Some 'refreshing'

I deleted my Facebook account recently, along with all of its pages. And yes, it was a drastic thing to do. But I Miranda Mayer needed a refreshing. A new 'Like' page was in order, something freshly made, with none of my randomness all over it. It's a given that authors can be themselves on social media, but to a point. When my arguments on religion and politics start to take over where the books leave off, we have a problem. So a fresh start is in order! So please like my new page. I dropped hundreds of likes by doing this and need to rebuild!

So like my new page and click HERE!

Radio Silence Explained

Hello all.  I know, I haven't been very chatty lately. I haven't been very creative either. Just after Tinna's Might was published, I discovered I was pregnant. Go figure. :)  Of course, with pregnancy comes the requisite trials and tribulations, starting with morning sickness and sore ta-tas to migraines and a desire to do little more than sleep.  Yes, I over-share. Live with it. :D

It is timely that I am with child when my heroine is also faced with this surprise at the same age as the author. Maybe it was a foreshadowing, maybe I'm a little bit psychic. Hah!  I have been writing, but sporadically. I've set aside book 3 for a bit, I am taking a break from Tinna's world for now, since Tinna's Might is still fresh on the market.  I'm focusing instead on a couple of other stories I've been working on.  I am finding inspiration difficult lately, but it's slowly coming back.

Hopefully I'll have some new titles available soon enough. I'm particularly happy with one book I'm working on right now, and look forward to sharing it with readers.  For now, I'm moderately quiet, except on my Facebook page, where I get a little too riled up by political and religious matters. I tend to be a bit of a blusterer--but I am a fiery character and I get worked up about the world around me. It's the blight of an writer, to be honed into the world a little too deeply.

Those of you who have purchased Tinna's Might, please don't forget to post your reviews on your preferred bookselling site... It's selling nicely in spite of my complete lack of marketing, so that's a good sign, but I'm only getting star reviews on some eBook sites, and I'd like to see what readers have to say. Writers (most writers) benefit greatly from reader feedback. Even the tough stuff. That doesn't mean I'm calling out open season of evilness, but I do hope you'll be objective in your review.

Thanks again for being supportive readers! I appreciate everything you do to keep me going as a writer, and I hope I'll have more stories to offer you soon.  And thank you for your patience while we waited out the editing process for Tinna's Might.  Ping me on Twitter or Facebook, I am responsive and always happy to chat it up.

Here is a lovely GIF of a children's book that I think every family should own. :)

MM

I am writing, writing, writing.

I am quickly discovering that with ebooks, the more titles, the better. At least that’s what I’m being told by a variety of authors who publish ebooks, and this has been somewhat proven to me by the rather brisk sale of the Blackroot novel I put on Smashwords sometime back. At 99¢, it is the best-selling ebook I have, outselling both Tinna’s Promise and even the free short-story collection, The Belletrist. It’s sort of shocking because Blackroot is such a departure from what I usually write, it’s gory and graphic, and a little weird. But the readers seem to like it. iBooks users especially, and lots of Sony Reader users. The desire to offer more titles has given me a creative kick in the pants, but on the flip side, it has also presented me with way too much distraction.

I am currently about 60% on Tinna’s Reign, editing for Tinna’s Might has slowed to a crawl, but it is still moving. I’d say we’ve moved up to about 84% completed, and I have two other books I’ve been pecking at, one called the Wizard King and another The Blue Journal. The Blue Journal is sort of out of my comfort zone, being written in journal form in first-person, which is challenging to someone who almost always writes as a narrator. The Wizard King is a strange hybrid of a Regency romance novel and a fantasy. I started it about four years ago, but it fell into my ‘false start’ pile, and then I was browsing my old starts and rediscovered it, and found some fresh ideas popping into my head as I started reading it.

So this means I’m working on four books concurrently. Probably not a good plan—most people will tell you to pick a project and stick to it until you’re finished, but it’s a bit hard to do when you are having a hard time finding inspiration on one, and have come to a complete halt while another has found a little pocket of inspiration to feed it. I guess, as I always do, I will go where my instincts point me, and let the organic, creative process work itself out.

The point of it all is to offer a broad range of titles for readers. I have the bones for a few good, meaty novels, and I’m working on finishing up the Tinna Trilogy. I may revisit Oromoii later on, but for now, I’m going to concentrate on these other titles and keep out of my false start folder for a few months—just in case something else catches my creative eye.

Argh.

When editing reared its ugly head... Miranda turned her tail and fled

Tinna’s Might is turning out to be more of a bear to edit than I had arrogantly assumed. I thought the edit would fly by, but I am fortunate to have someone (Ien Nivens) editing the book who has invested himself in it as well and feels strongly about making bold suggestions for the work. The editor also happens to be a writer which adds an interesting element to the process. Recently, there had been a longer-than-usual gap of time between edited chapters. I dropped him a note asking him if everything was okay. He wrote back that he had the chapter finished and sent along a note asking me how open I was to suggestions of ‘significant change’. At first I was like... Uuuuuughhhhh... Seriously?

But then I read his explanation and could not deny that he was totally right. He was concerned about the timing of a significant turn in the plot, the build-up (or lack thereof on my part), and the way the story is divided up (chapter and break-wise) to maximize the impact of this plot-turn. Ien was completely 100% correct in this determination. It’s funny how when you’re writing and proofreading as you go along, in your head you think that something is impactful enough—that it makes a statement—when in truth, you haven’t featured it enough so that the reader will recognize it as a significant moment in the story. I simply didn’t see it. But Ien did. He was a bit reluctant to ask me to make this huge change, and sent me a note that was almost apologetic about it.

I promptly responded with a: “No, no, no! You are totally right. This is exactly the sort feedback I need!” note. His suggestion really proved to me that I picked the right person to edit this book. He was vastly relieved by my non-defensive response--and probably a bit surprised because we writers can be whiny sometimes. What Ien disclosed to me after was that he too is in the middle of his writing project and he realized he was asking me to do something he needed to do as well. So he took the extra time do it with his own work so he could feel okay about asking me to make a large change.

So to work I must go. His edits are wonderful and he’s doing a great job. But what I appreciate most is that he believes in what I’m writing enough to be honest with what he thinks needs to be changed. He’s cautious about it, probably worried he’s going to hurt my ego or something. But luckily, I’m okay with criticism. I even value it. A friend of mine calls criticism a form of ‘excellent failure’. She says it’s something to learn from, not something to hide from. She’s not wrong. Yeah, it hurts when someone picks apart what you’ve painstakingly written—but ultimately, these editors are looking at our work from the perspective as a reader—and helping us to make sure our story is told in the best fashion possible.

Ien is extremely respectful of my style, and so was my first editor, Dorrie O’Brien; although I have to say that I sort of wish Dorrie had been a bit harder on me—and suggested some big changes along the way. Someday, I might re-edit Tinna’s Promise. What I would change first off, would be the first chapter. I don’t think it was a great idea to start a book off with someone you didn’t really like very much (although given a chance, Taneth grows on you)—but your opening pages are crucial to draw the reader in, and an arrogant rant just isn’t attractive. You live, you learn. Tinna’s Promise remains something I’m very proud of and I stand by it, even with the questionable choice for a first chapter. But I do hope to fix it some day.

The moral of my story is... editing is a crucial process a book must go through. And honestly, it makes a better writer of you. Challenges and huge changes may arise, and it might make you want to cry into your soup, but in the end, you’ll have a better product for it and you’ll be thinking about that on your next project.

I cannot tout editing enough. I confess with Blackroot, I didn’t bother, but Blackroot is a source-story, not a full novel; I took elements of Blackroot and spread them out in the Tinna Trilogy, so I look at Blackroot like practice rather than the real thing, so I won’t invest on editing for it. It’s just a lark. The Tinna Trilogy is not. I take these three books very seriously. I realize how important it is to make sure that there is as much effort invested in lending them quality and worth as possible; not just for the readers, but for my own integrity as a writer.

So find yourself a good editor—and listen to them—even if the things they ask of you aren’t always what you want to hear.

E-book formatting is for the birds.

What have I been up to lately? Not much except struggling with the perils of e-book formatting. O... M... G... Seriously; what a nightmare. I have put Tinna’s Promise up on B&N’s NookBooks and Smashwords, I downloaded it to my nook and there are STILL formatting errors. The worst are the line-breaks problem.

I spent an entire weekend recently reformatting a pasted .pdf of the final manuscript for Tinna’s Promise. I had to go from the back of the book to the front, reintegrating every line of every single paragraph of the novel because the PDF paste had obviously kept each individual line’s hard break when I moved it to word.

Otherwise the
book would read like
this and it would
be oh so annoying.

Of course, had I used an iota of the intelligence that my daddy gave me, I would have thought to save my final manuscript that I sent the publisher into a folder somewhere where I could bloody find it. Then I would have had the original .rtf with all its soft line-breaks in all their glory. But I did not find it anywhere, and so I had to use the final version of the book in .pdf format as the framework for the ebook to insure I had all the right chapters and such.

Naturally, when re-formatting over 120,000 words of text, you’re bound to overlook a line break here and there (sometimes they hide), and you are also bound to accidentally delete spaces between words while doing it so you get the occasional mergedword. It’s really irritating. I also noticed that one book section had been merged into the paragraph of the prior section, making a hideous jump in the story in the same freaking paragraph. To discover this was really defeating. After I’d already re-uploaded it twice.

What I’m going to do this weekend is to try to re-read the damned book page by page on my e-reader, and follow along on my laptop, making changes as I go. I am *then* going to go and get my dog-eared, personal copy of Tinna’s Promise (with the old cover and cracked spine) and make sure that each paragraph matches the hard-copy version for the ebook.

When I do that, I will upload that ONE FINAL TIME to both PubIt! and to Smashwords. Of course that means it will take THREE more days for the modified copy to become available to buyers on PubIt, and put it back into Submission-Pending mode for the Smashwords general distribution catalog, which is another week.

Oh, and the really irritating part? Smashwords doesn’t let you overwrite your old, error-riddled versions, no. They keep every single freakin’ version you resubmit. Right now... I have FOUR versions; all in varying states of errorsville. It’s really embarrassing. They should take those down. Argh.

What I *should* have done was view my formatting and let the little dots and ¶ markers would help me track down the problems. But I didn’t use this wad of grey matter in my cranium I guess, and I just derp-de-derped my way through it while watching my DVRed shows from that week. Now I’m paying the price!

So I encourage you to yes, buy Tinna’s Promise in ebook format, it’s wicked affordable, I've put it up for 99¢ for a limited time(normally $4.00; it’s $6.00 on iUniverse) HOWEVER, perhaps you should wait for another week before you download it so you are sure to get the least buggy version. The latest version does however have the whole of Chapter 1 of Tinna’s Might previewed in it. Just so you know. ;)

Anyway, on the brighter side, look what my hubby gave me for an early Valentine’s Day present?



Squee! I’m sorry, I’m revealing the depth of my geekery here, but I am and have always been, since the late eighties, a track-ball kinda girl. Both my dad and I are (and were in his case) geeks that way. I’ve always had them, for a long time, until my last Logitech died after years of abuse. Now, instead of a normal computer, I have this tiny little netbook that I use to write with (in addition to obsessive internet browsing and Stumbleupon benders). I hate track-pads so I just turned it off and got a wireless mouse that had this thick jump-drive sized USB connector on it, and it was always sticking out the side of my little 9” screen netpad and annoying me.

I am cheap though, at least when it comes to spending money on myself, so I didn’t want to drop almost $60 on a trackball. So instead, I just complained incessantly to the ether (but always when my husband was within hearing range) that I wanted a trackball again—a wireless one, so I can just put it down anywhere I want, on my thigh, on the sofa, wherever, and that I want the thumb kind, not the one with the ball in the middle, and I wanted a Logitech with the itty bitty USB thingie (it’s teeny-like; Pez-size when plugged in) so there’s no thumb-sized protrusion poking out of the side of my little computer.

I must have whined enough, because hubby heard. I came home the night before last, and was doing something on my little baby computer, and started mumbling about hating my stupid wireless mouse and its behemoth USB connector, and he got up, went into the guest-room and then came out with an Amazon.com-blue-gift-wrapped package, which he hucked at me and said: “Fine... I’ll get you ANOTHER Valentine’s present... just take this already...” Yeah... Happy girl now. Silly things make me happy, I’m such a gadget whore—that’s from my dad’s genes, he was such a tinkery, geeky gadget guy too.

So at least now I have something smooth and comfy to help me through this formatting nightmare. Yay! Oh, and BTW.. I’m at *least* 50% through Tinna’s Reign. It’s turning out VERY dark... and there’s a scene in there that’s so dark, so raw, I’m almost afraid to keep it. It’s also very soon in the book; so it might be really jarring to some of the more sensitive readers. I dunno. ::groan:: I will keep writing, and then when I am ready to revise and proofread before editing, I’ll make my choice.

I revamped the http://www.mirandamayer.com/ website, by the way. NO MORE ADS! Yes, I finally sucked it up and bought hosting (told you, I’m cheap). I will add a bit more content soon... but at least there’s no more godaddy bar at the top. :)

Here is a picture of a passed out puppy. Just because.

Please.... edit. I beg you...

Independent writers... hear me out. It is no reflection on your creativity or your talent if you require the services of an editor. A real editor. An experienced, professional editor. It really doesn’t mean you can’t write, it should be a matter of pride, it should be a moral obligation to have someone proofread and edit your manuscript before you go out and have that baby published. Period.

Your readers pay a significantly higher cost for your print-on-demand work. What they should be paying for is a carefully assembled, professional package, from the cover to the contents. You paid money to have your book made available for print-on-demand publishing and ebook... then pay the money to make sure it is a product that respects the customer that is buying it. And by respect I mean having it EDITED. :::ARGH!:::

I’ve been reading a lot of indie work lately because it’s really cheap for my nook... and the thing that stands out most with these self-published authors is that they are not disciplined enough to keep from publishing their work when it obviously isn’t ready. PubIt! and Kindle authors especially—they seem apt to slap anything up there and call it finished, and that is a total no-no.

I read a book the other day; a Twilight-wannabe book where the author left at least one grammatical error per-page. From blatant misuse of words, to horrid spelling to outright bad writing—it was a bloody trainwreck. Last night I bought a book I wish I could return. In the first three pages, I was assaulted with the most horrendous writing. For one, the tenses are all over the place:

“The women laughed as they walked back into the house. When inside, Lizzie sits down at the bay window and gazes out thoughtfully...” GAH!!! This writer also writes dialogue like it’s written for Robbie the Robot; “I am glad you share my beliefs. This is an omen. We should go to Egypt. In my dream it was raining. It doesn’t rain in Egypt.” Who speaks like that? The writing is as dry as the desert the author is writing about and I couldn’t get past page 16. In the span of the FIRST TWO paragraphs, I was told three times that the space was an ‘expanse’. STOP OVERWRITING! Edit yourselves! I haven’t gotten through 2% of the story and I’m already bored.

I know I’m guilty of the repeated word or phrase. For instance, count how many instances of the word ‘albeit’ appear in Tinna’s Promise... I’m so annoyed I didn’t notice it until after editing. Editors are not the cure-all, but they can take something that’s over-thought and simplify it... they can take ideas that are not consistent and make them flow... they can make conversations interesting, they can make reading the text an easy, simple task and keep the reader’s eye from being held up by stupid errors.

Yes, my short stories are full of errors, yes my posts are full of errors, but I'm not asking anyone to pay for what I'm posting up here. If you are taking money for your work... G.E.T. A.N. E.D.I.T.O.R or DO NOT PUBLISH! Please. Damn. I want my $2.99 back!

/Rant

Twi-lit.

I pick on Stephenie Meyer a lot in my private life. It's mostly just jealousy because she has had such huge success selling such blatant mediocrity. Most writers who bitch and moan about her books are probably feeling the same way. They're pissed. I've been reading her books this holiday season as a sort of 'research' project, and I am annoyed at how I am compelled forward to read what is inherently predictable and utterly absurd.

I have to face it... for a pre-teen, these books are f**king brilliant. I had to suck it up and admit that yesterday, when I bought yet the next installment to read. Like most romance novels, the premise is simple... but girl A with boy B, give them lots of passionate feelings and then drag out the 'union' for as long as possible, and present it with as many challenges (contrived or not) that you can throw in to make it interesting.

He's a vamp. 'I'm too dangerous for you, young lady yet I cannot stay away' boy. She's 'special'... ordinary but not... something the simpering teenaged girl readers can relate to but with something exceptional that makes her attractive to this extraordinary piece of moody, broody, angsty and sparkling perfection that is the boy. It is excruciatingly trite, the whole thing... the vampire family, the teen-yearning, the angst, the never-ending and very contrived discussions about why this could or could not work... the hapless and clueless and wolfy second-runner-up... a few random crises to give the book some measure of momentum, and the heroine needing constant rescue. It's barfworthy. It's perfection.

Stephenie's writing style is simplistic but with just the right amount of sophistication (she must have a fabulous editor) that it draws the reader in; even cantankerous, jealous indie authors like me, who can only dream of that kind of readership for their work. Add in the enigmatic titles, the pretty covers... you've got a decent product... I cannot deny that this is really a brilliant scheme.

I have to say though, I watched the twilight movie the other day in 12 parts on youtube, and I found the movie to be a bit better put together than the book. Namely because the book concentrates mostly on Bella and Edward's angsty and passionate interchanges for the duration, and the murderous vamps just sort of randomly appear as if action is an afterthought... but in the movie, they are hinted at from the beginning, and made to let you believe that the murdering vamps could possibly be Edward or his family. Despite the movie sucking pretty badly, it at least got that right.

The whole vampires playing baseball thing had me in stitches, I admit. Okay, the whole thing had me in stitches... this is no Austen, that is for sure... It's pulp as much as my stuff is pulp... but I'm still reading it, and still buying her goddamn e-books... so that says a lot.

Next up... The Harry Potter series. A girl's gotta know. ;)

The christmas giving tree.

It always seems almost trite to hear people discussing the meaning of Christmas. This year, however, is a difficult year. For myself, my husband and my family. Layoffs, elevating prices... we decided we were not going to ‘do’ Christmas this year. We were going to buy 1 present for the 1 nephew, and the adults can survive fine without tchotchkes that mean little at all. We would try to adhere to the ‘meaning’ of Christmas and not to the commercial aspect of it. I am comfortable with this decision, we will gather for the holiday, and share the love, but save a buck or two.

Anyway, each year, I try to participate in a ‘giving tree’. I love the idea. Last year, I got a nine-year-old boy who asked for clothes. I went to Old Navy and went wild. I bought something like $80 worth of hoodies, jeans, shirts and so on. I hope they fit him, and I hope he liked them.

This year, I went with a local giving tree for kids in my neighbourhood up here near Mount Hood. Talking to the woman who was hanging the cards on the tree, I was appalled to hear that there were so many kids around us who lived in abject poverty, and who had absolutely nothing. Of course, to me it’s not about the ‘having’... but for a kid who probably won’t even get the basics ... I felt it was important for the child to have the experience of surprise and of getting something simple and something you want.

I usually pick kids who ask for practical things, because I have this old-fashioned notion that it’s better to buy them practical things. But this year, I saw a tag that said: 8-year-old girl. Wants: makeup and small toy horses. My brain said: “Aw”. And then it melted and I was thrown back a few decades into my memory.

I wasn’t a girly kid. I still don’t wear makeup or froo-froo pink things. I wear sensible shoes and jeans and sweaters, and I keep my lion’s mane of curls long and crazy. I hate dolls); they creep me out and always have. I did have barbies when I was little, but they were not the little fashion models and hair-do dolls that they were for other girls. For me, my barbies were characters in an epic fantasy story that spanned years of my life; like a soap opera. Ken was the guy who was either evil or was the fall-guy for the story, and the far manlier 12” GI Joes were the main squeezes. I had Sindy, a European version of Barbie, and since she was way better jointed and way prettier by my standards, she was usually the heroine, and the other Barbies and non-barbie fashion dolls held court. I made them costumes, and they had horses and I would spend hours upon hours acting out the epic. I took this very seriously. I was a weird kid, but I find that most fantasy writers I’ve met were weird kids. We always exist both inside our imagination and in the ‘real world’; no matter how old we get, we do it. But ultimately, I was still a kid, and if I think about what it felt like then to get something that you *really* wanted, to open up that Christmas paper and to have your expectations met, or even better; exceeded, it’s an amazing thing.

When I was about seven or eight, we lived in a duplex shared with an older couple whose daughter had already moved away. The husband was a curmudgeony old dude who spoke rarely, and the wife was a wonderful homemaker who obviously missed having her daughter about. They heard the craziness of my family through the shared wall of the house, I suppose... the screaming arguments, the slamming doors, and they saw what a weird, despondent little soul I was and took pity on me. I wish I could remember their names. Anyway, I spent inordinate amounts of time next door, eating delicious Belgian leek soup, and holding boards straight for the old man while he sawed them. They both doted on me in their own way. One year, I was over there hanging out in their dark, cozy sitting room, eating some cookies, listening to the grandfather clock tick its heart out, and wishing I belonged to them. The lady of the house appeared in her flowery apron carrying a toy catalog.

“Show me what you want St. Nicholas to bring you this year,” she told me, handing me the catalog. Guileless and clueless as a child can be, I opened up the glossy pages, and filled my eyes with all the wonderful things. It never occurred to me that she planned on getting me anything; I thought it was a sort of game of fantasy, perhaps. My family never asked the question what we wanted... never took the time to figure it out; so a lot of times, I got things that were hit or miss. Baby dolls and clowns that freaked me out and I didn’t touch. So, seeing a catalog full of everything a kid could want, I pointed out a huge array of stuff and told her why I liked each thing and how they would fit into the story I was playing out, sometimes even on their sitting room floor (I would carry the stuff over a lot). She listened and took mental note. When I was done pointing out Sindy’s horses, her riding attire, furniture pieces, and all other things... I promptly forgot about the exercise and went to enjoy a Tartine made with paté. A few days before Christmas, a huge suitcase appeared on the cement railing between our duplexes, and it had my name on it. Inside, was every last thing I pointed out in the catalog. Imagine my surprise; one, to get such special attention, and such a smorgasbord, but two, to see that the neighbour had been so thoughtful as to remember each and every thing. It was astonishing and wonderful and it made me feel really special.

I am really think that the kids who ask for practical things are either passively or overtly being pressured to by adults to do so—and that deep down, they want toy horses and cars and games more than they want Old Navy jeans. But when you’re not in a position to be demanding, when you are asking for charity, you are going to do what’s sensible to insure nobody judges you ill for it. So I was pretty struck by the little card with the honest response on it in her shaky handwriting. She wanted makeup and she wanted toy horses. I saw it and I immediately wanted that girl to feel what I felt that Christmas long ago, and so I snatched up her tag, and went shopping today. My work gave us $50 gift cards to a local store called Fred Meyer last week. I took that card, went to Freddies, and blew most of it on her.

I got this huge makeup kit with all sorts of eye-shadows, blushes, lipsticks, nail polishes and liners and in sparkly colours. It’s awesome. To pair with the kit, I got this adorable makeup box for her to keep her things in, with pink ‘kisses’ all over it. I also bought her a really cute little set of Breyer-brand horses that I know she’ll love. I got a huge Christmassy bag to put it all in, and some curly-q bows, and made sure she’d have something to open up and delight in. I normally HATE shopping. I hate stores. But I confess, I had more fun shopping for those silly things than I ever had shopping for members of my family, and the ungrateful, quite entitled kids in it. I enjoyed it because I knew she’d love it. It wouldn’t be the forced smile and the ‘oh, one of these things...” looks when she opens the bag. For that I’m sure.

So no, we are not doing Christmas this year except for two kids; one who expects it and takes it for granted and the other who will surely be delighted in a simple gesture. Merry Christmas kid, whoever you are. You made my Christmas. :^) It’s selfish, I know... but it was such fun.

The Formula

We are all influenced by what we see and read. All writers are. We all have dynamics that we repeat; characters we tend to carry from story to story—it’s what we do. Some write entirely for themselves, so they don't pay much heed to formula and style; but those of us who write for others, we have a moral duty to not be repetitive, unoriginal and predictable. Who wants to fall into formula? Why spend so much time writing a manuscript that has been written before?Avoiding that is hard. Part of avoiding having your story sound like every other story in its genre is to read and watch, and to inject YOU into what you write, no matter what the genre is.

I’ve known a few people in my life who don’t read much despite writing. They claim it’s so they aren’t influenced by other books, but in a lot of cases, they simply don’t realize that they’re writing something that’s been done a bazillion times, and if you just take away the details like the settings, the time frame, things like that, the core of the story, the character, the motivations, the plot is the same as pretty much every other book on the shelf. Let’s face it, the world has been going on doing its thing for sometime, and the written word has been around for a bit; so it’s not that easy to have an original idea any more. Case and point... how many remakes and sequels are we seeing these days? They’re want for material... And so are novel writers.

Pitfall: Predictability.
If you look at your story objectively, do you think it’s predictable? Do you think that the happenings would be expected? Would the love be requited, would plot take a turn, would your reader be surprised and taken off-guard? Staying away from formula means staying away from predictability. Avatar was a wonderful movie to watch, but we all knew the moment we saw it that he’d be riding that really giant orange/red dragon everyone feared in order to secure the respect of the people. Avoid pointing things out... in many stories, the author will mention something seemingly innocuous ... a broomhandle hitting the floor... a window with broken shards of glass... it's transparent and it takes away the surprise. The reader is automatically going to know that it’s going to be related to the next bit. Don’t be obvious. It’s annoying.

Pitfall: Archetypes:
The tired ex-soldier who needs revenge; the comedic sidekick; the jaded warrior, the strong chick that really secretly wants to be objectified, pursued and rescued; the untamed, willful woman who is tamed by the strong-willed hero; the dogged underdog, the grunting strongman... let’s face it; you might as well be picking characters from an MMORPG character builder these days... there are so many old, boring archetypes. Your characters are supposed to be real people in the story. They have backgrounds, they have motivations, even the good people have flaws... they don’t do things just because, they hesitate before they jump into the fire, the bad guys can be likable, heroes can make mistakes.

Pitfall: Recycled Settings.
Impersonal and recycled settings can get old quickly. It’s one thing to create settings, but another to make them yours as an author. What makes fiction good is the believability of the places you describe, the detail that puts the reader in your head. Pulling from your own life, your loves, you can create something intriguing for others to ‘see’. Pulling from the basic novel 101 settings, like Middle Earth, or New York, or L.A. with no personal references to it, no details is going to make it seem generic. It’s the little restaurants nobody knows about, it’s the shape of a window, and it’s the quality of sound in a room... you have to put your readers somewhere they can picture; and not rely on past authors’ renderings to support the ‘realness’ of your settings.

~~~

If you just write something that seems generic, or like another author’s work, it’s nothing but Fan Fiction. What makes a story readable isn’t just the story, it’s what is added of the author’s own personality and life experience. Even the most bizarre places should still be believable, which means you have to inject some of yourself into what you write, and not just write a story where A character goes to B character and fights them over C character who is in D location.

Don’t be formula! Don’t be predictable. Your characters should be as real as the people in your life, and don’t create worlds that are someone else’s... inject your own world, whether or not it’s somewhat fabricated or it’s a study of the neighborhood outside your door. As a reader, I implore you. As a writer, I implore myself. ;)

Ma raison d’être.

I’ve always been a confused soul. I still, at close to 40, don’t know what direction I want to go. Some kids have their future and career all figured out by career day in their sophomore year… others, like me, sort of dangle without bearing or direction pretty much their whole lives, not really fitting in anywhere. The things I went to school for? They are completely uninteresting and useless to me now. We try one type of job, we do pretty well at it, but it gets boring; then we try another type of job, tackle it as a challenge, master it, and then get bored with it and stop caring. That’s been the story of my life. All the assessment tests, IQ tests, career placement tests, all the high-hopes for my becoming an engineer, a scientist or a Nobel Peace Prize winner… Laughable. None of that helps anyone figure out what they are really meant to do, and what really makes them happy and feel fulfilled as human beings.

My résumé is a patchwork. I start my professional life off in the non-profit sector as and AmeriCorps*VISTA and I just go haywire after that… from marketing and graphic design to payroll management, copywriting and ad creation to office management, to now, environmental work. Seriously; it’s like having multiple personality disorder. I can do a wide variety of things, but who looks at a résumé like mine and says: “Whoa, there’s someone who’ll stick around?” Dude, unless the job you’re offering changes constantly, and doesn’t become rote… sure (but that job does not exist). But if I do the same thing year after year… I’m going to move on at some point. As evil Willow says, in my all-time favourite TV series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’... “Bored now.”

I do know two things for certain: 1) I’m happiest when I’m creating things; and 2) I’m happiest when I have the freedom to really write. Writing is the only consistent craft that has stuck with me from childhood. I’m one of those people that tries everything; wood-carving.. bored with it. Painting.. meh… Pottery… pfft… ::sigh:: Writing on the other hand… that one just never went away. I started reading at a young age, and the idea of being a story-teller was very appealing to me. So I would write clumsy little stories. This sense of creativity was fostered by an exceptional teacher in the fifth grade, who read us wonderful stories, who had us performing abridged versions of Shakespeare, who turned words into images, and who taught us to write, illustrate and to bind our own books.

Life affects your creativity. It’s a given. The more work demands of you, the more your family demands of you, the less you write. In my twenties, I churned out several novels. They were all extremely bad, of course, but it shows that there was a well of creativity and I had the energy to stay up until three or four AM (my creativity really peaks between midnight and four AM—not sure why) and still function at work. Of course, these days, I can’t do those hours any more. The older we get, the less time we have for what is ultimately (unless you’re Stephenie Meyer or JK Rowling) a past-time that is squeezed in between your work day, and children (if you’ve got them) and horses and all other things. I can’t afford to make it my career, so it is a peripheral thing. So I am pretty much always unsatisfied with the way things are. I’d simply rather be writing than doing anything else.

So, I am squeezing what is in essence, my raison d’être into whatever free time I have, and trying my damndest to find that creative pool inside me where I can tap into it. It’s not easy. Stress, family, work… it taps you out. I drive home on my daily commute; an hour each way, and I try to formulate ideas in my head as I do… what’s the idea? Where is the story going? … Most of the time I end up dwelling on immediate concerns; deadlines, parents, family crises, marital spats… It’s really frustrating.

Many of us less than famous authors are faced with this conundrum every day. Somehow, some of us manage to put together a product to sell… Some are good, some are miserably bad… but it’s a hard thing to juggle; trying to succeed as an author in addition to living a life and working a job like every other schlub. We have to dig into our pockets for editors (at least some of us do) and we have to act as designers and marketers to boot. We have to send query after query and receive rejection after rejection. But fundamentally, it’s important to us to get our work out there; as a sense of accomplishment in the art that we love, as a way to validate that this is what we are meant to do. It’s worth it, even if we aren’t selling millions and being picked up by Hollywood; even if we are barely breaking even, or in some cases, losing money.

Writing is my survival… it is my healing. Writing is my escape as much as reading is. When I think I can’t cope, I write. When I feel like I need to express something I’ve been internalizing, I write. I stay up late, and pay for it dearly the next day; I squeeze in some time on my net-pad during lunch, but I write. Jobs and careers might come and go, but all through it, I’m still writing. It’s what I was meant to do.

How did you start writing?

I can recall the time when I realized I loved to write. Reading was already something I relished, and from a very early age I was an avid bookworm. I used to LOVE the sound of hardbacks and I loved the smell of the paper. I know this sounds weird, but I remember in the first grade, I checked out the Ramona series from the library, and I remember loving how the thick, hard-backed books thumped when I tapped them, and I remember laying the open book over my face and taking deep breaths of that papery scent. Yeah, I know. I was a weird kid.

I was voracious reader too—I gobbled up the Ramona books, and then attacked most of the Beverly Cleary books, then pretty much anything else that sounded nice when I tapped the cover, and then moved onto the Xanth series by Piers Anthony and continued reading those all the way through to middle and high-school. I wasn’t a huge Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys fan—but when lacking anything else to read, I partook grudgingly.
I discovered Jean Auel’s books at a young age (I know… I was perplexed by those questionable scenes, I confess, but I did LOVE the narratives on Ayla’s medicine training, and her collecting and use of natural plants and such). I loved the Neverending Story… and adored how each chapter was in a distinguishing colour based on if you were in the present or in the fantasy world, and the first chapter starts with a word starting in A, and then each subsequent chapter follows the alphabet. I was dismayed to discover that the movie only depicts half the book!

I read books that were required reading for older kids & such; Where the Red Fern Grows; To Kill a Mockingbird, JRR Tolkein of course, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Of Mice and Men, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and Animal Farm, Wuthering Heights, Watership Down, Pretty much everything Brontë and all things Austen, Moby Dick and whatever else I could get my paws on. I remember a couple of times in middle school, skipping classes and hiding out in the back corner of the library, reading entire books in one day.

I started writing stories in earnest in the fifth grade. Before that it was mostly scribblings and poems and such. What prompted the storyteller in me for sure was my fifth grade teacher, Ms. Wendy Pamay. I think pretty every one of us can say that there was that *one* teacher or professor who had a profound effect on you during your formative years… Wendy Pamay and Mr. Paul Francis were my inspiration when I was young. I wasn’t necessarily a great student; I had a rough childhood and it reflected on my participation and attendance pretty badly. Ms. Pamay was the one who taught me that writing could be that escape, that place where I could express myself without reserve. She was a wonderful teacher… I credit her with so many of my present day skills and interests. She treasured creativity and reading—and found really amazing ways to teach us things—she was genius. That is why she is part of the dedication of my first published book.

It took a long time for me to develop my voice. Much through my teens and early twenties, what I wrote was very much influenced by what I was reading. I finished my first book at 23; and it was horrible. I was horrified to discover a television show that appeared after completing that book that depicted a character almost identical to mine, so I scrapped the project. I wrote another science-fiction book that was also equally as terrible. But every word, every paragraph helped me develop my style and find who I was as an author. I think I also took a while to figure out how to put myself in my writing instead of just writing to tell a story or emulate a style I liked at the time. It made my characters more authentic and likeable, I think.

I write when it comes to me. I have, no joke, at least 200 false-start stories, some only a couple of paragraphs, some as many as seventy or eighty pages; all of which skidded to a creative halt somewhere along the line. Finishing a book is hard, and a rare event for me. I’m not disciplined enough to make myself write or to create outlines, I’m afraid. I prefer organic processes; it makes stories less predictable.

Tinna’s Promise is a strange book… I know it is. But what I do know is that it is reviewing wonderfully… and that I have a viable voice as a writer. It took years to develop it, but it’s there. I’m hoping Tinna’s Might will have that same draw that keeps the reader engaged as the first book has. We’re still editing. I’ve had to do A LOT of moving stuff around and revisions; I tried too hard to fill readers in on the background from the first book; it’s a lot of work. I’m hoping to have it polished and tied up by end of year, but I’m not sure… we shall see!