writing

Taking Dictation

That book really took off over the weekend. I can barely keep up with all the stuff my brain keeps coming up with. Whole scenes are playing themselves out in my head. I got several thousand words written on Saturday. Now I need to do a little revision and regrouping because I got ahead of myself and skipped over some things that need to happen before other things can happen.

Although I’m mostly winging it, I’ve realized I do need some structure. I’ve taken some advice I’ve read and am writing a short synopsis from the villain’s point of view: what they did and why and what they’re doing in reaction to the other events in the story (using the singular “they” here to avoid any potential clues, like the gender of the character — I don’t want to spoil the book before it’s even written!). That allows me to have something of a timeline in mind to use as a framework and gives my heroine something to bounce off against.

I was on such a roll that I skipped an event I’d been planning to go to on Saturday since I didn’t want to risk losing all the stuff in my head before I got it written down. And that turned out to be a good thing because I noticed an odd burning smell in my car when I drove home from church Sunday. That’s about a fifteen-minute drive on neighborhood streets, so it could have been potentially bad if I’d driven halfway across the metro area at highway speed — and it would have been after most repair places would have closed for the weekend, so I’d have been in big trouble if I’d actually broken down. I don’t plan to go anywhere today (I have more scenes to transcribe, and there’s a front coming through, so the weather is nasty), but I’ll run over to my neighborhood mechanic in the morning for them to check it out. None of the warning lights have come on, but it’s not a happy smell.

Now I’ve got a cold, gray day, perfect for plotting mayhem and murder while wrapped in a blanket and with a cup of tea by my side.

writing life

Mental Writing

It seems there’s one thing the weighted blanket is no match for: a book that wants to write itself. But I don’t mind that kind of sleepless night. I pretty much just have to transcribe the first few chapters that wrote themselves in my head last night, and before I even got out of bed this morning I’d written the back-cover copy for the book.

First, I need to create the town because the location is a little vague. I know a few of the places, but I need to be a lot more specific and concrete to figure out the logistics. I’ve spent the morning Google touring the area where I’m setting the book. I’m stealing elements of a couple of different real towns, the location (more or less) of another town, and then making up a lot of stuff, but being able to “drive” down the roads via Google maps made it easier to visualize what I’m hoping to create (and saved me a day trip).

So, I guess I’m doing National Novel Writing Month again (unofficially) and adding difficulty points by starting late, not getting around to even plotting until several days into the month. That gives me a deadline to shoot for to have a rough draft done. I’m going to try to have a couple of books done before I launch, so what I may do is draft the second before revising the first. That way I’ll know what characters and places I need to establish in the first book.

This is my favorite phase of the writing process, making up all the stuff, just before I start actually writing. I’m not plotting too heavily. I know who the bad guy is and why, but I don’t know the process. If “pantsing” works for so many mystery writers, I may try it this time and see if my writing feels more spontaneous.

Life

Alien Flowers

We’re having a weird weather year in which we seem to have mostly skipped fall, going straight from summer to winter. We’ve already had a freeze, which is really early for us, and this means that we’ve missed the main reason I love fall: good weather for being outdoors. It went straight from too hot to too cold and damp. My morning glories had barely started blooming when the freeze hit. I had one in a pot small enough to bring inside, and that one is still blooming. Another I was able to move up against the house in a sheltered area, and it looks like it might bloom, maybe even before the next freeze next week. The third I couldn’t move because I put one big trellis between two smaller pots, and I couldn’t get the whole thing moved. There are some leaves left, but I doubt it will bloom.

pink coxcomb
The “cock’s comb” formation of a celosia plant.

My big success this year was in growing celosias, which was entirely unintended. I bought a packet of “annual cutting mix” seeds and threw them into some pots that already had dirt in them. A couple of them turned out to produce zinnias. The rest produced these crazy looking flowers that reminded me of science fiction movies and shows in which the aliens have invaded earth and are terraforming it to suit them, with weird alien plants taking over. I looked up all the plants listed on the seed packet, and none of them seemed to match. I finally figured out they were celosias, also known as coxcomb (though only one of mine went into the cock’s comb formation). Those weren’t listed on the packet at all.

I’ve also seen them described as “Dr. Seuss plants,” since they look like the kind

pink and yellow celosia flowers
Are they alien, or drawn by Dr. Seuss?

of flowers Dr. Seuss drew. They weren’t what I was expecting, and they aren’t really what I would consider “cutting” flowers. They keep changing as they keep growing, and the blooms stay rather than blooming and then falling off, so I haven’t been able to bring myself to cut any of them. I want to see what they do next. Supposedly, they make good dried flowers, so I may try that when the season really and truly ends.

I love sitting on my patio, surrounded by all my flowers. I had never thought of myself as the gardener type, but the plants bring me a lot of joy. I just wish I had a longer season for them this year. Our summers are so brutal that we don’t tend to get the good flowers until September, at least. This year, they didn’t really bloom much until October, and then we got a freeze at the beginning of November. I’ve had maybe three good days to sit or work outdoors in between the heat and the cold.

Today’s a gloomy, wet, cold day, which I love, but I prefer it to come after a good stretch of pleasant fall weather. I’d hoped to take a little vacation and go hiking in the Oklahoma mountains, but every time I have a stretch of days when I could do that, the day I’d be spending hiking is forecast for a bitter cold front and rain.

In case you’re having a gray day wherever you are, enjoy some of my flowers, with photos taken on a nicer day.

Life

Sleep Solutions

Sleep issues seem to be a common problem with writers. I guess it’s because we have trouble shutting off our brains. Lying in a dark room with no distractions and nothing to do is the perfect opportunity to work out those thorny plot problems, according to our brains. I’ve been experimenting with ways to help me sleep better, and my latest discovery may have done the trick.

I found a weighted blanket on sale at Tuesday Morning and thought I’d give it a shot. I’d done some reading about these, which are supposed to help ease anxiety and make you feel more secure for better rest. They were originally developed to help children with autism. In a way, they’re like swaddling or like a thundershirt for pets, using close pressure that’s like a hug to ease tension. I noticed how much better I was sleeping when it got cool enough to put the comforter on the bed, and I remembered that I used to put my sleeping bag on top of the comforter to give myself more warmth and weight, so when I saw this blanket at a reasonable price, I thought I’d give it a try.

It was hard to judge at first, since I got it last week when I was going to that conference, so I had all the little “will I get up in time to catch the train?” worries. It was really cold, and I must say that the super-snug blanket made it even harder to get out of bed on a cold morning.

But the last two nights have been some of the best sleep I’ve had in ages. I don’t remember doing my usual 3 a.m. wake up. When I wake during the night, it’s just to roll over, glance at the clock, and go right back to sleep rather than lying there awake and thinking for a while. I don’t know if it’s the blanket or just that I was tired.

The blanket I got is smaller, more of a throw, and I did use it one night when watching TV. For a change, I just sat there and watched rather than getting sidetracked and going online or doing other stuff like that. Again, I don’t know if it’s the blanket or if I was actually engaged in what I was watching. It’s also nice for reading.

Of course, the down side may be that this is going to be yet another thing that makes sleeping away from home difficult. I already have the issue of flat beds now that I’m used to my adjustable bed, and now I’m going to feel exposed when I don’t have twelve pounds of blanket lying on me. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the summer. I’m considering sewing some kind of weights to my knitted lace blanket to give me some weight without warmth.

writing life

The Mystery Convention

After a very busy week, it’s nice to get back to something like a “normal” schedule. I let myself sleep in, as it’s been more than a week since I didn’t have to get up and go somewhere in the morning, but now I’m trying to go by my usual working routine.

The mystery convention was interesting, though not quite what I expected. For one thing, I was probably in the youngest quarter of all attendees. I felt rather like a child. For another, I wasn’t entirely sure where it fell on the fan vs. writer spectrum. A lot of the panel descriptions made the panels sound like they’d be writing panels with how-tos and advice for writers, but then they ended up being more for a reader perspective. I still got some good info and learned a lot about the way mystery writers and readers think, but I didn’t get the nuts and bolts I was hoping for. I think most of the benefit for me was that hearing the discussions gave me ideas, and that made the vague mystery idea I’ve had in the back of my head start taking concrete shape.

As big of a mystery reader as I’ve always been, I hadn’t heard of (or hadn’t read) most of the speakers. I’ve now got a list of books I want to look for. I did get to meet Rhys Bowen, who writes the Royal Spyness mysteries, but that was in the hospitality room rather than on any panel. And I got a lot of scoop about writers I had read from Felix Francis’s talk. Of course, he talked a lot about his father, Dick Francis, but because of growing up with his father and because of the people he knew, he was also able to talk about going over to Agatha Christie’s house or visiting P.D. James. It sounds like as a kid he was very curious about writers’ processes, so he was able to talk about how they plotted their books and how they worked. I graduated from Nancy Drew straight to Dick Francis and Agatha Christie, so it was fun hearing all those stories.

I was rather surprised to learn how many mystery writers are “pantsers” who just write rather than plotting out the book in advance. I’d have thought that would be the one genre where you have to plot and plan. There seemed to be huge extremes between having everything planned out on color-coded notecards or Excel spreadsheets and just making it up as they go. Surprisingly, Agatha Christie was apparently a pantser. She made sure that every suspect actually could have been the murderer, with motive, means, and opportunity, but didn’t decide who actually did it until late in the writing process. Was Murder on the Orient Express a case of her not being able to make up her mind? And I guess And Then There Were None was a case of flipping it and making all the suspects victims.

In a way, I suppose it makes sense that if the writer is surprised by the conclusion, the reader is more likely to be, while if you know it all going in it might be harder to avoid being too obvious. My books haven’t technically been mysteries, but I have gone in thinking the culprit would be one person, then realized midway through that it was too obvious, so that person became the red herring, and then someone else became the culprit, with some editing to set it up.

I’m not sure I’d travel out of town to attend this convention again. Even if I start writing mysteries, I’m not sure the demographics are in line with my readership. I did get recognized a few times by readers who saw my name and knew who I was and commented about loving my books, which was cool. So I do have some readers there. But I doubt there would be much promo value without the backing of a major publisher. Most authors were only on one panel each, and then there were the publisher giveaway signings. That’s not a lot of exposure from an author perspective, but there’s also not a lot of business/education going on. There might have been more networking if I’d stayed at the hotel and attended the evening events instead of commuting, but networking isn’t my superpower, so I’m not sure I’d have got that much out of it.

But I did get some new books to read and I need to look up a few authors at the library.

Going Downtown

It never seems to fail that when it’s the perfect “stay at home and write” weather, that’s when I have to go somewhere. Yesterday, I had to speak to a university class, which meant driving across the metro area in the cold rain, and then back at the beginning of rush hour. Today, it’s raining even harder and is even colder, and I was planning to go downtown today to check in for the mystery convention so I wouldn’t have to worry about it in the morning.

But, given the weather forecast and the fact that it would be at least a two-hour excursion even if I were able to just go to the head of the line and catch the next train back, I made the executive decision to just deal with it in the morning. It’ll be cold then, but it won’t be raining.

In all this researching of train schedules, I found that the old option may be the best. For a long time, the only train from my city to downtown Dallas was the big commuter train that stopped at the downtown station, about 25 minutes or so from my house. I was so glad when they got the light rail through my part of town, with the station only about 15 minutes away.

But when I was looking up the train schedules, I found a notice saying that the downtown light rail tracks will be closed on Saturday. On a normal day, I’d have to take the train to downtown, then catch another train that goes right to the train station at the convention hotel. On Saturday, I’d have to take the train to near downtown, catch a shuttle bus to the downtown station, then catch another train to the convention hotel. I figured it might be worthwhile to go downtown and catch the big train, which is on different tracks and goes straight to the convention hotel. That’s when I saw that the commuter train is a 19-minute trip to downtown, while light rail is 40 minutes to downtown, plus waiting for another train to get to the convention hotel (which adds maybe 10-15 minutes). The downside to the big train is that it only runs once an hour during the day, every half hour during rush hours, while the commuter train runs every 20 minutes. But I’ll be traveling in rush hour. Even with the extra 10-15 minute drive to the station, it’s a faster trip, and I won’t have to wait at a semi-sketchy station to change trains. I’ll just have to be absolutely certain to catch the train, so no lingering after panels.

We’ll see what I can learn about how to write a mystery, and what I can learn about plotting a mystery that I can use in my other writing to build tension and suspense.

No posting the rest of the week because I’ll be downtown in panels.

Books

Reconsidering Darcy

Yesterday, my book group discussed Pride and Prejudice. I’m not sure how many times I’ve read it, but there are so many pop culture takes on it, so many adaptations, so many memes, that sometimes it’s hard to remember what comes from the book and what’s been added along the way. Reading the book again is like a revelation, stripping away all the baggage and getting back to the source, and I always notice something new.

I’ve never been a huge Darcy fangirl. I remember thinking of him as a jerk the first time I read the book (but I was reading the book for a course on satire, so I wasn’t reading it as a romance. I was looking for the snark). I found Colin Firth quite attractive in the miniseries, but I still wasn’t entirely sold on the character. As much as I love the book, I’ve never been one of those women swooning over Darcy or wanting to travel in time and meet him or even to meet the modern version.

But I noticed on this reading that the text is pretty clear that a lot of what Lizzie read as pride was actually social awkwardness, with the pride and snobbery used as a kind of social armor. It’s a lot easier to say “I’m not going to speak to those people because they’re beneath me” than to pull together the nerve to speak to someone when you’re feeling awkward in a crowd where you don’t know a lot of people. He’s got enough social grace to manage to look aloof and proud rather than tripping all over himself and being a dork, but basically he’s a dork who hides it well. That makes him a lot more endearing. But at the same time, he’s terrible at reading people, but arrogant enough to think he’s correct about people, which is a problem when he imposes his views on others.

I know Austen Twitter has started promoting Darcy as the poster boy for recognizing privilege and getting over it, and that is a strong thread in the book, where he starts from a place of assuming he knows best and Lizzie will be glad to take him, then realizes where he screwed up, and then sets out to change his ways and his attitude, then show her he’s changed, even using his privilege to help without expecting credit for it. He really has a satisfying character arc. The contrast between his first proposal, all, “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,” and the second proposal, “My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever,” is like a master class in how to talk to women. It goes from being all about him and her being obligated to listen to being about her and giving her the power not to listen.

But he wasn’t all gone in the earlier proposal. There’s a line that I love: “He listened without attempting to interrupt her.” That’s rather swoonworthy.

Plus, the best description of a slow-burn romance, when Lizzie asks him when he fell in love with her: “I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

I guess I’m Team Darcy now.

Posting Lapses Ahead

Posting is going to be a bit sporadic for the next week or so, as it’s a busy time. I’m about to rush off to a meeting, then tomorrow I’m speaking to a university class. I’m at a conference the rest of the week. Then, weather and health permitting, I’m thinking of going on a short vacation since we’ve finally got something resembling fall and it’s a good time to do some hiking.

Meanwhile, I’ve got some book revisions to start thinking about while I’m also plotting and developing a book. I’m hoping to get some work done on the train as I go to and from the conference.

Now I’m off to a meeting of a Jane Austen book club to discuss Pride and Prejudice. It was interesting re-reading it again after a long time. All the various adaptations and retellings of it tend to crowd out the original, and it’s nice to go back to the source every so often. I have thoughts on that, which may be the one post I’ll manage to make in the next couple of weeks. Let’s just say that I’ve never been one of those people swooning over Darcy, but after this read, I think I might now be.

My Books

News Updates

I’ve got a few updates about what’s coming and what I’m working on.

First, my next release will be an Audible Original, coming in early January. It will be in audio only for the first year, but I’m hoping to have an e-book edition after the end of that exclusive period. Stay tuned for more info about this one. It’s a contemporary fantasy romantic comedy unrelated to any of my other series. By the way, I get a bonus if this is the first book you get after joining Audible, so if you were thinking of doing that, keep that in mind.

Second, there’s going to be a delay in a Rebels book 4, for business reasons. One of the problems I have with that series is that the first book is controlled by the original publisher. That means I can’t do anything about the pricing, which is way too high for an e-book, especially for hooking new readers into the series, and that means there’s little I can do to promote it. I can’t do BookBubs or Amazon ads. The publisher certainly isn’t doing anything to promote it (they didn’t even do anything when it was first released), and since they don’t have any more books from me, they have zero incentive to do even so much as lower the price. Sales are really tapering off, and I’m getting to close to the level where I can ask for the rights back and republish the book myself, which would give me control over the whole series. But if I put out a new book, that tends to boost sales for the rest of the series, which would delay me getting control over the first book because I’d be farther from the threshold once more, and yet that boost wouldn’t be enough to really make a difference in income for me. So, I’m holding off on doing a fourth book until sales either surge so significantly (for whatever reason) that it’s worthwhile to do another book anyway, or until I get the rights to the first book back and the whole series is mine. It’s weird to be in a position to tell people not to buy or promote one of my books, but unless whatever promotion is so big that several thousand copies sell all of a sudden (it’s been selling under 400 copies a year), it’s better for me if sales drop off entirely.

Third, I’ve sold a short story to an anthology. There will be a Kickstarter to fund that anthology, so when that comes about, I’ll be letting everyone know. I don’t want to say anything more than that because I don’t want to steal their thunder.

writing life

Distracting Myself

I got my energy back today, so I’m looking forward to a productive day (the morning so far has been spent on dealing with the HOA, with their vendors getting estimates on doing repairs around my house).

I think my brain has been working over some things, and it generally finds ways to distract me to get me out of the way so I can’t work until it’s ready. It reminds me a bit of one of those books I recommended, To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. It’s a time travel book that’s basically about chaos theory and how the timeline seems to be self-repairing. The time travelers are trying to fix something that another time traveler seems to have possibly messed up, but everything they do to try to set things right just makes matters worse. Finally, when trying to get back to the time they’re working in after reporting to the “present,” they get stuck in the wrong time for a while and realize that the timeline was getting them out of the way so things could get fixed.

That’s what my brain seems to do sometimes. When I’m going in the wrong direction on a book, I sometimes get to where I can’t work at all and am totally distracted. That keeps me from writing the wrong thing that will have to be deleted. I get back to work when my brain has it all worked out.

The trick is figuring out the difference between normal distractions and “don’t wannas” and getting out of the way so I can work it all out. There’s nothing like a deadline for making me feel like my cabinets and closets need to be re-organized or to really want to go on a baking binge.

We’ll see when I sit down to write whether this otherwise lost week has paid off.