Steps forward, steps backward

I didn't do any writing this weekend, but I'm trying to keep to a schedule of working on writing for at least an hour or two each weekday night. Tonight I focused primarily on revising the 3K-ish words that I've written in the last week. That went very well, and I'm pleased with what I've got. I wound up cutting about 200 words or so. After I finished with those revisions, I did manage to write a bit of new content--hardly more than 200 words, since I only had about 20 minutes worth of energy in me by that point. But I'm all set up to be able to write a lot more tomorrow, so I'm hoping to get at least 1,000 words in then. Now it's off to bed, and my total stands at:

10,354 / 95,000 (10.9%)

Passing the 10K Mark

After such a long dry spell, it's really surprising to me that things have come all at once like this. I managed to do a bunch of prewriting for my fifth chapter ("The Farm"), and then I was still able to write 1,300 words on the chapter after that.

I realized two things tonight, which helped me accomplish all this. First, I've long had a habit of listening to music while I write. I listen to music while I do most everything--except read for pleasure. I've been doing a lot more reading for pleasure than I have writing recently, and I've started to realize that the music was distracting to me now. It didn't used to be--but now I try to impose the beat of the music on the passages that I reread after I write them, and that just doesn't work. So tonight was the first time I've written in silence in several years, and I think that was actually really beneficial. Hmm. You might find that obvious, but music has always helped me concentrate while I work. I'm not sure why that changed.

The second thing that I realized was that if my butt is uncomfortable, my creative motivation goes way down. I have several comfortable chairs, but nothing remains comfortable to me for hours on end these days. Taking my laptop and rotating chairs every time I got too uncomfortable was a big motivator. You know, one less thing to distract me from actually thinking about writing.

Anyway, I did indeed pass the 10,000 word mark tonight. So here's where things stand:

10,311 / 95,000 (10.9%)

Progress At Last!

Finally I've managed to write a good amount in one sitting. About 1200 words in only an hour and a half--not bad! The best part was that I hadn't planned this particular scene very well, and yet it really came together much better than I had dared to hope. I've been agonizing over this and other upcoming scenes for about two weeks now, so it's a huge relief to see how it actually worked out. It's amazing how much more vivid my actual end scenery always is than the vague scenery that I always picture in my mind while preplanning.

The other thing that really helped me in this scene is something that Chandra said to me about characterizing early. I've always been a bit afraid to head into emotional territory too soon with my lead characters, but I don't know exactly why. It doesn't really make sense; when done well, that can actually make characters much more accepted by the reader. Normally I tend to hold back a bit at the start of my books, but this time I've really let the internals of the characters present themselves much more quickly--and I really like the result.

9,035 / 95,000 (9.5%)

My Idols of March Entry

Well, I didn't win Miss Snark's Idols of March contest, but she did get a chuckle out of the fact that Dan Lazar was a "heartbreaker" in my entry. Here's what I submitted (#122 on her page--all the way at the bottom):

Who is Dan Lazar? That was the question that plagued Tom Griffin on the eve of battle. The thrum of the blades overhead and the rushing of wind past the open side door of the helicopter couldn't drown out the cacophony in Tom’s own mind. Once again he held the letter up into the moonbeam that fell across his seat.

Anna’s note was as frustratingly brief as it was ill-timed. It had arrived via courier, complete with the snazzy “signature required” instructions that had made the other men from Reacher Company take notice. What a way to receive divorce papers.

Prologues

One thing that has been continually bugging me about ALDEN RIDGE is that I have a prologue that really isn't a prologue at all. It's just a super-short chapter 1, because the action of what I considered the "true" chapter 1 picks right up where the prologue leaves off. My prologue was just a short scene, that's all--it wasn't back-story, or characters that I didn't plan on using for the rest of the book, or anything like that. It was just a short opening scene, and it needed to be there in order to make chapter 1 make sense (but again, not because of back story).

Well, in the end I decided to do some research and see what I could find out about prologues. The Wikipediea entry was fairly interesting for etymological purposes, but the best thing that google brought me was actually an article by Marg McAlister. Reading through her article convinced me that my prologue really isn't a prologue at all, and so I finally just renamed it to chapter 1. It's an unusually short chapter at 611 words, but my other chapters thus far are each a more standard 2.5-3K words.

What do you guys think, was this the right decision? It's a very short first chapter, but it just doesn't feel right to me to combine it with chapter 1. And since there's both expectations and a stigma about prologues, I thought it would be best to not to call it what it isn't (well, that's a good idea in general, isn't it). Thoughts?

Jury Duty

I've been unusually quiet this week because I've been extra busy since I was selected for jury service. The jury service itself took all of yesterday and the day before--and I wasn't even selected to serve on a jury. Yuck. I feel it's important to do my civic duty, and I would have found serving on an actual jury to be an interesting experience that would potentially offer ideas for future writing (such is always the selfish motivation for authors to do anything unusual, right?). But sitting and listening to lawyers grill potential jury members for two days is not my idea of fun. I had no idea that the jury selection process could take so long. The worst thing was, this was a medical malpractice suit (wrongful death), and I had enough connection to the doctors in question that I was pretty sure the plaintiff would have wanted to excuse me for cause. Though 20+ other jurors got excused for cause, and 7 or others were excused by the lawyers for whatever unstated reasons, they never did get to me and so I just had to silently watch for the entire time. I'm all for doing my civic duty, but that didn't much feel like it. Oh well.

With jury duty taking up basically my entire days, and leaving me pretty exhausted at the end of each day, I haven't had a whole lot of time for writing. Over the weekend I did a lot more planning, but it wasn't until late last night that I actually did any writing. It was only 500 words or so, but that's something. So, as of last night the total stands:

7,887 / 95,000 (8.3%)

Miss Snark's Idols of March

Miss Snark is holding a writing contest (updated rules are here). Entries are only to be 100 words long, and must include the words Reacher, Helipcopter, snazzy, moonbeam, Dan Lazar, and griffin. The deadline is actually today--she wants entries to be submitted between 5 PM and 5:15 PM EST. Sorry for the late notice, but she just did post about the contest yesterday, and I didn't find it until today. Happy writing!

Character attributes can drive plot

I'm still working on planning for ALDEN RIDGE--no new words written since the last update. But I have been thinking about one thing that I think is very useful, and that is the importance of the main character's... well, character to the plot of the work. But I'm approaching this explanation backwards.

The problem I was facing in my writing was that I just didn't empathize well enough with my main character in ALDEN RIDGE. She was interesting in many respects, and there was a strong emotional angle to her story, but somehow I still didn't want to be her. I'm all for having unsavory aspects to my major characters (and often do), but at the end of the day I can't put my whole heart into writing a main character who I just don't admire on some level.

What makes me admire a character? For me, personally, it basically boils down to the character being smart, good, and powerful in some way. Maybe you could even leave "good" off that list and I'd still admire them as an interesting anti-hero. But without smart and powerful, they just don't work for me. Your mileage may vary--and even for me, it's not like a character has to be Einstein The God Of War or something. Being "powerful" just means that the character is able to exert some measure of control over their environment. Maybe not at first, but eventually. They may not always get to set the tempo of their story, either, but sometimes they should be strong enough to on occasion. Being "smart" doesn't mean that they have to be all that educated, or a prodigy or Nobel laureate. It just means that they have to sometimes see or understand things that no one else around them does. Intelligence is usually relative.

Again, your mileage may vary, and there must be a million ways for a character to exhibit both of those traits. And as far as the "good" trait goes, I mostly mean that the character must perceive themselves as good. Even if they are actually evil, they have to have some sort of rationalization that makes them act the way they do. Evil characters who don't are nothing more than selfish, and that's not usually fun to read unless really skillfully done.

But getting back to my original point: these character characteristics can (and to some degree should) drive the plot of your story. The reason why is simple: you're supposed to be showing, not telling. So if you want your main character to be seen as smart and powerful, as I do, then you have to have some situations where these traits are exhibited. Otherwise, the only thing you can do is say "John was very smart." That doesn't work too well, because (among other reasons) readers prefer to make such judgements on their own based on observation. If the narrator tells us someone is smart, we generally take that with a huge grain of salt.

At any rate, I was working on my plans for the work, realizing that I still didn't just absolutely love my main character (though we were still friends), and also realizing that I had to do something about that. When I came up with my list of reasons I didn't absolutely love her (she was too passive, and nothing about her part in the plot screamed intelligence), I realized I need to make some plot changes. The funny thing is, though I started trying to think of sweeping adjustments to the main plot, I wound up just making some tweaks and adding to my sub-plots.

All is well now, but it just got me thinking about the myriad different ways that one can come up with a plot of a book. Sometimes even a great plot is a little bit of a byproduct of detailed, unusual characters and setting/premise. Actually, I think that might be the case more than we think. It's a lot easier to back into a unique plot that than it is to just think of one right from the start.

Update on ALDEN RIDGE

I'm going to try something new coming up. I've really been enjoying reading about the ups and downs of Karen Mahoney and Rachel Vincent as they write, and I've decided to do something similar. I find that it's nice to have the brief update posts from authors that I'm interested in, and perhaps my doing the same will be a good counterpoint to the longer Thoughts on Writing and Agent Search posts that I make. Those have completely been the focus of the blog so far, and that sort of content will continue to be a prominent feature here, but there's a limit to how many of those I can write during a week while still making progress on my actual book writing. So we'll see how this goes, and whether this is actually of interest to anyone, or what.

As to the actual subject of this post, the update on ALDEN RIDGE: things are going slow, word count wise. I wrote about 500 words tonight, which is 500 more words than I've written the entire rest of the week. That might sound like I've done no work on the book, but actually I've made tons of notes and done lots of preplanning. I actually outlined a full eighteen chapters that could take me to one possible ending of the book--not that I plan on sticking to that too closely (plus, if I just wrote those chapters, this book would only be something like 60-70K words, which is way too short). But that outline gives me something of a yardstick to shoot for, and already I've been flushing it out even more, revising it, and coming up with sub-plots that go along with it.

I had hit a point where I realized that I simply wasn't that interested in this book, not in the way I am in THE GUARDIAN. That was mostly because the story itself wasn't powerful enough to me, and I didn't connect enough with the characters yet. The setting was great, as I had spent the most time on that and general worldbuilding in my prewriting, but what I realized was the I only had the beginnings of an actual story. I've spent my writing time in the last couple of weeks correcting that, so that now I have a really story that I'm really excited about, and characters that are complex and that I connect with, to go along with the setting. That sort of work will probably remain ongoing until the book is complete, but at least I have a strong framework to add to, now.

So, while I'm still unhappy with my low wordcount so far on this project, I'm hoping that will pick up soon. My preplanning has really revitalized my outlook on this project, and I'm really excited about that.

7,353 / 95,000(7.7%)

Meez...

Well, I blame Chandra for this, who of course blames Vicki Pettersson. I'm not sure who Vicki blames, but I'm sure it's someone. Ah well, I've burned an hour or so making myself as a meez:



Would you like to waste some time, too? You're in luck.

Rewriting versus Redrafting

There isn't any real existing difference between these two words, so I'm going to make one up in order to describe my idea of the two different kinds of edits we make to our work.

In my made-up lexicon, redrafting is what you do of your own accord, after some time has passed from your first draft. This is what we do after the first draft of the ms is finished in order to polish it up so that it is worthy to be sent out either to agents or to beta readers. These edits are relatively more minor, often somewhat cosmetic or simply technical in nature, and while they are also very important, they are not going to catapult the ms into any new realms of quality--this is just part of what must happen to every ms before it can become a book.

On the other hand, rewriting is something else entirely. Rewriting might happen during the redrafting process, to be sure, but I think that most non-established authors aren't going to be able to do the rewriting effectively without a lot of time between the first draft and the rewrite, and probably not without some sort of external motivation or help (critique group comments, a growing stack of rejections, feedback from a mentor or editor or agent). In essence, rewriting is undoing or otherwise changing some part of your existing draft: cutting down overwriting you couldn't even see, cutting or changing characters that just didn't work, adding or dropping or totally redoing scenes or sometimes even entire sub plots in order to fix the flow or pacing or whatever in the novel.

I think that as a writer becomes more experienced, the distinction between these two processes disappears to some degree. That's what I'm finding, and I have a feeling that this is universal: all those things that other people had to point out for me in my earlier books, I now see automatically in my own writing. Not that I expect to ever see everything, but each time I do the revisions to a new ms, and each time I get feedback, I'm assimilating new information that (hopefully) no one will ever have to tell me again.

Redrafting is always easy to justify and enjoy, because it is simply improving what you've already done. But rewriting is more about discovering what you could have done better, and doing that instead of whatever you actually did. That can be a blow to one's pride, but it is also important because it is actually improving ourselves as writers, rather than just one ms.

The hardest part of that process is learning to filter out that backstory which slows down/distracts from/otherwise hampers your story. That, or losing those elements which are simply uninteresting to readers, though they are interesting to you as the writer. That's the part that really hurts, I think, because when we are first writing it is hard to know what will be of interest to others (not to mention what will seem far fetched or cliche). That’s "killing your darlings."

A lot of writers seem to abhor doing rewrites, or at least find it an intensely painful process, but I've never found that for myself. I differentiate between the story as it exists in my head from the way it comes out on paper. The rewrites just take me closer to being able to make other people feel about the story-on-paper the way I feel about the story-in-my-head. To me, that’s much more important than the sanctity of the actual story-on-paper itself.

Even veteran novelists have to do rewrites when they pick a story that really challenges them. That’s always the goal, right? To push yourself even farther with every story you write. If you read the foreword in the Author’s Definitive Edition of Orson Scott Card’s SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, I think that has a lot of very interesting comments on this subject. The work was most certainly not his first, and yet it took him something like 4 complete, ground-up rewrites of the book before it worked the way he wanted. It was just a new style for him, and a different kind of story from anything that was out there in his genre (sci-fi). It took him a long time to get it right, as well as feedback from a couple of other noted authors, but that book went on to win both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, which has only ever happened to about six authors (and to Card twice, incidentally).

This is what I think about when I’m doing rewrites. I always figure that today-me is much smarter and wiser than yesterday-me, so it doesn’t offend today-me to find out that yesterday-me made some mistakes. I’m just happy to strengthen my story and my craft in general. But whatever your take on them, rewrites are just a part of this business, like rejections and bad reviews.

(Note: this post is adapted from comments I originally posted over on Good Karma Reviews.)

Stage Fright And Writing

Trolling through old content from Absolute Write, I happened across the transcript of an interview from last January with Jenna Glatzer. She's actually the owner of Absolute Write, as well as an experienced writer. In the interview, she talks a lot about stage fright and how she found that affected her strongly in her prior career as a stage actor, and yet how it isn't something that has ever really been an issue for her with writing. She postulates that this is at least partly because writing is her secondary thing, while acting was her original dream.

I think that's very interesting, because I think a lot of aspiring authors hold writing as their Big Dream, and thus a whole lot of their identity is wrapped up in the stories they write. I think that might contribute to that fear of rejection that we all have--this isn't just some random job interview of which there are many more possibilities besides. This is our Dream, and there's only so many agents and editors out there. If writing is our only way to evaluate our professional self worth, then that's even worse--everyone gets rejections, and most people can't get their first book published (I read over on Pub Rants a while ago that the average might be three unpublished books before one is sold).

I don't mention this quasi-statistic to be discouraging, and neither did they. Just because that's the anecdotal average doesn't mean it will hold true for everyone, either. But no matter what, you're going to get rejections. I've never heard of a published writer who said they hadn't. So the important thing is to not let yourself get too tied up by any individual work--whether that means moving on to the next book while you query for your current one, or whether that means not being so afraid that your current book isn't good enough that you never finish writing it. This is a time-intensive business, and as anyone who has queried for a book can tell you, the actual long process of writing the book is only Part 1.

Write for yourself. Unlike singers or actors, we don't have to perform on stage, and we should use that to our advantage. Don't needlessly put yourself on stage while you're writing. I know several singers (my sister and my sister in law are both terrific), and one of their biggest problems is not letting performance anxiety affect their performances. When they perceive the stakes as being really high, there's a risk that their vocal cords will constrict, and that has a very negative impact on the quality of their singing. You never hear this in professional singers, because sometime before they went pro, they learned how to control their fear.

And I think writers face the same challenge. A certain amount of introspection is healthy and wonderful, and absolutely necessary. But before we're ever going to be a true pro, we have to learn how to differentiate between the healthy analysis and that which is just stage fright. We have to write like there's no one else in the room (and, um, there probably isn't). Writing isn't like stage performance. It's like working in the recording studio or for the camera: you have as many takes as you need (and there aren't any other staff/actors/singers waiting on you, either, so even better). If your first draft of a new scene or chapter isn't great, don't despair. You have as many revisions or rewrites as you need, and you're the only one watching or keeping count. Write for yourself.

Combined Hook

I got wonderful feedback on the two hooks that I posted this morning. Thanks to everyone who voiced their opinion; it was all a really great help! The general consensus seemed to be that there were good and bad aspects to both of my hooks, however, and so I'm now putting forth a third hook that attempts to combine the good aspects of the original two hooks. If you have any more comments (good, bad, or ugly--don't hold back), I'd love to hear them. No matter what, I think that this is definitely the strongest hook I've ever had--though there's always room for improvement.

Oh, and one other thing: this new hook doesn't even touch on the Big Spoiler, and there's nothing else here that I wouldn't be comfortable putting on the back of the book. So, read on without fear.

At age twenty-four, with a college degree under his belt and a good job as a guardian magi for a small company, Sean Sunderland feels like he has a pretty good handle on his life. What he never suspected was how much of his life was based on lies. The Otherworld in which he works is actually just one small part of an ancient world that few suspect exists, and a race of demons wants Sean for its own because of magical powers he doesn't even know he has. Even Sean's parents seem to be hiding something--his connection to the Otherworld may be stronger than he knows.

It isn't until the demons try to capture Sean that he becomes aware that his world isn't what he thought. Though he hides his abilities from his family and most of his coworkers, those who are aware of his true nature are unwilling to let him return to the life he loved. The free peoples of the Otherworld want Sean to unseat the lord of the demons, the demons demand that Sean join their ranks or die, and a ten thousand year old vampire needs Sean's help to save his descendants from a malevolent phantasm. Somehow, Sean will have to master his powers well enough to protect himself and those he cares about not only from the demons, but also from the darkness within himself.

New Hooks

Okay, well, based on the feedback that I have received I have now cooked up another couple of hooks that I can potentially use. The hooks themselves have a lot of spoilers in them, and so have been blacked out--you have to highlight them with the cursor to see the text. That way, those of you who don't want anything spoiled won't accidentally read these without meaning to.

Option 1 (focus on powers):

Sean Sunderland grew up thinking that his greatest gift was simply to become a guardian magi who could protect corporations from magical intrusion and the specters that roam the Otherworld. But when the demons try to capture him after his college graduation, Sean discovers that he is one of the last Thaumaturges--powerful magi who can work magic without the runes and amulets that are normally required. Sean's magic is virtually unlimited, bounded only by what he can comprehend in sufficient detail. The problem is, though Sean can already create 300 meter fireballs and slow time, he has very little control over his magic. His magic seems to make him invincible, but the reflexive nature of it also makes him dangerous to everyone around him.

Though he hides his abilities from his family and most of his coworkers, there are ancient creatures who are not willing to let him ignore his abilities. The Eldest Dragon wants Sean to unseat the lord of the demons, the demons demand that Sean join their ranks or die, and a ten thousand year old vampire needs Sean's help to save his descendants from an evil phantasm. Sean knows he will ultimately have to face the demons--but what he doesn't realize is just how terrible their power is, for they are Thaumaturges also, and much more practiced. They kill him and turn him into one of them. Somehow, even as a demon, Sean will have to master his powers well enough to protect himself and those he cares about from not only the other demons, but also the darkness within himself.

Option 2 (focus on intrigue):

At age twenty-four, with a college degree under his belt and a good job as a guardian magi for a small company, Sean Sunderland feels like he has a pretty good handle on his life. What he never suspected was how much of his life was based on lies. The Otherworld in which he works is actually just one small part of an ancient world that few suspect exist, and a race of demons want Sean for their own because of magical powers he doesn't even know he has. Even Sean's parents seem to be hiding something--his connection to the Otherworld may be stronger than he knows.

It isn't until the demons try to capture Sean that he becomes aware that his world isn't what he thought. As Sean is pulled ever more into a struggle as old as humanity itself, it becomes increasingly clear that the life he had struggled for years to build is lost. Even his newfound powers aren't enough to resist the demons--it isn't long before they kill him and turn him into one of them. Despairing at his undeath and desperate to escape the demon civilization in which he is now held captive, Sean must hold fast to his human identity if he ever hopes to escape and save those who still matter most to him.

For those of you who wish to read these hooks, please let me know what you honestly think of them. It would also be useful to me to know which parts catch your eye, if anything does. And also the reverse: what seems prosaic or cliche? I might do a third hook sometime soon, if these don't seem strong enough. For those of you who wish to have nothing spoiled, I'd suggest staying out of the comments section for this particular post, too.

Hook Advice?

All right, here's an area where my knowledge and skill at sales/marketing are apparently falling short: the hook. I think I'm pretty good at writing synopses now, and good with some other aspects of the query letter, but I'm having trouble distilling a compelling hook for THE GUARDIAN, which is after all a relatively complex book. The faults in my hook are most recently evidenced by literary agent Rachel Vater's hook critique, to which I submitted my hook (I'm #25, but don't read it if you don't want to know a major spoiler). Her entire comment was: "Alternate worlds, demons trying to kill people with magical powers for some reason. Nothing here really caught my eye."

Ouch. I even sent her my new-and-improved version of my hook, rather than the one I had previously been sending to agents. I've gotten personal responses based on my writing quality, I think, more so than my query itself, and I think my query--most specifically the hook--has been what has been holding me back from getting more requests for the full. Certainly I've gotten good comments from the two professional readers who have read the entire thing (Matt Bialer and Beverly Swerling), but neither one of them decided to read the entire thing because of my hook or query letter alone.

So, I'm realizing that if I hope to get another agent to pick up THE GUARDIAN based on the query letter and sample chapters alone, my best chance at that is to have a much stronger hook than I presently do. I've already gotten some excellent advice from Karen Mahoney, but I thought I would make a formal post about this and see what ideas or techniques everyone else has, too. For some reason, as much as I've read comments from agents and other writers, I just don't quite "get it" yet when it comes to hooks. Somehow my book, which has been praised as being very original by those who have actually read the whole thing, comes off sounding more than a little cliche when I try to write my hook (in all fairness, I tried writing hooks for other works, like THE MATRIX and THE DARK IS RISING, and somehow I manage to make those sound cliche, too. Yikes, I must be doing something wrong).

So, any thoughts?

Strengthening your opening

My last post was a link to an agent's post about their crazy life and job, and I mentioned how that just illustrates how critical the query package really is. A big part of the query package is obviously the query letter itself, since that is what agents (or their assistants) will invariably read first. But the next big thing, probably the biggest thing, are those sample pages. And I don't care if the agent requests the first three chapters, the first fifty pages, or the first five--you only have a page or two at most to make a good impression and build interest.

Writing is cumulative, in many senses, and if an agent doesn't like your opening, that will at best color their perception of the rest of your sample. At worst, it will make them reach for the form letter without reading any more at all. Our job is to have exceptionally clean prose and get to the point as quickly as possible during those first pages. We need to give the reader reasons to keep reading, while at the same time giving them NO reasons to stop reading. With stacks of queries as bad as what Rachel Vater discusses being pretty common, I've read statements from agents who say that they are actively looking for a reason to put down those sample pages; they already have a fairly full client list, and they only want new unsolicited work that is absolutely immaculate.

I've gone through a number of drafts of my opening with the help of a number of really talented editors (my wife, and author Beverly Swerling being at the top of that list). I felt like the version that I first posted on this blog earlier this month was about as strong as I could get it. Overall, I think that perception may have been close to accurrate, but there was one thing that I was being too subtle about. That has been corrected now, and I think it makes my opening a lot stronger.

The issue is that my prologue includes an exciting event--a death--and then chapter 1 has Sean Sunderland--the main character--waking up. A lot of agents don't like wake-up starts to novels, but mine is handled differently enough that I think it is okay. The problem, however, is that even though we've just seen this death in the prologue, it isn't obvious from the start that the issues in chapter 1 are anything but normal work stuff for Sean. When the start of a novel seems too ordinary, with no concrete promises that anything different or life-changing is coming, readers start to wonder why the story is starting where it does. This problem resolves itself by the end of my first chapter, but in order to really pique the interest of agents and readers I realized I had to resolve that issue much sooner. As Miss Snark likes to say, we need that "flaming corpse."

Thus, my opening line has been changed to now immediately indicate that something significant is about to happen: "On the night the demons came for me, I awoke in a cold sweat, sitting straight up in bed." The highlighted section is what is new, and I think that this really helps to change the tone of the entire opening scene. Something unexpected is happening at work--okay, if I don't know anything beyond that, it sounds really prosaic. But if you first tell me that demons are coming for you that night, then the unexplained event at work suddenly seems sinister and dangerous--which it is. It just wasn't coming across before.

I had already set up a number of phrases and small events in the first chapter that served to create tension, and now they all feed into this one statement of "on the night the demons came for me," and serve to strengthen that tension: the way Sean finds his coworker Derrick comatose, the way Thomas appears behind Sean in the courtyard, the way Sean stays behind while the others leave. . . all of this takes on new meaning with just a small addition.

I made this first edit a couple of days ago, but didn't mention it then on the blog. Today, I've made a second small edit: at the start of the second scene of chapter one, when Sean has just arrived at the office, the line previously read: "I walked quickly as I crossed the parking lot to the back entrance; I found the nighttime silence uncomfortable." It now reads: "I walked quickly as I crossed the parking lot to the back entrance; the deep silence seemed unnatural." I had originally intended for this statement to be mildly creepy, but I was just being far too subtle about it for that to work. The new wording reinforces the fear that a demon could potentially be jumping out to kill Sean at any moment. The fact that the situation doesn't quite resolve itself in the way one might expect is irrelevant; I think that it is actually stronger that the demons "come for him" in a way that is unexpected.

Anyway, these are two extremely small edits to the first chapter, but I think that they help bring to the surface the tensions that I had already set up. Hopefully they will both go a long way towards convincing agents (and later editors, and then readers...) that they want to read more of my book.

An agent's life

Many of you may have already read this, but I've only been reading literary agent Rachel Vater's blog since early December, and so this older post of hers (from last October) was new to me. It covers her daily life, and I found it extremely poignant. To all those aspiring authors who despair over their mound of form letter rejections, I think this is a useful look at the other side. I can see why assistants would become a non-negotiable necessity for agents once they have a client list of a certain size.

This underscores the importance of a strong query package more than ever for me. I've been working on my query letter a lot over the past few days (in case I get rejections from the agents I currently have queries out with), and now I'm even more glad I've been revisiting it.

Addition to THE GUARDIAN exerpt

The response to my excerpt from THE GUARDIAN has been really positive, but I must admit that I had very little of it posted before. Because so many people have made overtures of wanting to read more, I've gone on and updated the excerpt so that it now also includes the second chapter. You can jump right to that chapter by clicking here. As always, I'm interested in feedback, so let me know what you think!

Oh, and one other side note--the quote in Latin at the very start of the book is something that I wrote myself; Gnaeus Furius Eboracum is a character in my world, not a real historical person. Ten points if you can tell me what modern European city he lived in! I'll give you a hint: the etymology of his name tells you everything you need to know. Ahh... my Latin teachers will be proud to learn that my five years of Latin weren't for nothing, I imagine.

The greatest strength of fantasy

I am super excited. I had thought things were going really well with ALDEN RIDGE, but yesterday and today I was really starting to hit some blockage. But tonight I've had a revelation, and practically the rest of the book was laid out before me! Talk about adrenaline--it's onset has actually given me a headache, but I don't care.

The first problem that I was facing was that I just wasn't certain about some of two of my main characters' motivations early in the story. I had enough backstory that I knew each character quite well, but the situation they were in was ambiguous enough that they could each react in a couple of different ways. I was having trouble deciding in which way to have them react. This is normally something that I would just let work itself out on the page, or in my last stage of prewriting for a chapter, but this time it wasn't happening. After a rip roaring start, I was stuck.

Fortunately, no three week break from writing was required this time (that's happened to me before). Tonight, I realized that it wasn't a problem of characters' motivation at all--that wasn't the root problem, anyway. The problem was that I didn't know exactly where the plot was going. I had the general plot arc all set up, and all the themes, setting, characters, and so on designed to perfection, but I still didn't quite have a story. Or rather, the story that I had in mind was enough for a long short story, or a short novella, but not a full-length novel.

It just wasn't complex enough, and also would have required a lot of boring, ruminative exposition to really address my central themes. When I realized this, I realized that I had neglected my fundamental rule of novel writing: a great novel must have TWO strong ideas. For THE GUARDIAN, my first idea is what is highlighted in my overview--the Otherworld, Sean's abilities as a Thaumaturge, demons lurking, the world is based on a lie. Those are actually multiple ideas, I know, but they all essentially fit together to create the basic premise and setting. These are the elements that you learn about early on into the story. What comes later, which I've referred to as a 'twist' thus far, is what makes the story really unique.

I was thinking about how I'd set all that up, and knew that was lacking in ALDEN RIDGE. You've basically read about the general gist of that book's first idea in my overview--the zombies, broken earth urban fantasy--all of that again addresses the setting and the premise. There's some other very cool stuff along those lines that you don't know about yet (naturally), but nothing that would be completely unexpected to a really smart reader of the genre.

To address this problem, I kept coming back to my central themes: lots of ruminative exposition would kill the book, even if I was actually able to finish writing it (I have a really hard time writing things I know aren't interesting). I needed a way to convey all those ideas, to build those themes, without requiring them to ever be explicitly stated. Obvious, you say? Well, that is how themes generally work, I know. But early into a project, things like that can be forgotten--at least by me.

The solution to my themes problem and my second-great-idea problem turned out to be exactly the same: externalize the themes. This idea isn't original to me: I once heard it said that (to paraphrase) "the greatest strength of fantasy is its ability to externalize the internal conflicts of the characters." I did this in a major way with my twist in THE GUARDIAN, and now I have what you might call a twist in ALDEN RIDGE using this same basic technique.

I need to remember this for the future. I need to remember that this is why I've always loved fantasy more than any other genre (even more than sci-fi, thriller, or horror): fantasy is able to take unique characters and setting, and blend them into a cohesive whole in which one is reflected in the other.



P.S. - There is also now going to be a much larger element of romance in this story. Romance is an important aspect of THE GUARDIAN, as well, but also something that I'm largely deferring to later books in that series (just because of how the story goes). I hadn't anticipated having the opportunity for a strong romantic sub-plot in ALDEN RIDGE, so I'm excited to suddenly have that.

Overview of THE GUARDIAN

Well, in posting the description for ALDEN RIDGE, I realized that I never did post an overall description for my other book, THE GUARDIAN (the one I am currently looking for agents for). So I thought I would go on and post that, too. This is not the description that I use in my query letters, as this one purposefully avoids revealing the major twist that drives the latter half of the book (and that has been the most intriguing thing to agents).

This is more of a vague book jacket description, if anything--though it's not really in the right format for that, either. It has some elements of a Project Description for a nonfiction book, but doesn't even stay to that faithfully. So, my point is that a description in this fashion isn't good for much of anything inside the actual publishing arena, but I think it will suffice for giving blog readers an idea of what the heck this story is even about.

THE GUARDIAN is set in the present day, but follows an alternate timeline in which computers are of little importance and the Internet does not exist—instead, twenty years ago, the Otherworld was invented. The Otherworld is a magical plane, apparently endless and initially featureless. Over the course of the last two decades, these virgin lands have been built up and settled by citizens of nearly every country of the world we know, which people now call the Outside.

The one blot on the history of the Otherworld is that its inventor was brutally and unexpectedly murdered only five years after he revealed his discovery. His death, and the death of the research team that had worked alongside him, sealed a secret of the Otherworld that only they knew: it was not created by any human hands. The Otherworld has seemingly always existed, and the undetected human civilizations there stretch back well over ten thousand years—perhaps even predating the earliest recorded Outside history.

The protagonist of the story, an Outsider named Sean Sunderland, works in the Otherworld as a guardian magi—one who maintains magical systems and protects his company’s Otherworld facilities from magical intrusion. When Sean passes through a door that inexplicably appears in his office building, he finds himself in an entirely unknown part of the Otherworld, filled with ancient towns, mythical creatures, and an evil that has reigned since the birth of humankind. This is Ivoria, the oldest realm of the Otherworld, separated by a great abyss from the Far Reaches that the Outsiders inhabit.

Ivoria is lorded over by an entire civilization of demons, who hope to capture Sean because of powers he does not even realize he possesses. They hunt the last of the Thaumaturges, powerful magi who are able to control magic without the aid of the runes and amulets which are normally required. As Sean discovers more of Ivoria, he becomes increasingly aware of the connections between it and his own world, and the danger that the unsuspecting Outside populace is in. At the same time, he is forced to face his growing power and the potential threat that he represents to those around him. While Sean tries to reconcile all the conflicting parts of his life, it becomes progressively clearer that he must face the demons if he is to save not only himself, but the masses of innocents suffering under demonic rule.