Here’s a brand-new, thoughtful review of the Secret Texts trilogy.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From the category archives:
Backlist
So, boy, oh, boy. Just agreed to my deadline schedule for the new book.
I’m struggling with Hawkspar. Must get that book finished. Promptly, yes? It was officially due last December, and Anna has been lovely about the delays, but I’m not . I want to have the book done, and done well, so that we can get it edited and into production.
Over the weekend, I finished the copyedit of Work-for-Hire I. Must get that mailed. Promptly, yes? It’s due Sept 1.
New deadline to add to the mix. Bad Moon Rising, December 1st. I’ll be doing numbers in a bit, but, well. Yes. It’s almost September now.
My main character isn’t the only one confronting alligators.
{ 4 comments }
Novel outline is going well, but I needed a break, so I surfed. Douglas Hoffman gave a nice review of Last Girl Dancing; Jcop wants to know where the fourth book in the WORLD GATES series is (Hint: When I’m howlingly successful, the publisher will probably want the last four planned books. Meantime, I did the best I could to give the series closure); Danjel Bout offers a clear look at his location, a place as alien as the surface of Mars; Stuart McBride rants well on an example of breathtaking responsibility avoidance; Zette Gifford (who’s now just shy of 8000 writers in the FM Writers’ Community), offers some insight into working with writers; Carter offers an essay on Us vs. Not-Us (my take on the same issue is Common Ground: Holding Communities Together, plus the entire novel Talyn. This is a subject that compels and fascinates me.
First time I’ve had a chances to look at other folks’ weblogs in a couple of weeks, and it was shorter than I would have wished. Deadlines compel, and one of the migraines that have been hovering and diving for the last couple of weeks is hovering now.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
German-edition Vengeance of Dragons for sale on E-bay — link via my friend Keely.
{ 1 comment }
92,041. That’s how many words I have as I sit down to write this morning. It’s a lot of words. For most of the 20+ books I’ve written to this point, I’d right now be doing the last loop of rope around the calf’s fetlocks before stepping back and throwing my hand in the air. For each of the four Matrin novels, which ran 125,000 words apiece, I was 33,000 words away from the finish line — roughly 3/4th’s of the way done and trying to make sure I had everything I wanted squeezed in for that book.
I’m 1/3rd of the way done. One THIRD. I still have twice as much to write as what I have already written. I’ve just barely passed the first pinch, I haven’t hit the midpoint twist, anything that could remotely be considered downhill still lies far, far away, unseeable and unimaginable even with a good pair of binoculars.
But the things that amaze me are that I am on track pagewise, and I am actually having to condense and compress in order to keep on pace for the story I want to tell. The book, much to my astonishment, wants to be longer. It’s a big story. I didn’t realize how big until that fact sank in — that I could easily write the book at 500,000 words and not pad a single word, and that by doing it at 250,000 words, I’m going to have to keep squeezing it into its too-tight jeans all the way to the very end and praying that the seams don’t explode.
I still remember sitting with my manuscript for Fire in the Mist, desperately looking for points where I could squeeze in a tiny bit more action or one more a little scenelet to fill the thing out to the 90,000 words required by the contract. I have to laugh.
{ 3 comments }
Seven of my books, starting bid $4.99
It’s a pretty sweet deal if you can get it for cheap — it includes like-new copies of Sympathy for the Devil and Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood, which are a bitch to find anymore (I’ve seen copies of SFTD going for as high as $50, so it could be a really good deal if not too many people bid), plus the complete Arhel series (Fire in the Mist, Bones of the Past, and Mind of the Magic), and, finally, Minerva Wakes and Mall, Mayhem, and Magic.
As of right now, the auction ends in three days and 8+ hours.
(Oh — important note: This is not my auction — I can’t vouch for this guy or anything. He has a good rating, but I have no links to the auction. I just spotted it and it looked like a potential good deal.)
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
And with it, a few days of not writing. The 2000-words-a-day goal is going to have to wait until after my stress level goes down a bit. I’m supposed to get the Time Warner offer on the proposal for what we hope will be three hardcover stand-alones tomorrow. My agent is hoping to have the dickering done by Saturday.
I am, to put it politely, a basket case. It would be nice to think that writers can write through anything, and many times I can, but a lot is riding on this (like the major chunk of my next three years income) and I find myself unable to be either productive or sanguine.
Well, I’m being productive. I’m researching romance novels. I’m considering creating a pseudonym and branching out. So, markers in hand, I’m reading my way through a stack of top-end romance novels.
And twitching a lot.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
