Cupid Bow Mouth

Wrapped up two more chapters today. Pushing into another one and, although it needs polishing, it's in the right place enough for me to move on into another chapter. Ultimately, that's three chapters down. Things are very linear right now because I'm connecting all the dots and trying to make sure that the transitions transition. I've made some heavy decisions back in January to cut a character who was WAY to easy to remove and spackling over her absence has been surprisingly NOT an issue. She featured more heavily in the back half of the book, so we'll see how it goes when I get there, but still not foreseeing too much issue with excising her.

Writing and editing are crazy interesting and I wish that I could just do this over and over.

Xiran Jay Zhao posted two reels on Instagram about the timing for the sequel to Iron Widow that had everything to do with how much she was paid for the first book and how those payments were distributed. It's a transparency into the publishing world that I deeply appreciate. I already know that the pay isn't great for like 90% of authors, but the way the money gets released was a new one for me.

She could not prioritize writing the Iron Widow sequel since she had to prioritize making enough money to feed herself. We can't all be EJK Rowling-King and make millions of dollars! Most of us won't. It's nice to see conversations about what reality looks like and then how to negotiate life around it.

I have a writing schedule, but honestly, with only 24 hours in a day, it's hard for me to work 8-10 hours, commute two hours, try to workout, read, eat, and get a sufficient amount of sleep. Folding writing into that list means that something has to get de-prioritized and rescheduled. Honestly, it's usually the workout or the sleep schedule.

Ha!

So, then I also read THIS article and ... yeah ... I already knew I'd be keeping my day job, but I'll be definitely keeping my day job.

Back in October I made my first original short story submission. Two weeks later it was rejected. Two days after that, I submitted it to a different magazine.

Three months later, I was notified that my little baby made it out of the slush pile and was being considered for publish.

Two months after that it was ultimately rejected.

Whew! This process is hard ... and LONG. Five months for an ultimate no. I drawered the story for the moment while I work on novel revisions. I'll try submitting somewhere else later in the fall. Still, this was a nerve wracking and challenging time.

The rejection said that it was a close call and they hope to see more from me soon. I want to believe that they're not just being nice regarding the close call.

A stupid thing that I've realized is how my brain like to think that only 3rd person past is a "real" novel. So that even though third person present is what I like to write and mostly read, if I don't draft that way then I am failing.

Well ... I'm failing anyway. Struggling with a novel in 3rd person limited, past tense.

It's dumb.

Despite the fact that I killed her off in that one story, so maybe she has a right to be angry --

Whatever. I am cracking open the laptop to write and I need to wash my hair. I'm also very tired because I got through ALOT of garbage work emails yesterday. 400 down to 115, I think. Still, two significant projects that need to be finished before Friday that I barely touched ... but anyway.

I love that when I am struggling with writing the most. When it's not quite working, someone will randomly like a fic on DW and it makes my day to think people are still finding those things and liking them and taking the time to let me know.

It helps. When the writing is hard or I'm tired or discouraged or Agatha has stood me up for the millionth time ... it helps.

Really.

So, thank you.

So ... this is a thing ...

Amazon is Adding Goodreads Ratings to Book Listings

And I don't think it's a good one. I've been dialing back on reviews overall, but this just makes me uncomfortable, especially considering the way reviews flood both sites long before an anticipated book launches. I've always thought that no one should be able to post a review until AFTER the book launches. I et it that people have ARCs and ... hopefully, I will be one of those people in the near future, but I also see too many people who Don't have ARCs posting about how excited they are that the book is coming and with a four star rating. If we have to allow review, because of ARCs, the maybe the rating becomes inactive until the book launch date.

Arguably, online reviews don't, especially on Amazon and Goodreads, don't impact book sales as much as people think they do. It does potentially impact the algorithms that mean you SEE the book, but, at least as far as Goodreads, most people are only more likely to add a book to their TBR. I find that true give the thousands of books I've added and how often I DON'T use the list to decide what to read or buy next.

Happy NaNoWriMo, if you do.

Happy November 1st if you don't.



We're playing more of the revision game this year. 99K words that need to be contracted into 90K. There's also an ending that needs discovering. So work. Lots of work to be done.

Wish me good luck. And patience. Lots of patience.

I wish you the same.

So, what's the dealio?! Who's doing what? Is anyone doing anything?

This year's Nano for me is unofficial. My goal is to wrap up edits on this draft of the novel. My third act is a sheer mess and I need to cut 10K words overall. Now, that said, I've decided to separate my fannish writings from my professional writing goals and so! I need a new profile name for over there.

Crazy thing is that I forgot how hard it is to think of a user name. I've had this one for ... decades ... yikes! Legit since 2004, I think. SMH. It's amazing to me that I have been even remotely involved with ANYTHING for so long, even with the way I've been mostly MIA for the last five+ years.

Anyway, let me know if I should go find you on the Official NaNoWriMo site. I'm excited for writing and all the projects even though, right now, it's really, really hard. But then it kinda always is.

But, guys, we are good at this. This is a thing that we can totally do!!

Guys.

I've fallen in love with Tamsyn Muir.

I know. I know. I fall in love at least once a year. It's a song or a movie or a book and, well, yeah, maybe I'm fickle, but guys! It's always true.

Last night, I finished Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth (which I read back in June).

I adored almost everything about it. Both of them. Kick ass lady necromancer heroes, being petty and bad ass. I love Gideon is so much awkwardness and muscle and how Harrowhark is mean and confident and wicked intelligent. I love how co-dependent and toxic they are. Tamsyn has me INVESTED in these two. She's got me committed! The world building is intricate and specific. The writing is cheeky and chatty and intense and elegant.

Harrow the Nonth is partially written in 2nd person and it does a really unique thing. It forces you to pay attention and unwind the story to try and figure out what is happening because guess what? You are not the YOU who is being told this story. It's a whole puzzle and I am totally HERE for it. The pettiness of humanity, how you should really never meet your heroes, and how even God is a lie because people are fallible.

Definitely not for every one. I think you really have to have a yen for epic, space opera fantasies filled with bones and the threat of Armageddon. And don't expect a linear story, tied neatly at the end with a bow. Muir does not write that. She really doesn't tell you more than you need to know at one time. She expects you to work for you endings and, again, LOVE. I'm taking something from that. Working to trim my excessiveness in writing, I'm committing to a return to my fanfic roots where I kinda didn't care if you got all of it or not.

I've found that, some people want you to spoon feed them EVERYTHING and some people don't. I'm in the don't camp and, there's an audience for that. I'm one of those kinds of readers.

Very long time, no see.

Here we are, once more shouting into the void.

I don't know where else to put this, so I'm putting it here.

Yesterday, my first ever submission to a magazine was rejected. It stings and it makes me question whether or not this is a thing that I can do. I also totally acknowledge that it's not necessarily anything more than someone had a better story. I submitted along with someone who definitely had a better story. A story that was so gorgeous I was like they will DEFINITELY take it. Yet, they didn't.

The lesson? It's all subjective and relative and there's no accounting for taste.

Does it make me feel better? A little?

Did I immediately submit somewhere else? I did.

Will they take it? Probably not ... but I guess that's okay, too. It's a learning curve and process and one that I never would have imagined trying if not for Buffy fandom and this space on Dreamwidth and before that Livejournal. It was there that I learned that maybe I could be a writer one day.

Other things:

*Novel MS edits are trash.
*Trying to prep for NaNo is trash.
*Work is trash.
*I'm going to a revision writing in retreat in January with Maggie Stiefvater which is awesome.
*I went to Spain last month (did not love)
*I went back to Scotland in July to write in a castle (crazy amazing)

I'm tired, guys; but I suppose the universe still loves me a little bit:

*Lili as on TMC this afternoon
*The Wish is on Fuse right now. Charisma Carpenter was so gorgeous in that blue outfit.
*Interview with the Vampire on AMC. Perfect! The texture, the casting, the nuance and changes in the story. All of it. I love it. Sam Reid as Lestat is perfectly charming and moody and petulant. I don't think they could have done better. Louis is as soulfully self-righteous, tormented, and beautiful as I could have wished for.


I'm reading Harrow the Ninth right now and I have a serious love/hate going on with it. Everyone in this book is literally the worse person ever, but I'm compelled by them. It's such a puzzlebox of a story that I can't help but keep going.

Keep going. Isn't that what we learned from Walt Disney and Meet the Robinsons? Keep Moving Forward.

So, moving forward. Edits await. Trash though the may be.

This all kinda sucks right now.

Love, me ...

Started: 1/19/22
Finished: 2/2/22
Pages: 352
Goodreads Shelves: apocalyptic; post-apocalyptic

Intimate and curiously interwoven stories about life, how it inexplicably tangles up, and how important and difficult choices are. A bit slow sometimes but always interesting. A character piece set smack in the middle of the end times.

Without a traditional plot, its almost like reading a narrative history of events fleshed out through the lives of people. Elegant is a good word, quiet. A more literary version of World War Z or Robopocalypse minus the official UN documents. I liked the opaque nature of parts of the stories. Things happened and no one understands exactly what why or how. The characters, as happens in real life, are forced to make up their meaning ... the meaning of their lives and their existence, who they are as they go along. In true fashion, its all anyone can ever do.

It was easy to read and there were an abundance of characters and POVs. I liked the time slips so that the world before and after are explored along an adjacent narrative through line. My biggest critique is that the plotty aspect of the ending is more than a bit anti climatic. The plotty aspect of the ending is also, in the end, the least interesting and the least important thing about the book. A solid read and a good start to the 2022 reading challenge.