The Secret – by the Muse

So while I was writing Real Magic for Writers, I realized that I stumbled upon what I call in the book “The Secret.” It’s not really a secret; it’s what most other writers say about how to write.

Sit down and write.

That’s the secret. Simple, huh?

I was talking to someone recently who gave me a detailed Steampunk story, and ended it by saying, “But I have to write it.”

Well, yeah!

At the risk of putting people off: You’re not a writer if you think about writing. You have to do the work.

That’s what the core of Real Magic is–doing the work. (I’ve just saved you the price of the book.) I only hope that the book is uplifting enough and helpful enough for others to follow.

It’s who you know

I did an author Meet and Greet with about 20 other authors at Woonsocket Harris Public Library. While most of the authors there didn’t seem to sell any, I sold three. One to a “fan” (I’ve got fans!); one to someone I hadn’t seen in a long time; and the third to one of the authors’ guests that I sat next to.

It seems that’s my base, people who have read the books and enjoyed them, and people that I know who want to try them out. Luckily, I go out to enough events that I get more fans than just family and friend. The “fan” told me she passed Grimaulkin on to her cousin. Who knows where it’ll go from there.

BayCon – go there!

Road trip!

No, not really. BayCon is going on in sunny SoCal, and my publisher and two of the authors in Paper Angel Press are going to be there. Go visit!

Writing non-fiction is a little harder than I thought. Some of the items that I’m writing about, I got from other sources but put my own spin on them. I plan on having a bibliography, but do I cite the sources as I go along? I don’t want this to be a research paper – I’ve seen other non-fiction books just mention everything at the end.

I’m writing about summoning your muse. It’s not really “summoning”, more of a “calling to”. I’m running into trouble, again, with source material. I’m getting it from three different sources.

Research is in order.

Real Magic

I have decided to start on a new book. Blood From a Stone seemed to be mechanical, with no life in it. I got to the second chapter of the book, and realized that it was boring. Even though I hit the plot points did everything I was supposed to do, that was the problem. I followed a formula.

I followed the outline, and, I guess, the outline was boring. There’s a book called Story Trumps Structure, and it goes against the idea of using an outline. Sure you have “beats” and “inciting events” and all of that, but if there’s no life, there’s no story.

That’s why I felt I needed to do something different. I was talking with my publisher and mentioned to him about a panel that I could do called “Real Magic for Writers.” It would be about using the magic (chaos magic or eclectic magical practices) that I used to help my writing along. I drew up a proposal and he and his business partner liked it.

So Real Magic for Writers is slated to come out in October (I think? Or September?). With this one, I have an outline, and I’m following it, but I’m putting life into it because it’s about something I’m passionate about and that I’ve done for about 30 years. It’s something I haven’t done, a non-fiction book about a sort of secret part of my life.

And City of Heroes is back!

Switching gears

While waiting for the slooooowwwww download of CoX, I’m writing a new book.

I’ve stopped writing Blood From a Stone. I kept getting stuck, following the outline I had created for myself. I found out that I was forcing things to happen.

So now I’m writing a book for writers called Real Magic for Writers. It draws on my experience as a Sorcerer and Magician, as well as a writer of ten books.

I’m trying to keep the book conversational and easy to understand. The main point of the book is you can do the spells, but you also need to do the work behind them in order for the spell to succeed.

The good thing about this book is that the outline is clear. There’s no real room for diversion, once I can get the outline perfectly done up. With fiction, there’s rabbit holes even with outlines. With non-fiction, it’s pretty easy to go through.

I just hope that the people who read this book won’t go nuts if everything goes wrong.

Gaming or Writing? Or Sleep?

I have a lot of health problems. My internal chemistry needs to be perfect for me to function. Otherwise, I can sit and fall asleep anywhere, at any time. It takes a lot for me to work 8 hours, and then try to stay up for another four or more hours to try and edit or settle in for a game.

I can’t do it.

I eat, and I swear, half an hour later, I’m in bed. I read for maybe another half hour and I’m sleeping from 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.. And still tired when I get up!

Between low iron, high sugar, and low steroids, I have no idea what the problem is. There’s too many problems to begin with.

And now I’ve found out that my old game, City of Heroes, is available again.

I want to go back to it, but my priorities are the story. I’m in the process of rewriting now. I want to game (I check in every once in a while but often don’t want to get into it). I want to read. I have to write. It’s not that I don’t want to do that; I feel like my body betrays me.

I’m on page 24 of Blood From a Stone, and it took me all week to get that far. I can only hope that I get further this weekend.

Tempt the school librarians

Yesterday I attended the first (possibly annual) Providence Book Festival. In terms of sales, I didn’t do too well, but in terms of networking and finding out information (and helping other authors) I did really well.

One nugget I learned was that librarians go to these things. It’s not a bad thing to try to cater to a school library. Because Grimaulkin is young adult, and that market is hot (not hot-hot like middle grade) I can get the book into the hands of high schoolers. I also offered myself up as a speaker to school librarians in case they ever wanted to put together a panel of authors.

Meanwhile, I am now doing the rewrite for Blood From a Stone. I did all the background work, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, what characters to keep, what scenes to redo and add in. I hope to have it done in the next two weeks and ready to send out to the editor by then. My self-imposed deadline is June 1.

May 1 is when Grimaulkin Tales comes out. We titled each of the stories like Canterbury Tales, which is kinda neat. I’ve sold one copy already, and I may have someone ready to get it in June.

My next appearance will be June 1, at the Woonsocket Meet & Greet in the Woonsocket library.

Next Saturday, I will be appearing at the Providence Book Festival in the Renaissance Hotel. It’s a fancy joint, so I might have to dress up. and I have to pay an insane amount to park. Oh well; at least I’ll be with other Pulitzer Prize winning local authors (though I never heard of them). It should be interesting.

I might have one appearance in May, but on June 1 I’ll be in Woonsocket for their second annual Meet and Greet. I hope to participate in Pridefest on June 15 – it depends on when I get my tax ID. It’s the little things.

In the meantime, healthwise, I don’t feel like I’m getting better, and some days are better than others. Today is already rough; I can imagine what next week will bring. I have some tests the following week to decide whether or not I’ll need oxygen. If that happens, I might as well give up doing the outdoor events. Nevermind how the heck I’m going to get around.

Progress on Blood From a Stone is excellent. I’ve plowed through my manuscript, fluffed up some scenes, taken out some worthless characters, and told a story. It’s the how that is going to be the problem. I know what I want to say now, what I meant to say in the first draft; now I need to figure out how.

It’s going to take some significant rewriting on my part to get it to be the story I wanted. But it has some hope, unlike Yellowtree which has the only hope of a good title.

Speaking of good titles:

Review: Clean
I didn’t finish it. Maybe I’ll go back to it. Why?
The main character (A Level 8 telepath, whatever the hell that means) is a recovering junkie. I thought, okay, that’s interesting. But he brings it up in every chapter. In every other chapter, he keeps asking his superiors for help from “The Guild” and the superiors keep saying no. By the fifth time of all this happening, I’d had it. (Remember the rule of three, people. Reject it three times and then do something about it, or your reader will think you’re dragging it along like a dead horse.)

Review: Hot Lead, Cold Iron
I’m still reading it, though I’m getting really close to not finishing it.
The main character, Mick Oberon (probably that Oberon, I wouldn’t be surprised) is a 1930’s noir PI fae. I thought that was a great idea, too, except the narrator’s voice keeps switching from period voice to a more modern voice. It’s like hearing a high Victorian lady spout the f-word like a soldier. We’ll see if I finish it.

Health is Everything

It’s true. I went to the Association of Rhode Island Authors’ meeting (which didn’t have an elevator) so I had to climb stairs. It took me almost a half an hour to get from my car to the meeting, and out of the meeting to my car.

And I have an event in two weeks. At first, I was going to do it by myself, but just thinking about carrying all those books in on my own, setting them up, and tearing down–when I can’t even walk down stairs!–just scares me. I do have a helper who is being forced to come with me, but I have nothing for him to do so he’ll be bored.

I certainly hope that by August, when appearances ramp up for me, I’ll be able to do more things on my own.

Grimaulkin Tales is ready to come out on May 1, with some advance copies at the Providence Book Festival on April 27. At that, all the table real estate will be taken up by books, because I have a 3′ table space. Only two spots for business cards, a spot for the Corporate Catharsis flier, and the rest is all ten (YES, TEN!) of my books.

I am working on Blood From a Stone and will be working on it for a while. What happened is that in the middle of the book, I started dictating and there’s tons upon tons of dialogue that have nothing to do with the story. Not to mention NO QUOTES. Six pages of doing laundry. That’s going to get excised, for certain. And I repeat myself a lot. Characters don’t do what they’re supposed to, or they just do an awful lot of thinking.

Yeah, it’s a mess. It will be Maxwell’s story, but it’s still a mess.

Death card

The Death card in Tarot means endings and new beginnings. I’ve just finished Grimaulkin Tales (not Grimaulkin Collected – that’s the omnibus edition) and it will be available May 1.

Now I’m working on Blood From a Stone, doing the long and detailed rewrite of the story. It’s not as wrecked as Yellowtree. Yellowtree needs a total rewrite, I think. I might end up parking it in the drawer and starting something entirely new, but I love the title and I can’t let it go.

My next event, hopefully, will be the Providence Book Festival on April 27. I may have copies of Grimaulkin Tales there – no promises. Regardless, they will be available at PrideFest (if the Association of RI Authors has a presence).

Brother of the Zodiac omnibus should be available soon as well. Here’s the first draft of the cover..

The second draft has some Easter eggs and this will be available soon. Blood From a Stone will be under Maxwell’s name because of the subject matter.

I am trying to think of a different story to do. I liked the character of Turbo that I developed in Champions. His brother was a superhero and got injured, so Turbo took up the mantle himself without his brother knowing. I’m not sure if the superhero market is any good when it comes to stories–I know that the urban fantasy series is still going strong. I want to write to market a little bit, because otherwise the book will end up in the remainder pile somewhere. But I don’t want to sell out. It’s a fine line.

I want to write something that I can enjoy writing because after all, I’ll be with it for months. And you, Gentle Reader, will be with it for hours. I don’t want to waste your time on it, either.

Well, first thing’s first – finish Blood From a Stone and then take a look at the landscape to see what’s next. As with the Death card, every ending is a new beginning.