Under-read book recs, a fantasy sampler, and other assorted news

Upon returning from Worldcon I got about halfway through writing a post detailing all the fun I had and cool people I met, plus my thoughts on some of the less good things that happened at the con (such as the infamous short story panel trainwreck). Sadly, my task load is such right now that I fear that post will never be finished, since I'd far rather spend my scant moments of writing time on actual fiction.

Ah well! Suffice it to say I had an excellent time overall, and I was delighted to see N.K. Jemisin's Fifth Season win a Hugo, because I thought it was a damn good book. Oh yes, and at my reading I did not get to eat all those tasty cupcakes myself, since a good 20+ people showed up. (I let them vote on which story they'd rather hear. Lizaveta won over Cara--it seems people like blood mages.)

But as I've said, my time is short, so here's a quick round-up of news that I've been meaning to post:

1) I'm writing a four-part series on under-read SFF books for a new feature on the Lady Business blog they're calling "Readers of the Lost Arc" (how cute is their title?). I'm doing one post per decade, for the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. My 1980s post is now up and ready for your reading pleasure. I just turned in the 1990s one, so that one should be up sometime in the next few weeks.

2) On r/Fantasy somebody was asking what books we'd suggest as a beginner's guide to the fantasy genre. Here's a fantasy sampler list I put together to show off the range of the genre, just in case the Readers of the Lost Arc posts aren't offering enough book recommendations.

3) In other r/Fantasy news, they're about to start a group read of Sherwood Smith's excellent epic fantasy Inda. I highly recommend the Inda series, and the group read looks to be extremely well organized and should be a lot of fun, so if you enjoy epic fantasy, consider joining in! Oh yes, and for extra group read fun, in September the Goodreads r/Fantasy group will be reading the equally terrific standalone sword-and-sorcery novel To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts.

4) If you're a Colorado local, I'll be attending the RMFW Colorado Gold writers conference Sep 9-11, and participating in their group author signing at the Renaissance hotel on the evening of Friday the 9th. (I love this conference. I always come back newly energized and ready to work hard on whatever I'm writing.)

5) I will NOT be attending World Fantasy this year as I'd originally planned. Partially because I'm traveling a lot already this fall, and partially because I'm a bit frustrated with the con's inability to join the 21st century (in terms of ensuring disability access and protection against harassment, as well as the focus of their programming). I've donated my membership to a newer Colorado writer who can hopefully benefit from the networking opportunities, since WFC is terrific for that. While I personally have always had a wonderful time at WFC, I figure I can have just as much fun at a different con that's more responsive to member concerns. (Right now I'm thinking of giving ConFusion a go.)

6) Shattered Sigil short story update: progress continues on the Cara novella, albeit slowly due to family and day job needs. The Lizaveta story is headed off to the anthology editor this week, and the three other stories I promised you awesome Labyrinth of Flame kickstarter backers wait in the wings.

That's it for now! For those of you in the US, hope the upcoming holiday weekend is a good one. We're supposed to fly to Orlando on Thursday...right when a tropical storm is forecast to cross over Florida. That seems to be a metaphor for my entire week right now. All I can do is take things one day at a time.




 

Still busy, but far happier

After a solid month of horrible gray rainy days, I can't even tell you how happy I am that Colorado has finally stopped pretending it is the Pacific Northwest. We're still getting thunderstorms every day, but hey, at least the sun shows in between the storms now!

Sun on the Flatirons - at last!

Seriously, I would never survive in Seattle. It's truly amazing how much happier and energetic I am on sunny days compared to rainy ones. (Snow is okay. Snow means skiing and sledding and fun. Rain just means dampness, dreariness, and flooding. Also, my son's school constantly cancelling all their afterschool activities, because in Colorado people think children will melt if they get wet.)

So my life remains crazy busy, but now the sun has returned my stress levels have gone way down. I'm chunking along on my structural edits for Labyrinth of Flame - only a few weeks more work, and the book will be ready for line editing. One big step closer to publication, which is exciting and nervewracking all at once. But mostly exciting! My goodness, I've been working on this book for so long it's hard to imagine a day when it'll finally be finished and in readers' hands. But that day gets closer all the time.

In other news, registration for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Colorado Gold conference is now open. I'm teaming up with fellow fantasy author Kerry Schafer (no relation, believe it or not!) to present a workshop on our experience with Kickstarter, sharing lessons learned, tips, and advice. This is my first time presenting but my sixth time attending; I highly recommend the conference to any writers in the area if you have the cash. It's where I first met my agent and joined my critique group, both of which have been absolutely invaluable. The conference sold out last year, so if you're interested, don't wait.

And now, back to edits! I'm so close to the finish line. (Or one of them, anyway. But this one's a big one.) See you in June...

Writing Faster, Writing Better

Weekend before last, I went to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold conference.  It was my 6th year in a row attending, and just like the previous years, I had an excellent experience.  Haha, this year, I even managed to attend some actual panels instead of spending all my time in the lobby socializing! The best and most motivating of the panels for me was one on "Writing Faster, Writing Better" - something I felt in desperate need of advice on, as I've been struggling to make progress on The Labyrinth of Flame while having less time to write than I ever did on the previous 2 books.  (Damn do I miss the days when my son took a nice 1.5-hour afternoon nap!)

I'm happy to say I came away from the panel with a whole new slew of tricks to try.  Many of them are psychological - everything from picking a simple ritual to perform before every writing session (lighting a candle, listening to a single song, etc), to using a 20-min timer for writing spurts.  Others involve actual adjustments of your writing process.  I've decided to try one of these - the "scene outlining" approach.  (Author Rachel Aaron describes this in her "2K to 10K" approach.)  

Usually by the time I get to a scene, I know pretty much what I want to happen, so I've never tried outlining it in any detail before I write.  I just sit down and start typing, and work through the details of dialogue and action as I go.  Yet I've noticed recently I've been stopping a whole lot while writing to stare at the screen and think about those very details.  They *need* to be thought through, no question; if I just force myself to plow onward willy-nilly, then sure, I pump out words, but then they have to be completely rewritten later because the details are so far from right. Whereas if I sit down and work out all those details in advance of actually setting fingers to keyboard, I'm hoping I can write a far more useful draft version of the scene in far less time. 

I'm not entirely sure how much time this will save me.  Yes, if I work out details in outline form, I'm not trying to write them in prose that other people would read, so that obviously saves a bit of typing-deleting-retyping.  Maybe I can also save time if I think through the scene during other moments of the day (driving to/from work, eating, etc).  But the "thinking" part is always the part that takes me longest, and often I don't have a good grasp of how best to handle a scene until I've actually tried to write the prose and found it doesn't work the way I was originally thinking.  So we'll see!  But I'm a big proponent of "If something's not working, then make a change."  My current writing process isn't letting me make the progress I want.  Time to switch it up.

As part of that, I've decided to make a big wordcount push on Labyrinth of Flame in Oct & Nov.  Full speed ahead, no revision, always moving forward (while using scene outlining, etc, to try and keep the words I put down somewhat useful).  So consider this a heads-up: I'll be a bit scarce around these parts.  I'll post my schedule for MileHiCon when I get it, and I'm thinking of doing a brief post every Monday for my own benefit, to tally progress and see how things are working (and decide if I need to try different tricks out of the workshop bag).  But other than that, it's gonna be nose to grindstone, fingers to keyboard.  

I don't expect this push to let me reach the end of the draft - I'll probably need at least another month or two afterward - but I want to get much, MUCH closer than I am right now.  I remember how awesome it felt to write THE END on the first draft of The Tainted City.  It can be summed up pretty much like this:

Sticking the landing on my final axel while competing at Adult Nationals a few years back. I'd fallen on that jump a million times (nothing harder than landing a jump at the very end of your program, when your legs are exhausted).  That time I made it - and won gold.  (Woo hoo!)

So here's hoping I can move the happy day for The Labyrinth of Flame a whole lot closer.  Fingers crossed!  

RMFW Conference Wrap-up, and Tainted City news

Before anything else I just have to share: as of today, The Tainted City is in stock on Amazon!  Yes, that's right, IN STOCK. Now. RIGHT NOW. Holy crap! I mean, the early ship date isn't totally unexpected...as I recall, last year The Whitefire Crossing shipped from Amazon about 2 weeks early...but still. Yow.  I can't quite wrap my head around the idea that the book I spent so many late nights writing this past year is heading out to readers' hands at last.  (You guys, I am *dying* to know what you think, whether good or bad!)

(Just to clarify, it's only the print version of Tainted City that's going to be available so early.  For whatever reason, Amazon ships print books the minute they hit their warehouses, but the ebooks never become available until the official release date.  Don't ask me why this is.  The ways of publishing are byzantine and mysterious.)

Of course, this past weekend some folks got their hands on copies even earlier...because I attended the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers "Colorado Gold" conference, and participated in the conference book sale.  (I brought about ten copies of The Tainted City and sold all of 'em.  Including one to a very kind, very well-meaning gentleman who first bought The Whitefire Crossing for his fantasy-loving wife and had me sign it to her...only to call her later that evening proud of his purchase, and find out that he'd already bought a signed copy of Whitefire for her at the conference last year, and she wanted the sequel!  I signed the sequel for him and promised his wife in the message that I'd make sure not to sell another copy of Tainted City to him next year, haha.)

I owe a lot to RMFW. I met my agent-to-be at the very first RMFW conference I attended (back in 2008), and got invited to join a critique group that made a world of difference to my writing.  (Thanks to what I learned from their critique of Whitefire's original draft, I was able to rewrite it to publishable quality and get my book deal.)  I can't say enough about how wonderful an organization RMFW is, full of helpful, kind, generous people who bend over backward to help new writers. 

Group shot of my critique group (all 6 of us attended this year's RMFW conference). Front row: me, Catherine Montrose (a.k.a. Catherine Cooke), Carol Berg.  Back row: Curt Craddock, Susan Smith (a.k.a. Mackay Wood), Brian Tobias.  Without these people, The Whitefire Crossing would never have gotten published.

This was my fifth year in a row attending the RMFW conference, and I had just as good a time as ever.  I'll confess I spent much of the time in the hotel lobby bar hanging out and talking to fellow writers as opposed to attending workshops (though I did attend some, I swear!).  These days as a parent I get so few opportunities for uninterrupted adult conversation that I snatch at the chance whenever I can, heh!  And in truth I find talking to other writers about craft and story ideas just as inspiring as attending formal workshops.  When I ran out of social steam (as often happens during a conference, since I'm an introvert), I happily took myself off to a secluded corner of the hotel and did some plot noodling for The Labyrinth of Flame (the third and final book in the Shattered Sigil series, which I'm about to start work on.) 

At a conference dinner with Susan Smith, Curt Craddock, and Carol Berg.  Note the evil little smile on Curt's face. He is making up yet another horrendously groan-inducing, insanely clever simile to reclaim his title as champion of the RMFW simile contest.

This year was extra fun since those of us in my critique group got to cheer on one of our members: Carol Berg, who was voted RMFW's Writer of the Year for 2012.  (Carol's been one of my writer-heroines ever since I first stumbled across a copy of one of her novels in the library, many years ago.  She writes absolutely terrific epic fantasy - if you haven't tried her work, you are totally missing out.  Still can't believe how lucky I am to be in a critique group with her!)  Carol gave a lovely speech at the opening dinner - and later, on her Writer of the Year panel, she Told All in response to the moderator's questions, including 'fessing up to the TV show that is her guiltiest pleasure.  (Which turned out to be quite a few other writers' guilty pleasure as well!  What is it?  My lips are sealed...) 

Carol giving the conference's opening speech

Oh yes, and while driving to and from the conference, I took the chance to check out the brand-new audiobook version of The Whitefire Crossing.  I'm gonna do a post later this week talking in more detail about the audiobook experience, but the short version is: hearing my book read aloud was both utterly cool and extremely weird, all at the same time!  (The narrator, Andy Caploe, does a great job.  Especially with Dev.) 

So all in all, a lovely weekend, and now I get a break before heading back out on the con circuit in late October for MileHiCon and World Fantasy.  Time to plan a peak climb, I think...September is a gorgeous month for the mountains in Colorado.  And in the meantime, I'll be holding my breath as The Tainted City makes its way into the big wide world.  Will you like it?  I'm anxious to find out!