A little more blog comment catch up

 

B_twin_1

I’ve told you, haven’t I, that PEG II ends possibly even worse than PEG? Slightly depending on your definition of ‘worse’.

Ummmm. No. I don’t think you had. And if you had I had BLOCKED IT OUT. Thanks.  

One of us is doing a certain amount of blocking anyway.  Like I’m blocking the whole trilogy thing.  THERE ARE TWO BOOKS LEFT.  AND I HAVE TO REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED IN THE FIRST ONE.  BECAUSE THERE’S A FIRST ONE.  Arrrrrrgh.  I was reading a snarky review somewhere of someone else’s first book of a trilogy, and the snarky reviewer was saying how tired she was of authors feeling they have to produce trilogies and that this one is already failing to support the length.  Well, I can’t speak for the length-supporting—and I’m sure some authors, possibly desperate to earn a living*, which does happen, silly us for quitting our day jobs, have signed up for a trilogy for the ‘paid three times’ aspect—but some of us don’t choose to write trilogies, trilogies choose us.  One might almost say mug us.

I didn’t mean to finish anything on a cliffhanger.  The end of PEG was supposed to be the end of part one.  The end of PEG II was supposed to be the middle of PEG II.  I don’t do time, I don’t do distance, I don’t do length or word count. . . . I am Not of This World.  Which explains a lot really.

I blame KES for your growing fondness for cliffhangers.

It’s the other way around.  The end of PEG was a big, Oh well hey moment, even though I knew a lot of people would hate me for it.**  Writing KES is an interesting experience*** not least because of the 800-or-so words per episode set-up and the need to create some structure out of the situation.  Eight hundred words doesn’t give you much opportunity for momentum.  Itty-bitty cliffhangers are a way to make the story feel like it’s moving forward.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Skating librarian

So have I missed something, does Pegasus II have a pub. date yet, that you are already anticipating reader’s reactions? 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.  I HAVEN’T WRITTEN IT YET.†  I’m anticipating reader reactions because PEG II also ends on a cliffhanger and I know what the end of PEG got me.  And if you ever browse around in the blog pre-PEG you may come across one of the occasions when I warn you that PEG has a Frodo-was-alive-but-taken-by-the-Enemy ending.  Readers frequently surprise me but some things can be successfully assumed.  Like that cliffhangers make a lot of readers cranky, especially when they’re not expecting it.††

PamAdams

Remind me to have her crate off the kitchen table and on the FLOOR before that [that the hellterror is too heavy to lift] happens

I’m sure she’d be happy to leap up on the table without you lifting her.

Yup.  She will soon.  She can’t quite bound reliably up on the chair from the slippery kitchen floor, and then she doesn’t have enough spring without a run at it to boing it from the chair into the crate.  But she’s now busy making me feel ENORMOUSLY GUILTY because the minute I put her on drugs and started feeding her more she’s having an unscheduled growth spurt.  Ask me how I know this (she says, rubbing her aching arms†††).  Sigh. . . .

* * *

* Scary publishing story?  Here’s a scary publishing story for any of us who aren’t J K Rowling or E L James—and for you/us readers.  I tweeted it a little while ago but for anyone who doesn’t immediately click on every link, here it is again:  http://stephanieburgis.livejournal.com/311674.html

Books are not widgets.  They are not one size fits all.  Another one of similar dimensions produced by another company is not a suitable substitute.  And it is not okay that the big guys are playing hardball with the little guys’ livelihoods and future careers because they can.

I would like to believe that when this gets sorted out both sides, who are, in fact, in the book business which does, finally, depend in some fashion on authors, will make some good on the books and writers that are being squeezed now.  But do I believe it . . . ?

** And I have—or anyway had, since I tend to delete them—the email to prove it.  What continues to fascinate me however is the number of people who seem to believe that was the ending.  I know I don’t write series or sequels and that I may even have made a slight doodah about the fact that I don’t write series or sequels, but it genuinely never OCCURRED to me that anyone wouldn’t recognise a cliffhanger when they saw one.  Also . . . have I ever ruined one of my heroines’ lives and left her in a crumpled heap on the floor?  Maybe some of these people have never read any of my other books and don’t know my reprehensible tendency toward the Technicolor sunset finish.  I grant that some books end more Technicolorful than others^, but do you really think Sylvi and Ebon are parted for life?  Please.

^ I still get furious, appalled or gravely disappointed mail about the end of SPINDLE.  These readers and Ikor should get together.  They could start a club.+

+ I’ve said this before.  But I think it again every time I get one of these letters.

*** Especially the part about HAVING NO IDEA WHERE IT’S GOING.  I know most of the immediate future, aside from the way every story changes in the process of writing it down, and I have some idea about some things farther ahead (or sometimes farther to one or another side), and I recognise as you might call them hot spots where there’s more story if I can wiggle what is there already around and get it aimed in the right direction, but mostly I have to trust to the extremely alive critter that KES is, and hope it/she continues lithe and frisky.  I AM OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE.  I DON’T DO SERIALS.

† I’m in the early No, no, nooooooo phase, including the Huh?  What?  I wouldn’t have put this in if the story didn’t promise me there was a reason NOW WHAT THE MANGY TICK-INFESTED FRELL WAS THE REASON?^ This is a not uncommon phase mid-story but I’m not used to having some of it out there in public already.

^ Distant sound of story, giggling.

†† Not to worry.  Much.  There will be a Technicolor-ish sunset ending.  Eventually.  I think.

††† Although I can still tuck her under one arm because she puts her feet in my pockets.  Southdowner warned me about this. . . . But really it’s a useful talent.  Usually.  Except when she uses it to trampoline herself out of your grasp.