Pretentious Title

To the book reviewers

2012-01-28T17:39:00.000-05:00

This might come as a shock, but I like to read. I know! An author who reads books? Well try to keep your eyeballs in your heads, folks, because I'm going to tell it like it is. Straight up truth! Ahem, anyway.

SO, I like to read (duh), and because there are way way way more books out there than I could possibly ever consume even if reading was my full time job, I also enjoy book reviews. Especially clever, funny, insightful reviews that are as entertaining to read as they are informative about the book (see all of Smart Bitches). I have an RSS feed of dozens of reviewers I read on a regular basis just because I like hearing about books. This list includes reviewers whose opinions I never agree with, but who I keep reading just because I like seeing the other side. And as an author, I especially love book reviewers because without them, getting any attention for a debut novel that doesn't have a big ad push behind it would be nearly impossible.

I know what you're saying, "Ok, Rachel, we get it, you're a book review nerd. Why are you stating the obvious?" Well, because there's been some shenanigans going on across the internet that, I feel, need some addressing.

First off, let's review what a book reviewer actually is. A book reviewer is someone who reads and gives their opinions so that other people who might be interested in a title can get a taste for if the book is their thing or not before they purchase it. This means a book reviewer's audience is their readers, the people who come to their site or column or Goodreads account to check out what books are worth pursuing. A book reviewer has no obligation to give a book a good review. A book reviewer has no obligation to review a book AT ALL (well, unless they work as a reviewer for a paper that demands reviews of certain books as part of the job).

The vast majority of book reviewers these days, especially in genre fiction, write reviews as a labor of love. They don't get paid for it other than whatever advertising they can get from their websites, and many don't make any money off their reviews at all. With this in mind, I get astoundingly frustrated when I see things like this. Yep, that is a contract sent by a (small) publisher to a book reviewer. A CONTRACT, for a book review, telling them things like what review system they should use, and trying to make them sign over rights to their review, etc. etc. And in return for all this rights snatching and bombastic downtalking, the lowly reviewer has the honor of reviewing the publisher's books.

*deep, calming breath*

Ok, so this is one really horrid example of how people can get forget the fact that every time a book reviewer selects a book to talk about, they are doing the publisher a favor. But there are plenty of examples of authors and publishers treating reviewers and book bloggers like they are the ones who should be grateful, and that's just not how things works. A good review is not the reward you get for sending someone a free copy of your book. Every review, good, bad, or otherwise, is a gift. Each one represents a book lover taking time out of their life to read and write something thoughtful about your work. Authors and publishers should spend their time worrying about how they can thank reviewers and make getting books to them easier, not how they can best ensure a stream of positive reviews in time to meet their pub date.

So, just in case I haven't made it clear yet, let me go ahead and give you Rachel Aaron's official policy on book reviews:

If you reviewed my book, thank you. If you loved it and said so, you made my day a million times over, thank you! If you hated it, I'm sorry, but still, thank you for reviewing it. If you reviewed it on Amazon, thank you. If you gave it one star, it made me sad, but I'm STILL GLAD YOU DID IT. I said it before and I'll say it again, every review is a gift. Every single person who took their time to say something, anything, about my book deserves my appreciation and thanks.

There are thousands and thousands of books published every year in the US alone. For a new author like myself, the greatest threat is getting lost in that sea of titles. My fear isn't getting bad reviews, it's having my book sink because no one knew it was there. Every time someone writes a review of my work, even if that review isn't glowing, new readers hear about my book, and the risk of fading away grows less.

Book review work is demanding, the least I can do is try my utmost to make sure it is never thankless. So to all reviewers out there, the big ones and the small ones, the pros and the casual Amazon raters, thank you. Thank you for reviewing my book. Thank you for reviewing books period. Thank you for helping to get new authors going and bring attention to older books that might have gotten overlooked. I owe a great many of my sales to my reviews, and I never, ever forget that.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you. And if anyone tries to treat you badly, I will cut them.

Yours forever,
Rachel

Orbit France made me a BOOK TRAILER!

2012-01-18T08:18:00.001-05:00

Seriously BLOWN AWAY!

La légende d'Eli Monpress, Le voleur aux... by Orbit_Books

It's in French, but you get the general gist. DailyMotion is kind of annoying with ads, I'll put up a better link if I can I get one. Still, the trailer is COOL. Soooooo cool!!! Thank you guys!!

Fantastic Eli Review, now in English!

2012-01-18T08:04:00.000-05:00

So a few days ago I was utterly blown over by an incredibly imaginative comic-style review from Sita at http://www.sorcelleries.net. Only problem (for me, at least)? It was in French! But then, as I bemoaned never getting to read it, Sita contacted me over Twitter with an offer to translate! Rachel's Day: MADE! So, without further ado, here is the translated review!

Is that not the best thing ever? Thanks again to the wonderfully talented Sita for drawing this! Her other reviews are just as cool, you should totally go to her site and check them out! You can read the original French version here if you're cool like that. Thanks a million times, Sita, and I hope you enjoy the other books when they come out in French!

- Rachel

The Spirit War, coming at you!

2012-01-09T11:16:00.000-05:00

As you might have noticed from the lovely new look, I've updated my website and blog to match my glorious new covers!

I mean, can't have new covers without a new site, can you?

But that's not the best part. The BEST part is that my new site includes a big, 3 chapter sample from The Spirit War, including the prologue which might as well be a Josef short story! It's still a long wait until the book comes out in June, but hopefully this will help ease the wait. Or make it worse? Either way, I hope you enjoy it, along with my spiffy new site!

Now, back to the final edits on Spirit's End. Siiigh, it feels like the end, too. Poor Eli, he was so enjoying being the main character. Don't worry, Eli, you'll always be my main character! (Eli: You say that to all your characters. Rachel: *innocent whistling*)

A happy New Year indeed!

2012-01-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

There is no one more excited about 2012 than I am, and for reasons that have nothing to do with ancient calendars. 2012 is the year when the final two Eli books come out at last! I am SO HAPPY about this! Finally I get to share the end of the story with everyone, which means the time when I can stop worrying about slipping up and dropping a spoiler is in sight. Woo!

The Spirit War comes out in June, and Spirit's End, the fifth and final Eli novel, comes out in November. And even though I'm not supposed to have favorites, I have to tell you that these two books are probably the best I've ever written. I am UNCOMFORTABLY EXCITED about people getting to read them at last!

To celebrate, here's a large, lovely version of the cover of The Spirit War, as well as the back cover blurb! (Warning, back blurb might be a spoiler if you haven't read the first three books. Not a bad spoiler, but if you're very sensitive about these things, you might want to skip it. Or read the first three books, a much better idea!)

"All Eli Monpress wanted was the biggest bounty in the world. He never meant to have obligations, or friends, but master swordsman Josef Leichten and Nico, the daughter of the dead mountain, have saved Eli's life too many times to be called anything else. And when a friend upsets your plans and ruins all your hard work, what's a thief to do?

After years of running from his birthright, Josef is forced to return home and take up his title as prince. War is coming for humans and spirits between the Immortal Empress and the Council of Thrones, and Josef's little island is right in the middle. But conquest isn't the Empress's only goal, she has a personal vendetta against a certain thief.

What started as a simple side trip to help a friend is rapidly turning into the most dangerous job of Eli's career, but he can't back out now, not when Josef needs him. But when you're under attack from all sides, even the world's greatest thief can find himself cornered, and it's going to take all the fast talking Eli can muster to survive the next few days."

ALSO! Did you see that the lovely and amazing Felicia Day reviewed the first three Eli novels on Goodreads? Well she did, and she had lots of nice things to say! I've been a fan of hers for years, and I gotta tell you, I nearly died when I saw she called The Spirit Eater, caps lock quote, "a REALLY good book." To say I was fangirling over this would be an irresponsible understatement. I was positively levitating with happiness. Having people you admire read and like your books out of the blue? Priceless.

And in other big news, I've written a short story set in the Eli world that will be coming out on Feb. 15 to celebrate the Omnibus! It's called Spirit's Oath, and it's the story of how Miranda and Gin met. Here's the full blurb:

"Four years before the events of The Spirit Thief, Miranda Lyonette was a young apprentice Spiritualist on the cusp of a promising career. But on the eve of her return from bonding a wind spirit, a night that should have been a celebration, she finds instead that her father has come to take her home. Now, Miranda must choose between her duty to her family and her future at the Spirit Court. But while she's trying to make her parents see reason and avoid an arranged marriage to a man she can't stand, she stumbles across the one one spirit who needs her more than any other, a caged ghosthound who doesn't want her help. To save him, Miranda will have to earn the dog's trust, but what she gets in return is a friendship deeper than anything she expected."

At 20k words it's more like a mini-novel than a short story, but if you enjoy ghosthounds you should totally give it a try. It will be available digitally through Orbit Short Fiction, which is a really fantastic little story shop if you haven't seen it yet.

Whew, ok, I think I got everything there. Lots of great Eli stuff coming your way, I hope you're ready! I know I am!

Thanks for reading!

- Rachel

The Two Bird Minimum

2011-12-14T09:51:00.000-05:00

In my Eli Monpress series, Eli, my charming degenerate of a main character, has a favorite saying - "My stones have a two bird minimum." Of course, since it's my book and Eli is my character, this is also one of my favorite sayings, and I try to apply it as often as possible. Especially in my writing, and especially when I'm planning out a scene.

For example, yesterday I was cooking dinner and thinking about this new scene I was going to add to my new novel (the one from my 12 Days of Glory post, for those of you playing along at home). My editor had requested a few changes, and I'd decided right off the bat that a new scene was needed. But while I had the perfect scene in mind, I had a problem. While this scene nicely solved the problem my editor (quite rightly) wanted addressed, it didn't do anything else. Since my scenes tend to run around 2k, I was reasonably sure this new addition would only fatten my novel by around that much. But, to make the scene work I'd have to move my characters to a new location, which would add another 1.5-2k words to get them there, describe things, and get them back. And then there'd be everyone else's reaction to the location change (the problem with an ensemble cast, all those story lines have to be taken into consideration), so that's another 1k spent covering my bases and 5k in total once everything was added in.

5k is a LOT in a 110k novel, almost a full chapter, and way too much space to dedicate to fixing one measly problem. But I liked the scene a lot, so, I decided to make it earn its keep in the novel and set about finding other work for it to do. If this scene was my stone, I was going to whack as many birds as possible with it by the time those five thousand words were done.

As I've talked about in tiresome detail before, when I write a scene, I demand that it do three things - advance the story, reveal new information, and pull the reader forward. But the real secret I've found for scenes is that you can hit every one of these points from multiple angles at once, and the more angles you hit, the better the scene tends to get.

Complexity in a novel isn't a matter of having lots of people doing lots of things, it's about how well those plots are revealed and well they fit together. When I plan a scene, I try to do at least two stories at once, preferably more. For example, if my main characters have to go to a space station to get information about the main plot, I'll put hints of a secondary character's secret past on that station as well, and then maybe use the stop over as an excuse to have my main couple get some down time to have a serious conversation. So, in this one scene, a stop at a space station, I've hit on three story lines: the main plot, the subplot, and the romantic plot. Any or all of these plots can hit the three scene hooks for me - the discoveries for the main plot can advance the story, the hints of the subplot reveal new information and pull the reader forward, and the growing romantic tension can pull the reader forward and advance the story and reveal new information, especially if we get a hint of the hero's mysterious past. The possibilities are endless!

Every time you add a scene, you're bulking up your novel. You're putting more words between your reader and the end of the story. The way I see it, it's up to me to make those words count. It's up to us, as writers, to make each scene necessary, interesting, and purposeful, to really make the scene work to earn its place in the book. To this end, whenever I write a scene, I'm constantly thinking "what else can it do?", what else can I make happen. Of course, you can go too far with this and overload a scene, but part of writing is learning how much is too much, too little, and just right.

In the end, my new scene did end up being right about 5k long, but rather than just solving the problem I'd created it to solve, the new location gave information about the world at large, offered a perfect set up for some foreshadowing of later events, got me some great character interaction, and turned into a really fun little interlude before the big battle. Many birds were hit, including some I didn't know were up there. Final verdict: Great success! I wish you many great successes as well. Keep writing!

- Rachel

Out and About

2011-10-19T13:06:00.003-05:00

I am breaking my writing hermitage for some news!

First off, if you haven't already heard, I will be a guest this weekend at RoundCon! It's most an anime convention, but thanks to John Hartness, there are a lot of writerly types showing up as well. Best of all, though, I'll get to hang out with Kalayna Price, who floats my boat all the way to China. If you're in the area and have a chance to stop by the con, please find me and say hello! We will gab Eli and I will spill all the secrets for you!

Second, I did an interview with Tracy S. Morris about my writing process. I think the most interesting new topic I talk about in there is the difference in my process for pansters/discovery writers. Namely, how I don't know how people write like that, but if you do, more power to you!

Again, I do hope to see some people at RoundCon if anyone lives in SC! People who've read my books are my favorite people in the world.

- Rachel

Eli Monpress Week!

2011-09-26T08:59:00.002-05:00

The lovely Mel over at Mel's Random Reviews has declared this Eli Monpress Week! Eli, of course, would like to remind people that every week is Eli Monpress week, but he is none-the-less delighted to accept the honor. All week there will be reviews of my books and the audio versions as well as a big fat interview Mel and I did earlier in the month full of news about the new books and some really great questions about where Eli and the crew came from coming later in the week. I hope you'll head over and check it out!

How I Plot A Novel in 5 Steps

2011-09-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

By popular request (ok, 1 person, but they're populace, so that makes it popular, right?) I've put together a step by step process for how I go from "Hey I should write a novel" to "Ok, let's get writing!" Though I managed to get things grouped into steps, what I've really done is labeled and applied order to the phases I go through as I work toward the point where I feel I know enough about a book to start writing. Some parts of my process may seem a bit obsessive, but the most important part of writing fast is knowing as much as you can about what you're writing before you write it, and that means lots and lots of planning.

Planning a novel takes me anywhere from a few days to weeks. Usually I plan while I'm working on other things, like editing, but I've also had whole weeks where I did nothing but put a story together. I should say that I plan far more novels than I actually end up writing. My computer is littered with the cast off husks of half started worlds. I consider this a normal part of the process. If you do it right, planning is where you uncover all the things that are wrong with that idea you thought was so amazing last week. Sometimes these faults are workable, other times it's better to just move on. Even so, it's way better to discover a novel isn't as strong as you thought at the planning stage instead of 3 chapters in. Not every idea deserves to be a novel.

Well, enough of that. You came to see how I plan novels. So, best as I can articulate something that changes for every book, here is my general process. I really hope everyone finds something useful they can take away to help organize and speed up their own writing system.

Disclaimer: Unlike my other posts, which I think will work for anyone, parts of this method are personal and might not be right for your books. Feel free to cut, expand, or add steps to my process where ever you feel you should.

Step 0: Decide what book to write!
This is one of those decisions that seems obvious but can get you into a lot of trouble if you don't give it the respect it deserves. When you sit down to write a book, you are embarking upon a very large project. As such, the first question you should be asking yourself is "Is this actually the story I want to spend my time on?" You don't need to have the plot or characters set up at this stage, but you do need a certainty that the book idea floating in your head is something that will not only interest you for the time it takes to write, edit, and polish a manuscript, but will, once finished, do whatever it is you want your book to do (i.e., get an agent, please your editor, sell fantastically, etc.). Your time is precious, don't waste it on a project you're not excited about or doesn't work toward your goals.

While not actually part of the planning process, this step is really, really important. Don't skip it, and try a couple of projects on for size before settling down. Remember, you can always switch projects later, but invested time can never be recovered, so do yourself a favor and think things through before you spend weeks working on a world you're not actually interested in writing about.

Step 1: Get Down What You Already Know
Now that I've decided what novel I want to write, the first thing I do is write down everything I already know about the book. These are usually the ideas that exploded into my mind and made me want to write the story in the first place. Sometimes it's a character or situation, sometimes it's a magical system or a setting. Whatever it is, I write it down quickly and efficiently. I don't bother with details and I don't force myself to write past the initial flash of interest. This is just getting down the rough idea of what excites me the most about this book, what makes it special.

I use this step to codify and organize what I already know about my world, characters, and plot, which is usually very little. But, by putting this very little down, I have laid a basic framework and can now see the holes I need to fill in before any actual writing can begin.

Step 2: Lay Down The Basics
This is the part of the process where I figure out the bare bones of the three pillars of story - characters, plot, and setting. You know, that High School English stuff. Since I use Scrivener to write (amazing program), I just make a folder for each of these topics and throw everything remotely related underneath, but you don't have to do that. So long as you can keep your notes straight, any system will do.

Now, what bare bones am I talking about? Here's my list:

For Characters, I need: The Main Characters (usually 2-4), the Antagonists (usually at least 2), and the Power Players (as many as needed). The numbers are very subjective and change from book to book, but you get the idea. MCs and Antagonists are self explanatory, but Power Players are the people in the story who are not for the MCs or against them, but are never-the-less very important to the setting. These are the people who move and shake in the world. Think Etmon Banage in my Eli Monpress books or Dumbledore in Harry Potter. You know, the BIG names.
Now, I'm not doing detailed character sheets yet, I'm just getting down the basics - names, what they want, and the general sense I have of them as a character. Physical descriptions and histories come later. All I care about right now is how this person relates to the story. I've had character sheets that were nothing but a name and a one line description at this stage of things, and that's perfectly fine.

For Plot, I need: The end and the beginning, in that order. Figuring out the end of a book is my number 1 priority. After I've got my start point and my end point, I set down the major twists/scenes/climaxes I've already thought up. I don't worry about how all these thinks link together, or even if the events are in the right order.
This is also the point where I determine if this book is a stand alone novel or part of a series, and if it is a series, then I work out the end of the larger meta plot and where this current book's plot fits into the larger scheme.
Finally, I write a sort of manifesto about the kind of story I am trying to tell. Is this primarily an adventure story, a rebellion story, a love story? An adventure story can have a love plot and a love story can be an adventure, but it's important I decide early which story is going to be the primary tale. After all, a love story places the dramatic emphasis on different scenes than an adventure story does. The tone is different as well, so I need to know for sure right from the beginning what kind of story I'm writing as this decision will influence the style of the novel right from page one.

For Setting, I need: The magical system, if there is one. The basic political system. Where does this book take place and how does that relate to the rest of the world? What kind of a culture is this? What's the level of technology? Who has power in this world and why? How did the world get to its current state and why? If I'm writing a fantasy I'll do creation stories and work out the pantheon, for SciFi I figure out how humans got into space. This step changes wildly from book to book. I basically just write until I feel I've got a firm hold on what kind of world the action takes place in (though, again, I don't sweat the details yet).

This is the most important part: What we're doing here is the purest form of world building, and it should be enormously fun. If you are not having fun putting your world, characters, and plot together, you need to seriously reconsider if this is the book you should be writing.

Step 3: Filling In The Holes
By the time I move on to step 3, I've got all the basics down. I know how my novel starts and ends plus a few big scenes, I know who's in it and where it's taking place. Now comes the nitty gritty of making everything work together.

When I reach this step, the first thing I start filling in is the plot. Now, a book is way too huge to plot all at once, so rather than trying to just write out a plot, I break things down into small chunks. Thanks to the work I've already done, I know the story's beginning, so that's usually where I start. I go to the beginning, look at my world and my characters's motivations, and ask "what happens next?" And then I write that down. Once it's down, I ask again, and so bit by bit the plot fills in.

Of course, I always get stuck. Sometimes I just don't know what comes next. When this happens, I usually jump further down the line, either straight to the ending (which I already worked out, clever me!) or to one of the big scenes I was excited about. When I get to the big scenes, a battle, say, I look at my world and my characters and ask "how did this happen?" And then I go backwards until I either reach the place where I got stuck the first time or I get stuck again.

Sometimes, though, I get really stuck. Like, I have no idea how two scenes are connected, or how I can possibly get from the middle of the book to the end. When this happens it's very tempting to think the plot is completely borked, but here's a trade secret: there's no such thing as an unfixable plot. Often, you don't even have to figure out a clever solution, you just need to discover why something isn't working and the solution will simply appear. One of the earliest lessons I learned about writing was that, if I was stuck, it was because I didn't know something. When a plot won't move forward, it's because there's something you don't know. Figure out what that is and you can unstick even the most stubborn plot.

So, when I get seriously stuck, I let the plot go and start working out other things. This is where I fill out those character sheets you find on line. I work out the detailed history of my world and spend time with my characters, try to figure out what they're thinking. If that still isn't enough to get me moving again, I set down in ludicrous detail what's going on in the world at the moment where the plot is stuck. I especially map out exactly what the villains are doing, that alone is often enough to snap the plot back into place.

Learn from my Fail - Never get so wrapped up in pinning down particulars that you kill the novel for yourself. Long ago, before I'd actually finished a novel, I was working on a sweeping epic fantasy. Now, I'd read online that a writer should know her world inside and out, so I set to work Building My World (TM). I wrote and wrote and wrote for days, getting down all this absurdly detailed information that had nothing to do with my story, things like the political backdrop of wars that happened five hundred years before the plot and table manners in countries across the sea I was never going to visit. About half way through naming the different dead princes of the Empire that had fallen a thousand years ago, I threw away the novel in disgust. Now, if you like planning out your worlds to that level of detail, go for it, but there's absolutely such a thing as too much planning, and you can make yourself sick of your world before you've even started writing if you're not careful.

I know I've reached the end of step 3 when I can write out my whole plot, start to finish, with no blanks or skipped scenes. By this point, I've also gotten stuck enough that I've written detailed sheets for all my characters and major settings. If I have missed writing out the details for someone or someplace, I'll sometimes go back and fill them in, but not always. Usually, if I didn't need their information while I was writing out the plot, that's a sign that they weren't as important to the story as I thought.

Finally (and this is where things get a little hokey), I know I'm ready to move on to the last part of my planning when the feel of the book becomes tangible. All my books have a unique feel, almost like a taste in my mind that belongs to that book alone. I can't really describe it, but I never move on to the next step until I can feel the book clearly. I guess you could also call it the book's voice. This is about as "feel the muse" as I get.

Step 4: Building a Firm Foundation
This was the point where I used to just go ahead and dive into the novel, but now that I'm writing faster, I've discovered that taking a day to do one extra step of refinement can save you weeks of trouble down the line. At this stage I've got my plot, I know my characters, my world has its history, rules, and feel, so now it's time to start pouring the concrete details that will support my novel through the writing and edits to come.

In this step, I always:

Make a timeline. I didn't have time lines for the first 4 Eli novels and OMG did it bite me in the ass. Lesson finally learned, I now make timelines not just for the events of the novel itself, but the history before it as well. I especially make sure to note relative ages and how long everyone's known everyone else. Yes, it's annoying and nitpicky, but timelines have saved my bacon many, many times over, and I very, very much recommend making one. Trust me, you are not nearly as good at keeping track of things in your head as you think you are.
Draw a map. Actually, I usually end up doing this back in step 2, but if I don't have a detailed map by now, I'll make one, usually several, of the world at large as well as all my important locations. I also write out short descriptions of each place. This helps me describe things consistently and removes the burden of making this shit up as I go along.
Write out who knows what, when. This is usually just a paragraph where I look over the plot and jot down who discovers what when. This is to make sure I don't have Protagonist A making an argument (or worse, a plot decision) using information they wouldn't actually know yet. This is less of a resource and more of a double check on my plot.
Make sure I memorize everyone's particulars. I need to know name spelling, physical description, motivations, and relative ages for all my major cast by heart. Can't have anyone's name dropping vowels or eyes changing color, can we?
Write out a scene list This is where I take that plot I wrote out at the end of step three and break it into scenes and chapters. I've talked about what makes a scene before, so, using that criteria, I slice my plot into scenes and list them in a bulleted list. Once I have a list of scenes, I group them into chapters to make a nice little list. In my experience, a chapter usually consists of three scenes, though I've done as few as two and as many as five before. Chapter breaks should also take into account dramatic tension, so I try to take that into accout as well. For example, the first chapter of The Spirit Thief would look like this:

Chapter 1

Eli charms his way out of prison
The king of Mellinor discovers Eli has escaped, is moved to safer quarters
Eli and Josef take advantage of the confusion and kidnap the king.

Word Count estimation: Now that I've got a rough idea of my chapters, it's time to do an even rougher estimation of how long this book is going to be. I know from personal experience that my chapters tend to run between 5000 and 6000 words long. I don't know why, that's just what feels like a chapter to me, I guess. But this regularity is very handy when it comes time to estimate! By looking at the number of chapters I've cut my scenes into and multiplying that by my average chapter length, I know that a book with 15 chapters will most likely run 75k - 90k words long, or right smack dab in the sweet spot of publishable book length. Of course, this is just an estimation, but doing a check like this is also a really good early warning signal. If, for example, I've lined up all my scenes and found that I have 30 chapters worth of plot, then I know I probably need to cut something to avoid ending up with an 180k unpublishable monster. Trust me, it is SO MUCH EASIER to cut scenes at this stage than to cut them after you've written them. Even if you don't know your average chapter length yet, chances are your chapters won't be shorter than 5k. Counting them up and multiplying to get an idea of how big your book is is a great way to avoid painful cutting later down the line.
Do a boredom check. Once I've broken my novel into scenes and chapters (and cut and reworked the plot if the book was too long), it's time for the final and most important plot test: the boredom check. What I do here is I think through my plot, imagining the story in my head as thought it were a movie. There's no sound, no dialogue, I just go through the story scene by scene in my head, testing the story's flow. All the while, I'm on the look out for slow spots. Does the action lag anywhere? Are there any sections I can't visualize or scenes I skip over? If so, I go back to those points and figure out why. See, when you cruise through your plot like this, you're seeing your story with your reader mind and not your writer mind. Your writer mind might consider a scene necessary for plot reasons, but if your reader mind is bored you'll skip right over it and move on to the good stuff. This is BAD. I don't want my readers to be bored by or skip over anything I write. Plus, I don't want to waste my time writing boring crap, no matter how nicely it fits into the plot. This is all part of "be excited about everything you write." If a scene is boring, I rip it out and redo it. Ripping up a finished plot can feel really scary, but just remember: there's always more than one way to solve any problem, and a boring scene can always be replaced by an interesting one, usually by raising the stakes or upping the tension. This step may seem unnecessary, especially since you've been over your plot 10000 times by now, but take thirty minutes and do it anyway. A boredom check is your final defense against having to rewrite stupid scenes later. If you take the time and make sure every scene is golden right from the start, you'll save yourself wasted work and heartache later.

Step 5: Start Writing!

By this point I'm usually chomping at the bit to get writing. I know my world, I know my characters, I know exactly what's going to happen and why, and I know the climax I'm working toward. I know everything I need, all that's left is to put the words down.

Of course, no matter how well you plan your novel, it's important to remember that no one has all their great ideas at one time. Chances are the plot will change as you write. Characters will mature and deepen, you'll discover plot holes you never thought about, and ideas you thought were amazing will start to look played and stupid. All of this is part of the natural writing process. Never be afraid to let go of your plans and just roll with things. After all, the real purpose of planning is the acquisition of knowledge. If that knowledge inspires you to make a better decision for the book later down the line, then go with it. Never let your planning hold you back.

---

And that, more or less, is my system, I hope you can find something in there to help you with your own writing process. Again, I can't stress how much planning has improved both my writing and my writing experience. I have never had as much fun writing a book, or had my books come out better, than when I'm working from a plan. If you're the kind of writer who writes by the seat of their pants and is afraid strict planning will ruin the fun of writing for you, my only suggestion is to try it, just once. You might be surprised.

Again, hope this helps someone. As always, thank you for reading! And if you have your own novel planning process, leave a comment below. I'd love to hear about it!

Rachel on the (Internet) Radio!

2011-08-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

I joined Justin and Terry of The Dead Robot's Society podcast to talk about my books, my road to publication, and how the hell I write so many words every day. It was a really, really fun interview, and the show itself is a barrel of good times all on its own. So if you're at all interested in writing or the publishing world, why don't you check it out!

Here's the direct link to my episode, my interview is in the second part of the show. Enjoy!

The Lord of Storms!

2011-08-17T18:03:00.003-05:00

To thank all my fans for being so amazingly awesome (and to get myself some really amazing art), I've begun commissioning artists to make me pictures of my characters! First up, The Lord of Storms by Noiry! Link goes to the picture on her amazing DeviantArt gallery, but she also has nice work on her portfolio site so please go check her out. In the meanwhile, enjoy!

What can I say, the Lord of Storms is a ham and cheese sandwich! <3

The Lord of Storms is the head of the League of Storms, and a very bad ass fellow. He first appears (briefly) in The Spirit Thief and then more fully in the The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater. But he REALLY comes into his own in Spirit's End, the fifth and final Eli novel. Trust me, once you read book 5, you will know why he was the first character I commissioned!

More art will be following all the way through next year, so keep checking back :D. I'll also be revamping my site, and one of the new additions will be an art gallery. Should be awesome!

<3 Rachel

12 days of glory

2011-08-02T13:20:00.000-05:00

I've talked about my process for fast writing before, the combination of knowledge, time, and excitement that let me take my word count from 2-3k a day to over 10k per day. However, every time I get on the subject of writing fast, I always have to add the caveat that these numbers were achieved on the final two books of a five book series, usually toward the end of the book. For me, the end of a book always goes faster than the beginning or the middle. I find it much easier to write with the momentum of a grand finale pulling me forward. Also, I was writing well known characters in a well established world.

Because of these factors, it was hard for me to tell if my insane numbers were really coming from my system or from the books themselves. Had I really turned myself into some sort of super writer, or was I just caught up in the end of a story I'd wanted to tell for years? Was Eli doing this, or was I? So long as I was working on Eli books, there was no way to tell. The real test would only come when I sat down to write a new book in a new world. If I could keep pulling crazy numbers there, with no Eli or Josef or Nico to prop me up, then I'd know for sure that my increased productivity came from me. Last month, with the final Eli book turned in, I took the plunge. This is how it turned out, taken straight from the writing worksheet I keep on my title page:

Plotting started: July 17, 2011
Plotting finished: July 20, 2011
Novel started: July 21, 2011
Novel ended: August 1, 2011

You're reading that right. I plotted the whole book, start to finish (as well as outlines for two sequels), in three days. And then I wrote the book in 12. Actually, that's not even right. Check out my progress table:

Date	Time Written	Word Count	Words Per Hour	Location
7/21/2011	9:00 - 12:30 (3.5)	3680	1051	Home
7/21/2011	1:30 - 6:00 (4.5)	5125	1138	JJ’s
7/21	7:30 - 10:00 (2.5)	3877 (11882)	1550	Home (night)
7/22	1:30 - 6:30 (5)	6004	1200	JJ’s
7/24 - 7/25 (perspective switch)
7/26	8:20 - 10:20 (2)	1925	962	Home
7/26	1:20 - 6:00 (4.5)	2194	487	JJ’s
7/26	9:00 - 10:00 (1)	1076 (5195)	1076	Home (night)
7/27	8:00 - 11:00 (3)	2527	842	Home
7/27	1:00 - 6:00 (5)	7215 (9742)	1443	JJ’s
7/28	1:00 - 6:00 (5)	6372	1062	JJ’s
7/29	8:30 - 11:30 (3)	3836	1278	Home
7/29	12:30 - 6:00 (5.5)	7701 (11537)	1400	JJ’s
7/30	5:00 - 8:30 (3.5)	3373	963	JJ’s
7/31	4:30 - 8:30 (4)	4509	1127	JJ’s
8/1	8:00 - 11:30 (2.5)	4069	1627	Home
8/1	1:00 - 6:20 (5.3)	7203 (11272)	1359	JJ’s

One of the things I talk about in the fast writing post is the importance of keeping records. There are many different ways of recording your writing, but this is how I keep track of mine. As you can see, I actually wrote the book in 9 days, because I took the 23rd off and spent the 24th - 25th going back and switching the first five chapters from third person to first, which I count as editing, not writing. But even if we go ahead and count those two days, it still means I wrote a novel, a brand new novel with a world and characters I'd never sat down to really flesh out before the 17th, in 11 days.

Sorry Eli, looks like you can't claim credit this time.

But how did I do it? Beyond what I talked about in my fast writing post?

Well, first, I wrote a lot. As you can see from the table above, I spent between 6 and 9 hours a day at the keyboard writing pulling between 800 and 1600 words an hour. This sort of writing is not without its cost, I think my baby and husband have forgotten my face and let's not even talk about the state of my house or the pile of mail that's threatening to crush my dining table. This is not the sort of crazy writing project you can embark on unless you're a pro writer between books with a very forgiving family. If I'd taken things a little easier I would have had a life and still finished the novel in 20 days, which is perfectly acceptable, but this time around I was trying to see just how fast I could go. For science!

Second, I always knew exactly where I was going. This was how I kept up the high words per hour rate. Much of the dithering in writing comes from uncertainty. What do I want from this scene? What happens next? Remove the uncertainty and most other problems sort themselves out.

Third, I was really, really, REALLY excited to write this book. It's my first love story, and I've been gushy over my main couple for nearly 8 years. I always swore I would write their story someday, and finally getting the chance to do it was like pulling up a chair to the delicious cake buffet.

So there it is, time, knowledge, and excitement coming together to make a crazy writing alchemy of fantastic word counts. These last two weeks have been the most intensely fun experience of my writing career (at least so far as the actual writing part is concerned). I loved working like this. I literally bounced out of bed with joy in the mornings because I knew I'd get to write that day. When I was writing it was like I was taken away with the story, and when I'd finally drag myself from the keyboard, I felt like I could conquer the world. Going so fast was more like reading than writing, only I was in charge of everything that was going on. It was the ultimate power trip, and I'm frankly sort of worried I liked it too much. Not that worried, though.

My work on this book is nowhere near done. I have at least 3 edits ahead of me before the novel is even ready to go to my agent, much less make its way to editors. It might never sell at all, I might start all over, but wherever my novel's story ends, one thing is certain: I can reliably write 6-8k a day on any book in any world. And that, my friends, is awesome.

ask me a question, you'll get an answer with way too many !s

2011-07-19T08:17:00.000-05:00

I'm participating in FanLit Asks!

This month's question: Which speculative fiction character created by another author are you kicking yourself for not dreaming up first?

You can see my answer (plus answers from totally amazing people like Gail Carriger, Seanan McGuire, Jesse Bullington, and L. E. Modesitt, Jr.) here.

In other news, I've seen the finished painting for the 4th Eli novel, Spirit's War, and it is awesome! I'll be posting it as soon as design finishes the cover design. I can't wait to show you! It really is amazing.

<3 Rachel

Writing Post Round-Up

2011-07-12T08:59:00.000-05:00

In honor of Camp NaNoWriMo (and for general organization), I thought I'd do a round-up of all my scattered writing posts plus. I've written a lot about writing (since, you know, I think about it a lot), not all of which I think is true anymore, so I'm only linking the posts I still believe in. If you're a writer, whether you're participating in this month's writing challenge or not, I really hope you find something useful in these.

Story Crafting, World Building, and Character
The Three Hooks - how to write better scenes that move your book forward
The Knife Test - testing your characters
Dissecting the Devil - writing a good villain

Productivity and Writing in General
How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day - supercharge your word count
There Are No Writing Police - advice on the internet about ignoring internet advice. Meta!

That's all I could find for the moment. Again, these are just my posts. I am nowhere near to being the be all end all expert on writing. If you have a favorite writing post (or writing link that helped you of any kind) link it in the comments and I'll add it to the list!

Signing reminder and a nerdy anime rec

2011-07-07T08:51:00.000-05:00

Don't forget I'm going to be in SC this weekend for the Fantastical Mystery Tour mega signing event! It's going to be amazing, so stop by if you're in the area! I'll sign literally anything you put in front of me - your book, your child, your check, anything!

In other, completely unrelated news, my husband and I have been watching this very cool anime called Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magik, or Puella Magi Madoka Magica. On the surface it looks like a very typical anime magical girl show. I actually almost skipped it completely, but then I watched the first episode.

Guys... Sailor Moon this ain't.

Madoka Magica is the most creepy, edge of your seat show I've watched in a long time. It's the dark side of magical girls, and its got style to burn. The art design on the sets and backgrounds is amazing, so amazing that the characters look almost comically cartoony standing inside them. But none of that matters. The show's pacing is a freaking textbook of tension building. I have never watched a show with such a looming sense of dread and real concern for the characters. I literally have no idea what's going to happen from one episode to the next, and I watch each one with delicious anticipation.

In short, the show is amazing and you should totally watch it if you get the chance. It will takes your expectations of what a magical girl show should be and then makes you eat them.

Also, the music is fantastic. Go watch!

There Are No Writing Police

2011-06-27T07:55:00.000-05:00

It's no secret that I enjoy lurking on writing message boards. First, I like being around that much excitement and creativity. It's just a good vibe, especially when I'm feeling down about my own work. Second, sometimes you find amazing gems... and I will leave the definition of gem up to your imagination. ;)

But sometimes (ok, most of the time), reading these boards makes me angry, especially the forums where people talk about publication, specifically whether or not something is "allowed." For example, a post asking whether or not it's ok to combine subgenres, (eg, an epic fantasy with superhero elements or a steampunk vampire romance (note to self, write steampunk vampire romance)), or if editors will automatically reject a werewolf book, or if you're allowed to put horror elements in your Regency, etc. And then people will post back and forth with the various pros and cons of whatever the question was, but by this point my husband is usually prying the keyboard out of my hands before I turn into a flaming troll.

So, in the interest of not being a troll on a forum, I will post my trollage here. Everyone, repeat after me:

THERE ARE NO WRITING POLICE

If you are a writer, and you have a novel you are excited about writing... write it. Don't go on message boards and ask random internet denizens whether or not something is allowed. Or, if you're a feedback junkie and you just can't keep yourself from posting, whatever you do, do NOT go pulling things you like out of your novel because someone on the internet told you "that won't sell" or "you can't do that."

Who is the writer here? YOU ARE. Whose book is it? YOUR BOOK. There are no writing police. No one is going to arrest you if you write a teen vampire novel post Twilight. No one is going to send you off to an island to live a wretched life of worm eating and regret because you DARED to bring urban fantasy elements into a space opera. If you have a book that you want to write, then just write the damn thing. Don't worry about selling it, that comes later. Worry about making your book work, worry about how you're order the scenes to create tension, worry about if your character's actions are actually in character. Worry about your grammar. DON'T worry about which of your stylistic choices some potential future editor will use to reject you, and for the love of little puppies don't worry about trends. Trying to catching a trend is like trying to catch a falling knife - dangerous, foolhardy, and often ending in tears, usually yours.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't pay attention to what's getting published, but what I am saying is you should never sacrifice the elements that make your novel exciting to you because you think those elements will hurt your sales... especially if you haven't even finished the novel yet and all sales are still hypothetical.

Until your novel starts getting actual rejections from people whose job it is to know what sells in publishing, never change anything in your book unless you're doing it to make the book better. If your YA features fairies, vampires, and selkies and you decide halfway through that the vampires are over complicating your plot, that is an appropriate time to cut the bloodsuckers. If you decide to cut your vampires because you read on some internet forum that "vampires are lame," then you are betraying yourself and your work.

If you're like pretty much every other author in the world, then you became a writer because you had stories you wanted to tell. Those are your stories, no one can tell them better than you can. So write your stories, and then edit your stories again and again until you have something you're proud of. Write stories that excite you, stories you can't wait to share with the world because they're just so amazing. Write stories that you throw away because you realize halfway through that your amazing idea wasn't actually so amazing. If you want to write Murder She Wrote in space with anime style mecha, go for it. There are no writing police. Nothing is off limits unless you do it badly. And if you must obsess over something, obsess over stuff like tension and pacing and creating believable characters. You know, the shit that matters.

It's your story, tell it like you want to.

New Eli Cover!!

2011-06-23T08:59:00.001-05:00

As promised, the new cover for the Eli Omnibus painted by the fantastic Sam Webber is here! Isn't it pretty?!

SO pretty!

This will be the cover for the new 3 book omnibus edition of Spirit Thief, Spirit Rebellion, and Spirit Eater all wrapped together in one delicious package! The omnibus is scheduled to arrive February 2012. After that, the fourth book in the series, The Spirit War (All about Josef, plus lots of Eli!) comes out June of 2012.

The Spirit War cover is being done by Sam Webber as well, and you can see in progress shots of the painting at Orbit's website. I'm REALLY excited about that cover. I shouldn't have favorites, but I think Spirit War is the best book I've ever written. There's all kinds of goodies, you guys are just going to love it. So yeah, very happy Rachel :D.

I don't have an official date yet for Spirit's End, the fifth and final Eli book, but I'm editing it right now and will be turning it in to Orbit at the end of the month. I believe it's scheduled to come out very close to book 4, maybe July 2012? Anyway, soon, and we're on schedule, so you should have all the Eli you could want soon enough! In the meanwhile, drop over to Orbit's site and check out Lauren's visit to Sam's studio. If you ever wanted to see how a fantasy book cover is made, this is your chance. Fascinating stuff (and I'd say that even if it wasn't about my covers)! Enjoy!

- Rachel

ETA: The ever lovely Civilian Reader has nice things to say about the cover! Also, if you haven't read my interview there, totally go read it. It's probably the most intelligent I've ever sounded. If I die tomorrow, that's how I'd like to be remembered. Just carve the whole thing into the tombstone in 5 pt font and we're good to go!

If you're near Columbia, SC, you won't want to miss this

2011-06-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

So, thanks to the wonderful prodding of Kalayna Price, I am participating in a MASSIVE fantasy book signing at the Barnes and Noble in Columbia on Saturday, July 9th. We're going to have door prizes and free books and a panel discussion and it's just going to be the best thing ever! Our authors include me, plus these other way more famous people:

Faith Hunter, author of the Jane Yellowrock series
Kalayna Price, author of the Alex Craft novels, starting with Grave Witch
Misty Massey, author of Mad Kestrel
John Hartness, author of Hard Day's Knight

I am so happy they pulled me out of my hermit hole to drive up for a signing. This will actually be my first signing (because of the aforementioned hermit hole), so if you want any Eli books signed, this will be the place!

Here's the vital facebook link with all relevant info, and I really hope to see people there!

Also, no word on the new cover yet, but I swear it's coming! I'll post as soon as Orbit puts them up. Pretty Eli pictures are coming.

How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day

2011-06-08T08:24:00.001-05:00

When I started writing The Spirit War (Eli novel #4), I had a bit of a problem. I had a brand new baby and my life (like every new mother's life) was constantly on the verge of shambles. I paid for a sitter four times a week so I could get some writing time, and I guarded these hours like a mama bear guards her cubs - with ferocity and hiker-mauling violence. To keep my schedule and make my deadlines, I needed to write 4000 words during each of these carefully arranged sessions. I thought this would be simple. After all, before I quit my job to write full time I'd been writing 2k a day in the three hours before work. Surely with 6 hours of baby free writing time, 4k a day would be nothing....

But (of course), things didn't work out like that. Every day I'd sit down to add 4000 words to my new manuscript. I was determined, I was experienced, I knew my world. There was no reason I couldn't get 4k down. But every night when I hauled myself away, my word count had only increased by 2k, the same number of words I'd been getting before I quit my day job.

Needless to say, I felt like a failure. Here I was, a professional writer with three books about to come out, and I couldn't even beat the writing I'd done before I went pro. At first I made excuses, this novel was the most complicated of all the Eli books I'd written, I was tired because my son thinks 4am is an awesome time to play, etc. etc. But the truth was there was no excuse. I had to find a way to boost my word count, and with months of 2k a day dragging me down, I had to do it fast. So I got scientific. I gathered data and tried experiments, and ultimately ended up boosting my word count to heights far beyond what I'd thought was possible, and I did it while making my writing better than ever before.

When I told people at ConCarolinas that I'd gone from writing 2k to 10k per day, I got a huge response. Everyone wanted to know how I'd done it, and I finally got so sick of telling the same story over and over again that I decided to write it down here.

So, once and for all, here's the story of how I went from writing 500 words an hour to over 1500, and (hopefully) how you can too:

A quick note: There are many fine, successful writers out there who equate writing quickly with being a hack. I firmly disagree. My methods remove the dross, the time spent tooling around lost in your daily writing, not the time spent making plot decisions or word choices. This is not a choice between ruminating on art or churning out the novels for gross commercialism (though I happen to like commercial novels), it's about not wasting your time for whatever sort of novels you want to write.

Drastically increasing your words per day is actually pretty easy, all it takes is a shift in perspective and the ability to be honest with yourself (which is the hardest part). Because I'm a giant nerd, I ended up creating a metric, a triangle with three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm. Any one of these can noticeably boost your daily output, but all three together can turn you into a word machine. I never start writing these days unless I can hit all three.

Update! The talented Vicky Teinaki made a graphic of this metric and let me use it! She is awesome!

Side 1: Knowledge, or Know What You're Writing Before You Write It

The first big boost to my daily wordcount happened almost by accident. Used to be I would just pop open the laptop and start writing. Now, I wasn't a total make-it-up-as-you-go writer. I had a general plot outline, but my scene notes were things like "Miranda and Banage argue" or "Eli steals the king." Not very useful, but I knew generally what direction I was writing in, and I liked to let the characters decide how the scene would go. Unfortunately, this meant I wasted a lot of time rewriting and backtracking when the scene veered off course.

This was how I had always written, it felt natural to me. But then one day I got mired in a real mess. I had spent three days knee deep in the same horrible scene. I was drastically behind on my wordcount, and I was facing the real possibility of missing my deadline... again. It was the perfect storm of all my insecurities, the thought of letting people down mixed with the fear that I really didn't know what I was doing, that I wasn't a real writer at all, just an amateur pretending to be one. But as I got angrier and angrier with myself, I looked down at my novel and suddenly realized that I was being an absolute idiot. Here I was, desperate for time, floundering in a scene, and yet I was doing the hardest work of writing (figuring out exactly what needs to happen to move the scene forward in the most dramatic and exciting way) in the most time consuming way possible (ie, in the middle of the writing itself).

As soon as I realized this, I stopped. I closed my laptop and got out my pad of paper. Then, instead of trying to write the scene in the novel as I had been, I started scribbling a very short hand, truncated version the scene on the paper. I didn't describe anything, I didn't do transitions. I wasn't writing, I was simply noting down what I would write when the time came. It took me about five minutes and three pages of notebook paper to untangle my seemingly unfixable scene, the one that had just eaten three days of my life before I tried this new approach. Better still, after I'd worked everything out in shorthand I was able to dive back into the scene and finish it in record time. The words flew onto the screen, and at the end of that session I'd written 3000 words rather than 2000, most of them in that last hour and a half.

Looking back, it was so simple I feel stupid for not thinking of it sooner. If you want to write faster, the first step is to know what you're writing before you write it. I'm not even talking about macro plot stuff, I mean working out the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, writing up fast descriptions. Writing this stuff out in words you actually want other people to read, especially if you're making everything up as you go along, takes FOREVER. It's horribly inefficient and when you get yourself in a dead end, you end up trashing hundreds, sometimes thousands of words to get out. But jotting it down on a pad? Takes no time at all. If the scene you're sketching out starts to go the wrong way, you see it immedeatly, and all you have to do is cross out the parts that went sour and start again at the beginning. That's it. No words lost, no time wasted. It was god damn beautiful.

Every writing session after this realization, I dedicated five minutes (sometimes more, never less) and wrote out a quick description of what I was going to write. Sometimes it wasn't even a paragraph, just a list of this happens then this then this. This simple change, these five stupid minutes, boosted my wordcount enormously. I went from writing 2k a day to writing 5k a day within a week without increasing my 5 hour writing block. Some days I even finished early.

Of the three sides of the triangle, I consider knowledge to be the most important. This step alone more than doubled my word count. If you only want to try one change at a time, this is the one I recommend the most.

Side 2: Time

Now that I'd had such a huge boost from one minor change, I started to wonder what else I could do to jack my numbers up even higher. But as I looked for other things I could tweak, I quickly realized that I knew embarrassingly little about how I actually wrote my novels. I'd kept no records of my progress, I couldn't even tell you how long it took me to write any of my last three novels beyond broad guesstimations, celebratory blog posts, and vague memories of past word counts. It was like I started every book by throwing myself at the keyboard and praying for a novel to shoot out of my fingers before the deadline. And keep in mind this is my business. Can you imagine a bakery or a freelance designer working this way? Never tracking hours or keeping a record of how long it took me to actually produce the thing I was selling? Yeah, pretty stupid way to work.

If I was going to boost my output (or know how long it took me to actually write a freaking novel), I had to know what I was outputting in the first place. So, I started keeping records. Every day I had a writing session I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet. I did this for two months, and then I looked for patterns.

Several things were immediately clear. First, my productivity was at its highest when I was in a place other than my home. That is to say, a place without internet. The afternoons I wrote at the coffee shop with no wireless were twice as productive as the mornings I wrote at home. I also saw that, while butt in chair time is the root of all writing, not all butt in chair time is equal. For example, those days where I only got one hour to write I never managed more than five hundred words in that hour. By contrast, those days I got five hours of solid writing I was clearing close to 1500 words an hour. The numbers were clear: the longer I wrote, the faster I wrote (and I believe the better I wrote, certainly the writing got easier the longer I went). This corresponding rise of wordcount and writing hours only worked up to a point, though. There was a definite words per hour drop off around hour 7 when I was simply too brain fried to go on.

But these numbers are very personal, the point I'm trying to make is that by recording my progress every day I had the data I needed to start optimizing my daily writing. Once I had my data in hand, I rearranged my schedule to make sure my writing time was always in the afternoon (my most prolific time according to my sheet, which was a real discovery. I would have bet money I was better in the morning.), always at my coffee shop with no internet, and always at least 4 hours long. Once I set my time, I guarded it viciously, and low and behold my words per day shot up again. This time to an average of 6k-7k per writing day, and all without adding any extra hours. All I had to do was discover what made good writing time for me and then make sure the good writing time was the time I fought hardest to get.

Even if you don't have the luxury of 4 uninterrupted hours at your prime time of day, I highly suggest measuring your writing in the times you do have to write. Even if you only have 1 free hour a day, trying that hour in the morning some days and the evening on others and tracking the results can make sure you aren't wasting your precious writing time on avoidable inefficiencies. Time really does matter.

Side 3: Enthusiasm

I was flying high on my new discoveries. Over the course of two months I'd jacked my daily writing from 2k per day to 7k with just a few simple changes and was now actually running ahead of schedule for the first time in my writing career. But I wasn't done yet. I was absolutely determined I was going to break the 10k a day barrier.

I'd actually broken it before. Using Knowledge and Time, I'd already managed a few 10k+ days, including one where I wrote 12,689 words, or two chapters, in 7 hours. To be fair, I had been writing outside of my usual writing window in addition to my normal writing on those days, so it wasn't a total words-per-hour efficiency jump. But that's the great thing about going this fast, the novel starts to eat you and you find yourself writing any time you can just for the pure joy of it. Even better, on the days where I broke 10k, I was also pulling fantastic words-per-hour numbers, 1600 - 2000 words per hour as opposed to my usual 1500. It was clear these days were special, but I didn't know how. I did know that I wanted those days to become the norm rather than the exception, so I went back to my records (which I now kept meticulously) to find out what made the 10k days different.

The answer was head-slappingly obvious. Those days I broke 10k were the days I was writing scenes I'd been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the scenes I wrote all that other stuff to get to. By contrast, my slow days (days where I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn't that crazy about.

This was a duh moment for me, but it also brought up a troubling new problem. If I had scenes that were boring enough that I didn't want to write them, then there was no way in hell anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn't love it, no one would.

Fortunately, the solution turned out to be, yet again, stupidly simple. Every day, while I was writing out my little description of what I was going to write for the knowledge component of the triangle, I would play the scene through in my mind and try to get excited about it. I'd look for all the cool little hooks, the parts that interested me most, and focus on those since they were obviously what made the scene cool. If I couldn't find anything to get excited over, then I would change the scene, or get rid of it entirely. I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels.

This discovery turned out to be a fantastic one for my writing. I trashed and rewrote several otherwise perfectly good scenes, and the effect on the novel was amazing. Plus, my daily wordcount numbers shot up again because I was always excited about my work. Double bonus!

Life On 10k A Day

With all three sides of my triangle now in place, I was routinely pulling 10-12k per day by the time I finished Spirits' End, the fifth Eli novel. I was almost 2 months ahead of where I'd thought I'd be, and the novel had only taken me 3 months to write rather than the 7 months I'd burned on the Spirit War (facts I knew now that I was keeping records). I was ahead of schedule with plenty of time to do revisions before I needed to hand the novel in to my editor, and I was happier with my writing than ever before. There were several days toward the end when I'd close my laptop and stumble out of the coffee shop feeling almost drunk on writing. I felt like I was on top of the world, utterly invincible and happier than I've ever been. Writing that much that quickly was like taking some kind of weird success opiate, and I was thoroughly addicted. Once you've hit 10k a day for a week straight, anything less feels like your story is crawling.

Now, again, 10k a day is my high point as a professional author whose child is now in daycare (PRICELESS). I write 6 - 7 hours a day, usually 2 in the morning and 4-5 in the afternoon, five days a week. Honestly, I don't see how anyone other than a full time novelist could pull those kind of hours, but that doesn't mean you have to be a pro to drastically increase your daily word count.

So 10k might be the high end of the spectrum, but of the people I've told about this (a lot) who've gotten back to me (not nearly as many), most have doubled their word counts by striving to hit all three sides of the triangle every time they write. This means some have gone from 1k a day to 2k, or 2k to 4k. Some of my great success with increasing my wordcount is undoubtedly a product of experience, as I also hit my million word mark somewhere in the fifth Eli novel. Even so, I believe most of the big leaps in efficiency came from changing the way I approached my writing. Just as changing your lifestyle can help you lose a hundred pounds, changing they way you sit down to write can boost your words per hour in astonishing ways.

If you're looking to get more out of your writing time, I really hope you try my triangle. If you do, please write me (or comment below) and let me know. Even if it doesn't work (especially if it doesn't work) I'd love to hear about it. Also, if you find another efficiency hack for writing, let me know about that too! There's no reason our triangle can't be a square, and I'm always looking for a way to hit 15k a day :D.

Again, I really hope this helps you hit your goals. Good luck with your writing!

- Rachel Aaron

UPDATE, November 25: Wow, I never expected this to be so popular! I'm so glad it's been helpful for people! Just to update you all on my progress, since writing this post, I've completed, edited (and re-edited, and rewrote again, sigh, still working on speeding that part up), and sent out 2 complete novels, one of which was written in 12 days. You can see the worksheets and stats for that one in my 12 Days of Glory post.

Also, if anyone's interested in how I plot my novels, I've posted that here: How I Plot A Novel in 5 Steps! Plus, I'm over on the NaNoWriMo fantasy forum until the end of November answering questions, so if you've got some for me, please feel free to stop by! Again, I'm so glad this was helpful to all of you. Thank you so much for all the lovely feedback!

- R

ConCarolinas was awesome!

2011-06-06T12:35:00.000-05:00

I am SO TIRED and I lost my voice completely, a sure sign that I had a fantastic weekend! Thank you very much to the con organizers and to all the authors who let me hang out with them at the con and put up with my big mouth on panels. :D

At the con, lots of people seemed excited about the system I worked out for upping my daily word count from 2000 to 10000 words a day. Seeing the interest, I'm working on a blog post write up of what I said about it in the panel with examples of my spreadsheets. So keep your eyes peeled for epic writer nerdery in the next day or so.

Also, don't forget Orbit should be debuting my new omnibus cover on Wednesday, and I am so excited to show you guys after months of having to sit on the art. Seriously, it looks lovely.

And if I saw you at ConCarolinas, thank you so much for coming up. Nothing makes me happier than to meet fellow geeks.

<3 R

ConCarolinas and new covers!

2011-05-31T20:01:00.000-05:00

First up: This weekend (June 3 - 5) I will be at ConCarolinas along with tons of other people way more awesome than I am. Hooray! If you're in or around Charlotte, NC, tickets are cheap and the guests are awesome. Plus I will talk at you until you're sick of me :D. So stop by if you're in the area!! (To see what panels were gullible enough to let me behind the table, click here and select my name from the "Guests" drop down!)

Second, the wonderful Orbit art team will be debuting the cover for my new omnibus on the 8th! Hooray!! I've seen the final already, and I gotta say I can't wait to show you guys. Arrrgh, all this not talking makes me crazy. I'll post the cover as soon as Orbit puts it up. Eli looks very yummy, I must say!

And speaking of not talking, have I mentioned I finished book 5? Well I did! And just today I've finished the first round of edits. Now it's off to my first round readers so we can see where I dropped the ball... or if the ball even left the floor in some places... ahem, moving on. I tend to edit in many rounds, turning the story over until all the bumps are polished off. This book is definitely the most complicated I've ever written, and there are several sections that need some work, but I'm confident that anyone whose read the first three books and liked them is going to love the last two, especially the ending. Arrrgh x 2, can not wait!

Anyway, hope to see some of you at the convention, and definitely keep your eyes peeled for a sexy cover next week!

- R

I emerge from the shadows and...

2011-05-10T07:15:00.000-05:00

... answer kindly questions at The Civilian Reader! It was a really fun interview and I drop a lot of information about the last 2 Eli books (as well as why I'm an awful blogger). So if that's your thing, go on over!

But there was 1 question I didn't get a chance to put in the interview, so I wanted to address it here. Namely, why do I continually refer to the last 2 Eli books as "Book 4" and "Book 5" rather than, I don't know, by their freaking titles? The answer, gentle reader, leads us deep into the wild and wooly world of publishing.

It all started when Orbit, my beloved publisher, decided that rather than releasing the last two books like they did the first two - as mass market paper backs with color coded face covers in 2011, they were going to instead wait until 2012 and then do a an omnibus edition of my first 3 books quickly followed by books 4 and 5. This decision was made for a lot of reasons - sales, the fact that book 4 is freaking huge and book 5 is probably going to be just as big (ie. WAY too large for a mass market paperback), wanting a new look for the series, etc. etc. All of these reasons were explained to me, and I'm totally behind the rebranding. I've already seen the omnibus cover art and I like it a LOT. I'll post it all over the web the moment I get permission.

But wait, we were talking about TITLES. Ahem.

Back when I was first signing contracts, the last 2 books of the Eli Monpress Series were titled "The Spirit War" and "Spirit's End" to go along with the Spirit naming structure. These were not my original titles, but then, none of the books have their original titles except for The Spirit Thief. But hey, part of being an author is being flexible with your titles.

(For those who are curious, the series was always going to be 5 books and the titles were as follows:
Book 1 - "The Spirit Thief" was always "The Spirit Thief"
Book 2 - "The Spirit Rebellion" used to be "The Real Monpress"
Book 3 - "The Spirit Eater" used to be "Daughter of the Dead Mountain"
Book 4 - "The Spirit War" used to be "Josef's War"
Book 5 - "Spirit's End" used to be "The Other Side of the Sky")

But with the rebranding, we're not so sure about the titles anymore. After all, since book 1 is now going to be "The Legend of Eli Monpress Vol. I, II, and III", the whole Spirit nomenclature isn't as important anymore. We'll probably keep the names we've already chosen, as The Spirit War and Spirit's End are perfectly fine, fitting names that match the rest of the series, but since I don't know 100% for sure that's what the books will be called, I'm just sticking to what I know, Book 4 and Book 5.

Now that I'm days away from finishing book 5, one thing is certain: Both of these final books are about as dark as The Spirit Eater. That said, Eli only gets mouthier the deeper into trouble he gets, so you can put any fears to rest about this turning into some sort of grim fantasy slog. It's hard to get too dark when one of your main characters is a talking ball of water. I'm very, VERY happy with how book 4 came out, and book 5 is shaping up nicely. I can't wait for 2012 when everything will be done and I finally get to share them with you!

I hope this clears up some questions, and thank you all as always for reading!

- Rachel

Made my day

2011-04-11T16:20:00.000-05:00

Don't know how I missed this one, but since it's short, I'm going to post it in full because it makes my day.

*Starred Review* Aaron’s outstanding fantasy debut is the first in a trilogy about unrepentant thief Eli Monpress, whose goal in life is to amass $1 million in gold. Hoping to accomplish his mission in a hurry, Eli decides to raise the stakes and kidnap a king. He doesn’t realize, however, that snatching the king of Mellinor (an entirely unmagical and rather boring kingdom) will set off a chain of events that will put him in peril from multiple sources, including the powerful Miranda, who is determined to catch Eli. But that’s no easy trick, as Eli is also a powerful magic-user himself; his swordsman-partner Josef carries the legendary Heart of War sword; and their female associate is a demonseed whose powers are terrifying. Fast and fun, Spirit Thief introduces a fascinating new world and a complex magical system based on cooperation with the spirits who reside in all living objects. Aaron’s characters are fully fleshed and possess complex personalities, motivations, and backstories that are only gradually revealed. Fans of Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) will be thrilled with Eli Monpress. Highly recommended for all fantasy readers. --Jessica Moyer, Booklist

Thank you, Booklist!

So picky!

2011-04-06T21:43:00.000-05:00

So I have a post I can not get right. I have tried and tried and tried to say what I mean to say, but it just refuses to cooperate, and so I have cast it away until we can come to some accord. In the meanwhile, you'll just have to bear with the following tangent:

I've been on a reading kick the last week or so (amazing what quitting Warcraft can do for your life!), and as a result I've spent a great deal of time in my local library, browsing through the fantasy section. Now, my local library is wonderful and amazing, but it is also a pain and a half to get to, so whenever I go I make sure to read at least the first chapter of any book I'm considering taking home because I refuse to make that annoying drive for anything less than a known quantity of awesome. But this enforced extreme care in my book selections has revealed a fault of my character I never recognized before, namely that I am truly, phenomenally picky about what I read.

Time was that I would give anything that sounded cool at least a general glance over. Not any more. Now, faced with a huge shelf of books, my selection process goes like this:

1) Scan shelf for stand out titles/covers.
2) Read the back to check out the plot, get VERY ANNOYED if the back is nothing but quotes. Quotes tell me nothing. I want PLOT! Scrounge around inside to see if the story catches my interest or has any of my pet peeves (and let me tell you, I didn't even know I had these pet peeves until I started doing this. But after careful evaluation, I've discovered I always put down books containing boy heroes, young, initially powerless females caught up in situations beyond their control, too many made up names, shy people, the list goes ON AND ON. It's horrifying.)
3) If the book still has my interest, I will then open to the first page of story and start to read. If the first sentence doesn't catch me, I'm done. If the first sentence does catch my interest, but nothing's happening (landscape description without cool landscape, etc.), I'll give it one paragraph. If nothing cool happens, I'm out. Even then, if the first character isn't interesting, I'm done.

Now, while I'm doing this, the writer part of my mind is quivering in horror. How can I be so cruel? Don't I know these are stories authors worked on and loved every bit as much as I did for my books? My reader self (since apparently I've got n people in my head at any given moment) just gives the writer a dirty look and points out that we've only got an hour a day to read, not to mention the awful drive over here, and do you want to spend those limited resources on something we won't like?

Spending this sort of quality time with my reader mind has taught me many things over the last few weeks, namely the enormous importance of opening lines. But, picky as the bitch is, you can't argue with results. Every book I've brought home so far I have loved, some past the extent of reason. There's something to be said for knowing what you like, and after nearly 20 years of literacy I ought to know what I'm after. But sometimes, as I skip over book after book after book, I start to get the creeping dread that I am cutting myself off from a world of reading by being so damn rigid in my book choosing process. The truth is, I'm probably missing a lot of really good books, but then everyone does. No one on earth has the time to read every good book, not even every good book in one genre. It simply can't be done. I know that, and still...

When I was young and had tons of time, I read everything. I'd read books I only sort of liked just to see how they'd end. I read widely and developed what I now think of as my taste for books. These days, though, time is short, and so I try to only read good books, books that will delight me. Fortunately there are several resources to help me along that end: reviewers, book bloggers, author reccs, all that sort of thing. I'm amazingly lucky, I have a library with a large SFF section, I live in the age of the kindle, where I can read the first two chapters of pretty much any recent book at the press of a button. But still I worry that, because of the sheer volume of books I have to choose from, that I am being forced to stick to what I know I'll enjoy rather than branching out. That said, I'd take a surfeit of choice over a lack any day. The key, I think, is to keep my mind open. I can decide I don't want to read something, but I have to at least look first. Sort of like tasting new foods. Eventually, even the pickiest eaters branch out if they keep trying new things.

One of the bits of advice I always see for writers is to read widely, but I think it is also important to read well. Read the books that move and inspire you, even if other people look down on them. The joy you take in reading is your own, and it is one of the richest experiences on the planet. Never let anyone spoil it for you, and if you have to be very picky to get there, then be picky. So long as you're still having fun, I don't think it matters at all, and there are certainly enough books to support even the pickiest of readers. You know, like me. :D

News and thoughts

2011-03-25T10:49:00.000-05:00

First, I have an interview with the wonderful Mihir of Fantasy Book Critic. There are mild spoilers, but nothing huge, especially if you've already read book 3.

Second, I got my first look at the new cover for the Eli Omnibus (that's book 1-3 combined for your pleasure, due out next year). I gotta say, that is a fine looking cover. As soon as Orbit posts it, I'll be linking it everywhere.

Third, the writing on book 5 is going well, though, as always when I'm writing a first draft, it feels like I'm crawling through the story. I always tell myself "I'm going to write all day today" but I never do. Five hours of writing is about all I have in me for any one day. Still, it's a pleasure to be almost done with the story. Not because I'll have to leave the characters, let me tell you how I weep at the thought of no more Eli. No, I'm happy because the story is finally reaching the big, big meta plot goodness I've been toiling over for 5 years now.

When I look back at the Eli books, I have a strange mix of pride and shame. I love the books, I love the characters and the world, but I'm ashamed of the mistakes I made. Sometimes, I wish I could go back and redo them. I wish I could write all the mistakes down so other writers could learn from them, but they're all so personal, so specific, no one would learn anything useful. With every book I write, I make more mistakes, some new, some new versions of mistakes I've been making since I started writing. I don't think I'll ever be done making mistakes, or doing things that couldn't be done better if only I'd know more, tried harder. Sometimes I think I've failed all together and there is no way I will ever be clever enough or eloquent enough to tell the stories. But I can't not tell the stories, can I? Even if I wasn't writing them down, I'd be telling them to myself. Since I've never been able to keep my mouth shut, I guess I've got no choice but to keep writing and, though I fail, at least try to fail better.

If I keep writing at my current pace of two books a year and live to 80, I'll have written 108 books by the time I die. That number fills me with such hope. Every time I finish editing a book I think, "that's the best book I've written." But by the time I write the next book, I'm sure I screwed the last one up. But all I can do is keep writing and hope that the next book will always be better than the one before it. By the time I hit book 50, book 100, surely I'll finally be the writer I want to be.

But then again, when I see the emails people send me, the reviews that say "I had such a good time reading this book," I think maybe I'm already there. The greatest pride in my life is knowing my stories made people excited, made them happy. What greater vocation can there be than making people happy? To be a source of joy in the world, even if it's only a joy brought on by snarky wizard stories full of mistakes. Every book gets better, and with every book, I'm building my way up, and I hope you'll come along with me.

Tension

2011-03-15T17:09:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I was going to post this at Orbit, but after much hemming and hawing, I decided it was too nuts and bolts of writing oriented. I'm going to write something a little more reader oriented for Orbit later, but for now, have a post about developing tension. I hope someone finds it helpful, or at least entertaining! - R

Have you ever read a book so quickly you had trouble remembering everything that happened? I'm not talking about rushing through books for school (though we've all been there), I'm talking about turning pages like a desperate animal because you simply CAN NOT WAIT to get to the end and see how it all turns out. (I read the Harry Potter this way, attacking anyone who came near me. Limbs might have been lost, I couldn't tell you. I was reading.) Now, have you ever wondered what the author did to make you so desperate to get to the end?

Well, probably not. You were reading, after all. But let me ask you a second question: have you ever been reading a book and liking it ok, and then suddenly you finish a chapter, put the book down, and feel absolutely no urge to pick it up again? Like, it wasn't a bad book, you were just... done, even though the book wasn't.

At their simplest level, these phenomena are two manifestations of the same book construction principle: Tension, one done right, one done not-so-right. I'll let you guess which is which.

Tension is one of those things critics and agents and editors and book reviewers and pretty much anyone who reads critically is always commenting on. It's the tug of the novel, the gravity that pulls the reader toward the end. It's the force that makes you turn a page, and it's every bit as important to good fiction as plot and character. (Don't believe me? Try reading a novel that has no tension and see how far you get.) But while it's easy to talk about tension like it's some mystical force, it's not very helpful to someone looking to actually put tension into their work. As someone who struggled a lot with tension as I learned how to write a novel, I offer you the simple writer's definition I finally came up with for myself.

Tension is making the reader ask a question, and then not answering it.

At least, not immediately. To give an example, let me turn back to that old stand by, Harry Potter. Why HP? Well, not only is it one of those few things I can expect everyone to have read, but also because Rowling is the freaking ninja master of tension. In the very first paragraph of Sorcerer's Stone , JKR spends her first sentence talking about how the Dursley's are perfectly normal. The second sentence reiterates this, adding that, of course, these are the very last people you'd ever expect to be involved in something magical.

And right there, the tension's locked in. Already you're asking the question: what magical doom is going to befall these stringently normal people? JKR spins this answer out over the course of a chapter, by which point more questions have been posed and you can't help it, you have to keep reading to learn those answers. Some hooks are big, some are small, some are long term, some are short, but they all add their pull. Before you know it midnight has come and passed you're still up, snarling at anyone who dares try to pry that book from your clenched fingers. You, dear reader, are hooked.

Speaking of hooked, the above example could also be called a hook, which is another thing critical readers, especially agents, are always going on about. But all of that violent language - hooking a reader, grabbing a reader, pulling a reader in, has to do with tension. They all force questions: Will she get out alive? Where is her husband? How did that wizard end up in evaporating most of central park? Can a zombie find love?

Of course, part of a satisfying read is having all your questions answered eventually. Dangling threads make for pissed off readers. But, and here's the most important thing I've learned about tension, you have to be very, very careful doling out your answers. If questions are the engines that drive a reader forward, answers are the destination. Once all pertinent questions are answered in a book, the tension is gone.

Let's jump back to paragraph 2 and the book you put down. For sake of argument we'll assume you didn't put it down for obvious reasons (characters were too stupid to live, something horrible happens that makes you throw the book across the room, the story completely jumped the shark, etc). So we have a decent book, maybe even a book you were enjoying, which you just stopped reading and have no real urge to start again. Why? What made you stop? All other things in the book being decent, I will bet you money that it was because the tension fizzled.

Several years ago this happened to me with a romance novel. Things were rolling along initially - broody hero, snappy heroine, money problems in high society, all good and going along fine. And then, a little over half way through, the couple confessed their love for each other and got married.

I put the book down shortly after. Now, I had another five chapters at least of the couple solving the mystery of whatever, but as you see, I didn't care. At least not enough to keep going.

In Romance, the tension question is always "will they get together?" Once this question and all its requisite "How? Where? Why? Is there sex?" facets are answered, that's it. Unless the framing plot is AMAZINGLY compelling and has plenty of tension of its own, once the couple is happily together, the question is answered and the tension is over. Most of the time, that also means the story is over, even if the writer's not done writing.

All that said, though, the final point I'd like to make is that there's no greater tension builder than reader investment. You can hook people with questions all day long, but unless you give the reader a reason to care about the characters and world you're trying to hook them into, they're not going to stay. Initial curiosity will get someone to turn the first page, but not the second. However, if you can create a character the reader cares deeply about, if you can force them to worry for that character, to make them ask "what's going to happen?" and really mean it on a deep, emotional level, you've achieved the highest pinnacle of fiction. But the only way to get to this lofty peak is good tension right from the beginning.

And that's what I've learned about tension so far. Any advice you see here is purely my own and should, as with any single opinion, be taken with a grain of salt. I hope you found it helpful, or at least interesting. I'm always interested in how other people approach tension, or any part of story telling, so if you have a comment, please chime in. I'm all ears (well, all eyeballs, since this is the internet).

thoughts while writing

2011-03-07T17:00:00.001-05:00

Dear Self,

Just a note of reminder, since you seem to need it. Remember, just because it's interesting doesn't mean it has any place in your story. Just because you LIKE it doesn't mean it belongs in the book. If a scene doesn't move the main story forward, no matter how amazing it might be, it's not going to stay int he book.

Because you're nearing 40k words, and frankly you haven't hit the middle hump of the action. I shouldn't have to tell you this, self, but this is BAD. You'd think you'd know this after 5 novels, but noooooo. So, remember, darling self, word count does not equal done book. The book is done when the PLOT is done, and at this point that's a long way from here. Stop futzing about with the loose ends and focus on getting your intrepid hero to the END of the story. Once he's comfortably settled in the falling action, THEN you can focus on wrapping up all those little things you threw in because you thought they'd be cool at the time.

But seriously, a 6k chapter focusing on side plot is NOT COOL. In the words of Gold Five: "Stay on target... Stay on target." We'll blow up this Deathstar/novel together, just stop writing BS, okay?

Yours always,
Me

A reply to Jezebel's story about Amanda Hocking

2011-03-04T16:27:00.000-05:00

I you like the cruise the interwebs, you may have already heard about Amanda Hocking's pretty rocking rise to the top. I'd heard a little about it, but no details until I read the article below from Jezebel.

26-Year-Old Writer Makes Millions On eBooks — But How, And Why?

It's a short write up, but as this is my turf, so to speak, I felt I should comment. However, comments aren't working on Jezebel at the moment, so, perhaps more wisely, I'm posting my comment here. Enjoy and feel free to leave a comment of your own!

Dear Jezebel,

I'm a published fantasy author with 3 books in print, and I gotta tell you, I'm 1/2 overjoyed, 1/2 sobbing about this story.

You can believe me when I say that the industry knows that stupid shit sells. The trouble is no one knows which stupid shit will sell and which won't. Every year sure-fire hits fizzle while unknowns rocket to the top. There are several stories of authors who were rejected by publishing houses and sold millions, Paollini is one, Hocking's another. But then again we have Stephenie Mayer who woke up one day and decided to write a book, wrote it in 6 months, got an agent with her first query letter, and had an enormous publishing deal by the end of the year.

The book market is no more fair or predictable or controllable than any market that makes its living catering to people's imaginations. For every Amanda Hocking out there buying a house with her ebook money, there's millions of authors whose ebooks never clear the friends and family threshold. That's why I'm so happy to hear that Hocking made it. That is a feat, and you better bet she worked her ass off for her success, both for writing books that, whatever faults they may have, must have made a lot of people happy to get sales numbers like that, and for the obvious effort she put into promoting her books online.

The part that makes me sad is how people who will dismiss her obvious achievement, forgetting all the work we don't see, the novels that didn't work, the insane risk of betting your family's future on words, and treat this story as some kind of phony sea change. "She made millions from home, now you can too! Screw New York and Big Publishing, publish your novel on Kindle and retire early!" So while I'm ecstatically happy for and, yes, a little envious of her phenomenal success (I would LOVE to sell 100,000 books, let me tell you), I'm also sad that, no matter how much she says "Even I don't know how I did this," scammers and people who prey on the writing dreams of others are going to be using her rise as a pitch for over priced "publishing services" for years and years to come.

And on another note: To the commenter who pointed out there are books on torrent sites. Chica, I feed my kid off book sales. Please don't support pirates. It's the authors who lose, not the publishing houses, and we're not all millionaires.

- Rachel Aaron

Still alive!

2011-03-02T10:28:00.001-05:00

Just writing, which tends to consume everything good/intelligent I have to give the world on any given day, leaving me a slobbering shell of a human being good only for drinking a beer and ignoring the dishes. It's times like this when I really admire the writers who produce epic amounts of writing AND maintain a daily blog. Tis inhuman, I tell ye. They be not writers, but word gods.

Moving on, here's some neat stuff!

- I did an interview for The Write Thing, who also posted really great reviews of my novels. There is nothing more flattering for me as an author than when other people take the time to not just read my books, but to write about them. Good or bad, all reviews are priceless. Thanks for the kind words, Pip!

- CSI Librarian has some lovely things to say as well!

- Mihir at Fantasy Book Critic put The Legend of Eli Monpress as one of his top favs for 2010, which is saying something, because 2010 was an awesome year for Fantasy!

- SciFiChick does a short and sweet review of The Spirit Eater, featuring one of my favorite lines so far: "This series is a must read for fantasy fans." I could not agree more! :D

I'm sure there's more, but for now I need to get back to Eli. You know how he can be when he's being ignored...

Now: cake.

My favorite thing to do for inspiration

2011-02-04T10:20:00.000-05:00

Step 1) Go to Deviant Art.

Step 2) Find an artist whose work shows a true talent (note, you don't actually have to be in love with the artist's work. I often choose artists whose paintings show a great sense of color and mood, even if I don't necessarily like their paintings)

Step 3) Go to the artist's favorites.

Step 4) Be amazed.

Since Deviant Art is crowdsourced, meaning the pictures with the most votes in a time period go to the front page, it can be hard to find the really creative stuff behind the wall of fanart and nudes (not that fanart/nudes are bad! But we're looking for inspiration here, not Naruto and naked hotties). However, the people who really know what's going on in DeviantArt are the artists themselves. I have had some of the best and most inspiring art moments of my life flipping through an artist's favorite art. This is where you find the really amazing stuff that may never make it to the front page.

So if you're looking for inspiration and willing to take a risk, you can do far worse than flipping through artist galleries on DA.

On my part, I've spent WAY too much time looking at this gallery. Absolutely amazing stuff.

Anyway, I hope I've helped you find some inspiration this morning. I'm off to read all those books I bought on my Kindle. Ahhh, the struggles of a writer's life! :D

We need a new name...

2011-01-28T10:28:00.000-05:00

Actual conversation I had with a lady this morning...

Lady, "So, what do you do for a living?"

Me, "I'm a fantasy author!" (always so cool to say)

Lady, "Oh wow! So like Harry Potter?!"

Me, "No, Harry Potter's YA, I write adult fantasy."

Lady, "............."

Me, "NO! Not THAT kind of adult fantasy!"

I still don't think she believes I don't write porn. Would you believe this has happened to me more than once? I need something new to call my books. I usually go with adventure fantasy, since there's lots of fighting and action-y type mayhem, but they're also funny. Yet with YA becoming the prevalent fantasy mainstay in mainstream culture thanks to HP and the other usual suspects, I find myself having to clarify all the time that my books are for adults, or at least they don't feature kids as protagonists. (Actually, teens and kids seem to really like my books).

So, how to specify that this is a novel written for grown ups without veering into all the nuances of "Adult"? The most obvious choice would be a pairing for Young Adult, but somehow I don't think Old Adult Fantasy would be very marketable.

Maybe I'll just stick with "I wrote a book. There's a wizard in it!" And let the intrigued figure it out from there.

Evolution of a Wizard Thief

2011-01-26T10:53:00.000-05:00

Been a rough opener to the year for us here on the homefront. Snow shutting down the city, sick kiddo, and all the drama that comes with those. BUT, Edits for The Spirit War, Eli book 4, are done! Even I like the book (this is a rarity, I usually HATE my books by the time I'm done). It had some REALLY fun scenes to write, though it continues the darker trend my books have been going down, which is actually what I wanted to talk about today.

If you've read my first three books, you'll notice a shift in tone from the almost goofy light heartedness of The Spirit Thief to the much darker Spirit Eater. The Spirit War continues this trend. Now, this shift towards the dark wasn't an accident, but it wasn't really planned either. This post isn't an excuse for the slide, but I thought it might be interesting to talk about how the novels ended up the way they did.

I approach writing from the bottom-up. I lay a firm foundation for my characters, give them histories, problems, priorities, and what not, and then let them sort things out. So we've got Eli, who's sly and cheerful as they come, but he's got some dark stuff in his past, and when we begin to dig in to Eli's character, all that starts coming up. Same with Josef, Nico, and, to a lesser extent, Miranda. The Eli novels have always been character driven, so it's only natural that, as the characters are forced to deal with more difficult choices and things they've been trying to run away from, you end up with darker books.

Generally speaking I've had a good response to this change, but I've also gotten some complaints. To these readers, I can only apologize. I would like to say that this is my first series and I'm still learning the ropes, but honestly I think this particular story would still have gone dark no matter what. With more experience I probably could have made the shift gentler, but in the end, Eli is who he is. He's a man who runs from his problems, and you can't do that forever. You can't be both irresponsible and moral without eventually having to pick one and take your stand. Also, there's the subject matter. The Spirit War is about a continent size war. You can't have something like that and not have it go dark in places. People die in war, it's not fun or pretty. That said, I think The Spirit War is the best book I've ever written. And it's not all doom and gloom. For all the war and hard decisions, it's still Eli. Just try to get him not to be a smart ass, I dare you.

The bottom line here is that if you've liked the books up to this point, then you're probably going to like The Spirit War too. Big secrets are revealed, questions are answered, the past is dredged up, and the stage is set for the final book. There's also some squee scenes for anyone who likes Nico/Josef :D. I had a really good time writing this book, and I think you're going to really enjoy it. The Spirit War will be out this fall. I should have some advanced copies before that, and I'll be running contests so you'll all get a chance to win the book early. Meanwhile, thanks so much for reading. Fans are the absolute best part of being a writer!

Sincerely,
Rachel

2011 - the year of more Eli books!

2011-01-03T10:58:00.000-05:00

2010 was a big year for me - first year as a mom, first year (really) as a published author, first book releases, first lots of stuff. That said, 2011 might be an even bigger year if you can imagine. I've got 3 books out and 2 more to go on the Legend of Eli Monpress series and lots of projects on the back burner just waiting to be poked. That said, I think the most exciting and difficult challenge ahead will be ending Eli's story. I've known the truth of Eli's world and the way his story ends for a long time, and now that I finally get to write it, I'm nervous. This was the little story that could, and I want to make sure the ending lives up to everything that came before it. Trust me, I'm going to be putting in a LOT of work making sure Eli gets the ending he (and you readers) deserve.

But enough looking forward! Let's look back a moment, for lo, we have new reviews!

Andy over at "All Things Andy Gavin" has a nice, short review of The Spirit Thief, which he sums up as "Ethereal fun." Who am I to argue? Also in Spirit Thief news, Travels Through Iest calls it "an extremely promising debut" among other nice things.

(On a side note, I am continuously surprised by the number of people who really like Marion the Librarian. She definitly wins the award for most mentioned side character. If I'd known she was going to be so popular, I would have given her a bigger role. Though the series isn't over yet, so who knows? Maybe she'll come back in book 5?)

And finally, Whatchamacallit Reviews goes above and beyond, reviewing all 3 Eli books currently available! Thanks guys! I'm so glad you liked them!

That's it for the current round up, if I missed any, please let me know!

Two new reviews of The Spirit Eater in one day!

2010-12-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

Be warned, both contain some spoilers. So if you haven't read the first two books, run and do that first and then read these! :D

"It has been a pleasure to watch these characters grow as the series progresses, and the world around them has only become more fascinating as Aaron reveals different lands, peoples, and events in each of the books; these are the sort of books that prompt late night dashes to bookstores in order to secure the next adventure, for who can bear to be left out of such a good time?" - Book Geeks

"Rachel Aaron gives the impression that she simply enjoys writing, and that enjoyment is contagious. Her prose has a fun, sly tone to it that’s genuinely enjoyable to read... If you’ve read and enjoyed the first two books, you should have no problem with this and will probably love The Spirit Eater, as it’s the best book of the bunch so far." - Fantasy Literature

Can't ask for more than that on a Tuesday, can you?

House cleaning

2010-12-14T08:35:00.000-05:00

The wonderful Devi has returned my edits for Book 4, so my little vacation is at a close. Le sigh. But, it's always great to get an editorial letter with the words "minor changes" on it. WOO. There is much much much to be done, but at least there's no moving mountains this time around.

I do want to take a sec here and dispell some weird mis-information about the series that's going on, for which I will use this handy bulleted list icon!

The Legend of Eli Monpress is a 5 book series, not a trilogy. I can understand the confusion! Trilogies are a standard series size, and we did have 3 books coming out all together with matching covers. But no, there are more! The Spirit Eater would be a terrible book to end a series on anyway. I don't even want to think about all the questions left hanging. But fear not! There are 2 more books where all questions shall be answered!
The Spirit Thief is not urban fantasy. Unless you count the fact that the book does take place in a city, the Spirit Thief could in no way be described as urban fantasy. I know it has a photo on the cover! I know it's blue-toned! But work with me, here. Take the book, turn it over. That's right, easy. There! What you are looking at is a blurb filled with kidnapped kings, wizards, and swords. Definitely fantasy, just not urban. Now, the book has been described as having urban fantasy pacing (which I will take any day over epic fantasy pacing), but it is not, in fact, urban. Deep felt apologies to anyone who was disappointed by the lack of vampires!
The Spirit Thief is not a romance. Again, I get it - photo cover of a cute, snarky guy, blue tones, but no. Though Eli does open his shirt in the climax (it makes total sense at the time! I promise!), there's no time for love, Doctor Jones. Of course, this doesn't mean characters don't fall in love over the course of the books, just that romance is not a central theme (unless you count Eli's romance with his bounty).

I'm sure there are more, but those are the three I keep hearing. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with trilogies or urban fantasy or romance (I actually hope to write all three in the future), I'm just saying that's not what I've written this time around. So, gentle reader, if you hear/see anyone assuming any of the above, please do me a huge favor and gently correct them (and then send them over to my site so they can read the first chapters!).

<3 Rachel

The Spirit Eater eats reviews!

2010-12-09T12:14:00.000-05:00

A mere nine days after launch and we've got some lovely reviews for the third novel in Eli's series - The Spirit Eater! I have gathered some choice samples below for your convenience...

"The latest Monpress Spirit fantasy (The Spirit Thief) is a super tale... However, even with Eli at his outrageously charming thieving best, what makes this a super tale is the internal conflict within Nico as the demon inside her battles for control with her essence in a sort of fantasy version of dissociative identity disorder." - Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round

" Whilst this is the third (and sadly for now) final offering in this series/world to date, it’s definitely been one that’s been a real joy to read. Her descriptiveness is crisp; the characters a barrel load of fun to hang around and perhaps most importantly the type of people that you’d like to hang around the pub with." - Falcata Times

"This series has been one of my favorite this year. I can't think of a series where I've liked every single character as much as I do in these books. My concerns in the review of first volume of Rachel Aaron overusing magic and powerful characters in the series has come to seem silly to me as she has weaved her tale with a masterful balance. I couldn't recommend this book more to anyone interested in a fun fantasy adventure series." - Jeremy Shane, The Outhousers

And though the give away is sadly over, you can still read my full interview about The Spirit Eater and other tibits about the Eli world over at Bitten By Books!

Feel free to post in the comments if you see reviews I've missed, or if you want to leave one of your own ;)

Blog comment problems

2010-12-07T09:17:00.000-05:00

I got an email today about problems posting on the blog, so I've made some changes to the permissions. Hopefully Blogger will now be less stupid. If you've had problems posting in the past this should hopefully fix them! Sorry about that.

Live Q&A today!

2010-12-01T10:11:00.003-05:00

At Bitten By Books! Starting noon central time I'll be around all day to answer questions about the Eli books and generally gab. I'm also giving away a TON of books, so stop by, say hi, and win yourself something awesome!

See you there!

god, architect, and janitor

2010-11-29T08:31:00.003-05:00

I have been working pretty much all the time on Eli book 4, The Spirit War. This is the most intensely I think I've ever worked on a book over such a long period of time. Day after day I write/edit for at least 4 hours of intense focus. Four hours may not sound like much, but I am a tiny, crushed creature when I finish. It's like waking up from a drinking binge, I feel disoriented coming back to the real world after being god, architect, and janitor in mine. Sometimes I literally have to sit and wait five minutes before driving home from the coffee shop where I go to write and flee my child (he has learned that I still exist when I go into a room he can not see, so I must leave the house or the sitter gets no peace) because I don't trust myself to drive in a straight line.

It's a crazy experience to be sure, but I can almost taste this book. I'm tugging on the strings as hard as I can, trying to pull it all together with the right timing, the right emotion, and with all the loose ends bound in. I will say, though, after 5 books written, this is the first one where I've truly felt like an author and not just some writer who's somehow tricked people into publishing her. I feel more in charge of my work, more together, more capable of spinning larger things. I can't decide if this is a real shift in the way I write or a coping mechanism for this novel. Either way, I'll find out soon enough.

my favorite review of the moment

2010-11-24T12:32:00.002-05:00

From SFFANZ: (I'm reposting the whole thing here since it is short and I love it so, please go check out their other reviews!)

"In contrast to a lot of the fantasy I’ve been reading lately, The Spirit Thief is fun, fluffy, light and a glorious sweet soufflé of a novel. It’s still highly original – any novel that begins with the hero in jail, chatting up the door into letting loose of its frame and thus letting him out is at least somewhat fresh out of the box. And then we discover that getting locked up was all part of his plan to steal a king! Unlike many fantasies, which bog down in details, this one keeps the action going. I was particularly pleased with the handling of the climatic sequence. Now, the climax is generally the best reading in any novel, but in a lot of fantasy novels it can be over all too quickly. But here, the climactic action begins on page 230 and keeps going until 286. Now, that makes over fifty pages of the fun bit. It’s impressively handled, and followed by a tidy resolution. The characters are interesting and well developed, without too many minor non-entities cluttering up the background. The lady writes a fair sentence, plots neatly, has a cheerful sense of humour, and I’m really rather looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book."

I am a squee-filled author. This pretty much sums up EXACTLY what I was going for when I wrote the book. I can not express how lovely it feels when someone really, really gets it.

I love every review, even the bad ones, because I always learn something about my writing. But the best part about keeping an eye on reviews is when you see something like this and know that, at least for this person, you did it right. Thank you, SFFANZ reviewer. You have made my horrible-to-this-point day infinitely better.

Smuggled!

2010-11-19T08:30:00.002-05:00

The Book Smugglers have reviewed The Spirit Thief! And while Thea have some criticisms (criticisms that have been repeated in almost all the mixed reviews, actually, many of which I have taken to heart while writing book 4 because writing-is-an-ever-evolving-thing, so on and so forth), she mostly seemed to have enjoyed herself. So I'm counting that as a win.

I can't tell you how strange and giddy seeing reviews pop up feels, even after months of them. To know that there are people out in the real world reading my book who are in no way related to me or obligated by friendship. And then they review it! And say thought provoking things! It still blows my mind.

Anyway, if you're wanting a fair review of the Spirit Thief, check out the link above. Or, just go read the 2 free chapters I have posted on my site (link to the left, top of the sidebar). Most people know by the end of the first scene whether or not this book is for them. I very much hope you'll find that it's for you!

And for the people who have read my book, please know that it's a 5 book series, not a trilogy as seems to be going around. I saw someone mention that The Spirit Rebellion is a terrible second book for a trilogy... and that would be true, except it's not a trilogy! Guess I need to ask Orbit to start printing 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, etc. on my spines or something.

The Page 69 Test

2010-11-18T07:55:00.001-05:00

The Spirit Thief undergoes The Page 69 Test, and Miranda's in the middle! Check it out!

Giving away books today!

2010-11-17T14:56:00.001-05:00

I have a guest post up over at SciFiGuy and I'm giving away books, 5 of em! Go over and check it out for a chance to win your choice of The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, or the as yet unreleased Spirit Eater!

Upcoming Events!

2010-11-11T08:52:00.002-05:00

My lovely, lovely publisher Orbit Books, has sent me enormous boxes full of copies of all three of my books. Since that's a bit excessive even for a bragging shelf, I've spent the last several days setting up events to give them away to YOU! My wonderful readers! Here's what we've got coming up:

November 17th - I'm doing a guest blog post for SciFiGuy. I'll be giving away your choice of my books, The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, OR The Spirit Eater, which doesn't even get released until December! You can get it first, weeks before it hits the shelves, just by leaving a comment. How awesome is that?

December 1st - I'm doing an interactive question/answer session with Bitten By Books, again with give aways. Got a question about the Eli universe you want to ask me? If it's not a spoiler, I will give you the dish. If nothing else, it should be awesome fun AND a chance to win free books. Who doesn't like free stuff?

I'll keep posting updates as we get closer to the events, so keep your eyes peeled!

- Rachel

Now with RSS

2010-11-05T08:03:00.001-05:00

Also, there is now an RSS link on the side bar for your subscription pleasure. This is probably way easier than waiting for me to post -__-...

Enjoy!

cross post, like cross fire (but with less death)

2010-11-05T07:57:00.002-05:00

At long last, I have a new post up at The Magic District! It's such a great blog. I really need to post more often.

The Spirit Rebellion launches today!

2010-11-01T07:36:00.004-05:00

So, The Legend of Eli Monpress book 2 officially launches today! Hooray! Of course, some bookstores have had it out for days already, BUT, today is the official release date! Here are some early reviews:

Rob Will Review: "I truly enjoyed The Spirit Thief. I flat out love The Spirit Rebellion. It’s so gratifying to see such a fantastic debut evolve into what is so far such a stunning series."

Fantasyliterature.com, "The Spirit Rebellion is once again an engaging, fun fantasy romp. The characters still bicker a lot, there’s once again a conversation with a door, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Eli Monpress is incapable of ever being boring."

Could that be more wonderful!? I think not! So let us celebrate this momentous occasion with a little story...

Like most debut authors I only had 1 book finished when I got my agent and he sold The Spirit Thief to Orbit. The Spirit Rebellion was the first book I wrote on a deadline, under contract. It was a really different experience, because I still had a day job and responsibilities all the stuff I'd had while writing was still a hobby, only now I HAD to write and finish a book on time. The Spirit Rebellion was also the first sequel I'd ever written... talk about sink or swim.

I did a little sinking at the beginning. Originally, the book that became The Spirit Rebellion had a totally different plot that focused on Nico. But as I wrote, I kept running into problems where I had these huge exposition dumps. Great mountains of back story blocking the plot every way it turned. It was frustrating and worse, boring. But I had a deadline, so I kept going, but then, about 3 months before the book was due, I realized this wasn't going to work. The book had a fundamental flaw, the story I was trying to tell required that the reader know way more information than The Spirit Thief provided - hence the mountains of exposition that kept cropping up. I couldn't keep going any more, I had to change the story.

Horrified, I called my editor and told her as best I could what had happened and that I needed more time. I wasn't really coherent, but she understood because Devi (my editor) is amazing and awesome like that. She gave me more time, and I frantically began work on a new plot that became the book we now know as The Spirit Rebellion.

The choice to jump ship to an entirely new plot when I had 3/4 of the book already written was one of the hardest choices of my life, but let me make it clear that it was also THE BEST DECISION I HAVE EVER MADE. Caps lock best. I went from stumbling through exposition to racing through a fantastic caper. Also, this new plot gave me the most delightful villain the Eli series has had up to this point. Plus, this book was the genesis of the best editorial advice I have ever received, when Devi told me to, quote, "torture more doors."

Read the book and you will understand how brilliant a suggestion this was.

In the end, everything turned out for the best. The new Spirit Rebellion plot was one of the best little capers I've ever come up with and I was able to reuse large chunks of the old plot in book 3, The Spirit Eater, thanks to book 2 giving me the room to lay all that exposition foundation naturally, neatly avoiding the dreaded info dump.

All that said, I have only one more thing to throw out there. If you read The Spirit Thief and liked it at all, please give The Spirit Rebellion a try. It's the book I wish I could have written first. Please, do it for Eli. :D

Thought for the Day

2010-10-25T07:04:00.002-05:00

I hate a lot of strange things. Not that the things are strange themselves, but that it is strange to feel an emotion strong enough to name "hate" towards them. Yesterday, I added a new entry: People who use absolutes seriously in conversation with no intention of owning up to them.

For example, I watch Hoarders on A&E (warning, link has auto play) (If you have not seen this show, watch it, it will make you a cleaner person if nothing else!), a show about, well, hoarders, people who obsessively fill their houses with trash until they're climbing over piles of cat shit to get to their kitchen. I'm not exaggerating! In these shows, child protective services gets involved a lot, because several of these people have young children living in this filth. When this happens, the hoarder will always cry into the camera and declare that they love their children more than ANYTHING and they'll do ANYTHING for them.

Then, of course, when the crew tries to CLEAN their child's filthy room, which the hoarder made filthy by filling it with their junk and/or (mostly and) cats, the hoarder pitches a fit about their stuff getting thrown away an has a meltdown.

This is about where I hit the ceiling. How can someone stand there and say they love their children absolutely and will do anything for them, and then fill their baby's room with trash? How does that even get started? I know there's mental illness involved and I should be more understanding, but this is why I could NEVER be a therapist or a psychiatrist. If I was on that show, I would stand that hoarder in front of every piece of trash and say "This broken lamp or your child, choose." And when they started fighting back, I'd say "I thought you'd do anything for your child?"

Hoarder: "I would, but-"

Me: "There's no but in anything."

I guess I watch too much anime and read too much fantasy, because I think that, when you declare an absolute in seriousness, especially something like your dedication to your family, those shouldn't be empty words.

Amazon.com is my master now

2010-10-13T12:18:00.002-05:00

I'm sick today. However, I am ruminating on how pleased I am to be sick in the age of laptops.

Couple more reviews popping up!

Civilian Reader had some lovely things to say, for which I was very pleased. Also, Atsiko, one of my book winners came through stunningly with a very in depth and thoughtful review. (If anyone else has posted reviews I'm missing, please let me know!) More reviews are showing up on Amazon, mostly positive ones, (and some from contest winners!) for which I am very grateful. There's something about Amazon reviews that make me freeze like a deer in the headlights. I think it's because I do almost all my book buying off Amazon.com and I often depend on their reviews to make that final purchasing decision. This makes me give my reviews on Amazon special weight.

Confessional of the Day

I used to day dream a lot about being an author, but one of the things I never thought I'd do is obsessively check my Amazon sales rank. I know it's meaningless, I know Amazon.com represents a pathetic sliver of the book market, I know I am wasting my life checking the page every hour, but I can't stop. It has become an obsession, because it's the only number I have. As someone who plays a lot of videogames, I have a tense relationship with numbers. They must always be moving higher, or in this case, lower, whatever direction is good. They can not be stagnating.

Every time I check my Amazon rank, my husband reminds me of this. But... but... OH GOD WHY AM I IN THE 100,000s? Wait, now I'm in the 10,000s! That's cool! I am not a failure and... NOOOOO, 40,000. X___X

Amazon, your power terrifies me.

Reviews and News

2010-10-07T12:12:00.004-05:00

First up, a very, very nice and thoughtful review from Mihir at Fantasy Book Critic. I especially love the comparison of the League of Storms to a magical military. This makes me a very happy cat for reasons that will become more apparent as the books come out... and that's all I'll say about that :3.

Next, my lovely UK editor Anna emailed to let me know that The Spirit Thief has officially launched in the UK! Hooray! For all my readers across the pond, I very much hope you enjoy the lovely edition of the book Orbit's UK division has put out.

And finally, all the books from my 24 hour book giveaway have been shipped to the winners! Most went out on Monday, but I mailed the last 2 yesterday. Now everything rests in the hands of the US post office, take that as you will!

In totally unrelated news, WOW Cataclysm comes out on December 7th. The fourth Eli book is due December 1. This is lovely timing, because I want to gorge on Warcraft non-stop, and that need to play is the most powerful motivator to get the book on time done I could ask for.

holy free books, batman!

2010-09-30T10:46:00.003-05:00

Big stuff today!

First, I have a guest post up at Kalayna's Price's blog as a part of her blog party! Will there be cake, sadly no. The cake was a lie. But there will be words! Many of them! Tasty ones, go check it out!

Second, to celebrate the official launch of the Spirit Thief tomorrow, I'm doing a 24 hour book give away over at The Magic District. Go and win yourself an autographed copy of The Spirit Thief!

Also, more reviews are up! Fantasy Literature caught the hint of darker things to come, and kudos are in order, because they are right. I will come out and say right now that the series does get more serious as the books go on. After all, Eli can't be irresponsible forever. The repercussions of his lifestyle have to catch up eventually, and I'll just leave it at that ;). Owlcat Mountain calls The Spirit Thief a "bang-up beginning to what promises to be an intriguing and unique tale of magic and mayhem." All I can say is wow, I wish I'd thought of that line! I would have totally used it in my pitch letter! Thanks guys!

Final note: More pictures of Eli on the shelves, this time courtesy of Kalayna Price. Thanks Kalayna!

Eli smirks in the face of the Dark Side!

Eli spotted in the wild!

2010-09-28T14:17:00.003-05:00

(Photo courtesy of Matt Albin via Facebook. Thanks Matt!)

I've heard numerous reports of The Spirit Thief being spotted on bookstore shelves, but now we have photographic evidence! Hooray!! Eli looks so handsome next to his bookish brethren! If you happen to be in a bookstore over the next few days, poke your head into the fantasy section. I'd love to know if this is a fluke sighting, or if Eli is truly out for real.

Unfortunately, my husband has been sick as a dog with walking pneumonia since last week, so I haven't gotten a chance to haunt bookstores myself. He has very poor timing! However, as soon as he's not a pathetic creature, I'm going to go to the Athens bookstores and haunt the shelves.

Also! I finally got my act together and go on Twitter (as shown by my nifty new ticker on the sidebar). Come check me out if you're into that kind of thing, I promise I'll try to be interesting.

writing problem of the moment

2010-09-23T09:06:00.002-05:00

The baby won't let me get 15 minutes to write on my novel, so here is a quick blog post.

My laptop's N key stopped working (very annoying when so many of your characters have n's in their names - Nico, Slorn, and Miranda, I hate you. (NOT REALLY DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT)), so I've been writing on an old, POS computer with a copy of MSWord that doesn't like putting bookmarks in. You see, normally when I'm working through a section to edit it and I have to stop for the day, I'll just insert a bookmark called "EDIT" wherever I stopped. This way I can jump back to my place with a simple click the next time I get a chance to write. Clever, right?

Well, now that fail computer with its fail copy of Word won't play nice with bookmarks, I've been just typing the word EDIT into my manuscript wherever I stop and using the search function to jump back to my place the next time I open the file. Usually, this works great. I use it when I have to write in OpenOffice too. But this time, not so good. See, I have a character named Gredit who gets mentioned a lot in book 4. Gredit... plus a dumb search feature that refuses to respect "whole words only"...

You see where this is going...

So search hops to every mention of Gredit's name before finding my actual "EDIT" marker. I suppose I could stop being so ghetto and get a better copy of MSWord, but right now all I can think about is how deeply I regret naming Gredit Gredit.

When people ask me what's the hardest part about being a writer, they get stories like this.

GAH x 10^9

Eli in the UK

2010-09-21T09:26:00.002-05:00

Got the UK edition of The Spirit Thief in the mail yesterday, and it looks lovely. I have to admit, I love the way the English do books. The paper is so silky, and the book itself is nice and large, a good bit larger than the American version, actually. (This isn't to say I don't love the American version too, I love all versions of my books!)

I'd post pictures, but honestly you probably couldn't tell the difference unless you were holding it, other than the size. So just imagine a trade paper back with the Spirit Thief's cover (seen in the side bar) and you'd be on track.

More reviews are coming in, including this one from Sporadic Book Reviews. I don't think I will ever stop feeling giddy and humbled when people review my books!

Also, there have been reports of people getting their books in the mail from preorder already, 2 weeks from the launch date. Gun jumping? Maybe, but if people are happy, I'm not complaining. I am going to start preordering more books I want, though. Books 2 weeks early? Yes, please!

whew!

2010-09-16T09:22:00.002-05:00

As you can tell by the dirth of posts, DragonCon was fun. The costumes, the good weather, the unabashed geekery, the endless walking! ( Ok, some of these things were better than others...) Over all, an excellent time. I handed out my little booklets (over 800 of them), and they seemed well received in general. Whether or not they were a true success is something only time will tell. Still, no one can say I didn't try! (That said, if you got a booklet and it let you here, please let me know!)

However, perhaps the MOST fun at DragonCon was getting to meet other authors! This will never, ever get old. Probably the best event was Kalayna Price (whose debut novel Grave Witch comes out in October!) inviting me to come have drinks with her and author A.J. Hartley. Alas, thanks to the DCon crowds, drinks were not to be had unless you were willing to die of old age in the line at the bar. Tragedy was, however, averted as Kalayna, being clairvoyant, or just very prepared, had brought a flask. Such a useful thing did not even cross my mind. I obviously have much to learn about con going!

In other ways Kalayna is more together than I am, she's hosting a blog party right now to celebrate her book's release! I will be doing a post as well towards the end of the month, but don't wait for me. Go check it out now!

And now, back to work on that fourth Eli novel with that pesky December deadline...

DragonCon! For Real!

2010-09-02T05:59:00.007-05:00

The con approaches! I will be there handing out real life, 3d, tactile sample chapters of The Spirit Thief! (Thank you again to Devi and Lauren at Orbit for making these look amazing!)

As you can see, they're conveniently pocket sized! I'll be handing these little beauties out all over the con, but mostly at the long lines where people need reading material most of all. If you happen to be at DragonCon, look for this suspicious person:

(Hint, I'll be the one with the handcart full of tiny blue books).

Come find me! I'd love to say hello (and foist some books on you!)

geekery extreme

2010-08-31T07:15:00.002-05:00

It is a well known fact that I am not only a fantasy geek, I am also a typography geek. As such, this project made me squee on many levels.

A typography designer updated Tolkien's elvish script for the modern age. It's elivin Helvetica!

Mind: blown.

Reviews!

2010-08-30T09:33:00.005-05:00

(30% shamelessly cross-posted from the front page news)

Closer to launch day and more reviews are starting to surface. SciFi Chick says "Full of humor and suspense, this action-packed fantasy adventure is highly enjoyable. If anything, this fast-paced novel was too short, having read it in just a few short hours. Fantasy fans will love this extraordinary new series." Now I'm blushing! Also, Genre Go Round calls The Spirit Thief an "amusing tongue in cheek thriller" which was kind of what I called it in my query. Was I just really right, or is Ms. Klausner reading my mail? The world may never know...

And since there's way more room here than up front, here's the link to Rob's excellent review at Rob Will Review. This one is from about a month ago, but it always makes me giggle like a school girl. I'll stop posting it when it stops making me happy (read: never).

Also! The folks at Good Reads have a lot to say. Some of it good, some of it not as good as I would hope. However, most of the complaints seem to be in the "this is too light for me" vein, to which I say, that's fair. It is a light, funny, fast book, and that's not everyone's flavor. However, I do hope that, even if you tend to like your fantasy on the heavy side, you will give the book a try (I make it so easy! You can read the first two chapters right now, for free, right here!). A little laughter and is good for the soul, you know?

And just a note to anyone wondering how I find these reviews, there is no author network that funnels them to me. I find everything the same way you do, Google! So if you've written a review or read one that I've missed, mea culpa! Let me know by leaving a comment here and I'll post it on the blog and front page.

nothing is sacred any more

2010-08-24T06:56:00.003-05:00

Last night my husband pointed out that the muffins I make for breakfast, my delicious cardamom, golden raisin, walnut, orange, carrot and oat muffins made with whole wheat flour, are, in fact, bad for me. DO NOT TELL ME THESE THINGS. The muffins have WHEAT BRAN in them. I put it in MYSELF. Sure they have 2 cups of sugar, but I can't eat cookies, ice cream, chocolate, cake, or ANYTHING I LIKE. DO NOT TAKE MY MUFFINS FROM ME YOU-

*deep breath to prevent murder of spouse*

I've never tried cocaine, and after seeing how I've dealt with the loss of sugar, I don't think I ever will. I obviously can not be mature about these things.

I'm going to go eat a god damn muffin.

My peeps

2010-08-23T08:38:00.002-05:00

Orbit, my lovely, lovely publisher, is turning 3! And to celebrate this momentous event, Publisher's Weekly has a pretty neat little article on the ways Orbit is bringing new ideas to the Fantasy/SciFi genre shelves. A very interesting read for anyone who likes to know what goes on behind the scenes of the book publishing world. There was stuff in here even I didn't know.

Of course, Orbit is using their fantastic 1-2-3 publishing strategy for the first 3 books of my series, The Legend of Eli Monpress. I would say that it worked fantastically for Brent Weeks, but Brent also wrote a very awesome series in the Night Angel Trilogy, which certainly didn't hurt. Still, here's hoping the same strategy gets my books out to an equally large pool of readers.

In other "my publisher is so cool" news, Orbit has created a series of amazingly awesome graphs showing trends inside the fantasy genre in typical Orbit mega-style. If you don't understand how graphs can be awesome, you obviously haven't seen these yet.

DragonCon!

2010-08-17T12:41:00.002-05:00

It's 99% decided that I will be at DragonCon this year. Not as a guest or anything so special, but I will be around and handing out preview booklets for the Spirit Thief. If you're going to be at DCon too and want to hang out, leave a comment or, better yet, drop me a line and we'll see what we can do!

New post up on the Magic District

2010-08-13T13:09:00.003-05:00

I explore a fundamental truth of series writing and wonder WTF is up with Monster High.

But I hate a too-short post, so here is another link to some amazing and inspiring landscape pictures! I could not write without beautiful and dramatic landscapes on my computer, which is strange because a lot of the time the landscapes in my books are fairly tame. I should change that.

awsomesauce, also, win some books

2010-08-11T09:43:00.002-05:00

Sorry if this is old news to some, but I'd never seen it before and I've been laughing about it for way longer than I probably should have:

Jim Hines' Neil Gaiman Facts

It's true, Chuck Norris has nothing on Gaiman the Great.

I've been a pretty big fan of Jim Hines ever since I read his princess books, and if you haven't given him a look over, you're doing yourself a disservice. However, today you're in luck! Ann Aguirre is running a Jim Hines fact contest and giving away copies of all his books as prizes. So if you know that Jim Hines is the reason goblin is now a legal entry on the US Census form, go there and take a shot at winning! Who doesn't love free books?

changing flavors

2010-08-10T21:32:00.002-05:00

As I write book 4 of The Legend of Eli Monpress, I find that my way of thinking is changing little by little. Or, rather, my way of thinking about my audience is changing. I'm always saying that writing is not a performance art (i.e., it doesn't matter if I skip some horrible scene and leave a giant red note that says "REPLACE WITH SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T SUCK" so long as I actually remember to replace it), but writing does have an audience, even if it's just an imaginary one, and the way I see that audience changes the book I write.

Back when I was still an aspiring author my audience was very simple, I was writing for agents and editors. While the average book reader doesn't see hundreds of fantasy plots every week, these people do. So it wasn't enough just to write a good book, I had to have a new, fresh good book. My audience was rushed, distracted, and I had one paragraph to make my case that mine was a book worth reading. Knowing this, I was desperate to make The Spirit Thief the most exciting, grabbing, original, fast-paced romp of a story I could squeeze into 80,000 words.

Of course, I'm still trying to do that, but now that my books are actually coming out and I'm working on the 4th book in the series rather than the first, things are different. My audience isn't made of just publishing people, but all kinds of people. People who, in this case, have already read and hopefully enjoyed 3 other books I wrote about my wizard thief and all the problems he ends up in. These people have done me the great honor of sticking along and letting me entertain them and allowing me to keep writing books, and for book 4, they are my primary audience. So the focus of my writing is shifting away from "how can I make this book really good?" to "how can I make this book holy shit awesome for people who've read the other books?" Because really, I read a lot of series, and there is nothing, NOTHING more disappointing and insulting than an author who lets her later books slide. I vow to never, ever become that person.

This new focus is actually a lot more fun to write, though. I know I can trust my audience to know most of the basics of the world, and that lets me dive right into the action. But it's also really really stressful because the bar is so high. People are rooting for these characters. If I flub a scene, someone will be horribly disappointed in me. That's some kind of pressure, and my books aren't even out yet! Still, I've always been the kind of person who gets more focused under stress, and so far, book 4 is shaping up to be the most complicated and, I think, most character driven of all the Eli novels. Also the most intense, especially with what I've got planned for the end. Trust me, you will be standing up in your chair screaming at me when you read this ending. Or at least I hope you will.

This is the new bar, and I'm putting everything I've got into jumping it. As Eli would say "Just don't flub things and it will all work out fine."

Humph. Easy for him to say.

CSS programmer is a great subjob to writer!

2010-08-09T09:38:00.002-05:00

Ok, fixed my homepage and everything to point to this blog as my new blog, complete with nifty buttons. If you got here from there, congratulations! Things work!

Back when I had a day job (and a life), I was a CSS programmer and designer for a web dev company. This has been IMMEASURABLY useful in pretty much everything I do. For example, when my editor says "hey, BEA's coming up. You need a website!" - there's no problem. Bam, website. Of course, it also helps if your husband is a PHP programmer. I did not design my homepage, that I left in the capable hands of Mr. Ryan White, who is the soul of The Thornhill Group and the best and most artistic designer I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Check out his page, you won't be disappointed.

I'll probably be redesigning the site in a year or so, but until then, I'm going to enjoy the distressed beige.

If anyone has opinions on the site (good, bad, or neutral), or if there's anything you'd like on the site that I've left out, let me know! I'm always looking to make things better.

fresh coat of paint, ready to go

2010-08-06T20:20:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I have now taken my old blog and officially made it into my new blog! There are a few Magic District cross-posts here just to get things a tad more up-to-date, but that's not going to happen after today.

So, now that's out, what is on this blog? Fun stuff, hopefully. Starting with tonight's topic: writing to music.

When I wrote my first novel (the one I never sold that came before The Spirit Thief), I listened to the Amelie soundtrack on constant repeat. Looking back, I don't really know why. The songs didn't match the novel at all. Music was just always something I had on whenever I was at my computer, and the Amelie soundtrack, being mostly instrumental, was safe and easy to zone out to. Now I can't hear any of the songs without immediately going back to the world of my first novel, which is both cool and kind of sad, because I would love to be able to watch Amelie again without being reminded of the book I never sold.

I had several flubbed starts at novels before finally settling in to write what became the Spirit Thief, and it was during these that I learned not to be afraid of silence. There's something hypnotic about the clicking of keys and nothing else. But I felt I should have something, so I tried relaxation music, chill techno, even those cheap-o CDs with forest sounds (which are creepy as shit when you leave them on repeat in a room and forget they're going). But the more I wrote, the more I realized that music was a distraction until, eventually, I phased it out all together. Now, I can't have anything on while I'm writing or I get horribly distracted. This is weird, because I can write in a crowded coffee shop or library no problem, but music at home? Forget it.

I feel like a real weirdo about this, though, since I know lots of authors love music to help set the mood when they write, even going so far as to make playlists for their characters. I just never got into that part of character development. Still, I respect those people who can write with music. Though I maintain that nothing is better than hearing your characters voices in your head and nothing else. That is the best music of all.

I'm curious though, if you're a writer, do you work with music on or not?

hotcakes? Mmmmm… hotcakes

2010-05-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

So my lovely, lovely editor has informed me that my books were proudly on display at the Orbit table at BEA and that the were, quote, “snatched up like hotcakes.” Now, as someone who can eat her weight in cake of any sort, I was very happy to hear this. This has, however, led to obsessive googling of myself to see if anyone’s said anything yet. I’m not proud of this. I like to think that I’m a pretty secure person. I mean, I never google my exes. But writing a book does a number on your brain. I think it’s because book writing is so investing. Sure other people helped, but at the end of the day, that book is me. I did that. So, even through my iron wall of confidence, the googling slips through.

So if you have a copy and have an opinion and are thinking about posting that opinion on line, do it! I’d love to read it! Even if you hated it (which I sincerely hope you don’t), I’d still love to read it just to know that someone read it and felt strongly enough about it to write something. Any review is always a gift, and as with all gifts, it’s the thought that counts.

supporting your writers!

2010-05-01T20:12:00.003-05:00

(cross posted from The Magic District)

So my first book, The Spirit Thief, comes out in October. So far away! But considering I've been a published author for nigh on 2 years now, that's relatively quite close! Now that this whole publishing gig is worming its way towards reality, people keep asking me how they can support my blinking, blind, newborn career.

Now, I have lovely friends and family and am honored and flattered beyond all telling that they would want to stick their necks and hard earned dollars out for me. But I don't want them to waste their time or their money, so when they ask me "Rachel, what can I do to support your novel?", this is how I answer, condensed in useful list form!

How to Support Your Favorite Novelist Without Spending More Than 15 Minutes or the Price of the Book You Were Hopefully Going to Buy Anyway

Wait until 2 weeks before the book's launch before doing anything - This is the most vital time for support. Any sooner and people might forget, any later and you miss those vital initial numbers that mean so much to publishers. You can of course talk it up earlier, but save anything big, and the actual purchase, until this crucial time.

Preorder the book - Since you were (hopefully!) going to buy the book anyway, this is the best way to do it. Preorders boost an otherwise unknown book up the Amazon or B&N or whatever seller you prefer's list. Strong preorder numbers lead to more and bigger book orders from retailers, which make your author look really good!

Leave an honest, informative review - Of course, we all love good reviews, but honesty is the most important. A page full of glowing reviews that ultimately say nothing won't draw readers, but even a 3 star review highlighting the book's pros and cons can lead sometimes lead to sales. After all, one person's gripe can be another person's love. Hopefully, your author has written a book that earns your giddy fandom, but even if you didn't like it as much as you'd hoped, write about it.

Mention the book on your social media - Twitter shoutouts, facebook links, blog posts, they all help to raise a book's profile. Even if the only people who follow you are your family and that guy from high school who kind of creeped you out but you don't want to unfriend because you don't want to be rude. You don't have to spam or be particularly verbose, you even copy/paste the review you wrote for the book's sales page, just say something and get the title out there. Every little bit helps.

As Cory Doctorow says, an SF writer's biggest problem is obscurity. Anything you do, even if it's just one post, can be a big help thanks to the ripple effect of the internet, and your author will love you forever.

(Also, when I was typing the above I misspelled Cory Doctorow's name and Google's (I use Chrome) spellcheck corrected me. Folks, that is fame right there, when your name is in Google's spellcheck. )

Anyway, that's my list. You tell me, did I leave anything out? Mess anything up? Let me know!

author toolbox: the three hooks

2010-04-30T20:18:00.000-05:00

(Cross posted from The Magic District)

One of the biggest problems I've had with my writing is excess flab. I have a bad habit of putting in scenes that I like (important, wonderful, fantastically written scenes) just because I like them, and not because that's where they should actually go (or be in the novel at all). This led to really big, unsellable books full of tension killing, scared cow scenes that went nowhere. It took me a lot of editing (and a lot of bad feedback) to finally learn my lesson: just because a scene is good does not mean it has a place in your novel. The good ship book is a small vessel. There's no room for scenes that don't pull their weight. But I'm an author. I generally like everything I write on some level (otherwise, why would I write it?) So how do I know what DOES belong?

To combat this problem, I created a checklist I call "the three hooks". Whenever I am planning a novel, the first thing I do is write out everything that happens. If I don't know what happens, this is when I figure it out. Some authors can just get an idea and go, and I do that a lot, too, but in the end novels always come back to their essence: a pile of scenes leading the reader from the beginning to the end. Once I have this pile of scenes, either in finished or outline form, I take each scene and I apply a set of standards. For the scene to pass, it must:

Advance the story

Reveal new information

Pull the reader forward

Without all three of these elements, a scene, no matter how good or beloved, is just wasted words. A scene that does not advance the story, like a flashback revealing character information that is not pertinent to the story, may be brilliantly written, but it does nothing for the book. A scene that does not reveal new information, say a talking head recap scene, may be chock full of snappy dialog, but it does nothing for the book. A scene that does not pull the reader forward, say a break in the narrative where everyone is happy and all their needs are met, may be very cathartic for the author, but it does less than nothing for the book. In fact, I'd say a scene like that would give you negative progress. Resolved tension leads to put down books, and that is not what we want!

These hooks don't have to be obvious (in fact, the more creatively you can hide them, the better things get), but they do have to be there to keep the story rolling. These are the hooks that keep your reader reading, the tiny little claws of interest you constantly need to wiggle into the reader's brain to keep them turning pages. If every scene in your novel moves the plot ahead, reveals new and important information, and gives the reader a reason to turn the page and move on to the next scene, then you've got a book that a reader can not put down, and that is what it's all about.

Fun math time!

2008-11-21T07:54:00.003-05:00

Novel math! It's the only math I like!

Goal length: 80,000
Words per week: 6,000
Weeks till the first draft is done: 13.3 (so 14)
Best of all worlds finish date: Feb. 28
Realistic finish date (assuming Christmas, panic, and scrapped chapters): March 30

That leaves about 3 months for revisions, which should be more than enough to get it whipped into usable shape (especially considering I actually know where I'm going this time).

If I'm going to stay on top of these deadlines, I'm going to have to write 7 days a week. Now, that's ok, because I do that anyway, but I'm going to have to be way more on top of distractions than I've been in the past. Having my writing office back up and running is going to help a lot with that, though.

Ok, Rachel, you can do it. Just stay cool, remember the secret to greatness... just don't suck and you'll be fine.

Here we go!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TODAY I WON AT LIFE

2008-11-20T07:29:00.004-05:00

Well, yesterday really, but the win continues!

So yesterday I got a call from my wonderful agent, Matt Bialer, and his wonderful assistant, Lindsay Ribar, *waves to Lindsay, and mad props* with wonderful news! There had been an offer on my book!

And not just any offer... a REALLY GOOD offer. Orbit, the UK based SciFi and Fantasy house, had come through with a 3 book deal and a larger number than anyone (or at least I) expected.

A 3 BOOK DEAL, GUYS! With enough money behind it where I could quit my day job!

I made it, I did it, I'm now a real writer by anyone's estimation. Life long dream achieved!

It wasn't quite as HOLY SHIT exciting as the day I got my agent, because that was a call out of the blue I was much more obsessed about it. This was also unexpected, but I don't think anything could beat the sheer joy of agent day (I also don't think it's physically possible for me to be that excited ever again).

But best of all, I get to keep writing my favorite books ever. I am the president of planet win!

What makes me doubly happy about all of this was I did it the normal way. I didn't have any ins in publishing, I don't live in New York, I've never been to a conference or pitched my book. I just wrote something, then despaired over it, then wrote it again. Then queried, waited, got rejections, queried again, waited, got rejections, (etc. etc.) until one day I got a response, then I rewrote it AGAIN (with very helpful input), and then waited some more, and then, everything happened.

There was no magic bullet, no secret society. Just me, my novel, and the faith that I could do it if I just tried. I'm sure I'm not done getting rejected, and I'm definitely sure I'm not done angsting about it, but yesterday I made it, and, as the unicorn said, no sorrow will live in me so long as that joy.

Thank you Lindsay, thank you Matt, thank you Travis and Matt and Krystina and Mom and Dad and Cindy and everyone for everything big and small. I'm so happy I could pop!

But I can't pop now, I have to go get started on Eli 2! :D

killing time

2008-11-14T06:09:00.003-05:00

Still no bites on my novel from editors. Of course, there are millions of reasons for this - they're busy, only a few have actually said no, the economy isn't the greatest for taking new business ventures, etc. But the pessimist in me wonders... maybe I'm just writing books that can't sell?

I think this year's long line of false starts have taught me that I can only actually write one kind of book - light, adventure fantasy/comedy, which I keep hearing doesn't sell.

Of course, all of this is horribly negative. My new book (which I need to update the side bar for) is going to be AWESOME. It's hilarious in my favorite kind of way, very tongue in cheek, fantasy meta humor. It's actually fun to write, and I'm having a great time...

But I also dread that it won't sell. Ever. Still, you do what you have to do, and for me, that seems to be sticking to my roots.

I just hope someone reads it someday!

stabstabstab

2008-11-03T07:39:00.002-05:00

Deep down inside (ok, maybe not so deep), I have a pretentious streak a mile wide. I was an English Major! I can't help it!

I've spent the past year trying to write a serious novel. Eli (novel 1) is light fantasy with comedy elements. There's a serious plot, but it's overshadowed by my funny guy, Eli. But I've always wanted to write Serious Fantasy(tm)... trouble is, I don't seem to be very good at it. If you took all the unfinished novels I've started this year, you'd have almost 200k, not to mention the piles and piles of world building notebooks lying all over my home office. But finally, I think I'm beginning to get what my subconscious (and the evidence) has been telling me all along. I may have great ideas for serious fantasy, but I'm really lousy at writing them. I just can't get into the story.

So I'm going to just stop trying for a bit. Head back to my roots.

I think I'm going to write something funny. Even if it flops, well, at least I'll be writing. At this point, I'll take what I can get.

plots, ponderings, and NaNoWriMo

2008-10-27T07:58:00.000-05:00

Due to many factors (my novel not selling, work being crazy, Warcraft being fun) which wouldn't matter if I was truly as HARDKOR about writing as I like to think I am, not much creative scribling has been going on. However, I have been very slowly and steadily building up notes and characters for a story I've been on-off working on for years. And as the timing works out, I am coming up on the end of my planning just in time for NaNoWriMo.

My relationship with the program is cold at best. I've always thought it was fairly silly. If you want to write a novel, there's nothing and no one to stop you except yourself. Writing is the most self sufficient art. It requires nothing except something to write on, regularly applied time, and the ability to push yourself forward once the 10% inspiration has bitten the dust and you're in the long, dry valley of the 90% perspiration. There is nothing more heart breaking or depressing than being 20,000 words into a novel and realizing that it's broken. It's dead and stupid and you can't fix it. Sometimes I make it over this hurdle, and those are the novels I finish. Sometimes I don't, and those are the novels that fall by the wayside while I move on to greener, less retarded pastures.

Everyone's path to storytelling is different, but for me, it is the ability to jump this hurdle, not word count or getting to the end, that makes me a novelist. An ability, I might add, that has been failing me of late.

NaNoWriMo takes the mack truck approach. Make your numbers, get it done. And it's true, if you sit down and make yourself write 1800 words a day (which I think is a ludicrous number. On my best days, when I'm going full steam, I get 2000 words in 2 and a half hours. Most days I'm happy if I get 1k in the same amount of time. I know I'm not the fastest writer, but if I made it my goal to get 1800 words a day, I'd have to spend 5 hours writing on average. My creative brain doesn't function that long.)

But NaNoWriMo, while an interesting tool, and I must admit a good get-up-and-go for getting people who've always wanted to write a novel to actually sit down and experience the day to day slog (because believe me, it's not roses and princes every day. Most days it's staring at the miles of empty white screen and trying not to panic), but in terms of helping people tell a story, it's a wobbly crutch at best, more likely to burn out potential novelists than create them.

If you're going to write a book, it isn't about the numbers, or how fast you go. It's about having a story strong enough to plow through the chasm of despair that you know is waiting for you somewhere in the middle. It's having characters who are strong enough to stand up and pull you out when you get stuck. If you can grasp those things, then the numbers will come by themselves so long as you take the time to write every day.

This is what I have learned through two novels. I hope it helps someone.

Now, back to the book.

long time, no ramble

2008-09-23T07:23:00.002-05:00

Hello all, I'm back and going to be trying to update this blog more frequently. For anyone who was wondering, yes, I've got my agent. Matt Bialer at SJGA. His wonderful assistant Lindsay scooped me out of the slush pile, which just goes to show it's all true: you don't need to know anyone to get an agent, you just need a book that can get their attention.

My book (which duh, I've never actually named on this blog), The Spirit Thief, is an adventure fantasy about a wizard thief who can sweet talk anything, the wizard cop on his trail, and the kingdom teetering on the edge of destruction because he can't keep his hands to himself. Right now it's sitting in an ever growing number of editor inboxes, and I'm trying to write a new book (trying is the operative word in that sentence).

I was moping over my foibles with book 3 when my husband quoted me something interesting off his blog-reader, "Story is the study of relationships over time." This goes along with the realization Sarah Monette gave me years ago, that story is different from plot.

I've always been an exceedingly plot driven writer. Plot and world always come first, then characters. How interesting, then, that the novel that actually won my agent started with the characters, or, more specifically, one character, Eli.

Eli is the main character of the Spirit Thief. There are many other characters in the book, some of whom I love so dearly, but it was always Eli's show (I only actually made up the title during the second draft, before that it was just "the Eli Novel.")

I don't have an Eli for my next novel, and it shows. In the Spirit Thief, I barely scratched the surface of real story telling, where the characters stop being plot devices and stand up to speak for themselves. If I'm going to make this happen again, I have to start with characters, because the characters are the story, not the world, not the plot. Plot without story is a hollow shell, and story is characters reacting with themselves and each other.

This is my discovery. Like so many other truths of writing, millions of writers have discovered it before me, but that means nothing. True understanding could only be gained by discovering it for myself.

Maybe now I can really start writing.

Can't say too much yet, BUT...

2008-07-15T17:05:00.001-05:00

Today I got the call. THE CALL.

I am now agented, and I could NOT be happier!

Hard work, it pays off!

:D

-Rachel

Only I could turn good news into writer's block :P

2008-06-20T06:52:00.002-05:00

So I've got a very good thing going for Novel 2, yay!! However, the prospect of maybe MAYBE actually getting an agent and selling the book is deep sixing my work on my current project. Because who knows? Maybe I'll have to drop it and work on edits/the sequel for book 2?!?!

Hahahaha.... right.

But the nagging thought it making it very hard to focus on the 2 novels I'm writing right now (yes, 2, because I suck and can't focus on one for whatever reason). Writing two novels has had unexpected benefits, however. Even on my worst writing days (like today) I can still find at least 200 words I want to say for one of them, and 200 words are better than no words at all.

Gotta get my pigs in a pile and keep going. I'm bogging down!

Things that drag me away

2008-06-02T07:14:00.002-05:00

Novel 2 Update: No word on fulls, siiigh.

Gentle reader, please forgive this self-absorbed, rambling entry.

I've always had jobs that didn't require much from me, stuff where I could chill at work, not think too much, and then come home early or on time and get to writing. That's worked pretty well for the first 4 years out of college, but now I've gotten this new job, a kickass job in an area I really like, but hey, what's all this work I have to do? Now, for the first time, I have to work late to get things done. Real life has been steadily encroaching on writing time for years now (and it's so sad, by the time I get old enough to handle my free time in a disciplined fashion, all my copious free time vanishes!), but with this new job, it's become an all out trench war to protect my few precious hours in the morning when I actually get things done.

It doesn't help that I've been jumping between projects again. Or that I'm actually interested in the work I do, which makes me think about it when I'm NOT at work, hence not supposed to be thinking about it. Even worse, I have to type all day at work, and that's giving me wrist cramps, which hurt the most in the morning when I actually WANT to type! Curse you, traitorous wrists!

I'm really hoping this is just the entry blitz, and that once I get through the massive backlog and learn the enormous mountain of shit I don't know, things will settle down and time will clear up again.

But, in the mean time, argh.

DONE HAHAHAHA

2008-05-16T07:39:00.002-05:00

Done with the rewrite for Novel 2! I'm still not 100% happy, but I'm happy enough to print this sucker and give to my readers for one last go over. Then I'll fix any problems they point out, give it one last (VERY QUICK) look, and send it out.

It's a lot better now. Honestly, even if it never sells, I'm so proud of this book. So proud of all the work I've done. Moments like this make it all worth it!

typity-typity-typity-TYPITY-TYPITY-typity-typity

2008-05-12T13:03:00.002-05:00

Despite the lack of updates, the rewrite is going. Very slowly, very badly, but going. The edits have forced me to face some of the major shortfalls of the book, and MAN, was I hoping no one would notice those.

Note to future rewriters: Don't dodge the hard stuff because you think you can cover it with a glossy sheen. If people do like your book, they will make you fix it. You can't shove it in your closet and hope Mom doesn't notice.

Ugh, back to the grind.

Requested rewrites

2008-04-23T16:22:00.001-05:00

First, good news! An agent with a full liked it! YAY!

Semi-bad news: She's the agent's assistant, the agent in question hasn't actually seen it, and she wants a full rewrite.

She was nice nice nice as could be, and she really seems to get my novel. Also, she read all the way to the end, which makes me happy beyond belief. Her suggestions are all very good and would certainly make the book better, really fantastic even, but I'm still struggling, and here's why.

I love novel 2. Love love love. This is not why I'm skittish about a rewrite, rather, I'm afraid that, after almost a year spent on this novel, I'll never move on. I'm afraid to put more time into something that may never sell. I'm afraid I'll lose my current novels in the malaise of constant rewrites.

But, then again, part of being a writer is writing every word with the absolute knowledge that it may well never sell, that no one but you may ever see it. You can think something is amazing and wonderful and have no one share that opinion, it's all part and parcel of playing the letters game. But that's ok. That's how it has to be. I'm happy I got this far.

That said, I'm going to do the rewrite. I'm going to throw myself back into novel 2 like it's brand new, and I'm going to rip it apart to make it stronger. I love that book so much, it deserves nothing but the best I can give.

So, heads up, here we go.

talking to people who don't exsist, it's not just for crazies anymore!

2008-04-16T13:37:00.005-05:00

Obligatory Query Update:
Getting many nibbles on Novel 2 - no bites yet, but still some exciting things! Gotta keep on keeping on! I swear I shall join you in agent land, Cyn, in this life or the next!

As you see, Novel 3’s word counter has been steadily counting up. Writing’s been going well, but I'm treading a bit more carefully as I get into uncharted waters. Not plot-wise, mind, I've got that covered up until the very end, but person-wise. Every writer gets a freebie at the beginning, mine was the ability to pull an awesome cast out of thin air (main characters, on the other hand, are a bit more trouble). Still, traditionally my characters come to me complete. They know who they are and what they want and my only job is to built the course they're chomping at the bit to run.

This time, however, things are different. See, the problem with these fully made people is that it's very hard to get them to change. They just sort of are who they are through the whole story, with no real development. I've always felt this was my weakest link as a writer. I write strong characters, but not fluid ones. They're pretty much the same people at the end of the book as they are at the beginning, and while those people were and are awesome, I always feel like I'm cheating myself out of a depth of story I know I can reach.

That’s why, when I chose my story for Novel 3, I made character change an integral part of the plot. I’m not talking about how the plot can’t move forward without the character’s action, every book worth the name has that. What I mean is that the events slated to happen at the end CAN NOT occur if the two main characters have not changed from their starting personalities. Or, rather, I’ve set it up so that what's going to happen will happen whether the cast is ready or not, so it's up to the characters to change enough to survive the ending. Overly dramatic? Probably, but by doing things this way I'm holding a gun to their little fictional heads (and, thusly, to my own swollen one):

“Change or get chunked,” I whisper as I flip the safety, “the choice is yours.”

I just hope I know how to fire the damn thing.

Wha?

2008-03-31T11:35:00.002-05:00

Haha, this is actually one of my favorite things. So being all caught up in novel 3, I kind of forgot I'd sent some more queries off a few weeks back. Well, today I check my email like usual and boom, two partial requests from agents I'd actually forgotten about querying...

This was just what I needed today. Thank you, fate-type god-people!

back in the saddle again!

2008-03-25T11:53:00.002-05:00

Finally found my third novel after all the false starts and it's going to be awesome.

Everyone's favorite fun time, new novel math!

Goal: 5000 words/week (what I know I can get even when things are bad), 100k total.
Timeline: 100,000/5000 = first draft done in 20 weeks, or the beginning of August (I'm cheating here a little, I actually already have 10k from a previous false start on this novel, but since I'll probably have to rewrite it anyway, I'm going to act like I'm starting from scratch.)

There's a lot going on plotwise in this novel, a lot of information to be packed into a relatively small amount of space. Looking at my notes, I could easily ramble on for 200k. However, 200k is unacceptable, so I'm going to do my best while writing to think "how is this important to the story? Could I do this better elsewhere?" Experience has shown that I am a piss poor editor, so doing more of this thinking during the writing phase of things might just make things easier. ANYTHING to avoid chopping a 200k novel down to 100k. That's just cruel and awful.

My end goal is to really take my time with this one, to get it written, then let it sit and cook while I do other things. Then, when I've forgotten how much I hate it (I hate every book I write for weeks after I finish it, and as soon as I type "The End" my fingers get physically itchy with the urge to go and fix all my mistakes right away. It's like I'm worried they'll become permanent if I let them sit, kind of like wine stains.) Well, not this time! This time I will restrain myself for AT LEAST a month.

I'm not even going to write out a time line for my edit. It'll just get done when it gets done.

Ah, it feels good to be back in the game. Watch the wordmeter, here we go again!

Ode to a wiki

2008-03-06T11:13:00.003-05:00

My all time favorite world building tool has to be the humble wiki. What other tool lets you spill out ideas, link them to other ideas, edit at will, track changes, keep all your world building notes online, easily accessible from everywhere, and is, best of all, free, simple, and easy to use? (Answer: Nothing)

My favorite at the moment is dokuwiki (linked in the side bar to your left), which I like because it is clean, simple, and PHP based with no database so I can keep it on my cheap hosting plan. Still, dokuwiki is just one of hundreds of free wiki programs out there, and there’s all kinds of awesome, fun things you can do with them.

When I start a world building wiki for a new novel I generally begin with the front page, carving my proto-novel up into neatly labeled divisions: themes, characters, settings, plot, magic systems, whatever I need. Then I just go down the list, clicking on each division to add a list of articles for that area, character names, for instance, or a list of places, anything I want to get to fast. Once I’ve listed everything, I go in and start filling in the blanks. For example, under my characters heading I now have a list of characters. I click on the character name to make a link, go in and start writing. I don’t worry about anything else right then except that character, what they look like, what they want, what their role in the story is, cool scenes where they appear, etc. As I go, I toss in links for important words (other character names, important places, themes, anything that looks good). Then, when I feel like I’ve got a good bit down about the character, I start filling in the new links. For example, if I mention that character A is the son of characters H and G, I’ll click on those new character names and start filling in their stories. This creates a whole new scattering of links, and so I click on THOSE and start filling THEM in, and organically, magically, the world of the story beings to emerge.

Because everything in a wiki is based on relationships, world building in a wiki is also a fantastic way to see where your world is thin. For example, when one of my main characters has a 2000 word write up and tons of links to other characters, places, and plot elements, but my other main character has two paragraphs and no links, it’s pretty obvious where I need to a spend some brain time. But even when everything’s been fleshed out as much as you can stand and it’s time to actually tell the story, the wiki continues to be insanely useful. Once I start writing, I refer to my wikied notes constantly to make sure I’m not forgetting things (or getting things wrong). This in itself is not unique, notes of any kind are made to be looked at, but the real gem of it is when things change.

Say I’m writing along and suddenly, one of the characters does something he’s not supposed to, something that changes the story. Even with the best planning (sometimes because of the best planning) this happens all the freaking time. Now you’ve got a new story with a new twist, and things have to change to survive. Back when I used to world build on paper, this generally meant I was screwed. I’d either have to go back and rewrite things (boring, time-consuming, by this point I want to WRITE, not world build) or just wing it and let my notes become outdated. Of course, if you don’t update your notes to incorporate changes, they become useless by the time you REALLY need them, which is when you have to tie everything back together at the novel’s end. One minute you’re right on track, writing away, then something changes and the next thing you know you’re winging through uncharted plot jungle on a few napkin notes and a prayer. This, to state the obvious, is not a comfortable way to work, and often leads to fumbling the ball, dropping the ball, or losing the ball entirely.

But a wiki saves me from ending panic, because with a wiki I can change my world notes on the fly as the writing changes the story. And not only do you make changes to the notes on the specific incident (e.g., a character does something that changes him from ally to enemy, so you have to go in and revise his part in later plot sections), but the nature of the wiki itself forces you to consider everything that links to the bit that’s different, spreading the changes throughout the work and making the whole world building web stronger.

Because my whole note system can change organically, flowing with the story instead of remaining stationary, fundamental changes become more manageable and your notes stay relevant and, most importantly, correct. What that mean in reality is that by the time I reach the end of the book I’m standing solid on a battle-tested mountain in interlinked, indexed ideas that have been with me through the whole process, and not on a napkin. And, trust me, it’s a much better place to be.

The 10 year plan, revisited

2008-03-03T13:02:00.002-05:00

No tremendous news to report on Novel 2 - 2 partials rejected with kind words, one more full requested, but no real dustups on either side of the reject/accept coin.

My 26th birthday is coming up (March 8, actually, send happy thoughts my way!) and this, coupled with my attempts to tame my home office, have sent me into some deep thinking. Many moons ago, when I turned 20, I drew up a ten year plan for myself. This plan has survived 2 hard drive crashes and 3 computers, which is more than I can say for most of my files (Obviously, something in the universe wants me to remember how stupid I was at 20) and it’s pretty funny (not to mention humbling) to look at now.

According to my timeline, my fourth book was supposed to be coming out this month. To put that in a little perspective, I was also supposed to be working for a high powered design firm and living on the west coast. As it is I'm married and living in the same town where I went to college. Marriage wasn't even ON my plan!

So I've fallen just a little bit short of my starry-eyed aspirations, but I didn't miss them entirely. I have written 2 books, each better than the next, and I'm still writing daily, which is more than I could say for myself at 20 (those early years were heavy on the talking about writing and light on the actual writing bit).

The best part of my ten year plan, though, is the finale: "2012: Quit job to work as a novelist full time."

Well, it's not 2012 yet, I've still got time to finish big! But to do that, I've got to actually sell something, which means I have to write something people want to buy, which means I have to write, and I have to write well. There's the catch. Over the last six years I think I’ve proved that anyone with a little discipline can apply butt to chair and write a beginning, middle, and end. But when life is so short, and 20 to 26 passes before you realize it, you being to understand that more is needed. It’s not enough to write a novel, it’s not even enough to write a good novel, I have to create a story that’s worth my time to tell it, a reader’s time to absorb. I didn’t hit that in my first novel. I did better in my second, but there are still plenty of places where I leaned on convention and didn’t offer anything truly new. Maybe by 2012 I’ll have it down, maybe I’ll hit it in the novel I’m working on right now. Who knows? All I can do is keep trying, keep writing, and then, maybe, when I really do reach the end of the obsolete 10 year plan, I’ll be able to look back at my decade of fumbling in the dark and see that, even if I’m not where I though I should be, the view is worth it all the same.

My love of what I can not have

2008-02-15T17:34:00.007-05:00

(AKA, my Sarah Monette obsession)

Sarah Monette is my favorite author, hands down. She’s followed closely (but in no particular order) by Ellen Kushner, Jeff VanderMeer, and China Mieville. All of these authors inspire me deeply, and when I hit walls with my own writing, I know it’s time to close the laptop and go pick up Melusine or Perdido Street Station. A few hours later I’m fired and fresh and ready to go back to my own stories.

But the strangest part about these authors is that none of them write in anything close to my style. I write quick, fun fantasy – heavy on the swordplay, larger than life characters, and skippy plots, light on the sort of deep, velvety description and fathomless imagery found in the novels listed above. If Sarah Monette writes Victorian drapes heavy with brocade and the blood of forgotten murders, and China Mieville writes impossibly beautiful alien balloons floating over the ruins of a mad city, I write IKEA sofas – colorful, fun, not necessarily minimalist, but they get right to the point.

Yet when I read stories that are closer to my own voice, I enjoy them, but I’m not inspired in the same way. My mind is always teeming with "I could have done that" and "wow, they did this a lot better than I did." I can’t see the novel for the words, so to speak. But Monette, Kushner, VanderMeer, and Mieville are removed from the reality of my daily writing. They operate in a different world with different rules where I am a stranger, and my only duty is to be amazed.

So why can't I write the kind of stories that inspire me? Well, when I’m being cruel to myself, I think it’s because my weak brain can’t function in the dizzy heights of meaning these other, better writers thrive in. But when I’m being kind, like I am today, I hypothesize that the real reason I love Sarah Monette and the others so deeply is precisely because they write the stories I can not, freeing me to unclinch the deathgrip of my writer mind and just be a reader again.

When I’m stuck on a story, more often then not it’s because I’m letting my writer brain, with its silly worries about publication and pride and grammar and pacing, do all the talking. But my writer mind only knows the plot, the turns and road signs along the path. My reader mind is the one who knows where we’re actually going, and it demands rest stops and detours through places it’s never been. So, when my directions lead me down another dead end, little bit by little bit I’m learning to step back, take a detour, climb up to a high place and look around. After a sufficient amount of oohing and ahhing at the countryside, I’ll find my road again. Works every time.

throwing the baby out with the bathwater

2008-02-06T16:25:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long silence, no new information has surfaced, and a writing blog is kind of dull during the actual writing part of things.

If you really want to know what you missed, here's the abridged version:

1) Worked on Novel 3 for about five minutes.
2) Checked email for news of Novel 2’s queries.

Just highlight those two lines and hit ctrl+v, then open a new word document and hit ctrl+c until you get carpel tunnel. There you go! Minute by minute updates!

So, no new news. Work on the next novel goes slowly, mostly because this novel takes RESEARCH. I've never done a novel that needs research, so this is a new experience (yay for libraries and wikipedia!). But as I write, I keep running into walls, and this is where the title of this post comes in.

Writing Novel 1 was this crazy rollercoaster time where I was sure that all I had to do was tell a cool story and people would read it. After I finished my first edit, I read every how-to-get-an-agent blog/post/FAQ on the internet. Then, when I had my chapters ready and my query letter in top shape, I gleefully stuck everything in the mail with the absolute certainty that there was NO WAY IN HELL anyone could reject my wonderful, wonderful novel.

Apparently hell has many ways I was unaware of, because the rejections rolled in at a brisk clip. I had quite a few partial requests and one full, but that was mostly because I had a really killer query. Once people got the actual book, they were less enthusiastic. Looking back when the dust had settled, I could see the novel’s problems (it was way too long, too slow, and the beginning was terrible). I tried to fix them for a while, but by this point I'd been working on this novel in one form or another for a year and a half. I was bored with the story, and, anyway, I had tons of new ideas! After a few false starts (actually, right in the middle of one particularly long false start that had cleverly disguised itself as an amazing idea), I hit upon the core of the story that grew into Novel 2.

That's when I started this blog. Novel 2 was going to be completely different than Novel 1. It was going to be quick! Exciting! And, most of all, I was going to get it done fast. No pussy footing around. Only serious footing, like jackrabbit feet, would be allowed. I stuck to my guns and cranked out Novel 2 in just under 6 months, and it was not only eons ahead of Novel 1, it was the best thing I'd ever written. It was funny! Exciting! I’d let other people read it before sending it out.

This time, I KNEW, there was NO WAY IN HELL it could be rejected…

Damn hell and its endless invention of ways! But, despite the rejections, I've gotten farther with this story than I ever got with Novel 1, and I still don't know how it will end up. But the specter of rejection looms over me while I work on Novel 3, and it's leading to some perhaps unwise second guessing.

See, when I wrote my other books, it was all about the story. Sure I was thinking about how I'd sell it (I'm a goal driven person. I can't write just to write, I have to have an audience in mind), but that took back seat to the writing. Novel 3 is different. This time I can't get the publisher in my brain to shut up and sit down long enough for me to write two sentences together. After every paragraph I write, I find myself pausing. Is this idea good enough to sell? Why am I bothering? Has someone already done this? Did they do it better? Why did you write that? You're fucking it up, aren't you? REAL writers don't write like that. God, they'll never buy that. Then I look over at the publisher in my mind, and she flicks her cigarette and tells me to do it again, but try to suck less this time.

Sometimes I tell her to go soak her head, but other times, too many times, I toss out the paragraph and try again. Every time I give in, I get the creeping spider feeling that, when I let my hopes for publication make decisions about my writing, I'm losing the real story.

It's times like this when I feel like those months at the beginning when I didn't know what I was doing were the only months where I actually had it right.

the good news and the bad news

2008-01-17T15:02:00.000-05:00

First, good news! I've got 3 partials out, and today the agent who requested the first of those three emailed back and said she wanted to see more!

(Intermission for Snoopy dancing!)

But (and you knew there was a but, right?) before I send her more, she wants some changes. She said she really liked a lot of stuff, but had some plot issues. Everything she brought up was well reasoned and appropriate. I have no doubts the changes will improve the novel, and I can't express how awesome it was to have someone who is a big agent in Fantasy talking to me about MY novel with the words "there's a lot I like"... I mean, that's going on my wall, right there! But, I'm so nervous about the changes. She was pretty specific about what she wanted, and I think I know how I could do it, but what if I fuck it up? What if I do all this work and she's like "on second thought, no thanks."

Of course, that could happen, but if I don't make the changes, she won't request it at all. She obviously sees something there, or she wouldn't be putting time into asking for changes. Time seems to be an agent's most valuable resource, and if she's willing to invest it in my book, then the least I can do is go at her changes whole heartedly.

Mostly, I'm afraid that I'm going to shoot myself in the foot. I've wanted this for so long, my confidence in my own abilities is shaken, and that won't do at all. After all, it's my story! If anyone can fix it, I can.

All this author nonsense is turning me into an obsessive twitch-case. Believe it or not, I'm NORMALLY very laid back.

who knew I had it in me?

2008-01-09T12:15:00.001-05:00

And while the queries for Novel 2 languish under piles of their brethren in lit agent inboxes, I start a new story.

It's something I haven't done before, a love story. Novel 1 had a side romance, but it got lost in THE END OF THE WORLD, which was slightly more pressing at the time. Novel 2 had no romance at all - not even so much as a weighted moment or longing glance. I've tried to write love stories before, but they always putter out. I thought it was because I'm not a romantic at heart, and I don't find love stories to be interesting in and of themselves. But then I look at my obsessive shipping of certain couples, and I realize that's bollocks. I just hadn't found the right story yet.

Around Christmas, the right story found me. Wonked me upside the head and broke open like a plot piñata, more accurately. All the candy scenes landed in more or less the right order, and I knew, I KNEW I had to write this. I knew it would take a lot longer than anything I'd done before, and I knew it would be a total bitch to write, yet I'm certain, if I can find that timbre I'm looking for, this will be the best thing I've ever done.

A week later and I'm 7000 words in, 5000 of which were written last weekend in a fit of joy I've never experienced in my writing before. I know it won't last. This novel, like every novel, will hit a rock, or a whole mountain range, and there will be issues, days when I loathe it, but, for this moment, I adore every the story with a passion I didn't think I had in me, and it's such a wonderful, strange, beautiful feeling.

At a time in my life when I spend 23 of my 24 hours obsessing over publication, a moment of writing just for the sheer joy of it is worth more than words could say. This is why I write. Sometimes it takes a sound thrashing to get me to remember of that.

I hate synopsisesessses

2008-01-07T07:58:00.000-05:00

I also hate the word "synopsis," moving on.

By the end of December, I finally got a query I was pretty happy with, but, after days of trying, no synopsis worth a damn. So I queried agents that didn't require a synopsis (a temporary solution), and, lo and behold, I get 2 partial requests (YAY!), both of which wanted a synopsis (BOO!). So I sat down and wrote one in a night, and it's horrible as I knew it would be, but it works. I wrote a much funnier, wittier one, but it was seven pages long. My rule of thumb is that you can go on for as long as you're entertaining, but that no one is as entertaining as they think they are, so keep it short. Seven pages, while entertaining (to me, at least), was not short. So I chopped it and made a 3 page version, which is terrible, but might just get the job done.

This let me query a whole glut of new agents. Right now I've sent queries to about 1/2 the people on my agent list. If they all say no, I guess I'll just go find some publishers who take unagented submissions. This feels like horrible failure to me, but I really love this book. I love the characters so much, I couldn't stand sticking them in the drawer. So I'll keep trying, for their sake if not mine.

But we've only had 3 rejections to date, so there's still plenty more to go!

Right on schedule!

2008-01-04T09:01:00.001-05:00

Queries are out!

UPDATE - 1/8
One more rejection, one more query out!

Queries sent: 14
Rejections: 4
Partials: 2

Moving along with Novel 3. Stop hovering, Rachel, and write your damn book.

I must never allow myself to become despondent

2007-12-07T13:26:00.000-05:00

I must never allow myself to despair. I must never allow myself to quit. I must keep going, even when it seems not worth the effort. I must never give up.

Remember this feeling, the hand rising to wipe the dirt off your chin, sore muscles sliding under skin as you pick yourself up. This is the distilled essence of being human. Never shy away, never stay down. Never let it go.

Done with the second edit

2007-12-04T08:42:00.000-05:00

I got Aaron's, Matt's, Andrea's, Krystina's, and Trav's back. You guys did an AWESOME job and I could not have done it without you. So thank you, if you're reading.

So we had the initial writing, which was about 55k, the edit, which clocked in at 70k, and this second edit, which hits at 75k. It could probably benefit from one more go through, but I worry I wouldn't survive, so I'm closing the book on this and moving on.

Now, all that's left is write a GOOD query letter (anything but that schlock I have now) and a good synopsis, and I'm ready to query. Finally.

Revision notes - Day 2

2007-11-13T21:33:00.001-05:00

Or whatever. Re-did the Nico fight, think it's much better.

Next up, cutting Renaud's enslavement bit and moving straight to him with the water. Be sure anything important gets moved somewhere else. Over all much better flow. It will need one more read-through before send off, but you can do that at the end of the real third revision.

Onward!

Revision notes - Day 1

2007-11-12T09:04:00.000-05:00

Well, actually day 2.5. I've written out my descriptions and started in on the ending. So far, I've fixed the scene where Karon knocks down the doors, smoothed out the Josef fight. This morning, I completely redid Renaud's speech explaining what the pillar was, and I think it's much better, much less info-dumpy. I also took out the blood magic thing, I can save that for another book or add it in a lesser capacity for this one later. I also had Renaud go into the pillar, which solves the whole "where is Renaud during all of this?" question AND is super creepy. This changes a lot of stuff down the road, but I think it'll all work out for the better. This climax has to flow properly, or there's no fun at all.

Next up: Battle of lava and sewage, then Nico. Don't forget to keep an eye on the ACTUAL text edits now that you're not writing new stuff.

My read through is done!

2007-11-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

And MAN, do I have a lot to do:

1. Go setting by setting and character and write out general descriptions to use in the edit. That way, all my descriptions will be uniform. This is especially important for interior settings.
2. Edit the ending and make all noted changes. This is the most broken part, so do it first.
3. Start at the beginning and start making the edits. Do a chapter a day, each in its own document before adding it to the final file. Don't skimp on this, and don't forget to edit the ending again (this should be done mid December, DO NOT rush on this, you need the best book you can write).
4. Give fresh edit to Matt and Trav to go over.
5. Start querying!

right on schedule!

2007-10-31T08:01:00.000-05:00

And I'm done (well, finished anyway) with the first go through right on schedule. Two months exactly, even with all the nonsense. Today, I will send the draft to the printers and then hand it out. Maybe... MAYBE they'll have it back to me on time.

In the meanwhile, my task is to

1. Do all the crap at work I've been ignoring -_-...
2. Write a query letter!
3. Write a synopsis!
4. Sit on both (seriously, you only get one shot, don't jump the gun)
5. Do all that map making and world building and what not for the next Eli novel.
6. Do all that map making and world building and what not for the next OTHER novel.
7. Don't obsess.

Now, off to get things done!

danger, TL:DR

2007-10-26T08:07:00.000-05:00

Ok, the hard part of the edit/rewrite is, as of 12 this morning, DONE. Left-to-dos as follows:

~~1. Edit final chapter (duh) - mostly polished, minor editing. Should be doing it right now, actually :P.~~ DONE

~~2. Go through the words listed below - seriously, I can't REALLY need to use suddenly twice a chapter...~~ DONE

3. Codify the world - make sure everyone's names are consistent all the way through, check the details, do anyone's eyes change color? Are Miranda's rings on the right fingers? Do her spirits change names? Does Renaud gain/lose an arm somewhere? Etc. This really should have been done during this edit, but it wasn't. Spot check as best you can and then save the real combing for Edit 2. DONE

4. Go though all the sections where I talk about magic and make sure I'm a) giving enough information for understanding, and b) not overstating or over-explaining and that each explanation matches the speaking character's world view and knowledge. - this includes both Miranda talks in the beginning, Eli's talk in the clearing, Miranda's talk to the king, Coriano's talk, and the stuff at the end. DONE

5. Go back over the beginning - this part is the most stylistically different, make it more like the rest of the book.

6. Go over all the new sections and make sure they make sense - including new Coriano/Renaud transition section, the walk under the city, and the ending. You've got 16k new words, make sure they're good. Also, watch for wordiness. You get wordy when you don't know what you're talking about.

7. Save, reformat, and clean up everything to go in a Bel Jean's book to hand out for reader copies - on the list: Trav, Tim, Steven, Andrea, Matt B., Aaron, Krystina, and Emily (8 total). Check price of copies, this may not be practical. Emily needs one for sure, though. See if Alex can get you a discount :P.

While the book is out with beta readers in November, my job is to:

1. Codify the world - draw maps, add roads, write out spirit naming conventions, etc.

2. Plan out the second novel thoroughly so I know if I need to add anything in this one. I want a scene by scene with all major events mapped out. Don't start writing it, just make sure you're not shooting yourself in the foot.

3. Write query letter, synopsis, and finalize your agent list (the fun part!)

When I get the reader copies back in December (hopefully) I need to:

1. Go through the novel line by line, applying the codifications listed above.

2. Read through everyone's notes and implement the best of them, fix problems people point out.

3. Get the manuscript agent ready.

THEN, in January, I...

1. Query until I sell it - my goal, 1 acceptance or 30 refusals by my birthday.

9 days until the end of the edit...

2007-10-22T14:56:00.000-05:00

and god, do we have far to go.

Rewriting the climax to be more climatic, then going back to edit it to make sense.

Once that's done, I have a special project:

I will go back through my novel and make sure every instance of:

suddenly (31)
then (153)
next (33)
very (66)
the (300+)
! (too many to count)

and all dialogue tags that aren't "said" actually need to be there.

God, it's time to learn to write.