Category: writing

Books, fantasy, goals, heroines, publishing, stories, writing

Responsibilities and Inspirations

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The thing about being an independently-published author (or at least journeying toward that goal – Magic Most Deadly, is so, so close to being ready!) is that you still have to be responsible about your writing.

By which I mean, if you have two books planned for this year, and two more planned for next, and you know that you are a slow enough writer it will take you all year to get those books written and ready for publication, you cannot, no matter how much you want to, hare off on a side trail and write something completely different. Because you have responsibilities just as surely as if you have a contract with an outside publishing house.

Which is why I am not writing that heavily female, POC, straight-up high fantasy quest-and-battle novel I want to write after seeing this, and reading this and this.

But I want to.

And so I am jotting down notes and character ideas and possible plots in my handy-dandy notebook here and there, as I think of it, and maybe, just maybe, once my self-imposed contracts are up, the spark will still be there and I will be able to write it. Or there’s even the possibility that I might be spurred to write these stories that much faster, so I can get to that one sooner.

In any case, it’s always nice to have inspiration bubbling, even if one can’t go chasing every will-o-the-wisp idea that floats across one’s path. Not, in any case, if one wishes to be that responsible writer one is trying so hard to achieve.

Seriously, who hasn’t read LOTR and wanted to see Eowyn get her shot at adventure? She would be an amazing protagonist.

 

(I am also, in trying to be responsible, not taking up my Welsh language studies again. Though that has more to do with homeschooling/packing/moving/I have no time for a new time-consuming hobby than it does with writing!)

goals, philosophy, writing

Get Healthy Bloghop: Water

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My number-one secret for getting/staying healthy isn’t really a secret at all.

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Drink water.

When I was pregnant with my first child, the best advice my doctor gave me was to keep hydrated. I got a giant water bottle – one marked with easy-to-read measurements, and used that to keep track of my water intake each day. By the time I was finally done with pregnancy and nursing … well, by that time I was expecting again, so when I was finally done with all that, I had firmly established the habit of drinking water constantly throughout the day.

I’m not perfect with it anymore – my girls are four and five, long enough for me to occasionally slide back into bad habits. But oh boy, can I tell the difference when I get out of the habit. When I am drinking enough water, my mind is clearer; my body healthier; my hair and skin happier; my temptations to eat too much sugar far lessoned. When I’m even slightly dehydrated? I get slow, sluggish, and stupid. Cranky, too.

I don’t always like drinking it. Sometimes it’s too boring, sometimes it just tastes unpleasant. So often I add fruit to it to give a little more flavor, or squirt some lemon juice in, or even add just a tiny bit of juice. Anything to convince myself to keep drinking it.

And no, coffee, even decaffeinated, is NOT an acceptable substitute for water. So sorry! (Neither is black tea, which is sadder for me personally.)

Exercise is good (I’m still looking for something to fill the gap ice dance was for me this winter); healthy eating in general is hugely important; the simple act of moving throughout the day necessary; but for me, drinking enough water to stay properly hydrated is the single best thing I can do to stay healthy, body and mind.

How about you?

This post is part of the Staying Healthy Bloghop. Check out more posts at Alex J Cavanaugh, Stephen Tremp, L Diane Tremp, and Michael Di Gesu.

1920s, Books, critiquing, fantasy, publishing, writing

Title Reveal!

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I teased on my FB page last week that I had finally settled on a title for my novel … and then said you would all have to wait until Monday, on the blog, to find out what it is. Wonder no more!

I’ve been calling this book Magic & Mayhem almost since the conception, but I never intended for it to be the official title – it was just holding it together in my mind, better than just calling it “Maia’s story” or “The Book.” When the time came to settle on a real title, though, I had the worst time. Nothing I thought of seemed quite right. I would bounce ideas off my husband with even more intensity than we used to discuss baby names (seriously, those were easy compared to this), and then email a list to my critique partner to get her opinion. I scoured the manuscript itself for clues, hunted through my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, searched poems and verses and the Bible, stared at my row of Agatha Christie’s in vain hope of inspiration, and racked my own brain for ideas.

Finally, finally I found one that not only I liked, my two long-suffering partners in crime agreed sounded good, as well. Success at last!

(Seriously, who would have thought picking a title would be almost harder than writing the book itself?)

So, without further ado, I introduce …

Magic Most Deadly 

Ever since the War, Maia Whitney’s life has been one long straight path of drudgery and boredom, with no room for the adventures she secretly craves. If only there was a chance to do some work that really mattered, but what would that be?

Lennox Davies, minor magician and master Intelligence agent, has no time for independent and opinionated women. Lives depend on his ability to remain undistracted and keep his own counsel.

But when the two of them witness a murder, and Maia discovers her own blossoming magical talent, they must put aside their differences in order to work together. If they don’t, England itself could fall.

And even if they do, it still might not be enough.

stories, writing

Notebooks

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I picked up a small notebook the last time I was out shopping. I was getting lined paper for Joy (who for some reason much prefers her drawings to be on lined paper instead of blank, and had run out), saw the notebooks, and on impulse picked one up for myself.

I have drifted, in the last few years, to being almost entirely a computer-writer. I have my journal, and journals of letters I write to my girls, but for anything else – stories, plots, poems, menus, shopping lists, study notes etc – I do it on my computer.

I got burnt out by social media last week. I had already been slowly coming to realize that once again, I was getting sucked into spending way too much time on the internet, and then with all the crazy happenings of last week, that time doubled.

When I found myself foaming at the mouth and wanting to unfriend and unfollow EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE WORLD I knew it was time to take a step back.

I also knew my weaknesses. Unless I am in the throes of a story, if I’m just on the computer to jot something down – a story element, my menu plan for the week, my to-do list for the day – I find myself checking out social media without even thinking about it.

So I pulled out the new notebook, thinking it was a stroke of genius on my part to buy it, even before everything happened.

The first thing to go in it was a to-do list, none of which got done. But it made me feel better to have it written down by my own hand.

Then it was some notes for the study on Philippians I’m doing with some friends. Then it was the above picture, various story elements from my novel, trying to put them together to send some coherent ideas to my cover designer (also trying to figure out a title, which is still giving me fits, because every one I think up comes oh so close but there’s just something not quite perfect about it, and now my brain is so fried it can’t think of anything new. I loathe titles. Why can’t I just label my books Book 1, Book 2, Short Story 5, Different Genre Book 8, etc? It would be so much easier.). Then I started jotting down the outline for my next Sophie short story, which is starting to get completely away from me and needs reining in.

Oh yes, and a list of sewing projects I need to complete for the girls’ spring/summer wardrobes.

All this, and I didn’t need to open my computer, and expose myself to the temptation of The Internet once.

I see some more notebooks in my near future. This one is already filling up rapidly.

characters, writing

The Rules

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I was reading The Secret Adversary for about the millionth time this weekend, and when I got to the part where Tommy acted completely out of character, I had to stop and ponder it for a few moments.

James Warwick as Tommy Beresford

I love that part. It’s one of my favorites. Sober, steady, practical Tommy acts completely impulsively, and it’s way better than if the same action was taken by Tuppence, who is KNOWN for her impulsiveness.

Now, most of the time, when a character does something completely foreign to their personality, it drives me nuts. So why does it work so well for Tommy?

I think it’s because Christie, as the narrator (she’s not quite an omniscient narrator in this one, but it’s definitely not a tight third-person POV) acknowledges that he’s acting OOC, and so does Tommy himself. I also think it’s because it really does happen, in real life, that the predictable steady people DO occasionally get wild impulses, and give into them without understanding the why or the how of it. So even though it’s OOC, it’s still believable, and it makes for a great scene, and builds up to some that are even better.

I like reading authors like Christie, who wrote before the era of “Rules for Writing,” and wouldn’t have cared a fig for them if she did (she scatters adverbs wildly) (haha – get it? Wildly? OK, I’m done). She wrote according to her own internal rules, and she never broke them, and it shows.

I break a lot of the so-called Rules in my own writing. But I have a set of my own rules, and the few times I’ve tried (guiltily) to break them, it makes a mess. And sometimes when I start to fret about The Rules, I remind myself of Christie, and then I feel better. Not that I’m the genius she was! But like her, my rules are more important to follow than The Rules.

As long as you understand what you’re doing and why, and you are doing it deliberately, I think The Rules should go out the window.

Where do you stand on the matter?

Life Talk, seasons, writing

April, May, Tulips, and Writing

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I hope you all has a wonderful Easter! We did; my husband’s family came out for the weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time together, filling and hiding plastic eggs for the kids to hunt on Sunday after church, and eating all the food I could keep coming out of my kitchen. We were a surprisingly hungry bunch this weekend!

As much as I loved having family out, and visiting them in our turn, I must confess to a sneaking sense of relief and freedom as we enter the month of April. Why? Because we have NOTHING planned. No trips, no people coming out to see us, nothing. Just living.

Now, I have learned in the last almost-decade of my married life that this is usually when life decides to laugh heartily at our expense and whack us on the nose with a broomstick. So I’m fully expecting Things to Happen. Even so, I’m reveling in the illusion of freedom right now.

We can finally start following our schedule! I can finish sewing the kids’ spring clothes! I can get more writing done! We’ll be able to do more than two days of school in a week! I can keep practicing driving so as to be more comfortable behind the wheel by the time we move! Carl and I can work together on the weekends to sort, organize, and pack boxes so that I don’t get completely overwhelmed by it all the week before we move!

(I am so laughing at myself even as I type this. This is NOT going to happen.)

Also of excitement to me are two things happening in May (in the merry, merry month of May …). One: my mother is getting her Master’s! We’re going up north for her graduation ceremony, and THEN we’re going just a little further north to go to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Canada.

This was an excursion we made most years when I was a kid, and Carl and I have wanted to go up every year since we were dating, and never made it. This year I said since we were already going to be so close (my parents live just south of the US-Canada border) at the right time of year, we WERE going to go. And so we are making sure our passports are up to date and GOING. I can’t wait. The girls are going to be blown away by so many tulips in one place, and downtown Ottawa is always worth a visit even without the flowers. Hurrah!

The second thing will actually happen before the first (confused yet?). For Mother’s Day weekend, happening before my mom’s graduation, Carl is going to take the kids to visit his mom. Where will I be during this? I’m SO glad you asked. I will be having a couple days entirely to myself. Not Here. Not at home, surrounded by all the Things I need to do every day, mocking me whenever I take the time to write. Not at his mother’s, where I still have to be mommy and wife (and daughter-in-law) even though we aren’t home. They are going to drop me off somewhere between our house and his mother’s, and I will have a real-live solo writing retreat. It’s my (belated)birthday present/(current)Mother’s Day present/(future)keeping everything functioning while Carl’s in seminary present.

So, any recommendations for a good place to stay in the Berkshires or southern Vermont for a solo writing retreat with no car?

And how is April looking for you?

Ever been to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa?

Did you have a nice Easter?

(A picture from last spring, taken at a park here in our city. Now imagine that, plus thousands more. THAT’S what it will be like in Ottawa.)

Books, writing

Overcoming Adversity Launch Day

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It’s the Overcoming Adversity Anthology launch day!

Cover design by DR Cartwright, from a concept by Ella Wilson
Blurb:
A collection of seventy moving and uplifting original pieces – real life, flash fiction, and poetry – about battling against the odds and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. The contributors include Amazon bestselling authors Alex J. Cavanaugh and Kyra Lennon, and the cream of upcoming talent.

The anthology is part of a fundraising effort to send the editor’s stepson, Andrew McNaughton, to a specialist college in England. Andrew has cerebral palsy, and is a remarkable young man with a promising future. However, the free further education options offered in his own country of Scotland will not challenge him and allow him to progress. In order to access the education he deserves, Andrew will have to pay exorbitant fees, thus creating a situation of discrimination.

Help us get Andrew to college by buying a book that runs the full gamut of human emotions, ultimately leaving you inspired and glad to be alive. Whatever struggles you are going through, our sincere hope is that this book will help.

Purchase Links:

(Paperback coming soon)

Editor Bio: Nick Wilford is a writer and stay-at-home dad. Once a journalist, he now makes use of those rare times when the house is quiet to explore the realms of fiction. When not writing he can usually be found spending time with his family or cleaning something. He has four short stories published in Writer’s Muse magazine. Nick is also co-running a campaign to get a dedicated specialist college built in Scotland. Visit him at http://nickwilford.blogspot.co.uk/.

~ * ~

It was such a privilege to be able to participate in this anthology. The poem I wrote, Memory, ended up being really special to me, and a chance to honor my grandparents. Thank you for this opportunity, Nick, and I hope it succeeds even beyond everyone’s wildest dreams!

Now, faithful blog readers, go forth and buy!
editing

Writer’s Sludge

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I haven’t written one word – save for blog posts, FB and Twitter updates, and the occasional short email – in three weeks.

Writer’s block, you ask?

Not exactly.

More like Writer’s Sludge.

I’m editing. I’m actually in the easy stage of editing, where all the major changes have been made and the end is in sight. I should be able to tackle this no problem, right?

Unfortunately, editing is also the tricky stage, when I need to focus all my attention on the task before me. Which means I can’t do it during the day, when the kids need me. Even putting on a movie doesn’t help (yes, I do resort to that sometimes – I never claimed to be Supermom), because I’m still in “mom” mode, not “writer” mode.

Up until the plague sweeping our house, I had been getting to the library for an hour on Fridays after Carl got home, and even that one hour of writing a week was fantastic. But with at least one of us being sick for almost the entire month of February, that just stopped happening.

Editing in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, you suggest? Yes. I should do that. I often have grand plans throughout the day of doing that. But usually by the time 8:00 rolls around and the kids are asleep, all I can do is curl up in the recliner and read fluffy books. My plans of a winter spent delving into different mythologies has fallen through, too! I’ve fallen back on comfort reads, Agatha Christie and Patricia C Wrede and Miss Read. All good books, but none of which require me to stretch my brain.

Which means, of course, that even now that we’re all (rap wood) healthy again, and I could be working on the MS again, my creative muscles have fallen out of use, and my natural laziness is creeping back to the forefront of my personality, instead of locked tightly in the back, where I usually try to keep it contained.

So I write this blog post in hopes that by being honest and open about this, it will trigger something in me, maybe even that famous stubbornness and contrariness that I’m known for throughout my family and friends, and I’ll start writing again immediately after posting this.

Even though I haven’t been writing/editing, I have started exercising some of my creative muscles again recently. See?

Now I just need to translate that into writing! Hmm … maybe if Maia had to deal with pirates …


1920s, Books, writing

Titles

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As many of you know, the working title for my current MS is Magic & Mayhem. I love the alliteration, the way it gives a sense of being a historical novel (tying in with books such as Sense & Sensibility or Pride & Prejudice, for example), and that it conveys the idea of what’s happening in the book without giving anything away. Perfect title, right?

Except. All of the sudden lately, I’ve been seeing a flood of blank & blank titles all over the place. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s looking like I’m following a trend (see my other post where I mention my annoyance with many of the similarities between the Crawley sisters and my protagonist’s family – I swear, I wrote mine before I ever even heard of Downton Abbey!). Not just because of hipster tendencies, but because I don’t want to give a false impression of my book. As a story, it doesn’t fit neatly into any genre or follow any current trends. So I would hate to lure somebody in by the title, only to have them irritated when the story reads so differently from other similarly-titled works.

So the question becomes, do I hope that by the time I have this edited, edited again, proofread, formatted, and finally published, that the blank & blank titles are less popular? Except I’m shooting for a late spring, early summer publication, even with all the work that needs to be done, so that really isn’t a lot of time. Do I hope that people will be amused by the subtle Jane Austen/Elizabeth Gaskell reference and miss out on the other, more popular new titles that follow that path?

Or do I go for a different title altogether? I had been playing around with a few ideas before settling on Magic & Mayhem:

Murder of a Manservant (excuse me while I fall asleep)

Of Magic and Men (except that it’s equally about men and women, and “Magic and Humankind” really sounds dull)

A Magical Mystery (booooring!)

Magical Mayhem (not bad. But not tremendously riveting)

In thinking about it just recently, as well as perusing old Victorian and Regency novel titles, I’ve come up with a few more:

Murder at Little Oaks (sounds like Nancy Drew – now, Nancy meets magic WOULD be a fun idea to explore sometime, but that’s not this story)

The Portland Papers (since much of the story’s plot revolves around needing to recover stolen papers, this one isn’t too bad. I don’t like that it doesn’t give any hint of the magic, though.)

The Apprentice (possible, since my protagonist is a magic apprentice. Still kind of dullsville, though.)

Such Stuff as Dreams (not bad – it is Shakespeare, after all, who also provided the title for one of my short stories, so there’s some continuity there. It is a little vague, though.)

Sigh. Maybe I should just hire someone to title my books for me …

Quick! Grace! Write out a title for Mummy’s book!
1920s, fantasy, goals, publishing, writing

Magic & Mayhem, Background

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I am mostly writing this to help me remember. My brain is terrible at holding onto these details.

In the spring of 2011, I was querying my completed MG fantasy, and researching and outlining a YA fantasy, as well as working on a children’s fantasy. Plenty of projects, especially when one considers that I had two toddlers at the time, one with whom I was starting preschool at home, the other of whom was potty-training.

And yet … I hated all my projects. Every time I re-read them, they seemed grimmer and more bleak. I have never been a dark writer, and I couldn’t figure out why what I was writing was so gloomy (I did find out soon afterward that I was on my way to a nervous breakdown, and though I was never diagnosed officially, I’m pretty sure I also had a mild case of depression – if not that, then at least severe despondency).

So one night, I tossed aside all my projects. Put away my research books. And I decided to write something for sheer fun, without even caring if it got published or not.

I’ve always adored Tommy and Tuppence (Agatha Christie’s creations), and any other male-and-female teams of adventurers/mystery solvers. Kate and Thomas, Cecy and James from Wrede and Stevermer’s Regency fantasy series also come to mind.

I decided to write an adventure story set in the 1920s, mostly because (thanks to LM Montgomery and her Rilla of Ingleside) I’ve always been fascinated by WWI and especially the between-war period. It would have to be in England, of course, because anything that an Anglophile writes for fun is going to be set in Great Britain. And just for some extra amusement, I’d throw magic into the mix. I knew I wanted a gentleman-and-lady team, like Tommy and Tuppence, except I wanted the lady to be the steady, practical one, and the gentleman to be the one who worked more off his impulses and instincts. I love turning tropes on their heads.

I had a few false starts, but eventually my characters and I came to an agreement about their personalities and roles, and the story sprang to life under my fingers. I set aside the research for that YA fantasy. I put the finished MG fantasy aside to look at and revise at a later time. I forgot completely about the children’s fantasy.

Most importantly, I had fun. I remembered why I loved writing. I even bought the first season of Downton Abbey (I had steadfastly resisted getting sucked in up to that point) as “background research,” and was hugely amused and somewhat miffed at some of the parallels between those characters and mine.

Maia and Len and all the rest took over my writing life. And I did not resist. The story that I started just for fun, with no thought of eventual publication, eventually became the story I am planning on publishing this spring or summer, whenever I finish the last bit of polishing. It spurred me to write If This Be Magic & The Traitor and the Spy, two short stories set in the same universe but featuring different characters.

Just a few short weeks ago, I sat down to do something else entirely, and suddenly the entire plot for a prequel unrolled in my brain. I frantically scribbled down the outline and started working – again, just for fun! – on a rough draft of that. That story is now spurring me to hurry up and finish editing Maia and Len’s current tale so I can work undisturbed on that one.

And just recently, I’ve started thinking about those three abandoned stories again, and wondering if I can give them another shot, make something less-grim of them.

The moral of this story is obvious – write for love, not for business. But I’m not recording it here as a moralistic warning to myself or anyone else. I’m writing it because it inspires me, that my best work to date sprang from writing for pure pleasure, and it helped to bring joy back into my life when I was in a very dark place. Just as the darkness in my personal life had been affecting my writing, when I started writing determined to just love it, that bled over into my personal life, and helped to bring me through that bleak tunnel.

I’m not even going to attempt sending Magic & Mayhem, Maia and Len’s tale, to a traditional publisher. Everything about this story has been personal, and I think the publishing part of it should be as well. I’m going to have it professionally edited, of course! But I’m not going to risk losing some of its joy by dealing with queries, rejections, changes, frustrations, and all the rest involved in traditional publishing.

An unprofessional decision? Yeah, probably. But being unprofessional was what brought this book to life. I’m not going to change that now. I have an entire career ahead of me to be professional in. I think I can afford to indulge my whims a little right now, before that career takes off.

Maia and Len are utterly unconventional. Their creator ought to be, as well.