Category Archives: fantasy

Updates in Nutshell. Or a Clam Shell.

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I’ve been inexcusably quiet here the last few weeks, and no, it’s not because of NaNoWriMo. Again, real life and things got in the way of that. Let me tell you, there’s nothing I would have rather done than write a novel from scratch, revel in the joy of creation, and bask in the awesome of writing for the month of November. But life has a way of being a stinkypants sometimes, and that’s totally what happened. I won’t get into the details of the personal life stuff, but it comes down to the fact that I’ve been job hunting, working on GeekMom, doing the holiday thing, working on Crossed Genres, and using my extra time to catch up on some anthology submissions (and a sale) as well as edits for Pilgrim of the Sky. When I had less work to do, NaNo was far easier.

In addition, we just released the first issue of Crossed Genres edited by Jaym Gates and myself. A momentous occasion, to be sure, as I’ve never been an editor of such proportions before. I really enjoy the process of finding those stories that shine. I’m particularly fond of the steampunk/Chinese influenced world of Jaymee Goh’s story “Lunar Year’s End“, but the TOC is really strong all throughout. What other magazine brings you such a width and breadth of genres? It’s truly fun to be part of the Crossed Genres team, and we have lots in store for the months to come.

Also important to note, I decided to axe the original ending of the Pilgrim of the Sky in favor of something more… transcendental. The book now contains 100% more quahog and 100% sphinx. I will rework some of the 10K I chopped, including the climax scene, but my heroine needed more punch. And now she’s got it.

Meanwhile, I am doing my darndest to focus on Pilgrim and edits and publication and try not to let other issues in the publishing industry get to me. But it’s hard. My husband is always the first to remind me that I’ve made a huge amount of progress in the last few years, but I can’t let go of that annoying voice in the back of my head. The one that doubts. That tells me I’m really not terribly marketable (squids and exploding eyeballs and whatnot).

Then I tell myself to shut up. Because, in the end it doesn’t really matter, does it? It comes down to the fact that, hell or high water, I write. And writing will happen whether or not I’m marketable. Maybe one of the weird ass books I write will start a trend. Or maybe it won’t. It makes me happy. And that’s the most important part. *cue the strings*

Anyrot! The gears do keep on moving, and I am the machine. So tally-ho!

The Gnome and the Necromancer

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With the month of November looming, it’s time to consider NaNoWriMo. Last year it was NaNoEdMo for me, as I was busy doing edits on Queen of None.  But this year,  I haven’t been writing much at all since I finished Indigo & Ink, and figured I could use November to focus. Edits on Pilgrim of the Sky aren’t due until early 2011, after all. Things have been… well, meh in a lot of ways, and I’m seriously in need of some writing therapy. Not to mention, it’s really fun being involved in something creative with a group of awesome friends.

So: enter The Gnome and the Necromancer. This is a departure for me. For one, it’s Urban Fantasy, and takes place in the modern day, here in our world, and not in a secondary world where the rules don’t apply. It’s also YA, the main character, Ruby, being all of fourteen. The other MC is a gnome, for lack of a better term, who is a professional kidnapper. He’s supposed to steal magical children and bring them to his side of the world, but he sort of slips up in Ruby’s case, and she ends up unleashing her powers inadvertently on our world.

Anyway, here’s the synopsis:

Ruby Benson is fourteen, and her life couldn’t be worse. Or so she thinks. When her cousin Calvin passes away in a tragic car accident at the age of sixteen, she accidentally brings back his soul from the Underworld: into her corgi. Her inadvertent magic spell triggers the Changeling Court, who realize–for the first time since her birth–that she was not taken as a baby, as she should have been.

Talfryn Windwake, the changeling gnome in charge of her case, gets sent back to Ruby’s side of the world to retrieve her. He expects the transition to go smoothly: after all, aside from not taking her when he should have fourteen years ago, he’s got a perfect record. But Ruby isn’t going down without a fight. As Talfryn struggles to redeem himself after his unforgivable error, Ruby must come to grips with her new abilities, and decide whether or not she wants to trade her old life for a new one… the life she should have had in the first place.

A bit more marketable? Perhaps. Nothing wrong with that, I don’t think. But it’s going to be both lighthearted and sad at times. Themes of death, loss, love, duty… you know, those sorts of things. And shorter. Hopefully no more than 65-70K, which should work well for the genre and the time!

Anyway: if you’re doing NaNoWiMo this year, feel free to friend me! You can find my page here!

The Pits of Research

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Technically it's a chasm.

I did it. I fell into the Pits of Research.

Don’t get me wrong. I love research. At a point in my life I wanted to be a professional researcher, i.e. a professor, so the hankering to discover new information is definitely strong with me.

However. There are good and bad ways to go about these things. I’ve been adding to and editing Pilgrim of the Sky, which, as I mentioned, has a lot to do with religion. Sort of. In the book, the premise revolves (haha, revolves…) around eight worlds. These worlds are all connected, are part of infinite worlds, yet still have similarities between them. The main character’s world is mostly ours. Now, on top of that, the book relies heavily on concepts of the reincarnation of divine beings and, well, divine beings in general. I won’t say too much because it would ruin some of the story, but our heroine gets involved with these quasi-divine, reincarnated people.

One of my goals in this edit was to branch out the various pantheons I include, away from Celtic and Norse to something more interesting. Now, I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last week sifting through research on every pantheon I can find. And it’s helpful.

But I was totally misguided.

The thing about having these eight worlds is a connection to but not a dependence upon each other. My mistake was leaning too heavily on research and not heavily enough on my own imagination, on the fantasy freedom I meant to explore in the first place.

Rule #1 for fantasy writers: research from the real world is great, and knowledge is power and all that jazz — however, relying too heavily on it can cloud your mind and slow you down. The most important thing for me, at this moment, was not mapping god to god across every known pantheon, but rather, just telling a good story and having some cool things happen. Which is what I’m doing at this juncture with my main character. I decided she needed some real testing. A gods’ gauntlet. But the thing is, the gauntlet isn’t in her world. Yet for some reason I spent hours this week reading up about the Mesopotamian and various Asian pantheons. Not that it won’t ever help me, or help me in another section of the book… I was just doing it all wrong. This is not the research you’re looking for, in other words.

Okay, so I lost a few days. It’s not the end of the world. Just be wary of research. As fun as it is, as thrilling as it can be, it can also blind you from your task at hand.

Anyway. Back to that gauntlet. Time to roll for initiative.

 

I have an announcement…

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Today is September 22nd, which happens to be the birthday of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, give or take. And while this day is perfect for gorging on cheese and mushrooms, taking walks in the park among the trees, and starting adventures, it’s also a good one for announcements (or so I’d like to think).

No. I am not disappearing. I have no magic rings, and even if I did own one, I’d probably have lost it by now or else left you entirely. I’m far too much of a Took to let a ring sit in an envelope for years.

The announcement is this: I have sold my first book! And no, it’s not that one. And not that one, either. But it is Pilgrim of the Sky, and it will be finding a home at Candlemark & Gleam, with a release date (tentatively) of August 2011!

I got the news shortly after I got out of surgery, and after talking back and forth (as lucidly as I could manage) with Kate Sullivan, one of the editors, I decided that Candlemark & Gleam was really the best home for Pilgrim of the Sky. I wrote the book with independent, small presses in mind, and after it received one very perplexing rejection almost a year ago, I’d been waiting for a place I felt fit the vibe of the book. When I saw a Tweet announcing submissions for this new, ambitious, small press, I figured there was nothing to lose. Plus, I really like their approach.

Even cooler? I feel like they really get the book. Which is no easy task. Pilgrim of the Sky is genre-smooshing, incorporating science fiction, fantasy, time-travel, multiverse theory, metal corsets, steampunk, romance, Romantic poetry (especially Wordsworth), and a little bit of religion and a heap of art history. (And floating mansions. And did I mention a talking raven and a guy that turns into a horse? Can you see why I didn’t query this one to agents?)

Still, as strange as the book may be in its genre, it’s still rooted in reality, being the only book I’ve ever written to take place in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, where I grew up. A lot of what I have to say in that book comes from the 18 years I lived there, and my experiences in that unforgiving climate. For that reason it’s surprisingly personal. The settings in many cases come straight from what I’ve seen–going from Northampton and the First Churches and Nini’s Pizza to Sunderland and the great, 18th century Colonial homes, then along the Masspike to Boston. (As I said in an old post just as I’d started the book: There’s something odd about that part of the world that you can’t quite put your finger on… it’s no coincidence that Lovecraft wrote about New England, let’s just say.)

I will keep you posted in the future, as I’m going to be heading into edits, soon. I’m one of those curious people for whom the editing process is enjoyable, so I’m actually thrilled to be revisiting Maddie, Randall, and everyone else–especially knowing that in less than a year I’ll be able to share their story with readers!

Weird Tales Uncanny Beauty Issue

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Picture via Jeff VanderMeer's Flickr stream

I’ve been waiting to talk about this until it was official but, hey, look: official! And awesome. I had the privilege of coming up with a project together with Brigid Ashwood, a brilliant artist and fellow lover of speculative fiction. The piece in the upcoming issue is entitled “The Wakened Image” and it’s a look at some of the “made” women in mythology, taken from the Mabinogion and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Brigid helped me brainstorm the subject, and then I wrote a three-part poem in blank verse; Brigid provided some astonishingly beautiful pictures to accompany the text.

The issue isn’t available yet, but soon. I’ll keep you posted. I am so excited to share this piece, and definitely squeed a little seeing my name on the front of Weird Tales. Who wouldn’t? :)

The Great Inbetween

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Oh hai. Yes, I have a blog. Sometimes I write in it. Right now for instance.

Yeah, been busy. BUSY. Busy with stuff I can’t yet share with the world; some writing related (in the speculative sense), some blogging related. All busy related.

So far, there hasn’t been time for much new writing. I have yet to catch novel fever on any one idea, but do have some projects I am trying to work on, anyway. Even if they are being difficult. I’ve had a few ideas that I’d like to pursue, but at the moment I’m sitting on a half dozen novels and feel, rightly so I think, that finding homes for them might be something I should consider above all else. While my agent search wasn’t as positive as I’d hoped, I should note that I had three agents interested in reading more from me. Three really awesome agents. So as soon as Indigo & Ink is ready to go, I’ll send it (no pressure, right?). At the moment I’m waiting for feedback. I already put the query letters together on that count. Now, if I only knew what the scoop was on The Aldersgate I would be a happy lady indeed.

Other than that, I’m preparing for surgery in early September, right after Dragon*Con. I’m looking forward to it, as this is supposed to help my hand/arm/neck/back/shoulder issues, the ones that have made typing near torture, but I’ve never had surgery. I mean, I had a kid. That was, technically, surgery. But this is different. I’ll be unconscious and all that jazz.

My son turned four this week, and we have a big party planned for Saturday, along with his cousin who’s turning one. I am the cake lady. So tomorrow I will be immersed in fondant and flour and sugar for most of the day, but I’m just hoping that my hands hold out. I’ve been instructed to lay off of blood thinning drugs, which means no ibuprofen, no naproxen; in other words, no drugs that actually work. Regardless, the cakes I’m planning include one Mini Cooper (for my son) and one Yoshi of Mario Brothers fame. At very least I will have a blast doing it. A big part of me wishes I were Duff Goldman. But a woman. And less hairy.

Anyway! Cool things are coming down the pipeline. I just have to get past the next few weeks…

Homesick for fiction.

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Having finished the draft of Indigo & Ink, which has occupied the last seven months of my life, I’m now feeling a bit down in the dumps. You know, I really miss writing the book. After that last edit, I had a sense of finality, and while it was very thrilling, in some ways it also left me feeling a bit empty. This probably explains why when my friend Karen mentioned she’d read some of the first chapter, I about fell out of my chair in excitement.

Yes, writers are weird. If you hadn’t figured that out yet, you just haven’t met enough of us.

Anyway, I haven’t stopped writing, but nothing’s had that zing since finishing Indigo & Ink. Though I did hit a milestone. I wrote a short story in a respectably short amount of time without freaking out and hating it–and then I actually submitted it. I’ve been writing about 1.5 short stories a year lately, which is pretty pathetic in all honesty. And I can whine all I want about it simply not being my medium, but in actuality I think short stories are a hell of a lot harder to do well than novels. For me, anyway. To develop a character in under 6,000 words terrifies me. Which probably explains why I wrote The God Who Played, aforementioned short story, in first person.

Regardless, I have some thinking to do about what to write and when to write and how to write and all. I have surgery coming up next month, and Dragon*Con before that, so tossing myself headfirst into a novel is probably not the brightest ideas.

But then again, when have I ever been one to listen to reason? ;)

Draft One, Deeper Into the Murk

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So, no longer Draft Zero, eh, Indigo & Ink? This is where things get interesting.

I’m not one of those people who can let a book draft sit for terribly long. Okay, wait, no. That’s a lie. I can let it sit plenty after I’ve edited the crap out of it, but otherwise it pokes at my consciousness for days until I fix what needs fixing. We can’t always be as disciplined as Stephen King, and if we all wrote the same the world would be boring (or… something?). When I finished Indigo & Ink, I was in the zone, so I decided to keep going.

The draft, at one point, was almost 125K, and that worried me. My goal was originally 120, and I’m hoping the very final one will be even a little slimmer. Words don’t matter so much as content, true, but a more slender book has a better chance. (And yes, 120K is slender to me!) At this moment it’s about 119,500 words, and is comprised of 50 chapters (I would say the chapters are that way because I planned them, but I didn’t; still, the symmetry nut in me is insanely glad to end in a nice, round number).

Editing this time around was quite curious. Because the book essentially has a novella folded into the mix (a bit like baking a good cake) I attacked it in two parts. I edited everyone else’s story, then went after Dev. Dev, as I’ve mentioned a thousand times, travels through eight hells in the course of the book. And I made a big choice. I changed all his hell chapters to the present tense. Most of the 5K that I lost was in those chapters, because they’re supposed to be terribly otherwordly and strange. I realized I couldn’t get Dev’s POV as close as the other characters, because the rules simply don’t apply. And for whatever reason, present tense can really add distance. I think it works. We’ll see what my beta readers have to say.

So, overall impressions now that the book is at this state:

Things I Love: I am very proud of the dialogue in this book. I only have a few characters who really go on at length, but the situation typically calls for it. The tension is palpable in the scenes they need to be, the language moves at a good pace, and it’s not burdened by too much description (which is an admitted problem of mine; I want to know the stitch pattern on the hem of a skirt, y’know?). I am also proud of the choice my heroine makes in the end. While the book has a sub-plot that verges on romance, I just couldn’t let it go too far. I let her do the talking.

Things I Loathed: Tropes, tropes, tropes. I’m writing fantasy. I am painfully aware. And there are some things I did because, well, it’s the genre. There’s one thing in particular that I’m still not entirely on board with but, well, it fits with the overall mythology of this world, and so… there it is. I can’t very well destroy all of the tropes (see the comment about the romance up there). Also, I feel that some of the political intrigue slacks a bit toward the end. But that’s probably because I had a hard time writing it. Also: the climax needs work, but I still need to think on it. We’ll see what the readers think.

Thinking About: The market. Worried that this isn’t terribly marketable. Telling myself it doesn’t matter, because if it’s written well someone will love it. Really, it’s a bit of epic fantasy mixed up with a dose of Lovecraft, a pinch of Dante, and a smattering of Mieville, set in an alternate world in a high Victorianesque setting. There are plenty of corsets, flying machines, and even some relations (if you know what I mean). All with a multi-POV narrative, and well, that squid I was talking about. (Doesn’t that sound like the perfect pitch paragraph…)

At any rate. What’s done is done. Now, it’s in the hands of those readers who will likely show me things I never noticed, and I can start the editing process all over again! :)

Enter title here…

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I’ve been going back and forth with the title thing on this book for the last week, really and truly frustrated that I couldn’t get something that felt right. So today during dinner (no, we were not eating calamari – it was gazpacho and sausages!) the name struck.

Indigo and Ink.

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Finally something that speaks to two of the main themes of the book and, in my mind, has a rather neat ring to it. And, at least with a cursory search on Google, no other books of the same name. Dark and squiddy. I like it that way.

I feel better now.

Titles, Tentacles, and Trust

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Image: CC by Stephane Giner via Flickr

Explosition: in a narrative, the presence of excessive exposition. i.e. expository barf

Well, 80K has been surpassed. This is good. This is very good. And as I plunge into the last few chapters, I’m realizing I do have more to say in this space. So I’m thinking the draft will be around 95K now… give or take.

I have a tentative new title: Mother’s Ink. Or Inkwell. It’s become the center of the story, really (ink that is), and has even lent itself to my own version of the undead. (This is momentous! I’ve never had the undead in a novel before. I feel like I might have leveled as a writer. They even scare me.)

The hard part is keeping a firm grasp on all the strands in the story. The final climactic scene has taken a great deal of think time to sort out. I need certain people in certain places as well as certain artifacts in certain places, and trying to orchestrate that has proven rather difficult. But last night’s late thought session (I tend to think out most of my novels in bed before falling asleep or driving in the car listening to Classical music) I figured out 95% of it. That other 5% is still up in the air, um, literally. But I think I can get there.

Two Things I Loved: Okay, so there’s 10K of stuff since the last post. That’s a lot of stuff. So I get to cherry pick. I loved the interplay between Dinah and Ash (though it needs some work) and I loved bringing Dev back into the “real” world. The latter was painful and awkward and so wonderfully anti-romantic and unsatisfying. Which is just how I wanted it to be.

Two Things I Loathed: The exposition. It’s everywhere. Both of the narratives I’ve been writing in have come to the point where they are with People of an Informative Nature (TM). They are realizing things, learning things. And while that information is essential to the over all plot, it does slow things down. For me.  And there’s more than one instance of expository barf, so that counts for more than two things.

Best Quote of the Day:

“What color are the stones, Ash?” Corin asked. “The ones along the top.”

Ash squinted. “Is this a trick question? ‘Cause I don’t have time for—”

“Just answer me. What color are they?” Corin pressed.

“Ain’t no color. It’s empty.”

“Empty?” Dinah laughed.

“What do you see, Dinah?” asked Corin.

“The rubies are brilliant,” she said. “The most brilliant I’ve ever seen. True red, as deep as blood.”

Corin nodded. “Precisely. She sees it. We cannot. Do you know why, Dinah?”

“Because you’re men and simply can’t appreciate the nuances of refined aesthetics?” she tried, but knew it was a lame attempt at humor in a mirthless environment.

Worst Quote of the Day: (especially Dev’s “don’t take her, just take me” bit; ugh)

“Miracle. It sounds like a nightmare. I’ve seen what those things are capable of,” Marna hissed. She was angry—spitting mad, as her father might have said. Dev missed that about her, that temper. It had been years since he’d seen it.

“You and your Brennada friends, my dear, have meddled in business quite beyond your ken,” the Sib warned. “Do not presume to tell me.”

“Let her go,” Dev said, standing, taking a step toward the Sib. He didn’t know what he would do to stop hean, but just listening to heas voice was making him ill. “Do what you want with me—I don’t care. Just don’t bring her into this.”

The Sib laughed. “Ah, so noble! But I’m afraid I can’t do that, Devinder. She has proven surprisingly valuable for all of her mundanity. We thought she would lure you from your journey, though were were mistaken, in a way. Still, she certainly prevented your death, which was to our benefit. But it seems there are other men prepared to be snared on her behalf. You do have a way, Ms. Bashkin.”

Thoughts of the Day: Really, it’s just been novel fever around here. Not thinking terribly clearly on any front, and probably won’t until the draft is finished. I’ve been pondering that last scene a great deal, and that’s about it.

Around the Bend: Big boss fight! Cue music! Cue dancing! Cue freaky squidlings and undead sorcerers! This stuff is gettin’ real, I tell ya.

(Image CC by Stephane Giner via Flickr)