Surface Edits

I’m plugging away at the final surface edits for Trentwood’s Orphan during my winter break from graduate school. It’s fast-going, and I’m surprisingly pleased with how the story is coming together. There are, of course, some chapters that got a little jumbled, but I assume that’s because not only was I retyping the entire book after hand-editing it, but I was converting from present-to-past tense at the same time. As such, some of my tenses got a little weird.

But other than that, I’m kind of excited. One of my friends pressured me into letting him read it, despite the fact that I’m not done with the surface edits, so he’s getting it in pieces.

Shocking though it is, not only does he like it so far, he converted the first chapter into a podcast. And it sounds super professional! If I self-publish, it will definitely go on the website as a sample of the book.

Which reveals my next thought: I’m wondering whether I’d like to self-publish this book, as I did my first, or if I’d like to try to go through a small publisher, like Five Star Publishing. I read one of their books in my genre and I know I could have written it, so there’s always that.

Anyway, things are coming along nicely. I hope to have these surface edits done by January 10 so I can send out the manuscript to those of you who offered to read it. As I mentioned before, I wouldn’t expect it back until May, so you have plenty of time to read and make comments.

Tell me, how are your projects going?

Fairy-tale Inspired Books

Happy holidays! I thought I’d throw out a fun Tuesday Thirteen list today, this one having a theme of fairy-tale inspired books.

I haven’t read some of these books in ten years, but for some reason they still haunt me. Here are my favorite fairy-tale inspired books (in no particular order)! I had to cap it at thirteen otherwise the list might never end. Though, there is a shortage of good fairy tale re-tellings, for some reason… I wonder why that is? Are there any really good ones I should know about that aren’t on this list?

1. Spindle’s End – Robin McKinley
2. Enchantment – Orson Scott Card
3. Spellbound – Ru Emerson
4. Golden – Cameron Dokey
5. Seven Daughters and Seven Sons – Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy
6. The Book of Atrix Wolfe – Patricia McKillip
7. Deerskin – Robin McKinley
8. Briar Rose – Jane Yolen
9. The Door in the Hedge – Robin McKinley
10. Phoenix and Ashes – Mercedes Lackey
11. The Lark and the Wren – Mercedes Lackey
12. The Pearl of the Soul of the World – Meredith Ann Pierce
13. Sabriel – Garth Nix

Actually, there is this one retelling of the frog prince and I can’t remember the title of it.

I do know that the prince was turned into a frog as part of a magical conspiracy, and that the princess/girl fell in love with him when he was a frog, and that his own brother/uncle/relative throws him across the room so he hits the wall with a sickening crack. The girl, distraught, thinks the frog died, but he actually just broke the spell by angering his relative into chucking him across the room.

Anyone know the book I’m talking about? It was really good. Anyone have any books to add to the list?

Second Draft Complete

As of Sunday at four in the afternoon, I finished writing the second draft of First Draft B. These are the specs…

The goal was to write 85,000 words, thus cutting out what I suspected was 10k words of fluff from First Draft B. It came out to 85 182, and that wasn’t planned. Very pleased.

I wanted to complete this draft by December 19, 2008. I finished five days ahead of schedule, even though I’m in graduate school.

I wanted a tighter, cleaner draft. I’m feeling pretty good about this.

I need to put this draft away for a couple of months and work on a new project. Thank goodness I’m taking an advanced fiction writing course next semester.

I’m looking for beta readers who are willing to comment on the entire work. I use Microsoft Word 2007, so I can read the commenting feature from 2003/2007. Let me know if you’re interested, and we’ll work out the details. If you don’t read historical fiction or historical romance, please don’t contact me. You won’t know the genre cliches to help me make sure I don’t commit them.

How are your projects going?

Book: The Reincarnationist

Title: The Reincarnationist
Author: MJ Rose
Genre: Historical Suspense
Length: 455 pgs.

Summary: Josh Ryder, an investigative photographer, is the survivor of a terrorist bomb that exploded a year ago in Rome, Italy. Thanks to the bombing, he is now the victim of odd flashes that have the “emotion, the intensity, the intimacy of memories.” But they couldn’t be memories. In these flashes, Josh is a pagan priest in ancient Rome, desperate to save a woman named Sabina and the treasures she is hiding from the marauding Christians. As his flashbacks uncover his previous life, deaths start piling up around Josh: whatever that woman Sabina was protecting in ancient Rome, someone today thinks they’re worth killing for.

Excerpts:

pg 36 – Josh experienced a flash of completely unfounded jealousy and unexpected emotion: a white-hot surge of jealousy unlike anything he’d ever felt for any lover he’d ever had. He wanted to rush over and pull Rudolfo away, to tell him he had no business leaning in so close, no right to get so near to her. Josh hadn’t known that this corpse even existed an hour before, but his recollections had taken over and in his mind he saw muscle appearing, then being covered by flesh, the flesh plumping out her face, neck, hands, breasts, hips, thighs and feet, all coming to life, her lips pinking, her eyes being colored a deep blue. … A million images crashed inside his head. Centuries of words he’d never heard before. One louder than the rest. He snatched it out from the cacophony. Sabina. Her name.

pg 261 – “You might as well be one of those stone sculptures,” Alex mused out loud. “Immune to falling in love. No one has ever made your eyes shine the way a stunning unset gem can.”

“Stop worrying.”

“One day you will stop believing in the possibility of heroes, accept the reality of the people you meet, deal with their limitations and learn to make the best of it.”

“Why should I do that? You didn’t. Aunt Nancy didn’t.”

pg 374 – “When you look into the eyes of someone you’re photographing, and glimpse a terrible suffering, don’t turn away,” his father had once told him. “It’s a gift to see into the depths of grief, because only when you realize that someone can be in that much pain and still function, speak civilly, shake your hand and tell you how nice it is to meet you, do you understand why you can’t ever give in or give up. There’s always another chance, another day. That’s the miracle of the human spirit. Take on the pain, Josh. Give it its due. That’s the only way to beat it.”

Why should you read this book?

You can always tell when I really like a book… I have a lot of excerpts from it that I think are the best-written passages. Let me tell you this: I’m in graduate school, and I’m super busy all the time. But I made time for this book. I read it in two days, despite all my assignments, because I was desperate to know what happened.

Read this book for a great example of suspenseful writing, for fleshed out characters, and even for some well-written intimate scenes. If you’re trying to write emotion but don’t know how to begin, this is an awesome start for you. If you’re tackling the idea of fate, and fate bringing your characters together/splitting them apart, read this book.

The Benefits of Free

I’ve been reading a lot, recently, about how authors are trying to to convert those “early adopters” over to their writing. Early adopters, if you don’t recognize the term, comes from the early adopters of software. That is, software users who grab the newest version first, decide if they like it, and then tell everyone else how great the software is. Early adopters have a lot of clout in their circles. Get an early adopter on your side, and they will do the majority of your word-of-mouth marketing for you.

As authors, we should aim for the early adopters. But how do we do that?

Well, you can always go to their blogs, websites, etc, and build up a relationship with them. This is the nicest way to go about it, and takes the most time. You can visit their blogs and ask them, without knowing them, to review your work… and I wish you good luck with that one.

It seems to me that free things seem to work, most of the time. But what can authors give for free?

We can give away what we do best: our work. MJ Rose is a huge proponent of giving away our work to gain new readers. And she would know, having left advertising to write full time. This is one of those things were you really need to worry about copyright infringement, though. If you’re published by someone else, you need to read your contract carefully and make sure you can give away a portion of the work.

So why give things away for free? Because people love free things! It spreads a sense of goodwill. It gives your reader a taste test so they can get a feel for your style. And, if they really like your work, they’ll buy your book, whether you give it away for free or not.

MJ Rose definitely got me with The Reincarnationist. I began the book by reading the free download she offered a month ago. But honestly, I hate reading on a computer, even while I loved reading her book. So… I bought the book. I knew I was loving it, so why not go for the investment?

You can use this to your advantage, as well…

• Have a contest on your blog where your top commenters can read an advance copy of your work.Your blog commenters/readers are your early adopters, and if they have blogs of their own, they will be the first to spread the good news of your newest work.
• Or perhaps have your top commenters act as your beta readers. I did this with my first two chapters for an assignment in my graduate program. Not only did I get wonderful feedback, but it seemed like everyone involved really enjoyed it.
• Offer the first couple of chapters of your book as a free download on your website once it’s released. In this day and age, everyone wants a taste test, and this is your opportunity to give it to them.
• Offer a discount to your blog commenters. Reward your friends for sticking with you through the hard times!

What other things can you think of to give away for free that you think would really snag those hard-to-reach readers?