Wherein I Rant a Bit…

Agent Rachelle Gardner has a great post up today that was sparked by her reading Steve Jobs’ biography and his line “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.” and how it relates to the publishing industry.

I’ve felt the same as Rachelle for the past few years. I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I see so many readers clamoring for more urban fantasy books and so many amazing writers complaining that their urban fantasy series was either not picked up or it was canceled. I’ve heard time and time again that the UF market is tight and that demand is on a decline. Well, maybe demand from publishing houses is on the decline, but that’s not true for readers.  When shows like Lost Girl, Supernatural, and Grimm are so popular, how can anyone say there’s a decline in interest in urban fantasy?

What readers don’t want is to pay $8 for a book that is as poorly written, error-riddled, and cliched as the self-published book they paid $.99 for. Not that I’m saying all self-pubbed books are like that. I know some self-pubbed authors who go above and beyond to put out the best book they possibly can. What I am saying is that readers buy books published by a big name publishing house because they’ve come to expect certain standards from those houses. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a sharp decline in the quality of books coming out of those houses. It’s gotten to the point where I won’t pick up a new urban fantasy author until I’ve heard some pretty glowing reviews from people and places I trust (especially now that Amazon has stopped offering their 4-for-3 mass market paperback deal)

The biggest issue, IMO, is that as soon as the genre hit big, publishing houses scrambled to sign as many urban fantasy writers as they could, regardless of how good their story was, in order to make as much money from the trend as possible. When those poorly written, badly edited stories came out, readers reared back in disgust and refused to partake of the dreck they’d been served. Now, the publishing houses, seeing how poorly those titles have sold, are saying that the market is in decline. Ummm… no. It only looks that way because you guys fouled the well.

And, it’s not only urban fantasy this happens to. Every genre that experiences a surge in popularity goes through this same cycle. You would think that the publishers would realize the pattern by now, but no. Or, maybe they do. maybe this is all a deliberate marketing strategy. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I keep hearing agents, writers, and editors all saying that the industry is driven by everyone’s passion for good books and not money. If that’s the case, then why are there so many atrocious books on the market? And I’m not just talking story-wise since that’s so subjective. I’m talking about books with plot holes as big as a house, books that have copy-editing errors on every other page, books that switch POV within the same freaking paragraph. If the industry is driven by a passion for good books, then PUT OUT good books. Otherwise I call shenanigans.

 

Clarion West 2013 and the 2013 Snow-pocalypse

I’ve decided to take the plunge and apply to the Clarion West Writers Workshop this year. This is a major thing for me for a number reasons.

The workshop is six weeks long in Seattle. Now, for those people who don’t know me in real life, I’m a classic introvert as well as being painfully shy and I get extremely anxious almost to the point of having full-blown panic attacks when confronting unfamiliar situations. I’d be by myself in a group of strangers who I would have to interact with on a daily basis. That thought more than anything scares the pants off me. Even around my best friends I’m reserved and self-conscious. The fact that I’m even applying is an amazing thing and it wasn’t  a sure thing that I was going to apply because just thinking about doing it made my heart race and hands shake. Still does, to be honest and I sent the application in already.

I’ve never been on my own and away from home for so long. I didn’t go to college (if I had it would have been a local college to save money) and I started dating my husband at the end of my senior year of high school, so there was no period of being footloose and fancy free for me. One of my biggest concerns is that I don’t have the mental/emotional preparedness to be away from my support system for so long.

It’s also expensive. The total cost for the workshop itself is $3600. That’s not including airfare which looks like it’s going to run about $500 unless I stumble onto a super awesome deal. Yes, the workshop costs are for six weeks worth of workshops, lodging, and partial board, but when you have a mortgage and car payment and all those other monthly bills, $4100+ (the entrance fee only covers partial board, so some meals will be paid for out of pocket) is a lot of money to be spending on a non-necessity. I can only hope and pray that I qualify for at least some scholarship monies because if I don’t, I’m not sure I’ll be able to attend even if I do get accepted.

I’m also kind of afraid that if I leave my husband home alone for six weeks I’m going to come back to find that the cats have forcefully subjugated him and taken over the house. I wish I were kidding on that, but I’m not. He’s far too much of a push-over when it comes to the cats and they have no respect for him as a leader at all.

Despite my fears, I applied. Now all I can do is sit and wait to hear back from them to find out if I made it in. Only 18 people get picked out of who knows how many hundreds of applications. I’m hoping my writing and my intro letter are enough to sway them to my side. *crosses fingers*

In other news:

On Friday we got hit with what The Weather Channel has dubbed Winter Storm Nemo. Yeah, I’m not sure why they’ve begun naming winter storms, but I think it’s stupid and I’m grateful that it’s just a Weather Channel affectation and not something the National Weather Service is doing.

Where I live we got about a foot and a half of snow dumped on us while other areas got up to three feet.

The view from my porch before we started shoveling.

The nearly six foot high wall of snow the plows left on the corner.

 

After shoveling. (Photo taken from above, so the actual depth of the snow is deeper than it looks.)

All I can say is that I am so very grateful my husband bought the biggest, baddest snowblower the store offered because we saw too many of our neighbors having issues getting through the deep snow with their smaller ones. Even still, it took us nearly three hours to get the sidewalks and walkways cleared and then another two hours to get through the wall of snow that was blocking the corner.

 

A Look Back At 2012

2012 has come and gone. Thank the Gods.

It’s not that it was necessarily a bad year for my husband and me, there were the usual ups and downs of life and finances, sure, but nothing devastating. But it was a bad year on a global scale and for a number of people we care about which greatly reduced our enjoyment of things.

Some of the highlights of the year:

My family was blessed with three more babies. I now have a new niece, a new nephew, and a new second cousin bringing the total number of children in my family who are under the age of 18 to 19. As I was making out the To Buy For list for the holidays, I realized that (except for one year) for the last decade there’s been at least one new baby born every year. That’s a lot of kids. So many in fact that we ended up buying presents just for the kids and our parents. Everyone else got homemade cookies.

My husband bought a new truck. This was both a good and a bad thing. A good thing because his Mustang which he’d had for close to eleven years was on its last legs and it would cost more to repair it than it was worth. A bad thing because we were supposed to buy me a new vehicle this year. My last car died right before we bought the house in 2010 and, since we were going to be buying a house, we didn’t buy me a new one then because it would have messed with our debt to income ratio. This year we could finally afford to buy me a car and the Mustang decided to crap out on us. Boo… Hopefully this year we can get me a nice used car since I’m getting really sick and tired of having to rely on others to take me where I want to go.

We got a whole heck of a lot further on my office renovation. It’s still not done, but it’s at about 75% done. Most of the delay right now is because one of corners is a curve instead of a 90 degree angle and it’s taking a lot longer than expected to get it to curve like it should. I’d rather take the time to get the curve right than simply square it off because the curved walls are one of the things I love about this house. BUT! We’re going to be sanding the floor this week and we’ve already got the paint colors chosen, so we’re basically just waiting on that curve to be done and then I’m going to commission one of my husband’s employees to make me some curtains for the windows. And then it’s down to simply getting furniture in there and decorating.

As I talked about before, my best friend and I had started sword training with her mentor. Unfortunately, once summer arrived, her life sort of went downhill and she wasn’t able to make it to practice for several months. As mentioned above, I don’t have a vehicle of my own, so that meant that I couldn’t make it to practice either. By the time her life calmed down and she had the time and mental/emotional/physical spoons to start going again, our teacher had already filled in that time with other activities. So, alas, there is no more sword training for me. I’m pretty sure our teacher was a bit put out by it. I really do feel bad because we were all enjoying it very much and I wish like hell I could have continued it.

I also attempted to go shampoo free last year by using apple cider vinegar and baking soda to wash my hair. That worked quite well for a few months, but then I started to notice that my hair was becoming very straw-like and brittle. So, I am back to using shampoo, but only sparingly and I’m searching for a good organic shampoo that isn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg. In other hair news, I still have a bit of a purple tint to my hair from when I dyed it purple to go to Vegas back in August of 2011. I keep threatening to go have it professionally colored at a salon, but I never seem to find the time. Just a word of warning — Splat Lusty Lavender Hair Dye is not as temporary as they say it is. I’m not sure if it’s staying in my hair because I didn’t bleach the color out of it first or what.

And an interesting factoid relating to the above — the majority of search terms that led to this blog last year relate to people searching for information on Splat Lusty Lavender or No Poo.

The search for a publisher for Lost Souls isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. A person can only hear/read “This is really good, you’ll definitely find a home for it somewhere, but unfortunately not with us” so many times before it gets absolutely depressing. And it doesn’t help when every one of them cites a different reason for passing. It means that there’s nothing to fix and it’s all just personal preference and the slowing Urban Fantasy market driving the rejections. So, I’m working on a story in a completely different genre and hope that when it’s finished the market for that type of book hasn’t passed me by like it did with Urban Fantasy. It really pains me to set Alex, Ryuu, and Vic aside, but I’m hoping that the UF market will see a resurgence in a few years so that I can whip them back out and try again.

Last year I only read 50 books which makes me quite ashamed of myself. I usually read between 75 and 100 books a year. There were a few times where I went for weeks without reading anything. I’m hoping to do better this year and I’m hoping to expand my repertoire a bit more. Most of the books I read last year were fantasy or urban fantasy. This year I want to read more non-fiction relating to history and science. So, if anyone has any favorite non-fiction books, feel free to rec them to me!

And finally, the blogging group I’d been blogging with for the last year and a half has decided to close down. Black Ink, White Paper‘s final blog post was last Monday. It’s both sad and a bit of a relief for me. I barely find time to post here, so trying to come up with good blog posts for over there was starting to get a bit stressful, but I’m so glad to have been a part of the group because it allowed me to meet a number of very wonderful and talented writers.

And that’s about it for last year. There were other things that happened, but I’ve either already talked about them or I don’t feel comfortable talking about them here.

So, it’s out with the old year, in with the new, and here’s hoping it plays out better than before.

ETA: Oh, and I forgot to mention that political differences cost me one of my dearest friends from high school. She’s a dyed in the wool conservative Catholic and I’m a liberal-leaning independent Pagan. Apparently, the religious differences were fine, but discussing politics from the opposite end of the political spectrum equals deterioration. *shrugs* I’m still a bit upset over it even though it happened in March. What made it even worse was that we saw her in public just a few months ago and she tried to make like nothing had even happened. I’m not against reconciling with her and re-starting the friendship since she was the one who ended it, but I do get cranky when somebody tries to make nice in a public setting with other people around even though they haven’t once tried contacting me privately.

Back on the Horse Again.

I got sick a couple weeks ago, just a summer cold but it would not go away. It left me a hacking, sneezing, feverish mess for nearly two weeks. Before I got sick I’d been averaging about three thousand words a week which, for me, is amazing. But when I got sick I didn’t write a thing. Not a damned thing. Part of that was being sick, but it was also partly because of a bout of depression which hid within the layers of sickness. The depression was spurred on by some bad news on the publishing front which sent me into a tailspin of self-doubt and indecision that made me second guess everything about this path I’m on.

However! This past Friday I managed to climb out of that funk and wrote over 700 words on a possible new story. Then I woke up Sunday morning with an entire short story burning away in my skull. I immediately went downstairs and wrote it out in one fell swoop. It came out to be just under 1400 words and after a bit of polishing I sent it off to two CPs who squee’d over it. I gave it one last polish then sent if off to Cameron to get her opinion on it before I start subbing it to magazines. This is only the second short story I’ve ever written. The first was Selkie’s Song which I wrote for LiveJournal’s Help Haiti fundraiser. You can read that one here.

I am so excited by this short story and I love it to pieces. I can’t wait to get Cameron’s thoughts on it. *bounces*

Today I’ve already written 700 words on my current WIP and I’ve got ideas simmering for the new story.

In other news, I got the Amanda Palmer Kickstarter CD in the mail the other day and I am loving the unholy hell out of it. Seriously. The Unholy. Hell.

Amazon Training and The Writing

I’ve mentioned Amazon training here several times, but haven’t said much in a while. That’s because, and I’m going to be completely honest here, it was a bit boring. The moves we were learning were fairly easy and not all that challenging. Even the half-swording techniques we’ve been practicing weren’t as challenging as I would have liked. That all changed yesterday. The moves we learned yesterday aren’t on the surface particularly hard or challenging, but when you add in proper form and footwork and lack of wrist/arm strength boy do they leave you quite sore. I think I’m going to have to invest in a good wrist brace until I gain some more strength or I’m only going to aggravate the nerve damage already there.

I’ve been going through a rough patch with the writing mainly due to a mild bout of depression. But I’m getting back up on the writing horse and slowly but surely I’m making progress with the depression. Yesterday I was working on a chapter for the second Alex book which, even though it ultimately got cut and merged with another chapter, really put me deep into Alex’s deep, dark thoughts and it hit me on such a primal, emotional level. I was kind of out of it for a good portion of the afternoon. And, considering that we had Amazon training yesterday afternoon, that kind of sucked. Being in a dark, angry place that isn’t your own when you’re swinging around a sword isn’t exactly a good thing.

But it was good for the writing and that’s the most important part.

I’m Sick

I’m sick of hearing that in order to “make it” you must put out X number of books a year.

I’m sick of hearing that you’re not a “real” writer unless you devote X number of hours a day to writing or write X number of words a day.

I’m sick of hearing that in order to gain fans you must be a social media wunderkind.

I’m sick of hearing that you must do X or you must do Y in order to achieve the same type of acclaim as famous writer Q.

In short, I’m sick and tired of people proclaiming that there’s only one path to success in this business. Every writer is different. We are not interchangeable cogs in a machine. And I will not be treated like one. I’m going to make it in publishing and I’m going to do it the way I want to do it. And I hope the rest of you follow your own path to your own success.

I Don’t Write For Myself

I was reading Chuck Wendig’s post 25 Lies Writers Tell (And Start To Believe) and number 9 really hit home for me.

9. “I Write Only For Me!”

Then don’t write. Sorry to be a hard-ass (ha ha, of course I’m not), but writing is an act of communicating. It’s an argument. It’s a conversation. (And yes, it’s entertainment.) And that necessitates at least one other person on the other end of this metaphorical phone call. You want to do something for yourself, eat a cheeseburger, buy an air conditioner, take a nap. Telling stories is an act we perform for others.

I’ve never written for myself. I write because I want other people to read my stories. I write because I want to share my brain dumpings with others. If I knew with an absolute 100% certainty that I would never be published, never have an audience for my work, I would walk away from it all. I would gather up all of my stories and burn them. I would permanently delete all of my writing folders.

Why? Because writing is hard work. Putting together a coherent, engaging story takes time, talent, and skill. And I’m too lazy to put that amount of physical work into something that only I will ever love.

If I want to tell stories to myself, I tell them to myself in my own head. That way I don’t have to worry about pacing, or dialogue, or continuity. I don’t have to be coherent in my own brain. I don’t have to fret over telling too much instead of showing. And better still, I can actually ENVISION the story instead of having to rely on words which don’t always do a scene justice.

I was just saying to a writer friend that I love to write. I love the rush of a good writing sprint. I love seeing my characters come to life on the page. But I can walk away from it all without going crazy.

Thinkerly Thoughts — Shutting Down the Blog

I’ve been going back and forth in my head about whether or not I want to continue with this blog. I know “everyone says” that having a blog is integral to becoming successful as a writer in this age of social media, but I don’t do a very good job of keeping up with it and I think that might be more of a hindrance than a benefit. I’m not a talkative person and I’m finding it very hard to force myself to be talkative online. It goes against my nature. It also rubs up against my perception that nobody really cares what I have to say so why say it. (Please note that this isn’t a plea for sympathy, I’m simply giving all of the reasons why I’m contemplating this.)

I never have anything I want to talk about or that I think people would be interested in me talking about. I lead a very uninteresting life and I’m pretty sure that me talking about my cats, my husband, or the never-ending home remodel we’re engaged in would get boring very fast. I also don’t think people want me waxing on and on and on about my writing (which is very boring as well). I’m at a point in the publishing process where I can’t really talk about what’s going on for fear of alienating the wrong person by saying the wrong thing so I can’t even blog about that.

There are some people who can make their trip to the grocery store sound exciting, I’m not one of them. Yes, I’m a writer and if I put the effort into it I *could* make it exciting, but I’d rather put that effort into my actual writing. Unless I’m making an effort, I’m not somebody who can be flowery and poetic. I’m more prosaic and matter-of-fact in how I approach things.

I wish I could be more like Lilith SaintCrow or Jim C. Hines or John Scalzi or Cat Valente or Chuck Wendig. They all rock their blogs. I can only dream about being that witty and engaging.

I haven’t decided on a course of action yet, but I’ll definitely post about it here once a final decision is made.

Lazy Weekend

This past weekend was a very lazy weekend. It was the first full weekend my husband has had off since September, so we slept in, I made breakfast brunch on Saturday, we lazed about the house, played video games, and returned some of the three years worth of bottles and cans we have filling up the dining room (don’t ask, we’ve just been REALLY lazy about it). I’m finally playing Dragon Age Origins. It’s a fun game, I love the different character interactions and the way those interactions change depending on your actions. I’m annoyed with the character Morrighan because it seems like nothing you do ever makes her happy. Although, I do love her jabs at Alistair. *grins*

I didn’t do a single bit of writing this weekend and only thought about it a little bit. I love weekends like this because now I’m re-energized and ready to jump right back in. I’ve never understood writers who write Every. Single. Day. and don’t burn themselves out. My brain occasionally needs a rest. I’m sure someone somewhere will say this means I’m not a “real writer”, but eh… *shrugs* We all run the race at our own pace and in our own way.

I have the first five chapters done and am now pondering chapter six. I think I shall throw another dead body into the mix. Then Alex and Sam get to have a date night.

The Blahs…

It’s been unseasonably warm here and, as much as I hate being cold, I love winter. I love snow (unless we get monster snowfalls like we did last year) and I love that first cold, crisp inhale that steals your breath away when you first walk out the door. You don’t get those when it’s 50+ degrees out. It was supposed to snow last night, but all we got was rainy slush that’s already gone.

I’m slowly working on filling all the holes and getting Book 2 up to First Draft stage. It’s slow going because I’m at that point where I want to be working on new stuff instead of old. I’m almost at the end of Chapter 5. I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen after this chapter. I had one thing in mind, but it would work better further in. I may just stretch Alex’s day out a bit more and make this the end of her day.

I’m in need of a new computer monitor. The one I have now is the same one that came with the computer way back in 2004. I’m starting to get major headaches if I’m on it for too long. Which makes writing my own stuff and reading a friend’s ms a challenge.

There’s also the matter of getting this damned hard drive changed. I think I’m just going to bring it in to a computer repair place and have them figure out what’s wrong with the new hard drive because it’s getting ridiculous. I bought the new h/d two years ago and I still don’t have it in yet. I’m getting a bit miffed by that fact.

Okay, I’m done whining. Time to go throw laundry in the washer, do some dishes, and get some writing done.