WordPlay

…Wednesday

Deep River Reckoning

Deep River Reckoning is a Reckoners short story newly available on Kindle: the journey of a woman recently passed strikes close to home for Garrie and Trevarr, as living and dead clash over the mysteriously damaged spirits of the Rio Grande.

I wanted an excuse to write a Reckoners story, so I ran a contest…the winner shared a few details to allow me to jump start the ghost. Of course, as uncontrollable as my muse is, she quickly did as she wanted to with those details. It was a great start, and a pleasure to work with the ghostly namesake!

And, of course, this is the cover with which discussions here, on Facebook, and over on SFF have been of such help. Look down to Monday’s post…and then take a good look at the cover here!

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…Monday

You’re my only hope!

So here’s the thing. I’m putting these backlist works up for electronic availability, right? Short stories and then we’ll see.

On the one hand, it’s a blast.

On the other hand…Dammit, Jim, I’m a writer, not a marketing department! I’m a moonlighting graphic twiddler, not a design team! And I’m mixing up my nostalgic media references!

The spooky river. Ooooh...

And so I find myself faced with…

Decisions.

So guess what! Yes! I want you to make them FOR me! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Sometimes I don’t have much choice with cover concepts or ideas–I’m working with stock photos, yes I am, even when I sometimes, er, twiddle with them.   So when I started looking for a Deep River Reckoning cover–the short story from the Reckoners universe just now available on Kindle, and which I’ll actually talk more about on Wednesday–I went hunting a really spooky river.

And hunting. And hunting…

Well, I was really happy with the end result, but now that I’ve had a chance to ponder it–and get a bit of feedback…I wonder if it’s not just plain too…

Serene.

You know. Pretty, but not grabby. Maybe not quite the right balance for a fiction world that’s contemporary, smart-ass, full of ghosties, full of magical action, and yah…has quite the little romance thing going for it, too?

So I played with a couple of other things, and then I realized…wow. I have no idea what to do.

Which cover would make YOU think about “picking up the book”?

AKA, “Hellllp MEEEEEE!”

(PS yes, there are watermarks on the bottom two. These are comp versions of the images for now…)

Ahh, the haunted woman. Evocative!

Scary stuff happening here! Run away! No, pick me up!

…Wednesday

Speaking of covers…Sklayne believes he should have a cover of his own.

Ahh, Sklayne.

He’s one of THOSE characters.  Always doing the unexpected.  Always saying the embarrassing thing.  He not only colors outside the lines, he makes up his own coloring book.

He’s a wonderful foil.  And for sure he keeps a certain  off-world bounty hunter on his toes…

Of course, he’s got his own story, too…how he came to be with Trevarr, the trade-offs he’s made with that choice…the way it’s changed him.  It’s a story of secrets and partnership…and it’s spinning out at its own pace, there in the background…

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And Trevarr said nothing, but Trevarr knew, and Trevarr fought against what was within, what was always within but always so deeply buried…never allowed any freedom, for fear it could never be caged again. Never controlled.

Sklayne knew that fear. Lived beside it. Had seen it woken once on this world already.

The eyes…always the change showed first in the eyes. The skin patterns, tattoos inborn, trailing and growing from those vestiges present at birth. After that, few knew…because few had survived. Or been allowed to. The bastard-breeds…they were the worst. The strongest. The hardest to control. Too torn between what they were and what they weren’t to live by the rules of any given being.

::Half-blood!:: he said, and ::Beware!:: and ::Danger there!:: but by then he knew the power had stirred and scraped and howled, stripping away carefully guarded layers with the shock that made this cat form writhe upon the bedspread these miles away. Trevarr, hurt. Trevarr, struggling. Trevarr surrounded by beings who did not know, who could not know.

Sklayne snarled a rudeness at the weak cat form and the feeble damage its claws had done to the bedding. He knew. He should be there.

Bound familiar.

::Take,:: he said, and gave what he could, across the miles. And knew he was heard when that gift was received, when Trevarr held ground against that which had been woken within. When he persisted, even as the Garrie-person wielded her bastardized breezes, her terror turning to confidence and profound competence.

So Sklayne gave, until the moment was done. Until he felt the faintest of touches, a mental scritch along the fur of his spine. And so he collapsed in on his corporeal aspect and let himself retreat back to this hotel room.

Oh, most disapproving.

::Cat-form, so very broken.::

Fark.

Sklayne set about fixing it.

…Monday

Because YES, I have cover!

Holy cow, do I have cover!

*pause to  gaze upon COVER*

Waiting for the book cover is one of the hardest things for me.  Will it suit the book?  Will it be accurate?  Will people like it?  Will it SELL the book?  Will it speak to me?

Lots of my covers speak to my AuthorSelf.  But what makes my AuthorSelf happy and what makes a good book cover are generally two different things (and kinda in a big way).  So once I see the cover, I still wonder about all that stuff.  And my various inner selves argue about it.

MarketingSelf: Holy cow!  Lookit that guy!

AuthorSelf: Can we convince people that Trevarr has his hair pulled back?

MarketingSelf: Holy Cow!  Lookit that guy!

AuthorSelf: …Because Trevarr is just the sort to rip his shirt off and amble around without, he who finds your average perfect summer day to be “brisk”?

MarketingSelf:  Holy Cow!  Lookit that guy!

AuthorSelf: *desperately losing the battle*  The belt…no clan symbol…

MarketingSelf: Holy Cow!  Lookit the not-tattoos!  Lookit the leather!  Lookit the sword!

AuthorSelf: I do kinda like the sword, in fact.

MarketingSelf: And hel-LO, pouty fussy AuthorSelf.  Did you happen to notice it is THE “paranormal romance” cover?  It has a sexy guy with otherworldly markings.  It has leather, brooding, and introspective smolder.  It says, “Pick me up for a good paranormal read!”  So what’s the deal here?  What’s the important thing?  That you get your picky little  trivia bits just right, or that the cover entices people to learn about your picky little trivia bits in the first place?

AuthorSelf: …

AuthorSelf:  Holy Cow!  Lookit that guy!

MarketingSelf: That’s what I thought.

….Friday

Welcome to the Pages First Rule.

What, you ask, is this?

This is when the day turns inside out…

Every meal is eaten standing up in front of the computer…

There’s still horse chores to do and mulch to spread in the darkness…

The shower is calling my name SO VERY LOUDLY…

The bed sobs, “I feel obsolete…*wail*!”

And there are still pages to write.

So I have pictures to share and stuff to say and blog posts ready to write!  But wow, it’s gonna have to be later…

So what am I doing right now? Stuffing gluten-free oatmeal into my mouth, heading out to grab the mulching fork, and planting my sights on some ice cream calories.  Making short work of everything between me and the laptop.   Because oh yeah…Garrie, Trevarr, and the Reckoners…you are MINE!

Wednesday…

Heading toward p. 50 of The Reckoners….

Garrie really had no idea what she was getting into.  Just looking for a little change of pace and a taste of the excitement from her work with mentor Rhonda Rose…but here, as she gets in over her head while scoping out the Winchester Mystery House from afar, she’s beginning to realize.  Mwah ha ha!

This scene was  really fun to write.   Oh yes it was.  Not that I’m evil or anything.

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The screams, when they came, clamped onto her like a leg-hold trap. Deep moans spiraled rapidly upward over a demanding rumble, tangling furiously within her–stealing her thought, stealing her calm. Stealing even the run away, fool! The muttered cacophony built, snarling, and then burst into a sudden shriek of sound, a chorus made of voices below bass and beyond ultra-sonic and everything in between, buzzing and twining and reverberating into complete incomprehensibility—-And she couldn’t think or move or even flee and still the sound climbed and spiraled battered away until she joined it, screaming into her own head, entangled in the chorus–”Garrie!”The sound cut off. Cut off flat, the only remnants of it the strangled noise she made in her own throat.

The early reviews/summaries of Reckoners has inspired me to say: I am not cheerful!

I am, in fact, a smart-ass.

It wasn’t something I planned, mind you.  Just how it is. (Seriously, if you aren’t mousing over the links in this blog to see what pops up in the title, you’re missing some fun).  So I’m repeatedly baffled when I find descriptions of my work as humorous or cheerful.

I think the ANGEL franchise books–working with the Joss Whedon characters–first let out the smart-ass in me. Well, the public smart-ass, anyway.  The other part was there all along.  Just ask my parents.

But after that, there was no putting the cork back on that bottle.  I mean, Kimmer…oh yeah  (Exception to the Rules, Beyond the Rules).  There’s a character with a slicing edge of humor.  Not always appropriate to her situation, but that’s what life made her…

Since Kimmer hit the scene, I never really know what’ll pop out of my characters’ mouths, and I like it.  They’re not all Kimmer, but they’re not that Snuggles fabric softener bear, either.  And with Reckoners, a book that has slyly dark edges sneaking through it, I just can’t…I mean…seriously.  Cheerful? As in perky?

Me?  Them?

I’m going to invest in some black nail polish and a glower.

PS:  If you want to know about the baggies…well, I’m not telling!  It’s in the book, mwah ha ha!

posted on Wednesday

Here’s another little goodie from The Reckoners….Garrie, trying to convince a reluctant team to head from home town Albuquerque to San Jose–and just now realizing that she’s not going to get them all…

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“Look, chicalet,” Lucia said, voice quiet. “You know I’m in. The shopping, right?” As if she hadn’t been with Garrie before the others had come on board, and as if she wouldn’t have gone on regardless. “But it’s maybe time to spill, yes?”

“Right,” Drew said. “Let’s hear the four-one-one.”

Garrie thought about asking him if he knew he was actually a nerdy white college student, and then–as usual–she just let it alone. She’d get over it. And it was really just her mood, her ongoing discovery that the status quo was possibly no longer the status quo.

“San Jose,” she said. “Winchester House. Our friend from last night was for real. He’s willing to pay our way.”

“Winchester Mystery House?” Quinn said, and not as though it were a good thing.

Garrie spoke quickly, overriding his pending reaction. “Look,” she said, “I know what you’re thinking. It’s a big fat hairy tourist trap. But what’ve we got to lose? It’s a free trip. There’s shopping for Lucia. And whether or not the reckoning pans out, Drew, you know there’s gonna be history behind the place.”  Oh my God, she sounded desperate.

She was desperate.

There was a pause, as they all made silent note of the desperate.

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BONUS MOON PICCIE!

It was SO much better than this–I couldn’t fool the digital camera into the right exposure (must get film in my Nikon!). But I kind of like the tree looming up on the side.

posted on Monday

You don’t know when or just how, but it’s out there.

The Bad Review.

Let’s say that again, shall we? Using the Monster Truck Announcer Voice?

The BAAAAD REVYOOOOO-OO!!!

Sigh.   The one where you simply fail to connect with the reviewer.  Fail, fail, fail.

Not, alas, one of those spewing nasty grams that makes it obvious the reader has an ax to grind. (OMG, this book has people who eat meat/eat vegetables/wear toe jewelry/snort alien beverages through a twisty straw and IT REALLY SUXX!!)

Ahem.

No, one of the ones where the reviewer speaks thoughtfully, but clearly just doesn’t approve.

The one where the reviewer says, “This [insert writing element] came in at such a zero for me that I put the book down.”

Especially when [writing element] happens to be terribly important to you.

So you ponder where you went so wrong for this person, and then you notice…but,  s/he seemed confused about [this specific] and the whole point of [that specific] was the opposite of how s/he took it…

(Can we just stop for a moment to admire how I’m talking about this without talking about it? Go, me!)

Unfortunately, since the review remains thoughtful, that leads to more pondering.  Pretty soon, the brain is in a total spaz attack.  Because hey, it’s tempting to think that alongside those factual misinterpretations, such nuances as [writing element] might well have been overlooked. But then that means the writer part of me certainly failed to connect with the reader well enough for any of it to be seen.  My prose, yeye’s eyes…not sympatico.  Or no!  Maybe the whole thing JUST REALLY SUXX!

BUT

*insert foot stomp*

I want everyone to love me!

(Let’s not use the Monster Truck Announcer Voice for that one. That’s just creepy.)

Anyway. There’s nothing else for it.

Ego.

Mush.

You don’t know when or just how…and then suddenly it’s now.

posted on Wednesday

Call it an experiment.  Little bits from the books.  But I admit it: the ego is fragile.  And I do watch the numbers.  So if it turns out that the Grand Snippeting Experiment isn’t truly of interest in the long run…well, you’ll know why you aren’t seeing them any longer!

From the first chapter of The Reckoners….


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Sklayne stretched his awareness into their new location, sheltered by an unfamiliar spreading bush. ::green sharp smells, twittering dry feathers, hard glossy beetle–::  A satisfying crunch and swallow, beetle no more. “Think cat,” Trevarr said, his tension battering at Sklayne’s edges.