Posted by nightphoenix on Jan 31, 2012 in
News,
Novels Well, yesterday I sent out a new batch of queries.
I think that both my query letter and story are much stronger than they were at this time last year, but I suppose I’ll have to wait and see what sort of response I get.
The issue that’s going to work against me the worst, I believe, is length. Hands, Like Secrets is bloody long, both for a debut and especially for the YA market. And there’s only so far I can knock it back without compromising the story. At best…at the very, very best I can do on my own…I might could knock it back to 118,000 or so. That’s how long Twilight is. Twilight was a debut, and a YA to boot. It’s not impossible.
It just makes an already difficult job harder.
I try to tell myself that Eragon was somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 words, and it took off nonetheless. However, Eragon was originally self-published, and had something like a year to gain momentum before a publisher ever picked it up. I will self-publish Hands if I absolutely have to, but I want to exhaust all my other options first.
I’m about to get back to work on Promises, Like Tears, which has become a bit bogged down. I think there’s a lot in there that I need to go back and cut, or rearrange, and I can’t quite decide if I should do that first or just push on to the end and THEN come back. The latter is probably the better option.
Changed Shades to Seven Shades. I really have no reason other than it sounds more interesting. And the characters occasionally swear by it. The only fact I’ve established is that there are seven “shades” in shayol, and I haven’t really worked out why that’s important. Might become relevant in the last book, when Saeli is briefly taken to shayol by the Keeper of the Oath. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
I’ve also decided to attempt NaNoWriMo this year, and see if I can’t get This Chosen Fate written. It’s all plotted out; all I have to do is sit down and write it. That’s something I really need to practice: writing straight through something without going into editing mode. And this way I’ll have something besides Shades to shop around…something that isn’t as long 
Tags: agents and editors, business of writing, Shades, This Chosen Fate
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 29, 2011 in
News,
Novels,
Output Hey look, a post!
Apparently one of my plugins was actually hiding all of my posts except the top one, but only if you weren’t logged in. So of course because I was logged in, I didn’t notice. Anywho, I have fixed that problem, and I’ve also gotten the audio player back up and running, so music should work now. Troubleshooting is a laborious process, involving a lot of logging in, turning features on and off, logging out, refreshing the page, checking the page, logging back in, and well, you get the idea. I posted two new posts since the Great Fatal Error and Two Week Shutdown, but because of the above problem, I don’t know if anyone has actually seen them. Was kind of wondering why they never showed up on Facebook. Read more…
Tags: agents and editors, Shades, the blog
Posted by Mistress of Feathers on Sep 12, 2011 in
News So I went to update the blog to the latest WordPress, because you know, it’s good to have things up to date. Well, and so…one of my many plugins had a fatal error and broke the blog. As my husband’s computer is where all the actual content is stored, and he’s always very busy…tonight was the first opportunity we had to fix things.
And it was so very, very easy to fix. Gah.
Anyway, that’s why things have been down for the last…week? Two weeks? Time tends to get away from me…
Back with your irregularly scheduled posts soon!
Edited to add: You may notice that some features, like my embedded music, are not working properly. Updating always breaks a few plugins (just usually not so thoroughly). I apologize. It will take me some time to get everything all updated and running again.
Tags: the blog, the real world
Posted by Mistress of Feathers on May 23, 2011 in
Input,
Music,
News No, I did not go to anyone’s prom. It’s been a long time since I was in high school, you know.
However, last week I did take myself to the movie Prom, on the justification that it was a teenager movie and I write stories for teenagers. I ought to keep myself familiar with how they dress and talk and act around each other if my books are going to contain any amount of realism. And…sometimes I like a simple young toothy love story. And the guy who plays Jesse is kinda cute *cough*…
Anyway, it was pretty much what I expected. Nothing deep or riveting or complicated. But it did affirm why the young adult genre appeals to me as a whole, and also reminded me that it’s been a while since I was a teenager.
I like the immediacy. People tend to mock teenaged angst, how everything that’s happening is so dreadfully important and a big deal all the time. How ups are like mountaintops and downs are like the end of the world. It’s true that young people lack a certain amount of perspective that comes with age and living life. But you know…sometimes I think adults could use more of that immediacy and significance. Young people care, immensely and deeply, and that kind of passion can do amazing things in the world, if channeled. We, as adults, need to remember how it feels to care, and to love, and to ache…to not let those things slip away with the years.
I like the sort of on-the-cusp, anything-is-possible vibe that seems to permeate stories that involve teenagers. It’s both exciting and scary to be making momentous decisions that will affect the rest of one’s life, and it makes those characters stand out in a way that wise, mature, rational adult characters sometimes don’t.
But watching that movie, I noticed something. Many of the problems between characters could have been easily and quickly solved, if the characters would only talk about what was bothering them. It amazed me how many times I was sitting there in the theater thinking, “Just say it! Why can’t you just speak up??” I found myself sometimes getting frustrated with how easily they would sometimes just give up and go along with the crowd, or follow orders, or do nothing.
But see, I’m an adult. Been there, done that, you know? I’ve learned from experience that getting things out in the open is usually worth any possible repercussions. I’ve learned to express myself, and I’ve learned that voicing my needs and feelings is far better in the long run than hiding them. I’ve had a few years to hone what I’d say, and how I’d say it, and I’m no longer so insecure about what people will think of me if I speak up. It takes some deliberate effort on my part to put myself in a teenaged mindset. Thinking like that not an automatic thing for me.
In other words, I don’t remember what it’s like to be a teenager quite as well as I think I do. And I’d do well to keep that in mind.
In other news, I’ve started another blog. I was very adamant that this blog was going to be for writing, and only for writing, and that I wasn’t going to get into religion or politics here unless it directly related to my writing. But more and more I’ve found myself needing a place to vent on certain issues…because otherwise they just bother me and bother me and I don’t get anything done for like a week. If you really want to know where I stand on such topics, you can head over here and poke around. There’s not much there yet, but it’ll probably get added to pretty fast. I will warn you, sometimes I may not be very nice and I’ll probably be doing a lot of picking on fundamentalist Christianity in particular. Not because I have a problem with the Christian faith…actually, I like it very much, which is why I’d like to see its blind spots and idiocies and dark sides exposed and dealt with. But, if that sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, then you should probably leave exilemusings alone. 
Tags: movies and television, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on May 5, 2011 in
News I’ve given the Projects page a massive overhaul. Switched things around, added about five or six new ideas and some new music. Some of the “new” ideas have actually been sitting on my computer for months…I just never got around to posting them up here.
You may notice some little things that have been updated.
I changed the name of the last Shades novel from Hearts, Like Glass to Dreams, Like Ashes…also ganked from a song, and I just think it has a better ring to it. “I watched the city burn, these dreams like ashes float away…” Updated the explanation to reflect my current progress.
Changed the title of Kailar to Fire Into Frost…because Fire and Ice is too cliched, as badly as I wanted to use it.
Changed the title of The Waters to This Chosen Fate; hard to come up with. I toyed with something like Beyond These Shores, but I didn’t want it to sound like I was equating the Waters to the afterlife, or that Lauren had died. The story is all about choice and fate, so.
Updated To Wake a Windmaker to just Windwaker. I was reluctant to give the book the same name as a Zelda game, but I think the story and format are different enough that it will be okay. And it gives Quintin more of a focus: he’s not just some random guy looking for answers, he IS the answer, he IS the Windwaker. No longer a journey to the saviors, but the journey OF a savior.
Changed some music around. Also, you may notice that some of the new ideas don’t have any explanation other than the pitch. That’s because…I haven’t put my thoughts together yet. I may do that in a few individual blog posts.
Tags: the blog
Posted by nightphoenix on May 5, 2011 in
Input,
Life,
News Yes, it has been too long. April was a month full of surprises and changes.
My car died. Like, permanently. Poor old Pontiac. The only thing worse than driving an overheating car across Melbourne was then having nightmares about driving said overheating car across Melbourne that night. Which, I now know, was not a wise thing to do…but alas. Thankfully, I have the most wonderful dad in the world, who funded the Hyundai Sonata I’m driving now.
We now have a cat. The hubby heard him crying outside one night after those two huge April storms we had. I, of course, had headphones on and didn’t have a clue. So we’re sitting there working on our computers, when the hubby suddenly gets up and walks out the front door with no explanation. He then calls my phone and asks if we have anything we could feed to a cat. I cut up some hot dogs and take them outside, where I find him with a very skittish orange kitty in the downstairs breezeway. We debated what to do with the cat, as it was raining and we didn’t want to just leave him outside. As it was around 11 in the evening, our options were limited. We ended up bringing the cat up to the apartment for the night and made plans to call animal control in the morning.
We got some basic supplies and discovered that the kitty was housebroken (litter trained and everything). Also, this cat really, really liked my husband. I mean, he couldn’t even leave the room without the cat trying to follow and put its paws up on his ankles. I stayed home with the cat the next day until animal control came, and that part was absolutely horrible. My son was home on spring break, which made it even worse (how do you explain to a five-year-old why someone is taking kitty to the pound, when every single child’s movie that features a pound portrays it as a BAD PLACE??)
Well, we debated, and debated, and finally decided that we couldn’t bear the thought of this cat getting possibly euthanized if no one claimed him. After a week, we went back to the animal shelter and officially adopted him. His name is now Kansuke, and he is settling in very nicely (after he got rid of the cold he caught at the shelter).
I have been writing, despite all this; working on Promises, Like Tears and This Chosen Fate kind of in tandem. When I hit a block in one story, I switch to the other. By the time I hit a hard place in the other, I’m ready to continue the first one. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time on Amphiptere’s Vision, tweaking the skillsets. “Sandboxing” them, I call it; where instead of coming up with a straightforward list of abilities, I create a set of “tools”, skills that can be combined to create the individual abilities. It gives the player the opportunity to create their own “style” of fighting, hunting, building, etc. It also forces the player to think about what the various tools do, and to anticipate what might happen if one tool is combined with another. I want the player to “know” his skillsets nearly as well as the character does, and to be creative in how he employs them. Breaks the bash-bash-bash-loot monotony of grinding that most MMO’s seem to have.
I’ve heard back on a few submissions, mostly the standard not-right-for-us-at-this-time letters. The few more personal notes I’ve gotten have been encouraging, however (as is the fact that I’ve even gotten personal notes at this stage in the game). I’ve sent out a few more and hope to hear back in the next few weeks. The agent hunt continues.
That’s about it on the real life front. More to come later.
Tags: agents and editors, business of writing, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on Mar 14, 2011 in
News You may have noticed that some of the categories and tags for the blog have changed. I went through and cleaned house a bit, as it were. I’ve decided to take the blog in the direction of documenting the creative process, both in general and specifically in my own work. I’m not retroactively changing or deleting any posts…just giving things a direction to take from now on.
In the tags, I deleted a number of redundant and rarely-used ones, and combined a few others. Notably, got rid of both the artwork and Mortal Instruments tags. Made the artwork a category instead of a tag, and the other…well, for some reason the MI tag was getting hits every day (almost since the day I created it, mind). There was only ever one post in that tag, making the sheer number and consistency of hits a bit mind boggling. I suspect a bot was responsible. I really don’t like bots snooping around. Don’t worry, the post hasn’t gone anywhere…I just nixed the tag.
Categories have been redone to reflect the new direction, and are, I hope, somewhat self-explanatory. Input is what I absorb in the form of books, movies, TV shows, etc…that which fuels the process. Output is whatever I’m working on, the results of the process. And there’s the process itself; how influence, inspiration, and imagination combine to make something new.
My next goals are:
1) Update the Projects page. Add some story ideas that have emerged in the last few months. Reorganize to reflect the current queue.
2) Update the Wands page. Add pictures as needed. Start the process of writing descriptions for each wand.
3) Make the first “official” creative process post.
Also I may, in the future, create a separate artwork page that showcases a bit more of my art.
Tags: the blog
Posted by nightphoenix on Mar 10, 2011 in
News I just realized I haven’t updated this blog in about a month. That’s both irresponsible and inexcusable of me.
I’ve been productive, which I suppose is part of the updating problem. Have plotted out the Waters story, and decided to give it an actual title: This Chosen Fate. Have also written nearly a full chapter of Promises, Like Tears. I’m getting a much better handle on Naeth’s character this time around. He’s actually supposed to be sort of annoying and not really all that likable when you first meet him, which will make his later improvements stand out all the more. I’ve been debating theology with friends, which easily turns into a time-sucker with me.
Also, one of the blogs I follow regularly, Slacktivist, moved to a new internet home last week, which sparked a…ruckus. Very quick sum-up: Within the community of commenters and lurkers that follow Slacktivist, many people had objections to the content of the new home site, Patheos, and felt that they could not in good conscience support such a site. The community seemed ready to split over the move. This is the type of situation that moves at internet speed and can only be kept up with if one is willing to follow 1000+ comments or so across the space of about 5 separate threads on two different websites. However, the community seems to have settled on a compromise: Fred will stay at Patheos to be a sort of light in the darkness, per se, but he’s handed the old space over to a few of the regulars from the community as a safe space for those who don’t want to or cannot bear to deal with the vile stuff on Patheos. Which, I have to say, is pretty awesome of him. But…following all the drama has taken up a lot of time this week.
Have also been cleaning the apartment, which is of course a never-ending job.
However, the truth is…I’m not sure where to take this blog. I definitely want it to remain about the writing, but really what it’s become is a sort of “update on me and my writing” space. Which is great (if a bit narcissistic) for me…but how interesting is that for other people? I’d like to give this place more of a direction, so people can come here and know more or less the sort of topics to expect.
I have two sort of hazy ideas. One, have the main theme be “the creative process”. The process of getting ideas. Turning those ideas into stories (or art, or…well, those are my two areas). Brainstorming. Worldbuilding. I could get even more specific, like: The Creative Process for Fantasy Writers. Or something. This could also incorporate the “real life meets writing” and “how such-and-such impacted me as a writer” posts that I do every so often.
The other idea would be to focus on the more nuts and bolts aspects of writing, like GMC and problematic plots and such. And how certain books and movies either succeed or fail based on these things. That’s kind of what Writing Excuses is, which makes it really interesting to me…but it’d essentially make this into a how-to blog. Dunno if I like that.
Anyway, I’ll be giving this more thought over the next few days. Just wanted to check in and say, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet.
Tags: goals, ideas, the blog, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on Nov 17, 2010 in
News,
Novels,
Output Today, November 17, 2010, at precisely 1:46PM, I wrote four spectacularly satisfying words:
“Here ends Book 1.”
The draft is done! I made it to the end before December. Final word count: 124,178. Okay, that’s about 20,000 words over my limit, but hey, it could’ve been worse. Woo hoo! Being me, the first thing I did was crank up some Hanson in the car. Georgia, Penny & Me, and Rock ‘n Roll Razorblade, in that order. Out of all the music I have, that’s what I needed just then.
Anyone feel like celebrating with me before I start the editing process?
I’m debating whether to print out a hard copy to edit. On one hand, it’d be easier for me to flip back and forth, decide where to add stuff, etc. However…that’s a lot of paper. I’d almost certainly have to take it somewhere to get it printed. Meh, we’ll see. Right now I’m just kind of giddy that it’s actually done.
Tags: Shades
Posted by nightphoenix on Nov 11, 2010 in
News,
Output Added the two axillary Shades novels I’ve been planning, and have tweaked the look of things. Changed the Grimm theme song to Yearbook by Hanson, and am trying to figure out why I didn’t make that the theme to start with. It’s absolutely perfect. Made some minor wording changes in some of the pitches.
Tonight or tomorrow, I’m going to add the Fall-Reconcile story.
Tags: the blog
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