Two steps back

I was going to post pictures of my car, since I keep reading books where the authors get details about Mini Coopers totally wrong and I thought it would be helpful for someone out there to have illustrated points of reference. But I haven't gotten around to taking the photos off my camera. So I'll post that this weekend, probably.

Instead, here's a brief writing update. I had a novelette and a novel that were supposed to be released this year. The novelette was scheduled for an April release date, but that magazine closed, so obviously it didn't appear. There aren't many markets for a 15,000 word SF story, but I've re-edited it and hopefully I can find a home for it eventually. A home that doesn't dissolve!

The novel is The Weredeer, which was delayed in the editing stages for various reasons and had its publication date pushed back a few times. Then the publisher went ebook only instead of print and ebook. Mine was one of four projects caught in between the old model and the new, and the publisher gave me the option of releasing me from my contract or going ahead and publishing ebook only. I had to think hard about this since we'd made it to the proof stage and I'd had a really good editing experience. But I chose finally to be released from my contract.

So now poor Weredeer is homeless again. I haven't decided what to do about it. I'll probably sit on it for a while, since I'm busy with other stuff and want to be able to devote a serious chunk of time to rewriting the query and synopsis and finding the right market for it.

I'm querying my YA Shadow Trail currently. I was going to wait, but I've given it several revision passes and there are no parts that make me think, "Hmm, that still needs work." It's more tightly written than anything I've ever done, and I'm proud that I got it that way on the first draft. I only had to add a few small scenes during revisions, and didn't have to cut any scenes.

I want to finish all the things

My success so far this year finishing up both Bloodhound and The Cabin on Wildwood Hill has made me eager to finish more projects. I certainly have enough active files in my WIP folder. I've been working on Adventures in Zoology, which is more than half done already, but my recent work editing and finally proofing The Weredeer (for release in early summer!) has made me interested in one of its unfinished sequels, Stag in Ruin.

I have started a new, untitled YA and I think it's going to be pretty good. I'm not hurrying with it, though. This time of year I rarely plunge into a new project. It's more time to peck around and finish up old ones. And that's fine with me.

I have reached grandmaster status in boring

The spring semester is over at last. Finals week has been punishing as usual. Back when I was in college, I never dreamed that one day I'd be on the other side of the tests (for those of you playing along at home, I am a test proctor/invigilator in my day job) and that it would be worse than taking the tests myself.

I've worked here four years now, so I know not to ask too much of myself during finals week. I can be productive next week, not now. Fortunately, the only thing I have due at the moment are the proofs for The Weredeer (yes, we're close!). Unfortunately, I have enmeshed myself in an online game.

It's called Ultima Online. I quit playing maybe five years ago and honestly thought the game had closed down. Through really byzantine means--by which I mean that I didn't actually seek it out--I found out a few days ago that the game is still going. So I opened up my old account for the heck of it, and lo and behold all my characters are still there and so are their skills and all their stuff.

This game was a pure time sink for me for years. I can see that it won't be that way for me soon; I figure after a few weeks max, I'll be getting bored with it again, and I'm already finding myself shutting down after a while and doing something else. But I have also spent many hours over the last two days just wasting time in the game. You know what's a time-waster and boring? Fishing in an online game. And yet I spent two-plus hours last night doing just that.

That's fine for finals week. But not next week, when I don't have an excuse to waste time.

Looking into 2012

Things feel very unsettled for me right now. I don't know what to expect day to day with Mom's health, which makes it hard to plan for the immediate future. But my writing schedule is pretty well set for the year. Here's what I have coming up in 2012.

January 6
My steampunk novella Goldie will be released from Musa, for only 99 cents! I have cool bookmarks ordered that I'll be giving away as soon as they arrive next week.

April
My novelette "Never Be Alone" will appear in the spring issue of Strange, Weird and Wonderful Magazine, and I'll also be the Featured Writer of that issue.

July
I just found out (adding this January 1) that my novel Evil Outfitters, Ltd will be released from Double Dragon in July, more than six months ahead of schedule!

Summer
My novel The Weredeer will hopefully be released from BeWrite Books. We've had a lot of delays, none of them anyone's fault--my editor had to have eye surgery, my mom got sick, etc. But the editing is nearly finished and hopefully soon I'll have some cover artwork to show you. This is my favoritest book I've ever written. I can't wait to share it with the world.

Labor Day Weekend
I'll be at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago this weekend, where I'm hoping to meet up with some of the other writers still waiting to hear our final decisions from Angry Robot Books.

I've got some other stuff I'm working on, some rewrites and revisions that will hopefully bear fruit by the end of the year. I have a short story and a novella already scheduled for release in 2013, and if The Weredeer does well the sequel may be released in 2013 also. I'm also messing around with doing some self-publishing, starting with that misguided romance I wrote last year (I'm just not a romance writer). And I'm going to try to write more short stories this year, since I miss that instant gratification from sending a story out and getting a yes from an editor in weeks instead of months (or years).

All the best to everyone in the remaining hours of 2011, and good luck to all of us in 2012 and beyond. Assuming the world doesn't actually end next December, and I'm pretty sure it won't.

There. Was that so hard?

I am amused to see on Duotrope that as of today, Apex started sending out responses to writers who've been waiting even longer than I have. I like to think that Cat Valente (is she still editor for Apex?) happened upon my yesterday's post, was consumed with guilt for leaving poor me hanging so long--or perhaps was filled with fury that I called her out publicly--and went into her files to reject me. Ha! You still didn't get mine! Mine's the one with vampires in it, which is why I knew full well going in that it would be rejected, and now a year later I'm still waaaaiting.

But I kid Ms. Valente.

I am happy to report that I have FINISHED THE DAMN WEREDEER EDITS. I sent the file off to my editor, who is way more patient with me than I am with, oh, you know, magazine editors who don't respond as soon as I think they should. I hereby swear most solemnly that I will never again be late with edits.

I guess I should get to work on those edits for Blood and Ashes, huh?

Oh, editing, how I despise you

I meant to work on my Weredeer edits this weekend, but we're closing on the new house Thursday so the weekend was filled with last-minute packing and cleaning and perusing of paint swatch cards. Also, it rained a lot today and Mom wanted to drive around in the rain. Until we move, she's lamentably divorced from the full effects of weather. She's the kind of person who sleeps with her bedroom window propped open a little no matter how cold or hot it is out, and who sleeps with her head as close to the window as possible (in our old house, she actually slept with her head at the foot of the bed for just that reason). Now we're staying with my aunt and uncle, and the windows in her room don't open and are too well insulated for her to even hear the rain.

I'm about a third through the edits. They take soooooo looooong and I have to cooooncentrate on them, dammit. And I've recharged from writing Misfits this summer and I think I'm ready to write again rather than edit. My attention veers from finishing Adventures in Zoology to finishing the major rewrite of The Trickster Society to finishing the tail-end of Bloodhound. My interest in editing anything is at an all-time low. Yet, edit I must.

Also, I'm way behind in my reading. Why are there so few hours in the day?

Part of the problem is that I'm back at work now, which I hate. I mean, I hate having to work anyway, and I hate having to leave Mom during the day (although she's doing much better and her main problem is boredom), but I also hate that there are certain things I can't do while I'm at work. Like editing.

A very good year

I just found my old photobucket login and logged in to see what kind of photos I was saving in 2006.

Well, I was saving screenshots from a MMORPG I played obsessively for many years, Ultima Online. Here's a picture of my tamer, Saint Vincent (named after one of my cats), showing off his maxed-out pet deer. Those of you who never played a tamer in UO will have no idea what that means, but the typical pet in that game was a dragon or something, not a deer and training low-level animals to 100% stats was not easy. You'll note also that the deer's name was Kristof. Yes, I had just finished writing the first draft of The Weredeer and tamed and trained a deer in the game to commemorate it.

I'm pretty sure UO no longer exists--I stopped playing years ago and haven't felt brave enough to check. If it's still around, I'll be sucked in and will spend all my free time playing. If it's not still around, I'll be sad because I played that game for literally years. I even participated in the beta back when I was 27 years old. I remember joking with my cousin who also played that no one would believe it if I told them how old I was, because 27-year-olds don't play video games--I mean, 27-year-olds are grown-ups.

Anyway, this 41-year-old kind of misses the game. But at least I've still got The Weredeer.

Now it can be revealed

I have the okay to announce this already! BeWrite Books has accepted The Weredeer for publication--maybe even as soon as this December. We've already done one round of edits, which has me cringing at my overuse of certain words and phrases. Time to edit everything else I've ever written. They're also interested in the sequel. That's doubly awesome, but I need to do some work on it before I let anyone (much less an editor) see it.

I'm thrilled, since The Weredeer has long been my favorite of all the books I've written. I've learned an awful lot about writing from it, too. I can't wait to see the cover once it's done!

So it's celebration time for the Weredeer!

When am I?

Well, I had an idea for a post but it just flew out of my brain. I'm watching hip-hop videos, maybe that's why. 50cent ruined my blogging.

It's finally warm here. Everything's brilliantly green and gold the way it only is for a short time in spring--oh, wait, I remember what I was going to write about.

Since it's early in the year, as usual I can't seem to settle to a project. I'm flitting like a hummingbird from one project to another, writing a little bit here, a few pages there. That's fine--eventually one will hold my interest and I'll finish it over the summer--but it is a bit confusing to keep the details straight. Not the plot and character details, I don't mean: those are too important for me to forget, even during a writing hiatus. No, it's the season of the year that mixes me up. Little Sparrow and the swashbuckling fantasy (I'm going to have to name it; I'll start calling it Adventures in Zoology) both take place in early spring, but Stag in Ruin is set in mid-fall and the Bell-Men sequel (Bloodhound) is set in early winter.

So Monday I was writing about Kristof the weredeer running around in drifts of dead leaves in the Endric high mountains in Stag in Ruin; yesterday I wrote a little bit about Terry and Cledesculen escaping from bandits in a golden spring dawn in Adventures in Zoology; and today I spent my lunch break writing about Cam riding her unicorn through the snow in the bell-men's world. I have to look out the window to see what time of year I'm really in.

Um.

Just because I have absolutely nothing to report on the Bell-Men completion front doesn't mean I have to stop blogging, I guess.

I don't know what my problem is with (re-)finishing Bell-Men. It's weird. I've never had trouble like this--it's like I've run into a solid wall of 'now what OMG what next?' and can't get past it.

Actually, I have had this trouble before, some three-odd years ago when I was rewriting the sequel to The Weredeer (that still doesn't have a really good title--I call it Stag at Bay despite its being generic). Like Bell-Men, Stag at Bay was a true rewrite. I had a finished draft that I hated, so I cut the entire latter half--and I do mean cut, almost every word went away--and rewrote it entirely. Then I wasn't happy with the result and by God I did it again. I like the book now, but it about killed me at the time.

The main problem with that book was a lack of plot. I hadn't done enough plotting going in, and then I'd muscled through anyway without knowing what I wanted to do with the book. During the rewrites, I remember spending hours stripping wallpaper from the bathroom while talking out loud to myself, trying to work out a new plot. That I actually preferred stripping wallpaper to writing shows just how desperate the situation was. (I did a terrible job on the bathroom, incidentally. I just hope the writing was better.)

Alas, I have no wallpapered bathroom to deal with now. I'm just going to have to stop reading other people's books for one stupid day OMG and knuckle down for an old-fashioned plotting session. I am literally within two or three thousand words of THE END. There is absolutely no excuse for me dragging my feet like this.

Finish Friday: The Weredeer

Yes, okay, it's only just barely Friday still (11:59 pm as of right now), but I just finished my final editing pass on The Weredeer. It's good. I don't think I can improve it anymore right now. In other words, I've rewritten it to the limits of my current ability, which was my goal; I'm more proud of this book than I am of any other I've ever written. I think Little Sparrow is actually better written, but Little Sparrow isn't finished.

My next step is to finish polishing the query letter and then the synopsis. Then I'll try querying a few agents and see if I get any nibbles.

Halfway through

Geez, it's the end of June already. I round out the half-year mark with a rejection for poor "Never Be Alone"; despite my tepid fondness for it, I think it's time to retire it permanently. The editor gave me some good feedback which is probably accurate, but which doesn't make me want to pursue another rewrite.

June was okay. I didn't get much done, although I did rewrite an old story FUGGETYFUG I need to hack it down RIGHT NOW to 4k words and SUB IT before midnight! I can't believe I forgot!

Um, anyway, I rewrote an old story in June and I've half-written a new story. I sold a flash story to Bards & Sages Quarterly. I got some rejections that disheartened me enough that I'm considering retiring everything I've ever written and growing hot peppers as a hobby instead. There would be less heartbreak, since nothing much kills peppers and I have a head start with nine huge cayenne plants out back.

I have zero novels out right now, zero novellas, and only three stories. Right now I'm feeling so paralyzed at my inability to judge my own work that I'm incapable of sending anything out--not a query letter, not a manuscript, not anything. I guess this is probably a good time to ask for beta readers for chapter one of The Weredeer. You don't have to commit to the whole thing, just the first chapter. I'm pretty sure it starts too slow. If you're interested, drop me an email at kateshaw123 [at] gmail [dot] com and you will have my eternal gratitude.

Now I have to go chop down that stupid "Cult of the Butterfly" story to 4k words. Since it's squatting there like a toad at 6,300 words, I don't anticipate having much fun.

Would you like words with that?

I spent my entire lunch hour writing, which I used to do all the time. I still don't have a title for the story, and it's not typed up at all (I'm writing it longhand), but I think I'm probably about 2,500 words in and roughly halfway through. It started out a little dark, but nothing Kristof the weredeer is in can stay too dark for long. But since the climax of the story is going to take place in a battle where basically everyone gets slaughtered, I figure it'll get dark again.

It's wonderful to be writing something that's flowing so smoothly. That hasn't happened since The Taste of Magic last fall. I don't think this story is my best ever or anything, but it's not bad and I'm having fun with it. "Having fun" is a very important part of the writing process, but one which is easily forgotten.

Is it Wednesday again already?

As introduced by Catherine J. Gardner, it's Work-in-Progress Wednesday! And I actually did some writing today!

Actually, I did some writing yesterday too. Yesterday I finished the rough draft rewrite of "Cult of the Butterfly," which is too long and horrible but at least it's done (again). I was going to start fixing it and chopping big chunks out of it today, but instead I started work on a new Kristof Hart short story (Kristof, of course, being the weredeer of The Weredeer). I'm having a blast with it and wrote about 1,500 words today--I haven't typed it up so it may not be quite that much, but maybe it's a little more. Anyway, Kristof is a main character but not the viewpoint character, which is an interesting challenge. I don't have a title for it yet, but I'm sure to come up with something awful by the time it's done.

Holy crap! It's the internet!

I read about the Internet Mapping Project over at Boing Boing a few days ago, and of course I had to print a blank map. I spent several glorious hours yesterday drawing the Internet. I'll be sending the original to the Internet Mapping Project, but I wanted to save a copy for myself so I scanned it. Here it is:

I know, you can't really see it in that picture. So I put a giant version on my website at http://kcshaw.net/internetmap.html. I warn you, it's a humongous .gif. ETA: Hey, I just realized if you click the picture above, it embiggens! I've probably just used up all my blogspot picture space with that one.

Totally changing the subject now. I saw guy-who-looks-just-like-Alex at work today! I hadn't seen him for months and was starting to worry he'd dropped out, but no, he's still in school and doing well. I'm so glad!

I rewrote the query for The Weredeer this afternoon. I still want to tinker with it, but it's about ten billion times better than it was. Next step: fix the appallingly bad synopsis for The Weredeer.

Too much work for lunch

I opened up my old Weredeer query over lunch (which I'm still at, natch) to see how much work it needed. Reading Carrie Harris, Query Ninja's query critiques has inspired me.

Alas, now that I know a little more about what makes a query good, I'm horrified to find that not only is my Weredeer query not good, it's possibly the worst query ever written that is not actually written by someone semi-literate. It's so bad it doesn't even make me want to read the book, and presumably I find weredeer intrinsically interesting.

But I can fix it! The query's a too-long explanation of what happens in the first part of the book, which has to go. Instead, I need to figure out the key hook and focus on that. Um.

What makes this book special? Hell if I know. Kristof can turn into a deer, yes, but that's not really, you know, enough to get most people to pick up a book. The core theme of the book, I think, is Kristof's friendship with Gabe, who has basically nothing in common with him--not species, not background, not sexual orientation, not nothin. And yet they forge a strong friendship that gets them both into huge amounts of trouble while they're trying to help each other out.

Does that sound like a hook? Can I actually say something like "The Weredeer explores the bonds of friendship between two men from different worlds" with a straight face? Hmm. I'll work on it.

(Also, someone just microwaved something that smells like poo with broccoli. It's in a little plastic tray, which means she probably spent three bucks on it at least. My ham sandwich and Sun Chips cost me almost nothing and they smell like food that hasn't yet been through a digestive tract.)

End of May round-up

Actually, May went pretty well. I think it's my positive attitude, although at times I had to grit my teeth to get a smile out. While I am an optimist, I'm also a grouch, which is an odd combination. I'm also getting grouchier every year that goes by.

I received about 10,000 rejections this month, but I also got two acceptances. "Orcs and Trolls" will hit Every Day Fiction on June 12 and "Long Way Home" will appear in the June issue of Semaphore magazine. Actually, the June issue is already up (actually, that makes sense--it's a New Zealand magazine so it's tomorrow there already, right?), so you can go read "Long Way Home" now if the mood strikes you. The cover of the June issue is amazing; I love it so much I really wish this was a print magazine instead of online.

Also, my story "The King's Messenger," the one with Kristof the weredeer in it (his first print appearance, which is why I'm so pleased with the story despite the fact that it is, hmm, possibly not my best ever), is now available at AnthologyBuilder.com. I updated it just a little before sending it in, and changed the title to "Kristof and the King's New Car." Yes, I know. Worst title ever. I don't know what I was thinking.

Also in writing news this month, I got a partial request from an agent for The Taste of Magic, and I actually wrote a flash story! I've also been working on the fourth Weredeer book, now tentatively titled Stag in Ruin, and the new project that still doesn't have a name. Little Sparrow hasn't had any lovin' this month, but that's only because it needs a little more simmering time.

I have so many books I want to write that they're practically stacked up in a holding pattern waiting to land. Never mind Stag in Ruin, which is after all a sequel; after the untitled project, I've got Little Sparrow, Tiger (what is this, a zoo?), an untitled YA book about a girl who learns she has inherited her estranged father's gift for charming animals, and Charmed Circle, which I think is going to be a sort-of-sequel to Evil Outfitters, Ltd. At least Evil Outfitters is already written.

Onward into June!

Filling in gaps

Last year I started writing the fourth book in the Kristof and Gabe series--or, rather, the third sequel to The Weredeer, because maybe some day it'll be published. I cheated, though, skipping from scene to scene to keep myself interested.

Well, this morning and partly this afternoon, I sat down and wrote all the missing scenes between the ones I'd already written. I don't know why I decided to do it now, when I've got Little Sparrow on the back burner and the new-untitled project on the front burner. But I'm glad I did.

I'm almost 15,000 words into this fourth book (working title: "four"), a lot more than I realized. Now when I'm ready to come back and finish it, it's ready for me. No gaps.

Step one to broaden my scope

With racefail '09 surging back into life again (if it ever really died) with MammothFail (I link to Leigh Dragoon's blog because she's keeping up with the whole thing and adding links to that post), I've noticed something happening in my writing.

When I describe a new character, quite often now I mention their shade of skin. As in these two lines from the new project: "A small, round woman with brown skin appeared from behind a rack of coats" and "Justin was talking to someone new, a slender man with pale skin and dark hair." The second I do that, I signal the reader (and me, the writer) that this is not a world in which everyone has the same color skin. And hurrah for that!

For me, this actually started with my in-depth revision of The Weredeer. I'd always imagined Kristof as having brown skin (to me he looks sort of Greek), but somehow I'd never put that into the book. I guess I never thought of it until the whole racefail issue came up, and when I went back in to revise, it was on my mind. That book's told in first person, so Kristof started describing people who didn't look like him as having either lighter or darker skin than he does. I guess I just got in the habit of thinking about it.

I'm really happy about this turn of events. For one thing, I feel oddly that I've made Kristof's voice truer with that one little change, and for another, my fantasy worlds are now that much richer. In Little Sparrow, for instance, I know why Hildy is very pale-skinned while most of the people in her city are either mid-brown or dark brown (it's because there are three different regions people immigrated from in the recent past), and although that detail may never come up in my writing, it subtly influences me as I write. Anything that makes worldbuilding stronger, and characters more interesting, is a good thing.

I'm not saying this is a solution to racefail, but it's got to be a step in the right direction.

Genderfail, otherfail

Aaron Polson posted about genderfail recently, counting up the protagonists in his stories and making a spreadsheet to see how he did with male vs. female vs. neuter/other protags. That made me think even more about my own writing. I'm not as thorough as Aaron, but I took a look through my stories this evening (published, unpublished, novels, shorts, and works in progress) and I think I'm going to have a long talk with myself.

Going by viewpoint characters alone--that is, the main character through whom we see the story events unfold--I came out about even, with 24 male and 23 female. That's good, especially since if a character appeared in more than one story, I counted him/her more than once.

But if I break this down further and look at non-human characters by gender (counting were-creatures and trolls as non-human but elves as human), 14 were male and only 3 were female. Even taking into account that weredeer Kristof Hart appears five times in the male side (one short story, three completed novels, one novel-in-progress), that's still a big disparity. I can count him only once and still get 10 male, 3 female.

I mentioned in my reply to Aaron's post that I found male characters more interesting (and challenging) to write because I have to work harder to see things through their POV. Apparently I like to take that to extremes. I'm not sure why I think maleness is more challenging to write than alien-ness.

On the other hand, I'm not writing about, say, weredeer just because weredeer are cool (weredeer are by definition uncool); I'm approaching human problems from a fresh perspective. How does a weredeer fit in among a society that is mostly human? Kristof's not always comfortable, even when he's at home. One of the issues I address over and over in my writing is belonging: as a family member, as a friend, as a part of society, and so forth; and one of the big issues that keeps coming up lately in my writing is the idea of race (and, since I write fantasy, species) and how that affects belonging. In The Taste of Magic, for instance, Ana (female!) is a half-breed elf in a society that considers half-breeds second-class citizens--but even half-breeds have things good compared to trolls; I got so into that aspect of the plot that I made it a big focus in the sequel, Blood and Taxes, where Ana and her friend Ash (male troll) keep having to face their society's assumptions and prejudices. I find this fascinating.

And yet, apparently, I also find it overwhelmingly male. Those three non-human females are two dragons and another weredeer, Rose of White Rose, and if you are playing along at home you may remember that White Rose isn't even a real project--it's just an exercise in writing a bad epic fantasy (the one where the elf lord mage has a foot fetish, because I got bored with him and decided to spice things up a little). I actually address gay issues more than I do women's issues even though all those main characters are straight too, since Kristof has to come to terms with his best friend (male human) being gay.

I'm not sure why this is. I have to think about it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the issue of otherness and character gender.