Holly Lisle's Blog, page 80
February 9, 2015
Some Indie-Pubbing Goodness For You
COFFFFEEEEEE!
I got my introduction to a site called Indie Plot Twist via this well-done article on Indie vs. Traditional Publishing.
It’s a nicely done, relatively new site that’s worth your time.
And I yearn for their coffee. Go visit, see for yourself, and tell Danielle and Carrie “Hi!”
February 6, 2015
Bashtyk Nokyd—Possible Cover Art. Your input?
Click to see the big version
I like this cover better than either of the previous ones I’ve done for the Longview series, and am considering doing the other two over again to match this style and formatting. What do you think?
Previous two covers are below for comparison.
The Selling of Suzee Delight: Tales from the Longview Episode 2
February 5, 2015
Type-In DONE on Bashtyk Nokyd
Right up to the last minute, the story kept punching me—I kept finding better ways to do things. I got an absolutely unanticipated but just-right ending to the episode.
And added damn near 10,000 words in the process.
But I’m done, I love it, the printer is humming merrily away, and I’m going to hand off my manuscript to my editor tomorrow.
This means next week, I write Lesson 2 of HTWAS. And next Friday, we resume class.
God, I’m fried. I’m going to sleep as much of this weekend as I can manage.
February 3, 2015
Cadence Drake in Real Life: Now legal, soon possible. I win! :D
Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood
The main character of my current novel series, Cadence Drake, was a genetically engineered child. One mother, three fathers, and some slicing and dicing of her chromosomes to give her the exact characteristics her mother wanted for her:
From my mother I have my coffee-with-a- touch-of-cream skin and full lips and straight teeth. From one of my fathers I have high, sharp cheekbones and slanting almond-shaped eyes with a pronounced epicanthic fold, though the eyes themselves are a vivid and startling blue, the gift of another father. My hair is straight and the color of amber, my nose is long and thin. My body is long and angular. I look like what I am—an outdated fashion statement.
I think this is a fantastic development, something that will improve the lives of future generations of human beings, and something that has tremendous potential for giving people a chance at longer and better lives.
However, I also think it’s cool as hell that I built the main character of my current main series on science that just went Real World.
The novel is also available here:
http://howtothinksideways.com/shop/hunting-the-corrigans-blood-a-cadence-drake-novel/
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hunting-the-corrigans-blood-holly-lisle/1002110711?ean=2940015519778
February 2, 2015
The Grueling Revision Of Penitence and Disbelief
Where revision is concerned, making the assumption that you have the process of knocking out an upcoming revision well in hand before you start in is an act of hubris that will be punished by the Manuscript God.
This I know, for I have walked through the Valley of What-The-FUCK-Was-I-Thinking many and many a time before, and have had my ass handed to me by simple black ink on white paper more times than I can count.
Knowing this, I like to think I have learned something from my previous revisions.
.
.
.
But, you see, THIS revision was going to be a piece of cake. 22,000-word story, knew what I was writing when I was writing it, I’d knock the whole thing out on Friday, do the type-in on Saturday, give myself a well-deserved day off on Sunday, and be back in here bright-eyed and perky today.
Hubris.
Ouch.
So I am now clawing my way out of a three-day ordeal that left me battered, bloodied, and unrested, to face type-in today with much more to type in than I had anticipated, with both the addition of a shitload of new words to the story, and a significant addition of plot that I’m going to have to track back-brain as I work to keep out the stupid, and one item that I FORGOT to deal with in the write-in and that I must now remember to address during the type-in.
Odds are high that I will not be finished with this today.
Nothing else happens in my universe until this is done.
I have a ton of other things that MUST happen soon, but this must happen first.
Watch this space. Once this manuscript is done, a bunch of things are going to start rolling out very quickly.
January 29, 2015
2,357 words today, and BASHTYK NOKYD is done.
The first draft of Bashtyk Nokyd Takes The Longview is now finished. It runs 21,790 words, and I am damned pleased with the way my ending came together.
Melie spots something important, Shay loses something even more important, and the monster get an excuse to come out of the box.
So I have tomorrow to do a write-in revision, and maybe type that in, and then get the story to my editor over the weekend. Next week, it’ll go to the copyeditor, and then back to me.
But while it’s out of my hands, I’ll do the next lesson on HTWAS Module Three, and do my best to have that in the classroom next Friday.
Which means the How To Write A Series class will be starting back to work next week. Which means next FRIDAY, the price goes up again, in recognition of the development of the third module. If you want the course, you have until next Friday to get it at the current price.
Off-topic, while researching growing food on high-population space stations
I have no time for people who wear their causes on a ribbon, or on their car bumper, and who think this means they’re doing something.
I have all the time in the world for people who look at their causes, ask “What could I personally do right now to make this happen?…and then do it.
This is a website by two such people. (Link opens in new tab.) If you think agro-ecology is boring, think again. This is some amazing stuff, and has the potential to be so much more.
And this video shows how they got there, and more importantly, why they got there.
I only watched this video because in the site text it mentioned that some of it was in Costa Rica, and I lived there when I was a kid.
Turns out it was the most useful bit of “growing food on a space station” research I did.
January 27, 2015
19,068 Words of BASHTYK…Getting close to the finish.
The Guardian of Freedom
Tomorrow I have to get serious about ripping out the six remaining scene Sentences in the story, and melting them down into, at most, three scene Sentences that hit all the essentials, and give me the big, powerful finish that I want.
And that leave me with the jumping-off point for the next story, which still has no title, nor even a hint of a possibility of a title.
But today, I got an even 1300 words (I confess to stopping on the round number on purpose—but I did finish my sentence 
).
Today folks were debating freedom—what it is, and who gets it.
I got the intent of what I wanted in the story in the two scenes I worked on today…but I could tell as I was writing the scenes, especially the second one, that these are the ones that are going to need some heavy revision.
Still, the story went the right way, my characters did the right things, and I left myself with a solid foundation for the revision. Some days, that’s good enough.
Now I need to get Help Desk stuff done, and then test the software Dan is building for me.
January 26, 2015
Bashtyk Nokyd doubts the “truth”: And words—now have 17,669
Almost…
Almost…
Dammit…ALMOST…
Hit 17,669 words today. Since I’m pushing for 20,000 to 22,000 words, that’s pretty good. (I may run long, but it isn’t going to be Suzee Delight long.
Melie has proven the value of her skills again,
Shay has convincingly demonstrated that she has the worst boss in Settled Space,
Bashtyk Nokyd is planning the overthrow of the Pact Worlds—or at least the freeing of their slaves—with my heroic pirate of a lawyer to help him…
Tikka has discovered something deeply disturbing in her new job as a GenDaring employee in the City of Furies branch…
AND…
I have my new villain—who is an old villain returned. It took me the full weekend to think through the relationships, the issues, and connections to other parts of the story, and the WHY of this (because if you don’t know why, faggeddaboudit).
AND…
The really big thing is still coming, and it ties this all in with Cadence Drake and The Wishbone Conspiracy.
There hits a point in every story where my stomach turns wacky on me: where I have butterflies and jitters and a faint, persistent queasiness that comes from knowing what this CAN be if I can pull it off—and having to finish the thing to see if I CAN pull it off.
And I’m there.
Because of deadlines, though, this should be about the shortest case of butterflies and quease I’ve had in a while.
Onward. Hope to have this finished in first draft by the end of the week, to my editor over the weekend, and to my copyeditor next week.
Once it’s live, HTWAS officially goes into Module Three (price bump) and I get back to doing Ugly Workshop stuff, Ugly Baby Stuff, and ReadersMeetWriters stuff.
But for now, it’s just me and the words. And I love this!
January 23, 2015
If you kill your villain halfway through the story…
The identity of the NEW villain?
Today was a bit of a catch-up day for writing. I got 871 words, which does not do a ton for my writing schedule.
But two days ago, in a moment of sheer inspiration, right in the middle of Bashtyk Nokyd Takes the Longview, I killed a whole lotta people, and dead among them was the pretty-well-developed hidden villain I’d been planning to kill at the end of the episode.
It was a cool damn scene, and I’m still totally revved about it.
But…
If you kill your main villain for the episode halfway through the story, you have a problem. So today I spent most of my writing time digging through Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood and Warpaint. I found my villain—and now I’m building some backstory to tie this into the LONGVIEW series, so that I don’t derail the series itself.
I have to keep this on track, because this series has to lead directly into Cadence Drake 3: The Wishbone Conspiracy.
Tomorrow I’ll probably be doing a lot of doodling on paper. The only thing I have ever found that lets me think as well as a pen and paper is a Minecraft map.
Go figure.
So once I get this figured out, I know what Lesson 2 in Module 3 of HTWAS is going to cover.
