Living the Fictional Dream

Since getting my Kindle (best first Mother’s Day gift ever!), I’ve taken to stalking the free fiction available on Amazon.com. It’s interesting what pops up there. Some good, some bad, and some just meh. And then I started noticing the self-published books that are available. For $0.99 to $2.99, you can buy whole novels. The number available in Y/A paranormal is mind boggling. You have to wade through some dreck, but you can find some decent reads for a much cheaper price.

The first one I read was Amanda Hocking’s Trylle trilogy. The first one, Switched, showed up in the top 10 on the best selling list. It was only $0.99, the premise (trolls) was intriguing, and the reviews were good, so I picked it up. And liked it well enough to splurge on the remaining two books in the series at the higher $2.99 price.

Over all, they were a good read. If only Amanda Hocking had better critiques and copy editors for her self-published work. Grammatical and punctuation errors jarred me out of the stories sometimes, and she falls into a lot of beginning writer traps that my writing group has helped me get away from (using “just” and “almost,” passive voice, repeating the same word multiple times in the same page/paragraph, using complex verb constructions when a single one will do, etc.). She also really could have used someone to tell her that the climax of the third book needed a little more build up to be believable and to help her smooth over certain plot issues (like the abrupt switch in the heroine’s “one true love” and how the ending of the trilogy was just too happy and too perfect).

But, despite the flaws, the concept and the heroine’s voice drew me in and held me there until I finished the story. I think the ability to do that is the most telling indicator of a writer’s talent (despite valid criticisms of her plotting and writing style, Stephanie Meyer has that gift, too). The mechanics can be learned and honed. (And maybe now that Hocking, self-publishing phenom, has signed a deal with a major publishing house, which includes re-release of the Trylle trilogy, she’ll get some guidance in those areas from the trained editors.)

Next, I tried Hocking’s zombie apocalypse story, Hollowland, at $0.99, and I liked this one even better than the Trylle books. The heroine was awesome, the world building was spot-on, and the supporting cast had a lot more purpose. There were still editing and technique issues, but the story was so much better, it was easier to ignore. I’m still hoping that another book in this series will come out, but I guess that will depend on her schedule with her new publishing house.

I’ve tried a few others here and there, and I seldom have as good of a reaction as I did with Hocking’s work. I need something outstanding to get into a book. A good character and can identify with and/or root for. A unique, intriguing, fresh twist on a concept that I haven’t seen a zillion times. Quality writing that doesn’t jar me out of the story, or a story so compelling that I don’t notice the sub-par writing skills (or at least can ignore them).

Without one or more of those attributes, I can’t commit to the book. I tried Hocking’s vampire series, My Blood Approves, but I couldn’t get into them. Sadly, I did not realize this until I’d already purchased them (my new rule, only buy one book of a completed series at a time to make sure you still like it when you finish the next installment!). The vampire series was just so… meh. The narrator never did anything but react. She really seemed more passive than Bella of Twilight fame, if you can imagine that. And things kept happening that were just too convenient. Once sure, but over and over again? Strains my ability to suspend my disbelief.

I alway skim the reviews of self-pubbed books . If one or two say there are grammatical problems or writing issues, I move on, even if there are a ton of 5-starred reviews, as well. Also, if the concept seems tired or a rip off, it would take very stellar review to get me to even take a peak. The Vampire Journals self-pubs that have been popping up on Amazon lately make me cringe. I think L.J. Smith was there first, people, and even if you weren’t into Y/A in the 1990s, her stories are back in the public view thanks to the TV series.

However, I think I may have finally found a winner on the self-pub Y/A market this weekend. Barbara Pandos, who wrote The Emerald Talisman. Pandos can actually write! She doesn’t use the same words repeatedly, but has a range of vocabulary (even a couple of higher priced words thrown in from time to time). And I don’t think a single grammatical or punctuation error jumped out at me. Her descriptions were vivid, and her characters were unique and interesting. Her take on vampires was different (at least to some extent) than the plethora of stories on the market right now. Her heroine had a gift of her own, and was not completely passive. And, also, her book is (as of today) available for free on Amazon, so the price was definitely right. I enjoyed the book a lot, and just downloaded the sequel, The Sapphire Talisman.

My only complaint with Pandos’s story is that sometimes the emotions felt by the lead couple weren’t completely justified by the text and there were a couple of plot holes that could have been fixed by just adding an extra scene. But I’ve seen worse in books released by an actual publishing house (Need, by Carrie Jones, for example — blarg, good concept, but what a mess!). What the book had going for it, far out weighed the bad.

I wonder what it takes to jump into this self-publishing market. So much is out there. Of course, if you go that route, you most likely give up your chance at publishing those books via a traditional outlet, and I’ve heard it makes it more difficult to get a traditional agent, even if you were shopping around a different project. However, that’s not 100% the case, because Hocking’s Trylle trilogy has been taken down and will be re-released by St. Martin’s Press in upcoming months.

Too bad some of these self-published authors don’t seem to care about grammar, punctuation, prose, writing style, and critique. I could make a good living whipping these novels into shape. They’d probably all hate my comments, though, and refuse to pay!

Well, I’ll sign off for now, but hopefully I can find the time to blog again soon. I really want to write a blog about the titles of self-published books. I know titles are not easy, but some of the ones out there are just so, so bad that it’s hilarious.

When you are “with story,” what is the first thing that comes to you? That germ of an idea. The one that seems much too small to spawn anything like a story or a novel. That little whisper in your ear, begging you to sit down at the keyboard. That first inspiration of a story to come. Is it a character? A setting? A line of dialog? I even read a quote from one author that the germ that spawned her best-selling series was a scene that she dreamed.

For me, it varies (probably true of most writers). For “Bridge Club,” it was the idea of superheroes wives working behind the scenes. “The Widow and the Stranger” came from me thinking about Atlantis. “Honor Bound” came from a writing prompt provided by one of my writing group mates that challenged me to write a compelling action sequence. “A Castle in the Clouds” was inspired by a chapter title in the novel Little Women (even though, in Little Women, the castle in the clouds was not literal).

Usually, though, my first inspiration is an idea — something not grand enough to call a plot, but that little idea the plot evolves from. Occasionally it’s a character or something else, but usually, it’s an idea or situation.

Recently, my muse has been whispering a title in my ear. Normally, titles are one of my worst things. I feel that it’s really difficult capture the essence of a story in a few words that are exciting enough to draw a reader in. Very seldom to I write a title that I’m actually excited about, though I have come up with a few. I was particularly partial to the title “Zero to Clean in Ten Minutes or Less.” I also really liked the title, “The Widow and the Stranger.” But a title is very rarely my starting point.

There was one story that came title first, but that was because the writing exercise my writing group was doing was to pick a title from a provided list (spawned from the automatic title generator) and write the story inspired by the title. That story became “The Care and Feeding of your Sleeping Knight,” which was in the top 10 stories at Every Day Fiction for quite a while.

Currently, my muse is whispering a fully formed title in my ear. It’s very strange. I have a title, but no story. I’ve bee poking at the title, noodling it around to see if the story will begin to work it’s way free. Tonight I got a small glimmer of a possible plot that would match the title. Nothing solid yet.

It’s definitely a different way of thinking about writing. It’s like building from the top down instead of from the ground up.

Happy writing, all!

It’s the end of an era. There will be no more new Harry Potter. The books are long done, and now the movies are, too. I got to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tonight, and it was quite good.

There’s always a sense of loss when something really good ends, isn’t there? I’ll never have that sense of anticipation again of waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out, of attending the midnight release party, of holding a brand new, unread copy in my hands. The story has been told, and it’s over. I can re-read them and visit the universe again, but it will never be new again.

R0wling created such a vivid universe with the Harry Potter series. And it was so well plotted. Things from the beginning that worked fine then, but take on a whole new meaning when seen in the context of the whole series. Sometimes I wonder how much was painstaking outlining and revision to make things match up and how much was that wonderful sort of zen thing that comes over you when you’re with story and somehow you get to the end and the most brilliant things line up that you hadn’t even realized when you were trying to get it all down as fast as you can type.

Coming down from a story like that is bittersweet. Part of me always wonders if I will ever be able to write something that good, something that will touch so many people. Or even a more modest number of people. Then again, I bet Rowling never thought her little stories would become such a phenomenon when she was scribbling them down in a cafe in England. So, anything can happen, right?

Anyhow, good bye, Harry Potter. I will come visit again. Definitely when the girls are old enough to be introduced into your hallowed hallways, and possibly before.

How did I spend the holiday this year? Well, I spent time with my family and went shopping. Then, though, while the girls were down for their naps and my husband went out with his mother, I polished up a flash piece that I wrote during the writing group’s Story Every Day contest this year and **gasp** submitted it. It’s a funny little horror piece that I revised with the help of my writing group. I wish I’d had the chance to send the revised version out to see if they liked it better, but there was a bit of a deadline. Hopefully, the new action sequences work.

We have a meeting next week, and after they give me comments on another little flash bunny that’s been tweaking my muse of late, we’ll see if there’s anything there. I have a market in mind for that one, too.

I feel so productive, LOL.

Uh oh… just heard someone stirring. I think nap time is over!

For the first time since… I guess last spring… I have a couple of things out on submission. And there is one more that I queried about that I’m hoping to send out soon.

I had forgotten that feeling of anticipation mixed with panic. I’d forgotten the urge to check your email twenty times a day in the vain hope that an editor has gotten back to you.

It feels good, but it is also somewhat crazy-making.

Why do we do this, again? Oh yeah… because the stories would eat holes in our brain if we didn’t.

A lovely, thick envelope came for me in the mail the other day. I received it on my birthday, and what a great birthday treat it was. Inside the envelope was my contributor’s copy of ResAliens #5, complete with eye-catching cover art and printed pages full of good stories. The second story in this issue was a reprint of my vampire hunter story, “Not Your Kind of Heathen.”

I’ve always been fond of this story. Rachel is a vampire hunter, and her biggest weapon in the fight against the undead is her faith. However, just because she believes in God, that doesn’t mean she isn’t pissed as hell at Him. If you’d like to read a little more about the backstory of this tale, here’s the link to the blog entry I wrote about it when it was first published.

I have to say, though, that while the first e-publication was cool (even though now that e-zine is long gone), I’m much more excited about NYKoH’s appearance in ResAliens. I’ve enjoyed ResAliens since it was solely an e-zine, but the new print version is really awesome. You should definitely check it out! (And I have a story in issue #2, as well.)

In other news, I just heard that my story, “The Vote,” was selected for inclusion in Every Day Fiction’s third annual anthology. I’m very excited to be included. The previous two EDF anthologies were very well done and included lots of great stories by  excellent writers. I’m sure this one will be the same. At least one other writing group mate will be in the anthology, as well — Go, Writer’s Ink!

In rejection news, a weird little story that I sent out to a relatively big podcast market was rejected a couple of months ago. However, my thrill from that rejection was that instead of the standard form rejection (which I’d received several times), I actually got a personal rejection note from the editor. Not only did he say he liked the story (though it wasn’t exactly what they were looking for), but he told me to keep submitting. It felt like I finally got noticed by that market. Maybe, if I found something more up their alley, it would be a good time to try them again…

And now, to wind things up, here are a few links to other stories from the last few months that you might want to check out:

• Writing group mate Jens had his story, “The Vicksburg Dead,” published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. Way to go, Jens!
• Writing group mate Alex had his story, “The Organization,” published in A Thousand Faces, one of my favorites.
• Writing group mate Stephanie had her story, “Loretta’s Flamingos,” published in Moonlight Tuber.
• And there is a new issue of 10 Flash Quarterly out. This e-zine of themed stories is always a good read.

Now, if I could just find a little time amongst changing diapers, running after a toddler on the go, and taking care of a six-month-old, maybe 2011 will be a better year for me writing and submitting-wise. We’ll call it a goal!

Hello out there in blog-land.

Sorry to have been so absent of late. The summer was even crazier than my usual life. I was in the hospital for several weeks with complications for baby #2. After our new daughter arrived, that brought a whole new level of hectic. How does anyone have time to write or blog with a 13-month-old and a newborn in the house? And now, my maternity leave is over (boo-hoo!), and I’m headed back to work.

After missing most of the writing group meetings this summer, I finally got back into it at the September meeting. We’re trying an experiment, a challenge, as it were. Write 250 words every day in the month of October. I’m not doing stellar — I’ve only managed to write 600 or so words and it’s already the 6th. However, this challenge was about inspiration, not pressure, and I’m hopeful that perhaps I’ll get a few more written over the course of the month.

The writing I did is some twiddling of the new novel idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for the past year or so. It came from a dream I had while pregnant with my first darling daughter. We’ll see if anything comes of it.

I have some other posts in mind about some reading that I’ve done lately; so, here’s hoping that I find the time to put fingers to keyboard.

I hope all is going well for my blogging and writing friends out there, and that you all have big word counts!

Last night, at my writing group’s monthly write-in, I worked on revising a story that the group critiqued at the meeting in June. One of the main characters gives birth during this story. Now, as anyone who knows me or who has spent much time on this blog knows, I have given birth myself (and I will be doing so again later this year).

My familiarity with this subject matter led me to an interesting conundrum. How much detail on a subject like child birth is too much?

Juggling the amount of detail to include in a story is a balancing act sometimes. As a writer, you have to know more about your world than anyone else. This is especially true if you’re creating a fictional world from scratch (like a sprawling fantasy realm or a high tech sci-fi world), but I’ve found it true in literary and mainstream writing, as well.

You have to know your characters inside and out. You have to know much more of them and the world they live in that needs to show up on the page. In fact, if writers routinely put all the information they have on world building checklists and character descriptoin forms into their stories, readers would run away screaming at the minutia of it all.

So, all that to say, I know that I need to limit the baby birthing details in this story. However, I found while writing it that this particular subject was really hard to reign in. And then, when my writing group read it, I found out that details I thought were important and fairly universal, were actually too technical and apt to be misunderstood.

I had no idea no one else had heard of APGAR tests. Amniotic fluid was another stumbling block. Hard to talk about a woman’s water breaking without mentioning amniotic fluid!

And then there is the consideration of how much detail is too much on the ick-factor scale. Let’s face it — child birth is pretty gross. You’ve got fluid and cords and a placenta to deal with. Not to mention that, despite what you see on television, that baby does not pop out all clean and pretty — it’s actually kind of gray until it gets to breathing and that cottage cheese looking stuff that covers it… even I’m squicked out by that! I wouldn’t want to write a story where the readers stopped reading because the details were too disgusting. (And this particular story is actually in a genre which is traditionally read more by men than women, so the tolerance level for child birth ick might be even lower.)

On the other hand, though, I got many comments from the crit saying that they liked having the details because it helped ground them in the story. So, for all the bad things about including too much, you also want to make sure you include enough that your readers can fully imagine that fictional dream and be fully committed to it.

Last night at the write-in, I took another pass through the story with a critical eye for detail. I’m not sure I’m done tweaking it yet. There is actually another plot element that I’m toying with adding, which would make a new draft a definite. But, hopefully, detail-wise at least, I’ve sorted out some of the problems.

If you made it through this whole entry, feel free to let me know what you think on the subject. How much information about birthing babies is too much for you?

Happy writing (and reading), everyone!

Hello to anyone who’s still out there! Sorry for the long delay between posts. Times have been crazy of late, but more on that later.

I have a few tidbits of news to share. First of all, Every Day Fiction has released the table of contents for July 2010, and guess who’s on it? Yours truly! I’ve had reprints published this year, but this will be my first official new story published in 2010. I’m excited! And the TOC mentioned me specifically as a “returning favorite.” That was nice to read.

Tune into EDF on the 4th of July and read my story, “The Vote.” I’m not going to say too much about the story until the 4th, but I will warn you ahead of time that it’s not a 4th of July story. In fact, its more apocalyptic than patriotic. But I had an interesting voyage writing and revising it, so I’m thrilled that it’s going to be joining my other stories published by EDF.

In other news, I received a contributor’s copy the other day. It was print issue #2 of Residential Aliens, which includes a reprint of my story, “The Sorcerer’s Wife.” The story originally appeared in the ResAliens webzine, and has now graced their print ‘zine, as well. If you’d like a copy for your very own, click here. It’s a great little ‘zine. I’m really happy with it. And if you want to read TSW online, it’s still available in the ResAliens archives.

My writing group had its annual Story Every Day (SED) contest in June. Sadly, I was the winner. The goal of the story is to write a new story of at least 500 words every day for two weeks. The winner is the person with the most stories, and if there is a tie, the winner is the person with the most stories and the highest word count. I say sadly I was the winner because I was able to write a whopping… wait for it… three stories. **sigh** Not a banner year for the SED contest. But, on the bright side, every story written is a good thing, so three (or two, or one, as others in the group wrote) is something to be proud of. I was hoping for more, but my muse just was not cooperating.

Why wasn’t my muse cooperating, do you ask? Well, I guess it is time to tell y’all. On the personal front, there has been stuff going on, contributing to the “crazy” in my life that I mentioned earlier.

For those readers who haven’t heard, I am pregnant. Again! Less than a year after my darling little girl was born, Hubby and I find ourselves expecting number 2. It was definitely sooner than we had planned (if this little one carries to term, as sister did not, they will be 14 months apart), but we are very excited. The new baby is due in September.

For some reason, though, when I’m pregnant, my muse clams up on me. Hence not much activity around the old blog, or on my writing in general.

Add that to working full-time, chasing around after a little girl who is crawling like the wind and working on that walking thing, and planning a first birthday party for next week, and life has been hectic to the max. I’m loving every minute, though (OK… maybe not the actual work, but even that is not so bad, LOL).

I hope all of you out there in blog land are doing well. I miss reading everyone’s blogs and commenting. If I ever have a bit of spare time, I really want to get back to that. I hope you’re all doing well, and that everyone is having a truly fantastic summer (as well as super-high word counts!).

Remember the queryI mentioned to y’all a while back? Short story shorter, I had a story that looked like it would fit an anthology, but it was a reprint and they only wanted new material. I queried, and they invited me to submit it. A couple of days ago, I got an email from the publisher that my story is on the short list for consideration of being included in the anthology.

That doesn’t mean acceptance is guaranteed or anything, but the moral of this story continues to be — it never hurts to query. The worst they can say is no, and you might end up with good results you never truly expected!