Archive for the ‘life’ Tag
Blade’s Edge is two years old today!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: life, milestones, writing
Leave a comment My first book hit the shelves two years ago today. Happy Birthday, Blade’s Edge!
In other news, Monday is my wedding anniversary (19 years and I haven’t killed him yet, but then he hasn’t killed me yet, either; it’s all good). Yes, the stupid terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center the day before my wedding anniversary. Hey, they bombed the London Tube on my birthday — it’s apparently all about me.
I’m an Early Bird Bonus Pitch winner for the Emerald City Writers Conference, which means I get to meet the fabulous Angela James (editor of Blade’s Edge, by the way) for the first time. And she wants to talk about “The Valmont Contingency,” also known as “The Reluctant Socialite, The Privateering Engineer and Zombies In Spaaacccceee.” What? It’s catchy, it’s accurate, and it’s going to be changed anyway…and I stink at titles.
Sometimes, a girl has to accept her limitations. String theory, yes, no problem. Juggling two jobs while writing novels and running a household, no problem. Repairing the car, fine as long as I can get it onto a rack. Complex space-opera plots — really, is there any other kind? Good book titles…. Um. Not so much.
And I’m in the middle of reading through the manuscript for “The Valmont Contingency” for Savvy Authors’ Editpalooza class. I have to have my notes posted by Sunday.
Maybe by this time next year, my first book will have a sibling. 🙂
The Difference Between Love Scenes and Sex Scenes
Right now I’m fighting with the first love scene of The Valois Contingency, because it’s not doing what it needs to be doing—and I’ve rewritten it twice (so it’s actually been written three times). Yes, this post is procrastination. It’s also venting a little steam, and not the good kind.
Sex, for anyone who has been married for a while, is pretty simple. A little foreplay, insert tab A into slot B and repeat, fireworks, then peace with a bit of a warm glow. If you’re not one of the people doing it, well, it’s not that interesting; granted, it’s still interesting to a certain extent, or the pornography industry wouldn’t thrive in any economy.
A love scene, however, has to do more than describe two people having sex, and the first love scene has even more responsibility; it has to describe the change in relationship between the two people, focusing on how it increases conflict (we’re talking about a romance novel, so the relationship is central to the conflict one way or another, otherwise it would be some other kind of novel “with romantic elements”).
Unfortunately, the first love scene in VC doesn’t do that. If anything, it decreases conflict between the two main characters. It’s the scene after the first love scene that really ratchets up external conflict—space zombies make their first appearance on stage (Yes, space zombies!), and information from analyzing their remains ratchets up the internal conflict.
Maybe that’s just how these characters roll. Sigh. It’s supposed to be a sign of a well-developed character when he or she refuses to do something just because you (the writer) wants it done, so I must have well-developed characters. I don’t mind admitting they can be a pain in the…neck sometimes.
Man, What a Ride…
Blade’s Edge went on sale Tuesday. It hit the top-10 bestseller list at Samhain on Wednesday. And a book pirate was requesting the file on Astatalk on Wednesday. It hit #8 on Samhain’s list on Thursday, it hit #7 today. And it peaked (yesterday) at Amazon Kindle rank 6,842 yesterday, which ain’t bad for a first book from an unknown writer.
And today is my 17th wedding anniversary. Someday I’ll post the story of My Big Fat Redneck Wedding, but for today suffice it to say that it’s a miracle we found someone to perform the ceremony at all, let alone making it through without nervous breakdowns. And I mean redneck in the best possible sense — one of my grandfathers was a homesteader in Kuna, Idaho, and the other one was a sharecropper from southwestern Missouri who lost everything in the Dust Bowl & had to move in with his wife’s sister in Weiser, Idaho. Yeah, I come from tough, rural people.
