Got a new book yesterday. It’s just over 300 pages.
It took a good chunk of a year to get written, edited, polished up, cover art made, a final approval, and then published and put in my grubby little hands.
And I read the whole thing in less than 24 hours.
I’m not sure if that makes the author feel good or not. I know how I’d feel about it (sleep dep makes you stronger, read it again!).
I just finished a latest book by a beloved author. And I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it… I’m more indifferent to how it ended. Even at the midway point I was like “Shouldn’t I be caring about this? I don’t care about this!”
I feel as though they (some of the authors) are taking the path of least resistance in their books. Characters are not evolving, they’re not growing into themselves, they’re stagnating. And, they’re seriously starting to smell.
It’s depressing. Now, I’m off to work on my own story, and I hope my editors/critique partners love me enough to say “This is the worst shit I’ve ever laid my eyes on” instead of blowing sugar up my ass and letting me make a fool of myself in front of an editor/agent/publisher.
Dora drooling is not good.
Moving on.
As most people know, I’m a wuss when it comes to spiders. I’m pretty sure the monks in Tibet heard me scream like a schoolgirl when one crawled across my foot in the shower. I then almost killed myself trying to escape from a spider, that, truly, wasn’t very scary.
Now, the spiders I killed last night and this morning? If they’d had their legged splayed out instead of bent at the joints, they would have been just a bit larger than a Susan B. Anthony coin. And I killed them all by myself without a scream or a “SHIT GODDAMMIT HELL- HONEY COME AND GET THIS FUCKING THING BEFORE IT EATS THE DAMN DOG!” freak out.
I’m very proud of myself.
Has anyone read Sunny? Something told me not to freaking bother as soon as I saw it was mentioned (several times) in promotional info that she was the wife of Da Chen. I had to wonder if she wasn’t riding his coattails to get her own stuff published. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and picked it up anyway.
I tried; I really, truly, honest-to-the-moon tried.
Then I threw the book across the room and stomped off to read Anne Bishop’s BJT series (and even some early LKH before bad sex, no plot, and contrived characters were spewed across the page in lieu of the ones I’d fallen in love with).
The Mona Lisa series (and her Lucinda series) are barely concealed caricatures of Merry Gentry (LKH), Anita Blake (LKH), and Janelle (Bishop). Sunny goes so far as to thank both Hamilton and Bishop in her books, and then proceeds to borderline plagiarize all three series into a mishmash that is somewhere along the lines of the “never should have been made” bastard offspring of a rhino and a teacup poodle.
If you like Sunny and her works, more power to you. I’ll stick with the people who did it first, and, honestly, did it better.
(That sound you hear is the painful death of any chance I might of had on *ever* getting a cover blurb from Sunny)
I never really understood the point of this. I mean, it’s a great concept… unless you’ve already micromanaged your time down to the second and you STILL don’t have enough time in your day to complete everything. To meet the base goal of 50,000 words, you have to write 1,667 words/day. Seven days a week. Doesn’t seem like a large goal at all, does it? Not that hard.
Until you think of the fact that six pages (double-spaced, one inch margins all around) is just over 1,700 words. Five pages a day is a big goal, especially if you’re at a point where you’re ripping your hair out and screaming at the computer because the damn blinker is accusing you of not being creative enough. (I blame lack of sleep and Type O Negative for that reaction)
I try to write five days a week, sometimes six, but always have a day off. Why? Because if I don’t get a break, I burn out. I get to the point where I don’t want to write, and nothing spells disaster like a writer who has lost her mojo. (Or his mojo)
Add in that I actually have other shit to do (school, cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, etc) and a house full of people, and I don’t know when I’d have the time every day. Little J. has this great habit of sneaking up on me and going “whatcha doin’?” and scaring the bejeesus out of me. She can be sneaky when she wants to be.
If you do NaNoWriMo, more power to you. If you’re like me and follow you’re own deadlines, rock on. Now? I’m going to go put another layer of puzzle glue on the puzzle D., C., and I finished last night and knit on Baby E.’s hat.
Does anyone remember getting those handouts at the beginning of the school year? The syllabus? Remember how it had dates of tests, vacations, etc?
Apparently, one of my instructors doesn’t know how to follow one. I have scheduled my tests for my other two classes (which I do online) around that syllabus. She moved a test from next week up to this week, thus screwing the rest of the year.
“We’ve gone over the two chapters, we can take the test Wednesday.” At which point, my entire class wanted to lynch her in the parking lot.
I did get the second round of edits for Cliodhna done yesterday. Both mine, and that of one of the editors, have been added to the MS. Time for another print out and read through. I keep wondering if it’s good enough; I think it’s perfect, but I’m biased. D. read through, and edited, and knows me well enough to tell me if something is shit. She reads books along the same line that Clio is in, and everything else she can get her hands on, so there’s a lot she can compare it to.
I’ve found that the best thing a writer can have in their corner is a well-read editor.
Anyone else picturing Kitty holding a Hand of Glory? No? Just me?
Anyway, Carrie Vaughn posted chapter one of the next Kitty book, so here it is! I had to type in the link address, my IE has suddenly gone haywire.
I’ve got two tests today, and I keep getting pernicious anemia and thrombocytopenia mixed up. Hopefully, she doesn’t ask about them.
My thoughts are with the family and friends of C.R. Corwin (whose real name was Rob Levandoski, which he also was published under).
Remember how I said I missed the old school vampires and monsters?
Be careful what you ask for.
I’m a Charlaine Harris fan, which is one part of the ‘tax paying vampires’ came in to play, but also, there’s True Blood on HBO. Like a crazed little fan girl, I plopped myself on the couch with a blanket and a drink and decided to let my television eat my brain for an hour. I laughed, I snorted, and I had a few “oh you’ve got to be joking” moments.
Such as when Maudette was watching the video of her having sex with the vampire, “he was rough, rougher than I like.” If you’ve just come out of the coffin, and have as few rights as a gay couple wanting to get married (which is just stupid, let people get married!) are you going to have out-and-out no holds barred sex with a woman that can lie later on and claim rape? Self preservation would run deep, I just don’t see it happening.
But, I’m a five-two bundle of paranoia.
In other news, two authors I love are getting to write more books. Both Jeaniene Frost and Jennifer Rardin signed on for for at least three more books in each of their respective series, congrats to both women from one rabid little fan.
I want to be like them when I grow up.
Cliodhna is coming along nicely, I got chapters 1-5 back yesterday from one editor (Thank you!) and realized why my other editor (who I really did just spring it on, I should have asked first) hadn’t sent anything.
I’d sent it to the wrong email address. I’ve since sent it to the right one and apologized for being an idiot.
I’ve noticed a distrubing trend among some authors. Those who have decided they’re pissed off that some people don’t fall drooling over their books, and post on the internet that the non-fans can basically drop dead.
So it’s the authors versus the fans (or, rather, non-fans) and I’m not sure who will win.
I’m rooting for the non-fans, because it’s ignorant and rude to tell the people who basically help you pay your bills (or helped at one point) that they’re too stupid or narrow-minded to enjoy your books. It’s also a damn quick way to alienate current fans.
I put up with abuse at work, I don’t need it from an author I use to escape from reality.
*Edits: Up to Chapter Twelve, only ten chapters left!*