Critique Partner...?

As I mentioned, summer in Calgary is winding down. My life is returning to normal and I'm writing once again. I've got three projects on my mind, and I'm having some trouble deciding which one I want to follow first. Rewrite book two of my Deyl Parker series? Write the high fantasy novel that's been hammering away at my brains? Or breakaway from my comfort zone and try writing my YA dystopian/sci-fi idea?

Whichever way I go, I realize I'm now at the point where I need a critique partner. Someone to kick the shit out of my first novel - an urban fantasy - and someone I can bounce new ideas off of. I'm open to critiquing a wide variety of genres in return: anything YA, dystopian, sci-fi, all fantasy genres, romance, chick lit, etc. etc.

So if you're out there searching for the same, send me a line: shayla.e.s (at) gmail (dot) com.

Unexpected Side Effect

My throat is sore. My voice is all raspy and low. Why?

Copy editing.

The story is written. I've edited the plot and structure four or five times, until I'm perfectly happy with the result. I've given the draft a few months of shelf time so the writing and ideas could percolate in peace. I've triple-checked continuity, built a solid world around Deyl, and I've scrapped every useless datadump and every sequence that slowed down the plot.

All that's left is what I'm doing now: the copy edit.

I find (and I've heard other writers say the same thing) that reading the story out loud really helps ensure the words flow smoothly across the page. It's definitely working (IMHO) but unfortunately reading aloud all day means MY THROAT HURTS!

And that's my complaint for the day. I'm more than halfway through the novel so I'm still on track for getting this edit done by Tuesday. Yay!

Oh, and I just saw today the casting post for the Hollywood version of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Then I saw the release date for the movie: 2012. Damn. I wish I was a more patient person. This wait is going to be brutal.

Off to read for a few hours... night all!

Fine Tooth Comb

That's where my re-write for I HAD TO FALL is at: word-by-painstaking-word editing. Double-checking (or am I now at triple- or quadruple-checking? hm.) every paragraph, sentence and word to make sure that it reads with a nice, smooth flow. I hate being jarred by awkward sentences or poor word selection when I'm reading, so I'm being extra picky at this stage.

Though, being able to work outside under the sun makes it much more enjoyable...

It's slow going, but the end is so close I can taste it. After just over a year of outlining, writing, editing, resting, re-editing and copy editing... I'm excited!

But I gotta hit the pillow right away here. I know, I know... sleep is for the weak. Unfortunately, I stayed up until about 3AM last night (this morning? ugh.) finishing TORMENT by Lauren Kate. Getting ready for her new release next week. So I'm only running on a couple hours of ZZZs. And feeling it.

Night all!

the End is upon us!

Very excited tonight. I've got two or three small sections of chapter twenty-five to revise/rewrite tomorrow evening and I'll be finished the all the major changes I wanted to make to I HAD TO FALL. I'm working all day Saturday (setting up all those nice trade show displays I've been designing) but after that I've got a week scheduled for making a few last minor revisions to the story, and then another week for a line-by-line polish of the copy.

And then it's done. Like, really done.

To share in my excitement, I've got a nice little excerpt for you here. One of my biggest changes to the story was the relationship between Cal and Deyl. Their interactions and face time remained the same, but their opinions, treatment and feelings about each other changed significantly. This is from chapter twenty, a bit of Cal and Deyl working together towards a common goal. Not that they wanted to, but they didn't have much choice.

(Yeah, I know you have no context for this. Sorry. Hope you love it anyway.)

I turned slowly towards Cal, who was dropping the choked body to the ground. We just stared at each other, his breathing heavy against the steadiness of my own. In that moment I knew something between us had changed, our uneasy truce complicated by the bond that came only from fighting side by side together.

"We have to clear this," was all he said.

I nodded.

Blood would leave the most visible signs of our ambush so I grabbed the two bleeding men first, taking one by the arm in each hand and dragging them across the narrow road into the dark shade of the birch trees. Beside me, Cal carried two more. In a minute we had the road cleared of the bodies and all trace of the fight.

The last man dropped from my arms. It was the tall one with my knife still embedded in his chest. I pulled it out as he fell to the grass at my feet, wiping it clean on a nearby patch of moss before tucking it back into my shoulder strap.

"Nice toss," Cal remarked, his tone casual.

Gazing up at him, I tried to gauge his thoughts. His expression was carefully closed. It struck me that he meant it.

A broad grin lit up my face, the adrenaline crashing and making me feel a bit giddy.

"Thanks," I said smiling even wider. A distant, low boom echoed on the morning breeze. We both turned to look towards the sound.

The charge had blown.

Cal turned back to me and I met his gaze soberly, the giddiness evaporating. He snatched both shotguns up and tossed one to me.

"We need to move."

"Right." I fell into step behind him again.

Feeling Like a Rollercoaster

A couple days ago I mentioned that I was working on rewriting Deyl and Cal's interaction from the point where there meet, all the way to the end of the book. And yes, I'm really happy with the way it's developed. Only, I looked through my list of 'changes still to make' and I despaired of finishing by the end of May.

One solid 10 hour day of editing later, I'm feeling much more optimistic!

Today I made it all the way through and finished the major edits to the end of chapter twenty. I also faced down a weapons / technology problem I'd been mulling over - with much frustration - for months now. And I came up with the perfect solution, one that answered and fulfilled every issue surrounding the problem. It means going back and making two smaller changes earlier in the book, but I'm not worried about those. Instead, I'm thrilled that I've created a solution and I'm excited to spend the next few days implementing it!

Based on today's success I took another, closer look at my editing schedule and that list of problems / changes. I'm feeling like another two, maybe three weeks and I can have I HAD TO FALL all wrapped up. Awesome.

Editing. Slowly.

At some point in my schedule I'd hoped to have this final round of editing done by the end of May. Well, today is the twenty-sixth and I can say with absolute certainty that that is not going to happen.

The editing has been, overall, really great. The issues I've brought up have been important and I think the changes I've implemented so far have improved the story significantly. It's just taken a lot longer then I anticipated.

Today, for example, I finally started working in the relationship changes between Deyl and Cal. I've spent the last few weeks considering the problems with the connection between them in the back of my mind. Yesterday and today I took all those thoughts and considerations, compared it to how the relationship works in the current manuscript, and wrote out a text document that clearly outlined how their new relationship should develop - from when they meet in chapter fifteen to when they part in chapter twenty-five. I managed to implement most of the resulting changes in chapter fifteen today, but that still leaves seven chapters where Cal and Deyl are together that will need to be tweaked, at the very least, if not totally re-written.

And that's just Cal & Deyl. Plenty of other changes still to come.

Maybe the end of June? Sigh. At least I feel confident that the final manuscript will be much better for all this work...

Rachel Hawkins kept me up all night.

I have a problem. An addiction, you might call it. It derails my life, to the point where friends and family worry about my sanity and health.

Reading.

Or more accurately, obsessive-compulsive-reading. Goes like this: Monday was a Canadian holiday, which was nice. Around ten pm I finished a long day of rewriting (working out the kinks in Deyl's relationship with another main character) and was itching for a good read. This is when I discovered something wonderful...

E-books are released at midnight on book release day. Midnight EST. I'm out here in Calgary in MST, so not long after ten I was actually able to purchase the e-book of Kim Harrison's SOMETHING DEADLY THIS WAY COMES, instead of waiting until after work on Tuesday. So, I started reading at ten, stayed up til about two or three am reading it, caught a few zzz's and finished reading it in the morning, before I had to be at work at noon.

Well, that was fine. Still got enough sleep.

Unfortunately, I found myself on a reading binge. I searched around for some new titles and read a couple sample chapters of Rachel Hawkins' HEX HALL, a YA urban fantasy. I absolutely fell in love with Sophie's sarcastic humour and literally could not put it down. This is my addition. I started reading Tuesday evening and didn't put the e-book down until around three am, when I finished it. And then I had to get up and go to work for eight. Yikes.

And then I laughed about how I have a problem... and proceeded to spend all evening today finishing the second Hex Hall novel, DEMONGLASS.

Sigh. Hopefully that's enough of a reading binge for now and I'll get back to re-writing tomorrow!

Keeping Promises

Hey, wow. So yesterday I flippantly promised I'd quit playing with Scrivener and get chapter twelve and thirteen done. Not that anyone actually reads my blog, but I guess making promises helps keep me on task, because I did finish twelve and thirteen today.

Well... maybe it wasn't the promise.

It was blissfully sunny and warm this morning, so I loaded up on java, grabbed the mac and the cat, and headed out to work on the re-write outside. Worked for hours. Easy to do, given the circumstances. Twelve and thirteen needed work in a few different areas. Both chapters have fight sequences that, honestly, I'd just written lazily the first time around. I went back and rewrote those sections, giving the action more tension and detail. There was also some magical inconsistency to deal with and some timeline issues.

And then I got sidelined by a potential change for chapter twenty-two. I've been considering two really major changes that would involve revising much of the ending. The idea I had today involved one of those ideas, adding a new minor character into twenty-two. She (pretty sure it'll be a she) would also have to be written into twenty-three and -four, but I don't think that will be a problem. What really sidelined me about this possible new character is how she can tie into book two - and book three, if I make it that far...

Finally, I'm going to add an excerpt from I Had to Fall to the Writing page tonight. Not sure what it'll be. If anyone's out there, feel free to share your thoughts :P

Ta-da!

Squeeeeee! This is my first post on my brand-spanking-new MacBook Air!! I feel like I've been waiting for this for years!

Oh, wait. I have been.

It really is awesome though. I don't know what else to say. I was running a six-year-old iBook G4 up to this point, so pretty much anything would be better, faster and smoother. I've got all my old files transferred over and installed all the software I wanted. I didn't take much music, since I keep my music library on the MacMini and just share the library. Brought over my favourites though, for travel purposes: Rammstein, Iced Earth, We Are The Fallen, She Wants Revenge, Foo Fighters, The Fray and Nine Inch Nails. Plus a few writing-specific playlists that I never leave home without :D

The other #squee item is that I've installed the trial version of Scrivener and spent that last three hours playing around with it. I gotta say... love it. I really don't care which program I use for composition, but Scrivener's organization of my timelines, comments, notes, character and scene sketches, etc. is absolutely wonderful.

I'll stop playing tomorrow morning though and buckle down on editing chapters twelve and thirteen. Promise.

Less than 24 hours...

I'm going out after work tomorrow to buy my new MacBook Air! This poor iBook is seeing it's last days. Well, sort of. I'm going to recycle it to my dad, who's running an even older computer. And they've changed the forecast (again) for the long weekend, giving us mostly sunny skies. Things are definitely looking up!

I finished re-writing chapter ten today, and got started on twelve and thirteen. Those will be hefty changes, so it might take a few days to finish them up. Plus, I'll be spending another good chunk of time setting up my new Mac and checking out Scrivener, which I think I'll go ahead and buy as well...

Itchy.

Well, please disregard yesterdays post, I guess. It's true, my hard drive has failed. But my new computer won't arrive until Friday (at the earliest) so I got the morning off work. Spent some of that time reviewing the major changes I want / need to make to I Had to Fall. Right now I'm mulling over the fight and conversation between two characters, right at the point where they first meet, in chapters twelve and thirteen. It doesn't flow the way I want it to, and the dialogue doesn't achieve the information I want to present. It needs work. But before I can get to those changes, I need to go back a bit further and makes some conversational tweaks to chapter ten. Nothing too major - I know what needs to be said, and even have some rough dialogue ready - but if I don't set it up now it might screw with the changes further along.

So, if tomorrow's schedule goes as well as today's did, I should have chapter ten pretty much in the bag and ready to move onto the changes needed in twelve and thirteen. Excellent.

Not so excellent: got about a hundred mosquito bites while mowing the grass yesterday. Mosquitos in Calgary. Who knew.

Oh! And countdown to my new macbook air has been revised... I'm thinking I'll go buy it a couple days before my birthday (impatient, I know) so I can have it for the whole weekend. Which means: only 2 days to go!!!!!

JuSt a biT cHaoTic

I'm a digital person. I really am. I never carry cash, my iPhone may as well be embedded in my forearm, I spend all day at work on a computer and then all evening on my laptop.

I like to think that being digital keeps me more organized. But right now, not so much. I just closed off my writing files for the night. I had 7 text files of notes open, 2 Pages documents (the draft and the synopsis), the thesaurus, the calendar, 4 Firefox tabs to Wikipedia articles, and 2 Numbers files. Wow. I manage to keep track of everything I need, but still. A bit on the ridiculously-chaotic side.

Because of said chaos, I'm excited to try Scrivener, once I get my new mac. It looks like just the thing I need to help organize this digital mess. I wonder what other authors do? Kim Harrison has blogged about it, but I think I'll go on a little Tweet campaign and ask around. Might get some interesting answers.

Coundown to Macbook Air: 12 days!!

PS. Funny thing: I still do my taxes long-hand on paper. Sure, I telefile it once it's done. But there is still a bit of paper in my life... once a year :P

Is it possible to survive without sleep?

Not needing to sleep is one of the strange fae-factors of my main character, Deyl Parker. What I want to know, is it possible for me too?

Because that would be nice.

So many great books to read, so little time in the day. I got back into my usual routine today, as hoped, but that only leaves about an hour or two a day for reading. Simply not enough! Last week, I finished Divergent by Veronica Roth in 12 hours (yay for flying, airports and long drives!) which was f'n awesome. Loved the premise. Sort of The Giver meets The Last Airbender. 

I also finished Wings, Spells and Illusions by Aprilynne Pike, nearly in one sitting. It was at the point where I was falling asleep, eyesight blurry from reading off my iPhone, but simply refused to put it down. So good, I'm re-reading again at a less-manic pace.

So, the question that always haunts me afterwards: how long do I have to wait for the next book in those series?!?

Too Long.

Rock, Query & Read

Love the new Foo Fighters album, by the way. Check out Dear Rosemary, Arlandria, and These Days. New favourite songs.

Kristin over at Pub Rants says to query while the querying is hot. Damn. Can't query until the MS is perfect (or as perfect as I can make it...) which probably won't be until late May. Plus, my query letter is crap right now. Little snippets of information that need to be made sensible, then sexy. And by sexy, I mean attention-getting, honestly.

I think I'll start re-reading the Dead in the Family, since Dead Reckoning comes out next week. I'm not a huge Sookie fan, but I like a lot of things about Charlaine Harris' SVM world. Plus, it's Urban Fantasy—gotta know my genre through-and-through.

First Post

Title is pretty much self-explanatory.

I'm going to give this blog thing a go. Do I have anything interesting to say? Remains to be seen. However, it doesn't really seem to me that to keep a blog you necessarily have to have anything to say. What I have to say is mostly about my writing.

I began writing just over a year ago, and no lie, it all started with one of Kim Harrison's blog posts where she discussed some of her writing tips. I realized, with a bit of shock, that writing a novel was an extremely structured, disciplined and organized undertaking.

Day job: graphic designer. And I love it. What appeals to me about design is the blending of creativity with structure. You can break all the rules and create an incredible design, but you need to know the rules through and through before you can break them. That same unique combination of imagination and organization, with some careful rule-breaking, applies as much to writing a novel as it does to design. Naturally, I fell in love with writing almost immediately.

So I've given some of the characters that were wandering around in my head a place to live, to grow, and to change, by putting them together in a novel. It's an urban fantasy (think Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong, Laurell K. Hamilton) titled I Had to Fall, and it centers around the adventures of Deyl Parker, a less-than-heroic protagonist. Is it any good?

Remains to be seen.