My Give A Damn’s Busted

I cannot speak

I cannot cry

The tears won’t come

My eyes are dry

 

I have no words

I see no light

My hope has dimmed

Tis black as night

 

My soul is numb

There is no zing

Encased in stone

I feel no thing

 

© 2017 Ana Ramsey

A Blessing for the World

I wrote this after the Boston Marathon bombing and it’s time to send it back out into the world.

May the Gods of Heaven and Earth comfort the grieving and welcome the dead into Their realms. May the Spirits of Earth and Fire, Air and Water hold us in their arms and strengthen us against the hurt we all face. May our Ancestors watch over us and guide us with their wisdom. May Justice be swift and Healing be gentle. May Mercy, Love, and Peace fill us all with their Light. And may we all be able to look into the Dark Mirror and see the face of another as our own.

I’m Back and Better Than Ever

I disappeared again. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone considering how crap I am at keeping up with any sort of regular blogging. I didn’t intend for my absence to extend this long, though.

This last year was a bit of a mess and my depression and anxiety walloped my ass something fierce for large parts of it, but I’ve come out of it stronger and with a better sense of who I am what my place in the world is. I lost a lot that was precious to me in the process and I won’t lie and say it doesn’t still hurt like hell even a year later.

I gave up on writing for a bit; I was in just too dark of a place to see the point of it. But I’m back at it with a new piece that I’m keeping close to my vest for now. I’m also looking into self-publishing CHILD OF MISCHIEF since I don’t see any point in trying to find an agent to take it on or a publisher who wants urban fantasy. I’m hoping to be able to get that out the door before too long.

The house renovations are continuing apace. We finished the bedroom and walk-in closet this past spring and our big project for this fall is getting our chimney repaired since parts of it are crumbling to dust. Over the winter, I’m hoping to get somebody in to build my library bookshelves and reading nook since neither my husband or I are up for tackling that challenge ourselves.

I know I say this every time, but I’m going to try and blog on a somewhat more regular basis, though I absolutely suck at keeping to any sort of schedule.

 

The Con Job

A couple of weeks ago I read a bit of fanfiction called The Cyborg Arm Job by CopperBadge. It’s a Leverage/Captain America cross-over fic that was really good. So good in fact that it spurred my brain to demand that I write my own Leverage/Captain America cross-over fic despite the fact that it’s been about a decade since I last wrote fanfiction. I only intended it to be a quick little story about the Leverage crew meeting Eliot’s idol, Captain America, at a Comic-Con, but it ended up being an eight thousand word beast that is getting a lot of love over on Tumblr where I originally posted it.

Summary: Eliot jumps at the chance to meet his idol even if it means spending the day at a geek convention. But HYDRA thinks the con is the perfect place to take Captain America down once and for all. Now the Leverage crew must team up with Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon to prevent a lot of innocent people from being murdered.

I wrote a thing

At last the weary light does fade
Giving way to silvery moonlit hues
Ink black shadows merge and spread
Darkening the earth and hearts of men

Howls echo through still night air
Setting wise ones to tremble in fear
For the Wild Hunt is on the prowl
Either flee and die or join the chase

Gaze long into the mirror of black
Find and embrace the monster within
With blood-stained claws and sharp-toothed grin
The terrors of the dark hold no sway over you

~Ana Ramsey

September 2015

I Finally Joined the Google+

If anyone wants to add me to their circles, here’s the link to my profile.

Just Another Day of Being a Writer

The rejections are starting to trickle in and, honestly, it’s not as bad a feeling as it was when I was querying Where Demons Fear to Tread. Oh, sure, there’s still the low-level dread of “What if nobody likes it? What if I missed the boat like I did with Demons? What if I’m just not good enough?”, but those are all normal fears that plague every writer. Or at least every writer I’ve ever heard/read speak on the subject.

Last time I was querying agents I used a site called QueryTracker, which was immensely helpful for keeping track of where I was in the process with each agent. Unfortunately, you have to be a paying subscriber in order to track queries for more than one project and I really wasn’t up for creating another account just for CoM, so I simply started an Excel spreadsheet in order to track agents. I still use QueryTracker in order to find agents and read the comments from other users who’ve queried those agents (I also check out the Absolute Write Bewares, Recommendations, and Background Checks forum for in-depth discussions about agents.). So far, my spreadsheet is much more helpful and concise than QueryTracker was even if it is a bit more work to set up.

Right now I’m struggling to write this synopsis. Nothing says Hell (Hel?) quite like trying to condense a 315 page book down to two pages and make it not only understandable, but interesting as well. I think I’ve pretty much got it nailed down, but who knows… We’ll see what my writing partners have to say about it.

Where I’ve Been

When last I left you, dear readers (Are any of you still here? Did I lose you all with yet another prolonged absence?), back in April, I was hopefully getting ready to dive back into the world of querying. I’d gotten my query letter together and sent one out to the agent whom my previous agent had recommended as a good fit for me, but alas, querying was not to be for later that day, one of my writing partners got back to me saying that she thought Child of Mischief needed one more rewrite.

As much as I internally screamed and raged and swore, I knew she was right, so after a nice long discussion with both of my writing partners, I figured out what needed to be fixed. These last four months have been spent completely tearing CoM apart and putting it back together again. I cut out a character I’d thought was important, but as I was deleting his parts, I realized that it didn’t change the storyline a single bit (except for a couple of chapters at the end which turned out to only need a few tweaks to make work without him). And that is one of the key signs that a character doesn’t need to be in the story, btw. I also rearranged a few scenes, wrote some new ones, and basically buffed the hell out of all of it.

I am beyond happy with the way it came out and, barring any major goofs my writing partners might catch, I’m confident enough in it to start sending it out as soon as I finish getting my agent list together.

And speaking of agents! Sheesh… I haven’t paid much attention to the agent scene since early 2010 and boy oh boy has it changed. So many of the agents I’d queried for Where Demons Fear to Tread are now out of the business and dozens of new ones have cropped up. And now there’s a Twitter hashtag where agents can request certain types of books (#MSWL)! Where was this five years ago when I was first querying WDFTT?

I finished the rewrite at the beginning of last week then promptly took the rest of the week off to let my brain air out a bit. Today, I resume working on the fantasy novel I’ve been working on off and on for several years now. It features an asexual, aromantic exiled princess, her trans best friend, and a group of rogues working together to find the king who was kidnapped. I’m really excited about this project because it’s not based on Western Europe (or anywhere on our Earth) and the characters are fun and diverse. I’m working title is The Once and Future Princess, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to change it.

So, now that you know what I’ve been up to these last few months, tell me what you all have been up to. While you do that, I’m going to go get Emereth and Trip into some trouble.

Wednesday’s Words

In honor of my preparing to venture into QueryLand once more, I’m going to post the query letter for Where Demons Fear to Tread which landed me my first agent.

            Violent Crimes Investigator Alexis Powers doesn’t have a prestigious title or a string of fancy letters after her name. What she does have are a gun, a set of ass-kicking skills, and a nasty demonic heritage few people care to mess around with.

That heritage is brought even closer to the surface after Death pays her a visit and kills off part of her humanity. Being that much closer to being a true demon is going to make her next case hell because Death wants her to find the stolen soul of a devout Catholic priest and he won’t take no for an answer.

To hide a soul from Death takes enormous power, and whoever is wielding that power will do anything to keep from being found. Alex must not only find the person or people responsible, but she must do it before her weakened human side gives in to her darker demonic impulses.

When her best lead turns up missing and a black market holy relic comes into play, Alex realizes she can’t do this on her own. She’s forced to accept the help of her agency rival –  a ten thousand year-old Japanese Dragon, and a Witch who specializes in breaking spells. Together they just might be able to solve this case before a demon-powered mage uses the priest’s holy soul to raise an army of truly immortal vampires.

            Where Demons Fear to Tread is my completed 90,000-word urban fantasy novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Wednesday’s Words

This week’s Wednesday’s Words are brought to you from the seat of my brand new office chair. Yay! My old office chair was more than a decade old and it had definitely seen much better days. It was so worn out and saggy that I had to resort to covering it in pillows for cushioning. Despite the very contented cat asleep on it, my old chair wasn’t a very comfortable place for a human to sit. Especially not for long periods of time.

So I ordered a new one last week and it arrived early Monday morning. It took a little bit of time to get used to – There’s no bottom pillow to shift and bunch up under my knees! Proper lumbar support! Thick padding on the arms to rest my elbows on! – but I am definitely in LURVE with it.

Today’s words are a snippet from Child of Mischief. I’m still waiting for my CP’s to finish their final read-through of it before I send it out into the scary world of querying and I’m hoping this will shame them into reading faster. *glares at Katy and Lisa* Okay, not really. They both have other stuff going on in their lives that takes precedence over reading my stuff and, as Lisa told me yesterday, I am far too understanding and forgiving.

So, without further ado:

Loki and I stepped closer to the iron gate, but Móðguðr called us back.

“Dearest cousin, wait.” She was frantically searching the folds of her clothing. “You’ve forgotten something.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Thank you for reminding me, my dear.” Loki went back to her as she pulled something out of a pocket. I couldn’t see what it was, but it struggled in her grasp as she handed it to Loki.

“I was good and didn’t eat it, just like you said, even if it does smell delicious.”

Loki patted the bottom of her foot affectionately.

“Thank you again, Móðguðr. I will try to visit you again as soon as I may.”

He returned to my side, the wriggling creature still in his hands. It was a chicken. A red chicken with black speckles. It glared at me with beady black eyes.

I’d never seen a chicken up close before and never realized they were so large. This one was about the size of my mom’s twenty-pound dog, Dorothy. Its beak was black as were its claws. It looked like it could do some serious damage if it got loose. Thankfully, Loki had a tight hold on the blasted thing.

“Uh… what do we need a chicken for?” I glared back at the little shit. I wasn’t going to let something I regularly ate for dinner intimidate me.

“It’s a cock and there are two others in different places that will crow to announce the start of Ragnarök. I need to take this one to Hel.” He didn’t sound quite so pleased at the prospect.

“Okay, so let’s take this cock and pony show on the road.”

Móðguðr roared with laughter as Loki stared at me in affronted shock. Mustering up all my remaining courage, I winked at him before walking through the gates of Hel.