WordPlay

by Doranna

My friend Julie Czerneda tagged me for this blog meme–she’s already done hers, and you can find it at that link.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Am I supposed to have a single answer for this?  I’m working on the backlist production of the Changespell Saga–that’s what’ll hit the “shelves” first.  And I’m preparing to write LYNX REVEALED, the next Nocturne Sentinels title.  And TAMING THE DEMON is the next frontlist title to hit the shelves (another Nocturne, in the new Demon Blade series).

But my big new exciting thing at the moment is the original (and probably author-released) third book in the Reckoners series, RECKONER REDEEMED.  I’m trying to decide whether to do a Kickstarter for it (which will have a huge effect on its length)–but I need a certain amount of material on hand before I make the decision, and that’s what I’m working on now.

(You see?  I already made the cover for it.  Because that’s the way my muse works.)

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

Books 1 & 2 in the series?  No, that’s the smarty pants answer.

The Reckoner Series was an idea I kicked around for several years.  I wanted a little bit Buffy, a little bit Scooby Doo, a little bit Ghostbusters (Garrie, our reckoner), and a whole lotta Trevarr (our hero).  Heh heh heh.  Sklayne built himself from whole cloth, and knew who he was the moment I started typing his first scene, so I’m not sure I can take credit for him.

I was targeting paranormal romance–since that’s where I’m active right now with the Nocturnes–but I really saw this as a chance to shift a little close to my fantasy genre roots.

This book in particular was pretty much ordained.  I pitched the series as a threesome, and Tor picked up the first two (THE RECKONERS, STORM OF RECKONING).  The first book was released on the day that Amazon removed the buy button from all Macmillan books, and that…

Well.  Was that.

So I wrote STORM not knowing if Tor would pick up #3, and I wrote it true to the outline/proposal…and that story definitely needs to be finished.  For all of us!  I also have the rights back to THE RECKONERS, so will be putting out an author cut of that one.  (To meet production needs, I had to cut about 30K words from that book, and I think it’ll benefit if it gets some of them back.)  STORM OF RECKONING is still available, however.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Paranormal romance, with a robust cast of characters and the evidence of my fantasy genre roots.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

How to choose?

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Buffy meets interdimensional Ghostbusters.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m not entirely sure yet.  That is, the first two books were repped and published by Tor Paranormal Romance.  This third book may go out under my Blue Hound Visions imprint, or it may go through The Knight Agency digital assistance program.  It won’t be a publisher book, however.  This is for me and Reckoners readers, and for my muse.  I promised her we would do this.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Dunno yet!  It’ll be written as I can buy time for it (one reason I’m considering the Kickstarter), and will probably grab moments between the scheduled Nocturnes.  It should be about 4 months total, when all is said and done.  Depends on the length, too, which depends on whether I do the Kickstarter thing…

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Um?

Sometimes I think readers are best positioned to answer that question.  So if anyone has a clue–based on the first two books–I’m  all ears (eyes).  It’s a book with dry humor, a lot of attitude, and a lot of sly heart.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I couldn’t not?

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

It is, as are all my books, about people coping with change and emotion–about learning who they are, by how they deal with what happens in their lives.  This means I get to make things happen in their lives, oh yes I do.

In this case, there are a number of elements I haven’t played with before.  Trevarr’s world is pretty dark, and that was fun to play with–while giving him a lot to learn about Garrie’s world.  Sklayne was the most fun, I think–both powerful and naive, shackled and uncontrollable.  I love him to pieces.  8)

=========

Thanks, Julie, for the chance to play with this blog meme!  And what do you guys think?  Kickstarter yes?  Kickstarter no?  Just shut up and write?

by Doranna

No, not THAT kind of flake.

Well, I guess…yes, that kind of flake.  Sometimes.  But that’s not what I’m talking about this time.  I’m talking about software for writers.

Because what’s better than finding software that gives you an excuse to procrastinate wallow, develop, and otherwise play with the story?

Actually, I’ve never gotten into the whole “build your book” software thing.  Or before that, the endless systems advised for same.  Oh, you know.  The index cards, the character interviews, the systems, and the navel-gazing, self-important, overly righteous exercises by which one is supposed to build a book.

(“Gosh, Doranna, tell us how you really feel!”)

And every time someone suggested such things, whether they came by way of book, seminar, or software, my muse made a retching noise and slammed the door between us.  After all, she’s been writing books since she was twelve, a native pantser who learned to plan ahead by about a third of a book at a time while holding the entire big picture in her (MY) head.

Well, a retching muse is hard to ignore.  (I want you to know I looked for a graphic for this spot, but had a sudden attack of class.)  And since writing as a pro also means coming up with proposals, which means coming up with detailed synopses, I just did it her way–which is to say, lots of hand-waving.  “So there’s this cool set-up, and then [hand-waving] something cool happens that raises the stakes!  And then [hand-waving] another something cool happens that raises the stakes even more!”

I always knew what I wanted to accomplish at any given point in the story, but I never knew quite how it would happen or what threads would be weaving through what point of the book.  And that works for me, but still…

I do like to be organized.  And I like to wallow and play in the worlds of my mind; I just generally do it without writing anything down.

In recent years I’ve stumbled through a lot of non-bloatware software.  There was the one that had a Save File” bug (unannounced) that ATE MY CHAPTER.  There was this other one that was waaaaay too complicated (see above, navel-gazing) and looked like nothing more than a great big fat excuse to Never Write Again.  There was one that was close, but not quite flexible enough.  There’s Scrivener, which I’m actually using for first draft, but have found the compile feature to be a major-league PITA/FAIL and the backups to create a dizzying number of hard-to-access folders and files, so I don’t like to do anything but the most primary and simplest work that way.  There are features I love and I’ve written 18 months of fiction on it, so it’ll likely stay my drafting software.  But.

I don’t even remember how I came across Snowflake, by Randy Ingermanson.  I was following my nose in the search for drafting software, and stumbled onto it.

Muse: OMG.  OMG.  This is IT!  This is how I think!  GET IT FOR ME!  GET IT GET IT GETITRIGHTNOW!

So I did.

And lo, it has changed much about the way I develop books.  Even if I don’t put a story or book through the system, I have it in mind as I’m pulling the story elements together, and it gives me direction.  And confidence.  And besides, it’s FUN.

The Snowflake system is called that because like snowflakes, its story-building process is fractal–not linear.  It starts with the very basic one-sentence summary of your story–the simplest level of complexity–and adds layers.  And it’s totally flexible–you can skip steps that don’t work for you, and the whole process still works just fine.  Or you can mutate the steps slightly to suit your needs, which I’ve done from the start.  I also recently started treating story threads as characters–that’s where it fits in the system–and that works juuuust fine.

Anyway.  I can well imagine that this system wouldn’t work for everyone (shoot, just look how many approaches not only didn’t work for me, but were actively antithetical to the way I work).  And it’s not a system that will teach you how to write–you have to know how to tell a story going into the thing. In fact, most of the criticism I see about the method is aimed at the fact that while it does create a plot, it won’t automatically result in storytelling.

Well, no.  Not much does, does it?  There aren’t any shortcuts for that.  You have to put the story into the planning your ownself.  So far I haven’t had any trouble doing that with this method.  It’s all in the way you expand from sentence to paragraph to synopsis–which, except for short pieces, is as far as I go.  If you want, you can write scene to scene, but that’s not for me.  Doesn’t matter, though–after all, the tool is there for me to use–I’m not there for the tool to use!

Muse: No one is the boss of me!

Yeah, yeah.

There’s a really good description of the process here, and here’s how someone else felt about it–but it takes me a heck of a lot less time to go through the process than is posited in these discussions. A tenth of the time, maybe?  A fifteenth?  Maybe because I don’t get stuck on the final step with the scenes, or maybe because I have a pretty solid thing of my own going already.  Here’s another conversation about it–this echoes my experience a little more closely, except the part about getting bogged down.

In fact, this is a process that un-bogs me, should I be floundering a bit.  That’s the whole point.  But I think it’s necessary to have a sense of when you’re doing the exercise in a truly constructive way and when you start doing it for the sake of doing the exercise.

Anyway, I’m currently snowflaking the third Reckoners book and having a blast.  I’m happy, the muse is happy…what’s not to love?

Or do you have a different book development software/process that makes this one inspire your muse to slam the door?

My research muse is named Spike.  You may have met him before.  He pops up in public every now and then.

Spike is a strong-willed being.  Spike sometimes takes over in the middle of research, demanding to know more…and more..and far, far more than I can ever slip into a book (or ever need to…).

But occasionally, we are in complete accord.

I’m currently developing the third Reckoners book.  There’s been some delay due to [publishing industry crapola blah blah blah].  I was lucky when I wrote the second book; I had just finished production on the first.  This time, the gap means that I have to do my research.

And that consists of re-reading the first two books and taking copious notes, because while I generally keep entire books in my head complete with nuances, details, and trivia, this time around there are two many books between them to call up those particular brain-files.

Let me say again: Spike demands that I reread the first two books, wallowing and immersing myself into the world and adventures of Garrie and Trevarr.

  Let the wailing commence!  Oh, WOE–THE AGONY!  Oh, WAIL–THE SADNESS OF ME!  Oh, SOB!  WHATEVER SHALL I DO!

*peeks out at you all*  Was that convincing?

That’s me.  Evil Overlord of my characters.

Evil Overlord:  Plans to interfere with his targets’ lives.

Me:  Plan to interfere with my characters’ lives.

Evil Overlord:  Is constantly thinking, “What can I do to cause trouble for these people?”

Me:  “What can I do next to cause trouble for these characters?

Evil Overlord:  “In fact, what can I do to tear them to shreds?”

Me:  In fact, what can I do to make things as difficult as possible?

Evil Overlord:  “HOW SHALL I KILL THEM?”

Me:  HOW SHALL I–

No, no no.  Wait a minute.  Here’s where we part ways.

For me, it’s How will they get out of it?

What new depths of themselves will they plumb to climb out of this personal disaster I’ve created, possibly while also saving the world?

(Possibly.)

Because the thing is, as the author, I don’t usually have any idea how they’re going to get out of what I put them into.  I’m so focused on getting them to the point of ultimate internal and external disaster (because, you know, that’s just the way I am) that when I reach it, I often go…

Me:  Uh, durrrr… NOW what are they gonna do?

The fun thing is how well it often works out.  If you read Storm of Reckoning, you’ll reach a point shortly before the end where…well, where things happen.  Go on, read it.  You’ll know where I mean.  Well, confession:  I didn’t know that was coming until about two pages before I reached it.  It was all, “Ahhhh!  What’s Garrie gonna do?!  How’s Trevarr going to get out of this one?!”  Complete with melodramatic punctuation.

And yet oddly, looking back on it…I don’t know how that scene could have turned out any other way.  Or that I would have wanted it to.

(The very end?  Well, I knew THAT was coming.)

It’s not all just a random power trip, by the way.  It’s not doing unto for the sake of doing unto–

Evil Overlord:  What are you talking about?  Of course it is!  And what a power trip it is!  Mwah ha ha!

*stuffs Evil Overlord into a gunnysack*

It’s NOT.  By pushing my characters to the limit, I’m exploring who they really are…and in a way, I’m showing myself what can be done.  Paving the way for that mindset, so when I reach my own roadblocks in life (an overly-profound phrase if I ever heard one), I don’t buckle or fold.  I don’t exactly think, “What would Garrie/Trevarr do?”–that would maybe be kinda creepy.  But I do fall back into the awareness that how I deal with difficulties–what I envision for myself–has a huge impact on the resolution of those difficulties.

Muffled Evil Overlord:  You are full of crap!  It’s all about the POWER!

Yeah, yeah.  Move over.  My people have a world to save.  Just don’t ask me how.

*wrote this one for my agent’s blog this spring; saved it up for a day that needed a good snicker

There’s always some woo in my books.  As in, woo-woo.  I suppose also as in “wooing,” but I swear I wasn’t trying to be punny when I started this sentence.

(Was that convincing?)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the Reckoners a lot lately, as I begin the preliminary work for the third Reckoners book.  (The first two were THE RECKONERS and STORM OF RECKONING, in case anyone’s lost track, along with partner story, “Deep River Reckoning.”  So I’m taking another look at those books–at the things I did in those books.

And I realize it was bound to happen–that I’ve finally set a book in Sedona.  I mean, take one writer of things fantastical living only an hour away from the red rocks, canyons, and vortexes.  Give her a decade of exposure.

The inevitability of it is clear.

Seriously!  Only an hour away from the woo-woo!

Not that my characters were as enthused.

Lucia Reyes:  Shopping?  In tourist Trap World?  I don’t think so.
Lisa McGarrity:  Reckoning?  In Faux Woo-Woo World?  I don’t think so.
Trevarr: [    ]

Oh, right.  Trevarr.  He’s like that.

Sklayne:  Me.  You forgot about me.

Sklayne.  He’s like that, too.

Sedona has to be both the most over-appreciated and under-appreciated place in the world.  Think SEDONA and you get crystals and vortexes, mantras and spiritual retreats.  Because, sure… there’s a lot of that going around.

But drive to Sedona from Flagstaff, and you end up winding through a canyon with dizzying hairpin turns, dropping a couple thousand feet in short order.  Ponderosa pines and scrub oak cling thickly along the red rocks in a stark green and bluff-red contrast, and rushing creek and riparian water habitat thrives below.  It’s alive and it’s stunning and it’s unlike anywhere else you’ve ever been.  Suddenly you look at it all much differently.  You look beyond the woo.

You think, “This is a place where I’d like to sit.  I’d like to spend time.  I’d like to write about.  I’d like to help preserve.”

Sklayne:  Vortexes.  Tasty.

Right.  That’s the thing, isn’t it?  So alluring, the temptation of the woo-woo.   Sometimes I think it shadows the amazing nature of what’s already there.  Because right there in Sedona, the world changes.

Sedona sits at the Mogollon Rim, the profound natural dividing line between the Colorado Plateau and the lower Basin & Range country.  Spend a few winters in the higher northlands, and you know right where the snow line lays:  Above Sedona, it’s chains and closed roads.  Below it, the fog clears out and suddenly you’re driving clear and free.

Above Sedona, the land is all silent volcanoes and cinder fields supporting skiing and ponderosa pines growing thick and deep; the amazing San Francisco Peaks were formed by your classic hot-n-heavy volcano, topped by the classic dome explosion.

Below Sedona, it’s a quick descent through juniper scrub desert to the broad sloping valley bowl of classic hot, hot desert.  Saguaro, prickly pear, cholla spring up, while grasses grow sparser by the moment.  Picture your cowboy hero, crawling along the ground with his tongue hanging out, a rattler coiled up not far away.

And there in Sedona, you have it all, both above and below.  North Sedona is full of canyons, swirling wind-formed rocks, Vultee Arch, and a plethora of stunning trails and views.  As if I could resist taking the reckoning action out into those settings!

Lucia:  I’m pretty sure you could have.  Or warned me to pack hiking shoes.  And, the way things turned out, a bulk pack of sanitary wipes.
Garrie:  Bring it on!  I’ve got ghostie vibes to hike out.
Sklayne:  Squirrels!  Tasteee!
Trevarr: [   ]

South of Sedona’s main road, the land plunges down into the red rocks–striking red bluffs in formations so distinctive they all have names (Snoopy, Lucy, Chimney Rock, The Mittens, The Cow Pies, the Rabbit Ears….).  It looks like someone turned the Earth’s crust upside down and left us all gazing at the roots of the rock.

Truth is, I enjoy the woo-woo.  The vortexes, both male and female in essence; the crammed, tight little shops along Highway 89.  There you can get crystals, furs, a plethora of T-shirts bearing eagles, wolves, and largely misrepresented Indians, and–if you look in the right place–maybe a badger skull to add to the collection at home.  (Ask me how I know.)   Geodes, vortex tours,  and any little thing with a whiff of New Age magic…this is the place!  It’s all worth a little wallow.

Sklayne:  Tingles!

But for me, the rich treasure of the area comes in the land, which carries a woo-woo all of its own–just because it is.  And in the end, even if it was crystals and vortexes that tickled my idea generator, it was the land that drew me, and which helped drive this story.  What the land and its creatures deserve.

Lucia:  Let’s just sit on Sterling Ridge and look down on the pass for a while.
Garrie:  Non-ethereal woo-woo.  Want me some of this.
Trevarr:  *just happens to be standing close to Garrie*

…Sklayne:  When can I eat it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

first appeared more or less in this form, in the Tor newsletter

Heaving bosoms! Throbbing tumescences (tumesci?)! Sensitive nubs!

Hmm.

Okay, that stuff is fun. But not the sum and total of passion.

PASSION: n. A strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept

PASSIONATE: adj. capable of, affected by, or expressing intense feeling

For characters–for people– to come alive, they must have passion.
I’m passionate about our environment. Respecting it, living in it, knowing it. I want to know the birds at a glance, the wildflowers by family and name, the formation of the earth beneath me. I’m passionate about my animals. I want that connection of knowing them inside and out, of training to a point of fun and subtle communication–and of being able to discern and fill their needs at a glance.

*an ironic pause in the typing while I run out to the barn in single digits because it’s time for bedtime hay*

And, as it happens, I’m passionate about writing. I want to feel as I write my stories, and I want readers to feel as they experience them.

Layers of intensity and feeling.

For characters to be real to any of us–in the reading or the writing–they need those same layers.

In my paranormal romance series, Lisa McGarrity (Garrie to everyone but the IRS) has a passion for reckoning;  she knows responsibility comes with her unique gift of manipulating ethereal breezes. She has a passion for cleaning up her world–of ethereal creatures from the dark side, and now–somewhat to her surprise–of entities she considers demons, although Trevarr might call them something else.

She has a passion for seeing that her friends are well in their lives; she takes responsibility for them.

And yes, she has a passion for Trevarr – a fiercely driven demon hunter from a different dimension.

Trevarr (not even known to the IRS) has a passion for protecting his people. He lives a hard and gritty life and he lives it at full bore, and aside from the aforementioned need to protect those who took him in as a young outcast, he doesn’t much admit to emotions at all.

This would be why it surprises him so very much when he turns out to have them. And that, too, is a layer with which to work.

Without these passions–without an ability to experience life deeply on their own terms, for their own reasons, the characters not only don’t come alive, they don’t have the foundation to experience the depth of emotion we want to see between them. Without the layering, the relationships–no matter what their bodies might be doing–are unfulfilling.

Without the passions, we kinda don’t care about the bosoms, tumesci, and nubs.

No, really–we don’t! At least, not if we’re the passionate ones, too–about our reading, about our writing…about what’s important to us in both fiction and life. Excellent plots nonetheless fall short; sparkling dialogue just sits there on the page.

So–as reader, as writer…as a person: go ye forth and grab the passion…right out there in public! After you do, the rest of it will come along, too.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Allbookstores.com

(first published in The Knight Agency newsletter in February!)

I need to get out more.

At a recent conference, where I was on the spot being an Author on a Panel, I mistakenly referred to the romance book expectation of “Happily Ever After” as “the Happy Ending.”

Oh yes I did.

More’s the pity, I had no idea why the audience burst into laughter.

Well, I suppose in some books, it IS the same thing…

Anyway, a kind soul enlightened me, and I turned beet red, and that was that. For the panel, anyway. But it got me to thinking about Happily Ever After, and how…well, I don’t tend to do that.

The thing is, in real life, there is no Happily Ever After–and I mean that in the best possible way. Those lovers who find their perfect match (against all odds, natch!) don’t stop being.

They face new challenges, and overcome those together, too. They continue together.

My characters are real enough to me so their lives go on, too. There are consequences to what they do in their grand adventures, both personal and practical. The things they’ve been through affect them; they grow, and need to understand what they mean to each other in these new circumstances. There’s always a next thing.

In Garrie’s case, her reckoner team needs to come to terms with an otherworldly half-blood they never truly trusted in the first place…but they do trust Garrie. Garrie needs to come to terms with the changes wrought within her, thanks to the new energies she’s faced. Trevarr faces both the mundane (Arizona rest stops) and the unexpected (how can this world not have the right food?). And irrepressible, unpredictable Sklayne…

Well. Sklayne wants to go home. And he wants to taste new things. Sometimes in that order, sometimes not. And just maybe, if he was to admit it, he wants his half-human partner to be happy.

Not that I’m going to make it easy for any of them…

But that’s how it is for me. Just because the book reaches the last page doesn’t mean the story doesn’t go on.

And I like it that way.

It's a BOOK!

Can’t you just feel taxes creeping up on you?  Can’t you, huh, huh?

Well, wuh.  I find that, organizationally, I’m still digging out from the two years of domicile in transition.  This year, I find myself in the middle of two things–scraping together facts and figures from a system that no longer works, and creating a new system that does work.

My brain hurts.

Where is my chocolate?

How many different pieces of software can one person learn at one time?

Is “without” supposed to be capitalized in that title up there, or not?

Wait!  I know, I know!

FORTY-TWO!

That is all.

(Oh, I lie–because I’m still rushing around the Internets, celebrating the release of Storm of Reckoning.  You can find me:

(previously)
Terry Odell’s Place — The Vicarious Wallow
Tor Newsletter — Beyond the Woo
NovelThoughts – The Happily Ever After
The Knight Agency Interview — Twenty Questions
Daily Cheap Reads
Rom Con — Storm of Reckoning: On the Road
The Knight Agency Free Friday!
Fresh Fiction — On Being the Evil Overlord

Now:
Authorial, Agently and Personal Ramblings — For I am the Corn Plant

Soon!
Thursday, February 24: Dazed & Confused: Pet Peeve!
Monday, February 28: Night Owl Romance Blog — On Having Adventures

Whew!)

The excitement of the day! My Backlist eBooks are being featured on Daily Cheap Reads today!

If you have a Kindle, Daily Cheap Reads is a great place to find inexpensive books of all kinds–indie, sales, and repubs.  This month features many of our Backlist eBooks writers, so…way cool!

And I’m still blogging around, all excited about the release of Storm of Reckoning.  You can find me:

(previously)

Terry Odell’s Place — The Vicarious Wallow
Tor Newsletter — Beyond the Woo
NovelThoughts – The Happily Ever After
The Knight Agency Interview — Twenty Questions

(now!)
Daily Cheap Reads

(next!)
Thursday 17th: Rom Con — Storm of Reckoning: On the Road
Friday 18th: The Knight Agency Free Friday!
Saturday 19th: Fresh Fiction — On Being the Evil Overlord

And in the meantime, I offer this recently unearthed little ode, penned while I was grooming.  You’ll figure out the tune, which fully reveals my sophisticated music muse:

Me:

I’m a Cocker Spaniel
Short and stout
Here is my piddle
Here is my snout
If you try to brush me,
Watch out–OUCH!
Big eyelashes
I’m cute, no doubt

ConneryBeagle: BAWHSOME, mymom!  Do it again!

One of my favorite videos ever comes from Where in the Hell is Matt:  Dancing Badly across the World.

(I am happy, because I just realized that since I now listen to my music via computer, I can now download the amazing song for this video!  Go, me!)

It's a BOOK!

Well, this month I’m doing my own little tour…across the internet, as it happens.  Writer blogs, Book site blogs, agent blogs, publisher blogs…

So from the recent past:

Terry Odell’s Place — The Vicarious Wallow
Tor Newsletter — Beyond the Woo
NovelThoughts – The Happily Ever After
The Knight Agency Interview — Twenty Questions

Dancing badly across the Internet!