Writer's Grove

When it comes to writing novels only one thing is easier—knowing I’ll finish. I have a confidence there where there used to be gnawing uncertainty that I might be wasting my time. Now I know that I can probably crank out two a year if I have an outline for them. That’s vastly comforting. But there are other parts to the writing process that will never get easier. 

I’ve always enjoyed my family tradition for Thanksgiving, but didn’t realize it was out of the mainstream at first. I thought with a certain naïveté that since everyone got the day off and everyone was talking turkey, everyone must celebrate it the same way too. Eventually, after seeing several movies of people indoors and not beating the shit out of a piñata, I hypothesized that maybe my family did things a bit differently. To test it, I asked a school friend after Thanksgiving, “So what did you get out of your piñata?” and received a look of complete bewilderment in return. That clinched it. My family was the strange one. But also very cool.

We go out to the desert and have Thanksgiving dinner outdoors. We can do that because it’s Arizona, and nine years out of ten the weather is just fine on the fourth Thursday of November. Refusing to succumb to food comas, we then climb a hill with a beautiful view of Rio Verde and some almond orchards, snap a few pictures, then climb back down and ritualistically, mercilessly, joyfully thrash an innocent piñata to death. Don’t judge; it’s great fun and we bond over the shared violence, and besides, that papier mâché had it coming.

There is much to give thanks for this year. Hope you have many blessings to count and you enjoy lots of warm fuzzies, and maybe hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I have always wanted to time travel, and for a while I held on to a tiny dream that one day I would find someone like Doc Brown, and he’d have a flux capacitor in a blue Shelby Mustang, and once we got hold of 1.21 jigowatts of electricity (the movie’s approximation of gigawatts), we’d be golden. We (the Doc and I) would go back and see Hamlet when it first debuted in Elizabethan England, and then we’d most likely catch the plague and die. Or get hanged as witches. Today that dream sort of came true.

I didn’t find a Doc Brown, but I did receive notice that my long wait for publication has just been shortened by a week. The release date for Hounded has been moved up from April 26 to a NEW! EARLIER! date of April 19! So in a way it’s like I skipped a week of time there. And so did everyone who pre-orders the book or buys it the first week! All those lucky people have become time travelers and probably would be justified in becoming a bit snooty about it. I’m a wee bit saddened that it didn’t involve a tricked-out Mustang (or a ride in Dr. Who’s TARDIS—bow ties are cool), but I’m certainly not going to complain. A shorter wait is just one more thing to give thanks for on Thursday.

1. I’m frustrated that I can’t seem to watch Sharktopus on demand. I’ve seen the trailers and it’s chock full of ridiculous. The kind of movie where you just sit down with some friends and popcorn and laugh. I don’t troll the TV enough to catch it when it’s on the Syfy Channel, and it’s a shame, because I think it has the potential to be a B (or C) movie classic.

2. My school’s football team advanced in the state playoffs last night. They’re in the final four; it’s the best they’ve ever done. I won’t get to announce anymore, though, since it must be in a neutral location and I’m not a neutral announcer.

3. Going to see Harry Potter at some point this weekend; kid is looking forward to it, to put it mildly.

4. Author Stacia Kane put up a great post about copyright and if you’re a writer (or a reader) you should check it out.

5. My webmaster dude (IT term) is working on my site and what I’ve seen of it so far is pretty spiffy.

6. For two whole days this week, I had nothing to grade. It was awesome. But now I have a giant stack of essays to look over, so I’d better get to it.

7. All three books now have their cover art up at Amazon! And (ahem) they’re available for preorder! :)

1. By this time tomorrow I will be caught up on my grading—only happens eight times a year! But I’m not quite caught up yet, so this will have to be quick.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but I finally scored a beer I’ve been looking for and I had to write it up. My writing/blogging friend Hillary Jacques told me about it and claimed it was to die for; I have taken her at her word because she’s from Alaska, and people have died for stranger things than beer in the land of salmon and short summers.

The beer is Alaskan Smoked Porter, and it comes in big ol’ dated bottles. For such an august brew I broke out the seminal autumn cuisine and a very serious dwarf to guard it.

That’s a grilled brat with sauerkraut and mustard, accompanied by some kettle chips. The Alaskan Smoked Porter stands majestically to one side. And on duty today from the dwarf kingdom is Einar Ericksson, high atop the seeded bun, shining a light in the dark cave of tasteless beers and leading us to liquid gold.

Einar’s motto (“I seek treasure and beer and often don’t know the difference”) is an example for us all. And in truth, he’s something of an archetypal character, guiding us through menus of tasteless swill to find a brew with gustatory substance. Do you doubt his archetypal muscle? Behold:

Don’t know if you’ve ever checked out Goodreads.com or not, but I dig it and I’m “there” now as an author if you’d like to click over there and say howdy. You can friend me there or follow me as a fan (I think?) and my blog posts will update there too. I’m not going to attempt to rate all the books I’ve read because that would take a looong time, but I do enjoy putting some things up and comparing my ratings with others, especially my friend Alan, who tends not to like things as much as I do. He’s a bit more critical than I am, and that’s a good thing, believe me, because he’s my alpha reader and I don’t know what I’d do without his insights. Usually I’ll give four or five stars to things or I won’t rate it at all, proceeding on the maxim if you don’t have anything nice to say…you know. The exception to this rule is Charles Dickens. I delight in giving his books one star. I might be the only person in the world who despises Charles Dickens, but I’m grateful to Goodreads for giving me a forum to express my wintry discontent with so little effort.

The other thing that’s really cool about Goodreads is the ability to get some ideas on what to read next…and I’m almost to the point where I’ll need something soon. I’ve been making progress through my pile o’ books and I’m just about caught up. I think I have found a candidate for the next one…it’s called Hunger by Jackie Kessler. It’s about one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Know why I’m going to read it? Because of this picture right here:

That’s Neil Gaiman holding Hunger. That’s all I needed to know. Put that on my TBR pile.

Also, my cover is getting “out there” and I’m very happy to see that people tend to like it. A lot. Here’s a blog where it appeared recently—she got the photos from my Twitter feed, so thanks to Persephone for following my tweets!

And today I will leave you with a gratuitous photo of my Boston Terrier, Sophie:

They didn’t tell me they would be shiny! I just got what they call sales proofs in the mail—these are what the sales folks take around to bookstores and say, “See, if you’re going to judge a book by its cover, then THIS ONE WINS!”—and the title that was previously white text is now foil stamped and embossed! I had no idea they were going to do that until my editor told me they’d gone ahead and done it. My scan doesn’t do it justice, but you’ll get the idea:

Well, my peeps at Del Rey outdid themselves with these covers. I love ’em! They are going to gleam on the shelves! Ginormous thanks to authors Ari Marmell, Kelly Meding, and Nicole Peeler for reading the book before the awesome cover existed and saying something nice about it. That truly means the most, because they didn’t have to read it or say anything nice, yet they did.

I really dig this one because you can see Atticus’s tattoo much better; it wraps five times around his biceps and then falls down the top of his forearm, but you can’t see that in the pose for Hounded. This cover has a couple more touch-ups to go before it’s finalized, but it’s 90% there and they needed to get a proof out for the sales team. I think it looks spectacular as is! Hope you dig ’em too.

There’s a pretty cool post over at SFWA by Victoria Strauss about gettin’ published: It’s not a crap shoot. She addresses three assumptions made by grumbling, rejected writers, and while I urge you to click over and read her original post, I’d like to piggyback on those assumptions based on my own recent experience.

1) First assumption: All manuscripts are on equal footing in the marketplace. As she says, that’s completely untrue, and I’m not talking about anyone’s writing but my own. The two books I wrote, submitted, and had rejected before I wrote Hounded were not all that great, though I thought they were okay at the time. Only with experience and hindsight did I see that they deserved to be rejected. Yet I don’t regret writing them; I learned a lot in the process and they got me to a much better place in my craft. If you’re on submission right now, write the next book while you’re waiting; it’ll probably be better than the one you’re shopping around. (It worked for me.)
2) Second assumption: The industry doesn’t want new writers. Not sure how anyone can believe this one. I just read a great debut by Mark Hodder called The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack. And my fellow inductees into The League of Reluctant Adults, Sonya Bateman and K.A. Stewart, came out with their debuts this year. I’m obviously a new writer, and there are plenty more on deck…so I think that one’s wishful thinking, whoever thinks it.
3) Last one: No one wants a writer without a platform. Strauss says this assumption is more true for nonfiction writers than fiction…and she’s right. I’m still trying to build my platform; I wrote and sold my book without knowing what a platform was. In fact, I’m still not sure about the whole platform-building thing, since I’m such a newb to this aspect of the business. What I probably need is some help from my pug, Manley (named after the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins). Come on: How can you not follow a guy who has the devotion of a pug like this?