Publishing news!

So, it looks like the new scifi/fantasy/horror anthology I have a short story appearing in is available now, ahead of the original May 1st launch date. Amazon has Sha'Daa: Tales of the Apocalypse in stock right now! It's also available direct from the publisher. There's even a nice review already out of the anthology that mentions my story:

"Deborah Koren's tale, "TheTunguska Outpact," is a story worthy of praise. The twenty-two-year-old protagonist not only faces boyfriend/relationship woes but discovers she is the only one who can hold the forces of the Sha'Daa at bay and keep them trapped at the point where they entered our world. With the aid of a shaman and his pack of metal "thunderbirds," the pair stand up to the demons of the Sha'Daa and achieve victory despite overwhelming odds."

Pretty cool! This story was originally written back in 2005, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Two of my good friends also have stories in this anthology, Rob Adams and Jamie K. Schmidt, both fine writers!

Check it out!

fanfic!

The first half of my Combat! fanfic "Murder's Melody" is up at Fruit Salad! It's so much fun writing these stories. This one I had to get out of my head so I could focus on DTD without mental straying. Unfortunately, it was no sooner edited and out, then I started work on another fanfic story, that I shouldn't be be working on, but it Won't. Go. Away. Made me realize something about what inspires me to write one thing and not another. Why one will latch on and not let go, and others just sit around. It's simple, really. It's emotion. Character emotion. It's got to dovetail/propel/illuminate the plot, and when the combo is just right, I whip through the story fast. DTD was like this, and one of the reasons I was able to write the novel so quickly. This new fanfic story I'm writing is the same. I need to write stories that make me ache (good and bad) and feel strongly with the characters while I write. Now, all my stories have that, it's more a matter of degree. Some have more strong emotion than others.

Which is why it rather fascinated me that Wyrdsmiths posted a link to this, that quite fits with my way of writing/revising, I was just never so logical about stating it this way. It goes with escalations.

Other than that... note to self on additional things that leave me incapable of thought: besides shirtless Aldo, he's not allowed to wear black shirts and a day's worth of scruff either. And that's in B&W. Devastating. Absolutely positively forbidden. I'm still ruined a day later.

And another well-timed discussion

This post sums up some of where I'm at while working on POW right now. I had a little bit of that last year doing Variance, the telling of which still feels beyond my current skill set.

Some serious blog neglect

Boy, I haven't been around here lately. Blame it on buying a new house, trying to sell the old one. Really did a number on my creative brain cells. They did not want to function. They're coming around now that escrow has closed, the move is pending, and the next phase of my life is about to begin.

So I was catching up on Storytellers Unplugged, and the following section from an essay by Brian Knight caught my eye:

(rant alert – most of the so-called envelope-pushers who self publish their work via Publish America and Lulu like to call their abuse of the rules of grammar Experimental, but leaving the “Speech Tags” out of the dialog in your novel isn’t innovative, it’s just dumb).

Which quite cracked me up because I know at least one writer who that would apply to. The annoyingly conspicuous absence of dialogue tags, that is.

Rather interested to see what project I get into as soon as the move is out of the way and I'm settled. Revisions on DTD? Or starting the new POW novel? Or should I save the latter for Nano, even though I promised myself I wasn't going to do nano this year. And I'm curious to see how revisions go on DTD, because when I started it, I had specific actors in mind to play the leads (not that "casting" lasts beyond the conceptual period -- the characters rapidly come into their own shortly into the writing process). But now, one of those could/should be played by someone else, and I'm quite curious to know if that will subconsciously color the re-write a bit, and if so, how.

Ain't that the truth?

favorite phrase of the day...

"Multi-tasking means that you can do a lot of nothing at once."

from one of matociquala's journal entries today. She also wrote this, which cracked me up.

off and running

So, I started editing one of my novels today. It's nearly 145,000 words long, and 45,000 of those words need to go. Yanking the unnecessary stuff is actually way easier on this particular work than I thought it'd be, mostly because this draft has been completed for over five years, and I'm a very different writer nowadays than I was then. The story's still sound, but can you say bloated prose? I didn't touch it in all that time either, which makes it about as fresh as this one can get.

This is a novel that I've struggled with the beginning, because I originally felt I couldn't jump into the action without setting a few things up first. The beta readers all said once they hit chapter two, they couldn't put it down from there, but chapter one, that all important chapter one, bored them. So, there's the "swap chapter one and chapter two" theory, which I toyed with and don't like (or haven't figured out how to make work). There's the "throw out chapter one entirely and just let her rip" approach. Or there's something between those two. But on that subject, I read number 5 of this post today, which made me rethink what I need to do to the beginning. Again.

And I really liked this consise post from Elizabeth Bear today on narrative tension. I was talking recently with a non-writer friend on why they can't put down some books, and wish I'd read her post first. Then I would have had words (dilemma, escalation, resolution) and an easy example to explain it properly. My take was much more long-winded.

Interesting writerly stuff

P.O.V. - read all about it...

How other writers write novels - link salad

Sometimes it's useful to read how other writers work, sometimes it's not. Mostly it gives confidence to people who haven't finished a book yet -- look, ma, someone else has the same problems, the same stress, the same insecurities, I guess I can do this. But for anyone interested, Elizabeth Bear has kindly gathered links to several different responses to the "how do YOU write a novel" question running around right now...

http://matociquala.livejournal.com/891599.html
http://matociquala.livejournal.com/889579.html

Just write the damned book

Elizabeth Bear had this entry today on her livejournal that cracked me up: Things to think about when facing incomplete novels. And after checking out the "Rocket Science" review link, I totally want to read that book now...

feeling no pain

Apricot brandy. Writing.

Nope, the combo doesn't work for me.

An icy snow-laden gust of wind blew across the room, from open window through open door, and Smith shivered. 'My God, it's bitter.'

'Loss of blood,' Schaffer said briefly, then added, unsympathetically: 'And all that brandy you guzzled back there. When it comes to opening pores--'

He broke off and lay very still, lowering his head a fraction to sight along the barrel of his schmeisser.

--from "Where Eagles Dare," Alistair MacLean

How writers really edit

Oh man, too funny, the timing on this. Found this via Elizabeth Bear's journal and it sums up exactly what I'm doing in editing right now on DTD.

Words

This sentence fascinates me no end:

"Beware the man who looks in the mirror of his name."

Page 96, "Wanderer" by Sterling Hayden

Making those words count

I love discussions like this, and I love reading Elizabeth's Bear's journal precisely because she jumps right in. I tend to save these kind of entries out to a Word file to read back later. This one got filed under the "editing" notes folder.

What's in your wallet?

I used to write novel in one big file. Just keep adding on, doing daily editing etc. all within the same file. Sure, I'd make backup copies of the file at assorted points, but it was basically one file, say, "novel.doc" that kept growing and changing. Then I read somewhere on Holly Lisle's journal last year that she does a "save as" each day and so each day's work gets appended on the main work but in its own file. This gives you both a backup and a time line progression of where you were at the whole way. And the most recently dated file will always be the current file with the whole novel in it.

I went, hm, that's interesting. Let's give it a try. So, I then had files named "novel 08-30-05.doc" etc.

And what then completely surprised me was how fast I got used to this system. I can't think of working any other way now, and I even do longer short stories in this manner. Sure, I end up with a lot of files (I have 61 on my current novel, which is rather interesting in itself -- 91K, 61 days, average of nearly 1500 words per day), but then I hit a night like tonight, where I realize that two nights ago I screwed something up. I wrote a scene on Sunday, decided on Monday it went the wrong direction and promptly deleted it and wrote a new one. Now, here I am on Tuesday, realizing the first version was the correct one. Had I been working in just one file, that original scene would have been gone. I would have deleted it and overwritten it with the new scene. But tonight, all I had to do was just go back to Sunday's file, copy and paste the scene into today's file, and life was good. I lost nothing. I don't have to recreate the scene from memory.

Daily backups. Don't leave home without them.

Oh man, do his words about the "need" for security speak to me...

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea -- "cruising." Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

"I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine--and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need--really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in-- and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all--in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

--Sterling Hayden