Paksworld

(Mirrored from Universes blog)

Working on the rewrite of Cold Welcome.  On Monday, I sent Editor the latest draft of the new ending, and in light of Editor’s comments worked on it some more, then started in on front-to-back run (actually crawl!) through combining her original letter, the marked up manuscript line edits,  and the changes that would be required by the new ending.   This also involved having two versions of the first chapters on the monitor at once, the letter, a stack of reference printouts, and the marked ms beside me on the desk. Read the rest of this entry »

At this stage of revision, I always wish I had another two weeks.  Or a month.    There’s always one…more…problem bit to untangle, that I think would benefit from more time to analyze and think about.  And then another, in the next section.  However, things are progressing appropriately.  The holes are filling in,  the once-blurry places are sharpening into focus, and though I’m dealing with some decisions made earlier that I might make differently now, they’re working out with some fierce hammering and welding.   (Clever ideas.  Clever ideas are the ones that seem so shiny! and smart!  at the time, and that flow easily in first draft and then…toward the end…reveal themselves to be more clever than good.  For instance, the…mumble-mumph.  How do you mumble-mumble and mumph-mumph so as to have a crisis *here* that requires characters to appear to have a random emergency giving you-the-writer the opportunity to lay the hook for the string that will later be pulled, so when something (errummph?) is revealed, the reader will feel a connection–yes, there was a foreshadowing but things were so hectic I missed it–and thus the revelation is not a deus ex machina.   Though of course all this backstage work IS the writer being the deus ex machina.)   Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, those are roofers tearing off shingles at the house my mother owned when she died.  Our son lived there awhile and stays there on weekends, as do guests.  It’s where we have parties, too, as it has  more room than our house.   It will soon have a metal roof, which should last longer, given that we have hail storms and branches that fall on the roof and squirrels who think getting through roofs is a lot of fun.

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So…when did I forget about active verbs, huh?  Not completely forget but forget enough to find myself in a thicket of “was carried, was done, was this and was that.”   Oh, and pluperfect constructions where they weren’t needed.    Also temporal glitches.   It helps to keep things in order, except when you intend to have them scrambled, right?  Right.  FIRST they did this, then because that happened they did this other thing, the results of which caused yet another action.

This doesn’t mean I’m down to the fine-combing, really, it’s just that some things stick out and I deal with them then, even if it’s not strictly by my protocol.

This will be the last post for awhile because a) deadlines and b) medical stuff–appointments, tests, all that, all taking time out of the writing day.    So I decided to hint at some things coming up in Crown of Renewal, along with the background research that went into them.   I hope this will tide you over for a couple of weeks, while I finish the revisions and the shorter work due for an anthology. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a blog post up at Orbit UK.   It relates to some things we’ve talked about on this blog.  I wrote it awhile back, and it’s only now moved to the front of the queue, but it’s apropos to the first chapter of the next book, in spades.

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Editor’s revision letter has now joined Agent’s revision comments and I am vanishing into the depths of Crown to work on the first level of revision, the deep structural, or foundation…and then the connection between that and the top level (some rooms, as mentioned before, are being added to the whole)…and then the top or finish level.  Read the rest of this entry »

The first week out is the week that determines (nearly always) whether a book will reach “bestseller” status.     It’s the week that agents watch over,  checking BookScan numbers regularly, checking rankings any place they can find one and making their own calculations of raw numbers v. other books’ raw numbers.   In the first week,  LIMITS sold a few fewer hardcovers than ECHOES, and a few more e-books, to wind up with a modest increase of total hardcover/ebook sales in the US market.   So thank you, all of you who wanted to and were able to buy a copy  in the first week.    Thanks for talking about the books, and introducing others to them.   You’re the ones who keep a writer in bread & butter (and dark chocolate.  Can’t forget the dark chocolate.)    Read the rest of this entry »

So today, the nitpicking round it is ongoing, and it’s…always interesting.   Nitpicking has various uses.  One of them can be shortening a book that’s too long (too long defined by publishing economics.)   I think I’ve posted before about some of the shortening strategies.   But this book isn’t too long, so nitpicking is aimed at other goals.   Tyops of course, like that one right there.   Not just letter reversals and misspelled words, but words mistakenly typed in place of others.  “Heard” for “herd.”    “Policed” for “pleased.”  (Don’t ask how I did that one…I don’t know.   Brain burp.  It wasn’t in this book.)   Anything that sticks out as awkward, bothersome, annoying, confusing.   For instance:

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Editor has approved the title for Book V:  Crown of Renewal.    Scheduled to release late May 2014, though that’s always subject to change .   You will soon notice that title as a category (like, um, for this post.)

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