News

Woo-hoo!

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30K words of sequel written!

I actually passed this milestone already, before I scrapped 25 pages last Thursday, but I just want to put this down in writing for my own reference, to remind myself when I get bummed out: I scrapped 25, and I’ve already written back 20.

It goes so much faster when I’m going the right direction.

In related news: I’ve put my name in the NaNoWriMo ring! If you’re doing NaNo this year, and want to be my buddy, I’m “amyunbounded” (I know, sad Amy fans, but the name is never, ever taken). I am, of course, cheating egregiously — I’m going to be working on THIS novel, the one I’ve already done 30K on. But the point, for me, really is the camaraderie and the lighting-a-fire-under-my-bum.

I feel the need for the latter especially, but also the former, more than usual. I’m on hiatus from Goodreads for a month or two – friends there have acquired eARCs of my book from NetGalley, and they’re READING IT. My nerves, they are wracked! The temptation to check in every five minutes and ask Are you done yet? How about NOW?? is immense. I’m trying to just relax and get used to the idea that yes, other humans are reading my book and it’s ok. I need some distance, need to breathe.

I used to be on GR just for the reviews, but I’ve met a lot of interesting people there, and I’ll miss them while I’m away! Still, it’s for the best until I’ve really learned to be the calm, cool, collected author I aspire to be. As my inner Darth Vader keeps telling me, “You are not a Jedi yet!”

Progress Report

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I’m on page 99 of the sequel. C’mon, brain, just a little bit more! Let’s make it an even 100. That would make me feel accomplished.

I suspect I am a slow writer. Maybe not the very slowest ever, but slow. I’m not sure why, exactly, though perfectionistic tendencies run in the family and are always suspect. My son has a written-output LD, which he presumably got from somewhere.

But I think some of it, too, is that I don’t think optimally while sitting or standing still. I think better while walking, and I don’t just think it’s because my thoughts are freer without the pressure of having to write them down. I think motion gives me access to things that are hard to dredge up otherwise. Seriously, we should find a way for me to write while walking. A treadmill? A stationary bike? It’d be a great experiment, to see if I’m right or if it’s just an illusion (because it might be, certainly). And think how fit and healthy I’d get, if nothing else.

(I am now noticing myself fiddling with the wording of this post. It’s entirely possible that I’m nothing more than a chronic, undisciplined fiddler. Phooey.)

Hello, new friends!

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The site is beginning to see some traffic from people who haven’t known me for years. That’s wonderful!

It’s also slightly comical timing, since I just spent the last week and a half raving about YES. It’s a bit like answering the door in your underwear. Oops. Um, yes, I was just dancing to “Don’t Kill the Whale”, ha ha. I’ll just, um, get dressed now, shall I?

All right. Much better. Welcome, darlings.

I promised my editor that when we got to this point I’d be ready to serve tea and discuss Proust – and we can certainly do that. But I am a person of myriad enthusiasms and variable attention. I tend to go a lot of different directions, sometimes all at once. I’m not good at maintaining a decorous and dignified façade. Rather than pretending to be something I’m not (calm, aloof), it’s better to be up front about what I am.

I’m a laugher, first and foremost. If it makes me laugh, it wins. I love many kinds of music, but especially the nerdy kinds: prog rock, early and ancient music, classical music, bagpipe music. I am interested in psychology, neurology, and archaeology; I am a passionate amateur Medievalist. I am a dog person, not a cat person. I like trying strange foods just to try them. I find travelling to new places exciting and renewing. I love my family and friends more than anything, but require vast tracts of time alone. I am an Epicurean and an atheist who dabbles in meditation. I used to belly dance, and will again once I find a new teacher. I love plants, rain, reading, occasional TV, and baseball (go Cardinals!). I once spoke very good Spanish and passable Irish, and could read ancient Greek, but I haven’t kept up on any of them, I’m afraid.

Second only to laughing, I enjoy thinking. If you make me think, you win. Consider it a challenge. Hm. I like challenges too. That’s one reason I became a writer: because it’s HARD.

Please make yourselves at home. Sit anywhere. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge (although knowing me it’s something strange). I’ll be in and out, puttering about.

I’m happy you’re here.

Ooh, look! Construction!

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Forgive the mess, darlings, while we move things around! It is always so tedious deciding where the sofa is going to go, to say nothing of the boxes and boxes of books. It may look weird for a while.

Pft. Who am I kidding. It may look weird FOREVER. It’s my place, after all. You must remember who you’re dealing with.

(And a million thanks to Arwen for being disinclined to freak out when the going gets tough!)

Release date change!

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It looks like Seraphina will be coming out July 10th, 2012, instead of the previously announced date in May.

I realize that means waiting two extra months for it – and I totally sympathize with how heartbroken you all must feel – but it’s actually good news. Captain Editorpants assures me that this means Random House is trying to optimize the release date so that my book can make a bigger splash. Yay!

But even better than that: it means the book will be coming out the day after my 40th birthday. As if it were a birthday present, yes. It just strikes me as auspicious.

I’m not superstitious as a rule, but I’ve had enough setbacks and weird luck on the road to being published that I am only ever hesitantly optimistic. Somehow, though, this has broken through my skeptical shell just a little bit. July is a fine month to be born, for books and people both.

Time to start planning that party, methinks!

Cantankerous updates

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* I seem to have defeated the virus. Either I’m awesome, or it was very very wimpy. Let’s all just vote for the former, shall we? Maybe that will un-grump me a little bit.

* The next three weeks are going to be particularly busy here on the home front, so this is just a heads-up to say posting will be sporadic until after Canadian Thankgiving (called “Columbus Day” by our southern neighbours, and “October 10th” by the calendar).

* Still no cover. We were very close for a moment; there was a possible cover that I loved dearly, but it’s looking like that won’t be the one after all.

* It’s ok. These things happen. I’m not mad about it anymore.

* I’m cranky because I’m looking at the gigantic pile of scheduled activity for the next three weeks and thinking, “I have another book to write now. When, exactly, am I supposed to write it?”

* That’s right: I’ll get it done by shorting YOU. It’s sad, and true.

* Ah, don’t cry. I’ll pop in occasionally with cryptic, haiku-like posts. Little koans. It’ll be fun.

* Here’s one now: The novice Rachel sat at her keyboard, staring at a blank screen. Her wise little dog trotted up and said, “Rachel, why do you despair?”

“I’ve forgotten how to do this,” said Rachel.

“Are you sure you ever knew?” asked the little dog.

“Is that supposed to be funny, little dog?”

“No,” said the little dog. “But this is.” And the little dog made a ridiculous noise in its throat, like Scooby-do gargling.

Rachel laughed and it was, if not exactly well, at least a little better.

It’s OK to be Takei in YA

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I feel like I ought to link to the current big YA brouhaha: Agent asks authors to “straighten” main character.

This is not the first time I’ve heard of something like this happening, and it’s appalling, to be sure.

I just want to add my data point to the debate, however: my book, in all its incarnations, has always had gay characters in it. There was even a transsexual in one version (who sadly is no more, not for being transsexual but because I was having to engage in painful, artificial plot-acrobatics to keep her).  I have never, ever, not ONCE been asked by my agent or either of my editors* to change anything about these characters.

Let’s call it out when it happens – that’s important! – but don’t imagine publishing is some kind of monolith. Good books will find a home. Keep writing, and don’t despair.

* Yes, I’ve been through two editors. I think I broke the first one.

Edited to add: Was the title of this post too obscure? Here’s what I was referencing:

 

Merry updates

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* I finished a plot outline for the sequel to Seraphina on Wednesday, and am feeling quite jolly about it. It was only the fourth attempt, which isn’t bad (for me). I sent it to El Señor Don Gato Editor, who appeared to rather like it, which means there will be lots of revisions.

* Yes, there would also have been lots of revisions if he hadn’t liked it, except that they wouldn’t be “revisions” so much as “Could you please start over and come up with an actual plot this time? What? I said please!”

* Revisions are good. Revisions mean there’s something there worth revising. As the folk saying goes: “Thou canst put no shyne uponst a cow pye.”

* It is so a folk saying. Go ask anyone. “Uponst” is a regional dialectic variation, accepted by fauxlorists all over the world.

* I am pleased to inform you that it looks like plotting is a skill one can learn, given enough time and enough banging of head upon table. I’ve done the experiment so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

* That’s “plotting of books,” not “plotting to make mischief.” I have a natural talent for the latter. The former, well. It’s just a good thing I’m stubborn.

* Yes, the silliness of my blog posts does increase proportionally with how merry I am. You may graph it if you wish.

Edited to add: Ooh! We are getting close to a finalized cover at last! It just needs to go through one more round of approval next week, I believe. I hope this one gets the thumbs up, because I really like it.

Fall in love with the future!

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Go check out The Intergalactic Academy, where my writer friends Phoebe and Sean have just started blogging about YA science fiction. The future’s looking better already!

Tiny updates

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* Still no cover yet. Don’t fret: you’ll be the first to know, once it’s official and I’m allowed to shove the artwork in everyone’s face, crying, “Look! Looooook!” So really, enjoy the quiet while you’ve still got it.

* I started reading Enchanted Glass yesterday, Diana Wynne Jones’s last novel (unless there’s something posthumous up the sleeve of her estate)(ooh, the Wikipedia page makes it sound like there is another one, or part of another one anyway). It’s proven extremely easy to slip into so far, as if she wrote flannel pajamas instead of books. Very comfy. Maybe not earth-shattering, but you can do worse than soft pajamas on a chilly morning.

* It is a great sadness to me that she died before I could give her my book. I suspect the moral of the story is that we ought to thank the people who have a profound influence on our work – thank them directly in a letter, I mean – rather than waiting for the work itself to be our subtler thanks. Because you really do never know!

* Well, okay, she was 76 and had lung cancer. I suppose I could have guessed that time was fleeting.

* I got to meet Lloyd Alexander eight years ago, before we left Philadelphia. He very graciously let me and my friend Sarah come to his house and talk to him for an hour. I gave him a two-page comic story I’d done about him for an anthology called Spark Generators (where cartoonists talked about their influences; mine was one of the few stories about a prose-fiction writer). Anyway, I consider myself lucky to have had that opportunity.

* There are so many people we can never thank, or never thank adequately. Sometimes all we can do is hope our work holds a candle for the next generation in turn.

* How did I get all somber, here? This was going to be a series of amusing vignettes, ending with a coy allusion to the fact that I have received a couple  nice blurbs from real, not-dead, also-beloved authors. I hadn’t realized that the process of questing after blurbs would require me to write letters, but it has and I’m very glad of it. Even when nothing blurblike comes of it, I’ve been given opportunities to thank people whose work has been invaluable to me, and I really appreciate that.

* But ah, Ms. Jones, I regret having missed my chance with you.