Writer's Grove

School’s out! I get to write full time now, and catch up on all the things around the house that have gotten away from me. Like, you know, the entire backyard.

Good news! My typeset manuscript for Hounded is here—the galleys, I believe they’re called—and they’re simply beautiful to look at. Seein’ my first book in print like this has had me grinning like an idiot all day. There are little boo-boo’s to fix here and there, typos that creep in during the process, you know, but nothing serious. In other good news, the manuscript’s been sent out to a few other authors here and there for blurbs, so I might have some of their spiffy (and kind) words to share down the road.

As I’m leading up to the big finale in Hammered, I keep changing my mind about who’s going to feel the pain and how. I wonder if it’s like that for the Fates (or the Norns), trying to figure out which thread to cut and how to knit the others together afterward.  I’m even throwing in a couple of the Norse gods—Heimdall and Tyr—that I hadn’t originally planned for, because more mayhem and peril is always a good time. My plans for the fate of Freyja have also changed…

Coming soon: a puppy cuteness overdose (we have a Boston Terrier pup), another Still Life with Fantasy and Fruit, and a red-bearded dwarf named Olaf Umlaut.

This is about alpha and beta readers, not werewolves. Rarr! Sorry. It’s also about all the fixin’ that needs to be done before a book appears on the shelves.

Nobody writes perfect, golden prose on their first draft. Or even their second or third. I could be wrong…but I doubt it.

Every writer’s different on how they approach these things, but it’s fairly common to have some sort of feedback during the writing process. An objective pair of eyes can catch inconsistencies and let you know whether what you’ve written A) makes any sense and B) if you’re entertaining. I use two alpha readers who look at each chapter as it’s finished and one beta reader who looks at the whole novel only. These three people all look at the book before my agent or editor sees it.

So hey, shout-outs to my alphas, Alan and Tawnya: They catch all sorts of good stuff and let me know when I’ve made a factual error. For example: “Kevin, blue spruce trees don’t grow in Europe. Dumbass.”

Calling me a dumbass wasn’t really part of the original comment—I simply felt like one. And I’m grateful to my alpha reader for checking on these things. I should have taken the time to research that, but I was probably in a character/plot groove and didn’t want to pause to make sure I named the right species of tree. A good alpha reader will call you on stuff like that, and it’s hard to find good alphas. Who’d want to read a novel in spastic spoonfuls, sometimes weeks apart, and nitpick instead of simply enjoying the story? Such people are a rare breed.

My beta reader, Andrea, is my Politically Correct filter. (Sometimes I put things in there just to set her off. It’s funny when she gets into a snit.) She also finds inconsistencies in tone that occasionally creep in during the course of writing, and she suggests that I flesh out a character here or maybe leave out something there. Since she reads the whole book in a sitting or two, she spots larger issues rather than tiny ones.

After the alphas and beta are finished and I’ve made changes according to their suggestions, I send it off to my agent, who may/may not have plenty to say (there was a lot for Hounded, but he had me deliver Hexed to Del Rey as is) and only then do I deliver it to my editor. This means my editor is probably seeing my fourth or fifth draft, but I go ahead and call it my “first” draft in terms of my computer files.

Then we go back and forth with changes until she says heck, this is pretty good, I’ll accept this. At that point everybody takes a few minutes for a happy dance. To give you an idea of quantity, there were five rounds of changes for Hounded, only three for Hexed.

But wait! We’re not finished! Next the copy editor gets hold of it and lays down some Grammar Fu with a green pencil. He/she will also catch lots of factual issues, ask great questions, point out inconsistencies, and I can make changes there as necessary.

After that it goes to typesetting, and the only changes I can make then are minor spelling/punctuation doodads. Inserting/deleting passages is probably not a good idea at this point, because it costs money.

Finally, it’s finished. Only after months of work will it go out to the general public. The author’s name is on the cover so he/she gets all the credit, but quite a few people are involved with any publication. (I didn’t even mention the cover artist and all the people in marketing and publicity. That’ll be a blog for another day.) So to my alphas and beta and my agent & editor(s), thank you, and cheers.

Since my books are first-person narratives, it’s easy to get into a bit of a rut. Ruts can be nice, mind you. Sometimes they’re downright comfy. But sometimes you’d like to put on a new pair of shoes and step out of that rut. Stretch your legs, go on a minor perambulation off-road, discover wombats lurking in the undergrowth. Find buried treasure. Or simply find out where the hell this metaphor is going, because I’m not sure anymore.

I’ve been stepping outside the (entirely pleasant) rut lately. For five chapters in Hammered, I get to tell the story in the voice of a different narrator. Making each narrator sound (and read) differently than my accustomed narrative voice is the fun bit. And it’s really bizarre what it can do to your head when you sink yourself so deeply into a character that you begin to think like him.

One of my characters is especially hirsute—as in, don’t let him make you any food without a full-body hairnet. After writing in his voice for an hour, I was overwhelmed with an urgent need to shave. And get a haircut. I actually felt hairier after writing and thinking in his voice.

That might indicate I have a dire need for therapy. But I hope it means I’m writing a lively character with his own personality.

Hmmm. If writing a hairy character makes me want to shave…I think I’ll create a skinny character next and drop ten pounds after writing a thousand words in his voice. And I will never, ever write a criminal because I like living outside of jail.

I know not how others do it, but I create a very specific set of verbal tics for each character. Leif Helgarson doesn’t use contractions often, for example, giving his diction an almost ridiculous level of formality. A Russian character neglects to use articles and often forgets to use pronouns, etc.

51K on Hammered now. For some reason, being over 50K makes me feel like I’m sprinting for the finish line. I do a little “Halfway!” dance all through the 40s, but once I hit 50K I know I’m on the home stretch. D’oh! Writing “home stretch” made Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home” pop into my head. And now that I’ve written it down and you’ve read it, it’s in your head too. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mötley Crüe is a virus.

Ah, goggles & dirigibles—is there anything more divine? Yes! Goggles and dirigibles and FRUIT! Behold the latest composition in my ongoing series:

One of the things I’m enjoying as a writer is how I frequently get surprised by my need to research something. As a reader, I’m familiar with being taken to “whole new worlds,” but it happens often when I write as well.

1. Moms are cool.

2. I’m currently reading a book called Shop Class as Soulcraft. It reminds me very much of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though this is a bit more straightforward and not couched in fiction. I’ll post a review when I’m finished.

3. I liked Robert Redick’s The Red Wolf Conspiracy quite a bit, though I haven’t written a full review. The creatures called murths were fascinating…wished I could have read more about them.

4. I’m now at 44K on Hammered.

5. There are degrees of geekiness and nerdiness, and I while I can truthfully claim to be both mildly nerdy and mildly geeky, there are certain things I must acquire to rise up in the ranks a become a TurboGeek or TurboNerd. The good folks at thinkgeek.com have me covered. For example, there’s this Dread Pirate Roberts action figure. It’s terribly fashionable, as I’ve wished. And then I need to get myself a new sonic screwdriver because the new Dr. Who has one. When I’m on the go and a bit sluggish and don’t have a pot of coffee ready, then I can have myself a Caffeinated Maple Bacon Lollipop. Mmm, bacon. With 80 mg. of caffeine in every pop, I’ll be shredding like Megadeth on my electric guitar shirt. Rock on.

I wish Chaucer would get more credit than he usually does. The dude was brilliant, and it’s hard to appreciate him fully without hearing his original language—which was, after all, a bit different from ours. He wrote The Canterbury Tales before the great vowel shift in English, and spellings weren’t entirely agreed upon, either (which continued through Shakespeare’s day). Still, modern readers can follow along pretty darn well, and when you hear it with the original pronunciation his gift becomes clear. I had a professor in college who would read it to the class with the shifted vowels, just as Chaucer would have in his time, and it’s wondrous poetry.

Hounded will be published one year from today. Is it too early to start a countdown?

Hmm. Probably.

While staring at the calendar and willing it to turn faster, I’ve been reflecting on what got me this far. Writing the book sure helped, of course, but writing the query letter got the book looked at in the first place. Lots of writers never get their book seriously considered because their query letter doesn’t snag an agent’s interest.

I’d actually suggest writing a query letter as a method of focusing your writing if you’re in the process of completing a project now. Distilling your project down to its essentials can be wonderfully clarifying if you’re flailing about with subplots and how you’re ever going to end it.

The meat of your query should focus on your main character’s conflict. What is at stake for your character, and what kind of heck must he/she endure before that conflict gets resolved? You put other goodies in a query too, like word count and marketing possibilities and maybe a wee bit about yourself if it will help you sell the story—but all of those are side dishes. Focus on the meat. You won’t be able to dwell on subplots very much and that’s okay—after all, if they don’t want your main plot, they’re not going to want the subplot(s) either.

My query letter got me several requests for partial manuscripts, a couple of full requests, and one whole agent (which is all you need). The meat was in the first three paragraphs. In the last paragraph I included the word count and genre, mentioned its series potential, and asked if I could send the manuscript. To celebrate the beginning of my year-long countdown to publication, below is the meat of my query letter for Hounded:

Atticus O’Sullivan has been running for two thousand years, and he’s a bit tired of it. After he stole a magical sword from the Tuatha Dé Danann (those who became the Sidhe or the Fae) in a first-century battle, some of them were furious and gave chase, and some were secretly amused that a Druid had the cheek to defy them. As the centuries passed and Atticus remained a fugitive—an annoyingly long-lived one, at that—those who were furious only grew more so, while others began to aid him in secret.


Now he’s living in Tempe, Arizona, the very last of the Druids, far from where the Fae can easily enter this plane and find him. It’s a place where many paranormals have decided to hide from the troubles of the Old World—from an Icelandic vampire holding a grudge against Thor to a coven of Polish witches who ran from the German Blitzkrieg.


When Atticus hears from the Morrigan that his nemesis, Aenghus Óg, has found him again, he decides to stay and fight rather than run. In so doing, he becomes the center of a power struggle among the Tuatha Dé Danann, where the sword he stole is the key to a plot to overthrow Brighid, first among the Fae.

That was all the meat I wrote. I doubt my agent pitched the book in the same way, and that’s not what you’ll see on the back cover of the book, but it worked. I left out a couple of gods and some werewolves and an Irish wolfhound named Oberon, but none of that was the meat of the story.

If I may, I highly recommend a site called the Absolute Write Water Cooler. Here’s the link. They have a Share Your Work section where you can post your query letter and get feedback on it. I didn’t discover it until after I’d already written mine, but it’s clear that it helps many people. They have lots of other forums too, and it’s a great community made up of published and (as yet) unpublished authors.

Okay. Is it 2011 yet?

Quick post: Saw two movies recently on the opposite ends of entertainment. One was Kick-Ass. Don’t take any kids. Just take your inner comic book nerd and enjoy.

One of the things I completely geeked out about is that I buy my comics at Atomic Comics…and it’s in the movie.

The other movie was Oceans, a documentary released today, Earth Day. Stunning. Beautiful. Jaw dropped when I saw the blanket octopus and the mantis shrimp.  Check ’em out:

Oh, and yeah, the guy swimming along the Great White in peace was a trip. Amazing. Makes me wonder what else we’re missing down there. Two thumbs up for both movies.