracles, the fruits of my relentless labors being realized with a shiny new publishing contract and a book about to make it to the shelves in just a couple of months.

Blood, sweat and tears went into this manuscript. Demons grown from the years of toil, heartache, passion, disability and love have made their way onto the pages of this little book of mine.

So I hope you will forgive me over the next couple of months when my excitement over every tiny bit of the publishing process overflows onto your newfeeds or in your ear when I'm anywhere in the vicinity. The realization of a dream is a moment that I'm unable to keep to myself.

And isn't a creation born from one's soul something to celebrate?

Cover Reveal

Without further ado, the title and cover to my forthcoming novel.



Covers are tricky things. We're told from childhood not to judge a book by its cover...but we do. So when WiDo said they were ready to commission by cover I spent a good two weeks fretting. And praying. And worrying some more. How can one image capture the depth of the story I've put my heart and soul into for over five years?

In fact I'd worked myself up so much that when the email finally came in with the glorious attachment I'd been anticipating, I simply couldn't look. I ran to find my husband and made him look while I covered my eyes. When he said, "I think you'll like it," I braved a glance and then couldn't look away. I mean, isn't it glorious?! And beautifully accurate. With so much awesome sci-fi-ness, and promises of a thrilling read.

What does this cover promise you as a reader? (You are also welcome to gush as well. I won't mind.)

Observations from LTUE

So there was this one time when I blogged frequently... then I got a publishing contract...

Well, it's true. Way back when I was hunting for my second unicorn (aka publishing contract #2) I blogged a lot more. I had all sorts of things to say about writing, and life, and editing, and life, and publishing, and life. Then I was hit with the cold hard reality of publishing: Work.

A lot of it. Interspaced with periods and waiting. A lot of waiting. The perfect time to keep up on my blog. Or my TV shows. Or my reading. Or my housework. Or my many, many many projects (you can read all about this particular passion here.)

So that's what I did (all except the blogging part for which you will forgive me because I'm here now, aren't I?) Until I went to my first writing conference in, like, forever.

Last week (or was it the week before), my writing group and I attended Life the Universe and Everything (LTUE). We went all out. We booked a room in the same hotel as the conference, showed up early, went to as many classes as possible until our brains wanted to explode, and even stayed for the Gala Banquet.

This was our one and only 'from author to fan-girl' moment of the weekend. Once Upon A Keyboard (minus Meghan who couldn't make it (sniff)) at the Gala Banquet. Mistcloaks made by Callie and photo taken with their creator Brandon Sanderson. (For understanding as to why this is so cool please go hither and read his Mistborn trilogy this instant. You won't regret it.)
LTUE proved to be a wealth of information. My purpose there was a little more complex than the last writing conference I'd gone to. At that time (LDS Storymakers 2010), I wanted to know everything there was to know about the craft of writing. This time, so many years later, I was pleased to discover that a lot of the information I garnered from the different panels on writing were things I already knew. Hallelujah, I've grown as a writer.

That isn't to say I didn't leave there without a jam-packed brain, but just full of information of another sort. This time around I wanted to know more about marketing, and what attracted readers to an author's books. The answer surprised me.

Marketing a book these days is done in a large part online. People read your cover blurb, see your gorgeous cover, read the reviews and make an assessment as to whether or not they want to read your book. However, when it comes to face to face conversation with potential readers, the rules change significantly.

During the panels, no matter what the topic, I found myself studying the panelists themselves. Were they smart, engaging, funny, humble, enlightening? Or were they narcissists who cared only about talking about their book, their characters and themselves?

Since the conference I have bought several books by authors on the panels and my decision for picking up which one of the many, many, many, many novels written by the presenting panelists was clear cut. I picked up the books by the smartest, friendliest, most knowledgable authors I met. I did not pick up a single book that had been pitched during a panel. I didn't even look at an author's novel if they couldn't interest me while speaking. I mean, if they can't interest me with their verbal words, I'm worried they won't be able to with their written ones either.

I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but the truth is we do. And that goes for their personal cover as well. When the conference was over, I took my very limited book-buying funds and put them behind authors whom I thought would give me the most entertaining book. I figured their real-life voice couldn't be that different from their writing voice, and so far I have discovered that is true.

To all the writing introverts out there who are fantastic authors but may have a hard time putting that across in person, I'm so sorry. There are so many books flooding the marketplace these days that an author can no longer afford to write in solitude and hope their written words speak for themselves. You can, of course, still have a successful writing career but your battle will be uphill. An author needs the entire package. Even authors whose books I've read and enjoyed, if I meet them in person and am turned off by their personality or attitude, I am unlikely to pick up another of their books.

Take what you want from my nonsensical ramblings. These are just my personal observations of what I learned during LTUE. This is by no means all I learned there. I learned that I love reading and writing horror (lightbulb moment). I learned a ton about the craft that I had never before considered and honed some that I thought I already understood. I learned that I can meet and speak to new people without finding myself rocking in a dark corner an hour later hoping they'll all go away.  I can't even put all I learned into one blog post.

So tell me, what do you expect/like from an author when you meet him/her?

News From the R.A.G.E. Publishing Front

People are always surprised when I announce I have a book coming out but that not for 9-12 months. "Really?!" They say. "Haven't you finished writing it yet?"

I have to laugh and other authors will get the humor. What a non-writer, authorly type doesn't understand is that finishing the actual writing of the book is just the beginning.

Let's go back 5-6 years ago when I "finished" writing R.A.G.E.  Yes, really, that far in the past the book was finished, complete. I'd written THE END and was excited to let people read it. Way back then I didn't even yet understand the massive venture I was setting myself on.

So, okay, I finished writing my book. Then what took another 5-6 years to get it to this nearly-published point? Editing. Yes, that pesky little word that seems like a side note to the exciting world of writing. And yet without it these shiny books we pick up in the store would barely make sense. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who writes crappy first drafts that need lots of editing.

Not that editing should take half a decade to accomplish, but since R.A.G.E. was my first novel and thereby my training novel, I also had to go through a massive education about everything from commas and adverbs to query letters and submissions.

Well, fine, having to learn the industry is one thing, but what about now? I have a publisher, I have a nice edited manuscript, why then is it still about 9-12 months before this "completed" book can be held in your excited, little hands?

Editing......again.......and again......until it's freakin' perfect.........

........well, that and the cover design, formatting, requests for blurbs, printing, and lots and lots of marketing. Suddenly that small 9-12 month window to get all my ducks in a row to give my book baby the best chance of success seems almost miniscule. I only have 9-12 months?!?!

For those of you having to anxiously wait your way through my months of hard work, let me tell you what's happening with R.A.G.E. right now.

Nothing. At least not in my house. R.A.G.E. is in the hands of my very capable editor who is picking through it as we speak with a bloody-red pen. Eeeek!

Not to worry, I know she only wants to best for my precious book baby. The good news is, she contacted me the other day and said that my book was, "too good. LOL," meaning that since it's been edited to the brink of death so many times before, she was struggling to find any developmental errors and she just wanted to go straight to line editing. Love!

And yet, while R.A.G.E. sits in edits, I still sit at home on my computer, sometimes working on marketing, budgeting and all those other non-creative, soul-sucking activities that an author needs to do these days to make a go of it, and sometimes pulling out book 2 and 3 in my 12th Dimension series. That is much more fun. See, even 2-3 years before these books will ever see print, they are already well under way. Book 2 is "finished" and book 3 is under heavy construction.

Take a look at that wonderful book you're plowing delightfully through right now, yes the one on your bedside table that you can't put down and will have finished within a day or two. That world and those characters that you've grown to love are a result of the toil and love an author put YEARS into, not for the money but because they wanted to tell you a story that you will think about for years to come.

That is the magic of a book.

The Announcement!

Yep, the very one I've been hinting at in the last few posts. About a month ago I was offered a contract with WiDo publishing! As it's been my dream for many years to get this book in print, I won't regale you with the drama or embarrassing displays of emotion when that acceptance email came in. Just know that it is and will forever be one of the high points in my life.
Here's the very action-packed shot of me signing the actual contract.You can read more about my journey in the press release on WiDo's website here.

Watch for R.A.G.E. summer 2014. It's going to be epic!!

The Unreliable Narrator

Blast from the past post from www.artnwritin.blogspot.com

So you’ve got this great story in the works. Excitement, tension, wonderful characters. But someone has to tell the story. Which of these characters should it be? Let’s pick one. The villain? The hero? The secondary character?

Ah, I have it. Let’s call our narrator Ezra. Now Ezra has been misunderstood and victimized his whole life. He’s ready to make a change, and not just for himself, but for poor, misunderstood victims the world over. So he gathers his courage. He plans. He collects resources. He sacrifices everything he has for the greater good. He is a hero, or will be when it’s all over.

The day arrives. Ezra kisses his cat farewell, grabs his bag of tools. He gets into his car, drives to the nearby police precinct and bravely blows the entire building sky high with everyone inside.

Ah hah! So not the hero then. But he sounded like the hero. Courage, sacrifice, greater good. Aren’t these words we usually use when speaking of a hero? Of course. To Ezra, he’s a hero. To the mass population he’s a monster.

Ezra speaks from his experience and his tainted view of the world. He sees the police as an evil entity, destroying his freedom and that of others. He sees himself as the champion, saving all those other misjudged victims(criminals)from having to answer for their unorthodox activities(crimes).

You can’t believe anything he says because chances are he’s not seeing the world as it actually is. He is completely unreliable.

This isn’t bad writing, or even bad characterization. Unreliable narrators are some of my all-time favorites. They lead you along. They make you believe in their world. They give you the gift of walking in another's shoes and understanding them no matter how misguided they may be.

Now this doesn’t only apply to villains. Your hero can also have a very tainted view of the world. They may see everything too rosy or too dark. Too black and white or too grey.

The trick is to allow the true world to be visible to the reader. You must allow the reader to be able to read between the lines or see past the narrator’s blinders. This takes the reactions of other characters to your narrator and using the world’s standard moral code to do your work for you among other things.

Sometimes you don’t even know the narrator is unreliable until you find yourself questioning their thoughts or actions. Hey, you totally thought Ezra was a good guy. Right? Right!!??

If done with skill and subtlety, the unreliable narrator makes a wonderful character filled with depth and interest. If used to your greatest advantage, the unreliable narrator can give you the greatest twists and surprise endings of all time.

R.A.G.E. Original Artwork

Way back a few years ago, I ran the query gambit with R.A.G.E., and while I'd had a few hopeful moments, it was clear I was getting no where with traditional publishing. While it was depressing at the time, I realize now that it was because the manuscript wasn't ready yet. Not by a long shot. There was still just so much I needed to learn.
But in true ADD-Stauna fashion, that wasn't good enough. I had a darn good story that deserved to be read and by golly I was going to make it happen. So I set about to self-publish. I sent my manuscript off on a final edit with my writing buddies, I did all the legwork on Amazon's Create Space, and (not knowing much about computer graphics but a whole lot about oil painting) I painted the picture below to use as my cover art.
R.A.G.E.  Oil on canvas with metallic silver highlights. 2011
A few days after I got my proof copy from Amazon, I was picked up by a small publisher and would spend the next two years feeling like I'd never be good enough to warrant print. Now years later, I've learned what I needed to attract the attention of another publisher. (Announcement coming soon, no really.)

Now while this painting will never be used for the cover art of my book, I'm still really fond of it. It conveys the feel and energy of the novel.

And hey, who doesn't like a gal in uniform with electricity coming from one hand, while holding an M-16?

The Importance of Invisible Writing

I'm dragging some of my writing posts from my old blog over here, ya'know, to consolidate any blog-stalking you might be doing. ;-)


So you've just finished your novel. No, not just any novel, the Great American Novel. No, your magnum opus! This novel has been designed to make people perk up and listen. You had a theme and you stuck to it and now everyone will be talking about it. The word will go out and awareness will be raised for those trees in the Amazon rain forest, those civil rights issues in the south, the sea turtles off the Eastern seaboard facing extinction, the sexism across the country.

Well, I hate to tell you this but if you've just finished writing a novel under this mindset, you have a problem. Notice I said novel, not nonfiction. The trouble is people read novels to be entertained. They want to be taken away with a cast of characters. They want to see what they see and feel what they feel. They want to be brought into the emotions of another person and learn their story and savor the conclusion. No one wants to be preached to. That’s what textbooks and scriptures are for.

We've heard it time and time again: The story must be king.

When anything in your novel bounces the reader out of the story and takes them away from the vividness of those characters and settings, I’m afraid to tell you that your writing is showing through. You worked hard on those words but really, no one wants to actually see them. They just want a story.

Now unfortunately this doesn't just apply to those larger themes mentioned above. This applies on a much smaller scale. You may have that novel where nothing is more important that the conflict and the characters. And yet your readers are constantly being pulled out of the story for some reason or another and forced to examine the actual words you've put on the page.

I’m talking of course about the technicalities of writing. I recently read two books back to back. One, an absolutely fantastic work where the only thing that took me out of the book was the use of OK vs. okay (okay, I admit, I really like “okay” better. OK looks like it’s being shouted). Is that OK with you!!

On the other hand, the other book was so full of passive writing, telling vs. showing, adverbs and other bothersome things you may think are not so important, that there were times where I would go for pages only seeing the words and never being drawn into the story at all. I spent more time mentally editing sentences than I did actually reading the stupid thing.

I’m sure someone is yelling at me at this point that not all readers see or even know about these silly writing rules. I agree. Most readers don’t know about them. They simply read the book with a vague sense of annoyance. They’re never drawn fully into the story and they probably don’t even know why.

Writing rules are in place for a reason. They allow us to smooth down those sharp edges into a silky piece of work. People will read it and walk away talking about your characters as though they are real people. They’ll make fan pages for the fantasy world you've created and sport t-shirts with your brilliant magic system brought to life.

The only people who appreciate purple prose are the ones who write it. You will never be able to sell the importance of your theme to a group of people if they can’t get into your novel. People will never get to know your characters unless you can make them seem like something other than words on a page.

So here’s the kicker. You know your characters better than anyone. You can go to any page of your Work in Progress and see their faces and feel their emotions and see their thoughts. To you they are real because you created them. You saw them before they were those words on the page. So how do you know if you've actually made your writing invisible?

1. Alpha readers. Beta readers. Writing groups. Editors. I can’t stress enough how you need an outside opinion on your work. Someone honest who won’t tell you what you want to hear. Allow them to tell you when they can’t stay connected to parts of the story. Or when that same freakin' word keeps jumping out at them. Or when they've had to read that sentence five times in order to discern the meaning.

2. Learn those all-important rules. Active vs. passive writing. Limited adverbs. Varying word choice, point of view, etc, etc, etc. Don’t just learn them, embrace them. Make them become as natural as typing. The rules are in place for a reason. They are formulaic devices honed over the years by people much more brilliant than ourselves to pull the story forward and make the words sink quietly into the background.

3. You know if you've themed your writing. It’s good to have a theme. It’s better to have a story where readers feel for the characters plight and worry about said characters surviving in that doomed rain forest in the Amazon.

Make the story the King.

So let’s be honest here. Is your writing invisible?

Sometimes when your manuscript is on submission........

So when I parted ways with Shelfstealers late last year, I spent a good 5-6 months doing some heavy duty editing, revising and major rewriting of R.A.G.E. in an attempt to get it submission-worthy again. When I felt it was as good as it was going to get without the help of a professional editor, I sent it out once again into the big, bad world in the hopes that a publisher out there somewhere would love R.A.G.E. as much as I.

Normally after I've sent my baby out on submission I spend my time checking my email obsessively, desperately hoping that R.A.G.E. is being read at this very moment and X publisher has to contact me immediately just to tell me how much they adore and want to publish my book. In between the email-checking, I would continue on with my writing, firm in the belief that R.A.G.E. will be such a rip-roaring success that  fans the world over will be clamoring for a sequel.

Well, I'd already written the sequel and gotten a darn good start on the 3rd book in the series and let's face it, I was exhausted after 6+ years of constant writing and editing. So instead of twiddling my thumbs and thinking dark thoughts directed at the publishing industry as well as inward at my compulsion to write, I focused my energies elsewhere.

I learned  how to crochet (courtesy of YouTube) hats, booties and blankets.

And flowers....

Lots and lots of flowers.

I faced my fear of tall ladders and painted the family room with the 20 foot ceilings

I turned the old Rex Jet wagon from my childhood that I'd found rusting in the field behind my parents house from this.....

...to this.

And in having success with the wagon I begged the old Schwinn Tandem bike off of my parents as well, turning it from this....

....into this. It's still incomplete, needing seats, the chain put on and probably a professional adjustment from a bike shop before it's ride-able.

Now here we are in the middle of the summer and I'm running out of projects.

But that's okay because there is excellent news on the horizon publishing-wise. Stay tuned for an announcement in the next month or so.

I may even open up a word document and start writing something new to calm my underfed, compulsive writing demon.

Projects!! And a confession......

There may be a deeper reason that my newest Work in Progress (WIP) is entitled Project Specter. I LOVE projects!
Ready for a moment of honesty? A confession of sorts?
I have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Well, more like ADD. I’m not a hyperactive person but apparently it’s no longer classified without the H, so there we have it.
I’ve had it my whole life but was only officially diagnosed with it last year. It’s not something I like to talk about as a general rule. For a long time I was ashamed of this disability, as though I was broken or mentally ill and people should keep their small children away from me. But remember that honesty I was talking about? How’s this for honesty?
For many the term ADHD brings to mind the worst kid in their elementary school class. You all know who I’m talking about. The one who could never sit still, the one who would make you lose class points toward your popcorn party, the one who got the bad grades because they weren’t listening, or were lazy etc.
Well, that wasn’t me, but I’d own it if I could. I was more the quiet type. I’d sit in my chair, listen to the teacher with my eyes glazed over and proceed to fail in a lot of subjects because they just weren’t interesting to me. I was also the kid who would hyperfocus on English, reading and art projects. And you know why? 
Because for those moments, the very real disconnect in my brain that refused to allow me to focus on the mundane, boring, or just not-in-my-interest-zone, would go into overdrive. This is when I would wake up, see the world in Technicolor and really come alive.
Well, it didn’t get better when I became an adult. Now instead of failing in math, I was failing in things like laundry, dinner dishes and toilet cleaning. I say WAS because since my diagnoses, I’ve found new ways to cope and turn on that other side of my brain that simply refuses to work right.
That doesn’t mean my ADD has gone away. No, it’s still there, determined to make me finish my book rather than the mounds of laundry piling up around the house. It can often be a dreary place. On one hand I know that not wearing smelly clothes is important to the entire family, on the other hand I can’t help craving that feeling of being awake and alive in all its Technicolor detail.
This is why I love projects. Writing projects, art projects, home improvement projects, yard projects. Ya’know, just projects! And as a bonus, I find when I have a project, some of that alertness, wakefulness, whatever you want to call it, bleeds over into the more mundane parts of my life.
I’ve heard it said before that many brilliant artists of our time had ADHD. I would agree with that statement wholeheartedly. ADHD may be considered a disability, but at least for me, it contributes more than its fair share to my art, writing, and other brightly-colored projects. And those, my friends, make the world a more beautiful place for everyone. 
And if that means I have to suffer through the dreariness when my brain is not turned on, it’s a small price to pay for even small moments of Technicolor brilliance.