A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • Looking Back

    Looking back at the works I’ve written, I see stories that missed the mark because I did not have a handle on my craft. I see characters who were not fleshed out well enough, and scenes that never grounded the reader inside them, allowing them to experience it. I see fragments that make more sense to me because I have all the backstory whereas readers do not.

    I see a lot of embarrassing things.

    And while I may cringe at these, there is a part of me that rejoices in the fact that I do see them now. Seeing the mistakes for what they are means that I have grown in my craft.

    In ten years, when I look back on works I am writing now, I hope I see new mistakes instead of old ones. I hope that I am writing better then than I am now. And I truly hope that is always the case.

    To my fellow authors out there, I hope that is always the case for you too.

    To the dear readers out there who don’t see what I mean, bless you. May you only be delighted over and over by the tales brought to you.

  • Book Review – Uprooted by Naomi Novik

    Our family has been a fan of Ms. Novik since the dragon Temeraire chose William Laurence as his Captain, so I’m not sure why it took so long for me to start Uprooted. I will make a brief note that this book has a small section that is not terribly appropriate for younger readers, so reading this was a private affair instead of a shared experience.

    That’s just fine by me. I read faster on my own.

    I will say that I deeply enjoyed this novel. It is the first book that made me frustrated with my Kindle when the battery alarm dinged at me. And I suppose that’s one of the better arguments for physical books instead of the digital format, but I could also pick up right where I left off on my phone, so I did have a backup.

    Agnieszka and the Dragon were great fun to watch as they prickled at each other, and the threat of the Wood was terrifying. I don’t do spoilers, you’ll have to read the novel yourself, but the magic system and the political boundaries were all very well done without imposing a ton of information on the reader. I will say that there is a lot within this novel that is left unexplored and I would love to see more novels in future. (I don’t think the author is planning to do that presently, but insofar as my mind goes, she always has that option.)

    All in all, I closed the book satisfied and rate it 5 of 5 – with that warning again that younger readers likely shouldn’t thumb through it.

  • Killing Darlings

    I’m not certain who first coined the phrase that writers must “kill their darlings” but I find myself staring down the barrel of my proverbial gun today. With my shelter book finally completed – yes, that only took me all of COVID and then some to finish – I am on to the next project!

    Or, projects, really.

    For the entire month of May I have opted to work on Story Bibles, Outlines, and World Building for the Werewolf Wedding novel and Tango Five, the third installment of the Tapped Series.

    For my dear, lovely readers who have showered me with their love of Enemy Souls, I thank you. And I am deeply grateful that the book delivered a satisfactory story! This was the second installment of the Tapped Series and I am excited to be working in the science fiction realm again, preparing for the third novel. And, as I often do, I have begun reading the series from the first book onward, taking notes to reference technology and character development.

    I do already have a vague story bible written in respects to the Tapped series, but I have found that nothing prepares me better for writing the next book, than reading the ones that came before. I’m not sure how other authors who work with series of novels handle this portion of the process, but this is what works for me. Even if I do cringe sometimes, recognizing that I have learned so much more about the craft of writing since the first book was published.

    Available at Barnes & Nobles and Amazon!

    So where does Killing Darlings come into all this?

    Well, for the Werewolf Wedding novel, if you must know. For fans who have been following along this whole time – by the way, I love you all and I hope you keep reading and adventuring and reading some more – you will remember a novel by the title Melody of Bones. Also known as my dragon novel.

    After a great deal of debate, I have decided to kill this novel. It is, in fact, a little darling.

    A two-plus-year darling that I have nursed and attempted to sell and simply gotten no where with. But the really cool elements of the novel fit perfectly into the story I am telling with Nora Grayson, and I know that both stories will be told better by doing a Dr. Frankenstein move and piecing them together.

    Does it hurt?

    Yes.

    Egads, yes.

    I love Prudence Alturas and her tragic tale as an exiled dragon.

    But if I do this right, I’ll get to tell her story better than my first attempt.

    So here is me, pulling the official trigger and killing off a darling. I hope to have a new draft completed by the end of July, with several more novels waiting to step up to the plate.

    For my fellow authors out there, I hate to say it but… they saying is right. Sometimes we really do have to kill our darlings.

  • The Courage It Takes

    Writing is not for the faint of heart.

    When I started this whole writing thing, I was a child who thought it was great fun. One assignment from a teacher in the sixth grade opened the world of fiction to me and I played around with all the fantasy, making shallow stories that grazed through fluffy adventures without digging into the scary stuff.

    Dragons were scary enough for my 12-year-old mind.

    It is only now, sitting some thirty years later, that I have come to understand the perils of a writer’s life. Nevermind the hours of labor that go into every story, that is an expected price every author must pay for quality work. Nevermind the outlines that get trashed, or the characters who drive the story in an unexpected direction, or the false starts. Nevermind the criticism bound to find us, or the false praise we must learn to ignore. These are all part of the job.

    The true peril of a writer’s life is exposing truth. We must be honest with ourselves about who we are, about the world we live in, and about humanity in general.

    In the movie Shadows in the Sun, a young man is sent after an author who wrote one novel and then produced nothing more for many years. When confronted with why he had not written anything else, his response was something along the lines of; “I had nothing more to say.”

    This has stuck with me.

    I do understand that some novels are meant for fun. There is nothing inherently wrong with fluffy adventures. If I want to stay in the shallows and play there, I am welcome to do so. And so is everyone else, for that matter.

    But I have found that each novel I have written has drifted further and further from those shallows. Maybe this is due to age, or maybe it’s a natural progression that every author encounters as they produce new novels. Either way, I have come to a novel that is drastically different from anything I have written before.

    This past month I have retreated from this novel, because the coward in me doesn’t want to go through it. I am confronted with the choice to turn the novel toward the fluff, or to brace myself and continue on its current path.

    Do I want the novel to say something?

    Am I brave enough?

    To my fellow authors who have been where I am sitting today, I salute you. And I hope you will meet me on the other side of this thing, because whether or not I am brave enough, it seems that I am diving in.

    For those of you who are currently fighting with their novels, trying to decide if they too are brave enough to make this dive, I cannot make that choice for you. But remember that there is nothing wrong with playing in the shallows if that is what you enjoy most. When you’re ready, the depths will be waiting for you too.

  • The Year of COVID

    Normally this is my favorite post of the year. The moment when I look back on all the work I managed to get done and begin planning out the next projects. I look forward to it. I make notes of things I deviated from, new projects started, projects scrapped, and generally remind myself that I do enjoy this whole writing process.

    This year…

    I am learning to be forgiving, both of myself and the people around me. Because I know we’re all struggling to find our footing on what feels like slippery slopes.

    So instead of looking at what I tasked for myself this year, I’m going to hone in on my major victories, give them a brief nod, and move on.

    My number one victory this year was putting out Enemy Souls. It has done quite well and continues to accumulate positive reviews, which I have to admit I love. For those unaware, it is a sci-fi romp through Saturn that highlights the Barlow family as they struggle to carve out a living while on the run.

    My second victory was completing National Novel Writing Month. But I have to admit that the very last week of the month, the day before Thanksgiving, I lost a beloved dog and switched projects as a matter of dealing with the grief.

    Sad, yes.

    Still a victory.

    Because when I am finished with this project and it makes its way to readers across the globe, everyone will know who Molly was and what made her special.

    Which brings me to the whole moving on portion of the post.

    With the world still unsteady, COVID still ravaging the population, I have decided not to make any future goals beyond the novel in front of me. The goal is simply to finish this book, and I’ll figure out where to go from there.

    For my fellow authors out there, I hope you have managed to hoard your writing time this year. I hope you have still gotten words on the page, even if it’s only 500 a week like me. And I hope that in the coming year, you are able to add to those words every day.

    For all my fellow humans, I hope you stay safe. I hope those you care about stay safe. And I hope that, if you have already lost someone, that peace makes its way to you.

  • Kicking of NaNo 2020

    I ended the first day of Nano 2020 at 3244 words. Which is excellent. I do admit that I am not doing a straight-laced Nano this year. Instead of starting from scratch on a brand new manuscript, I have unearthed the thing I started earlier this year that COVID derailed.

    Remember when I was doing that whole serial novel of Castle of Three Kings?

    You know, the one where I had to just kind of stop because suddenly I was a teacher, a parent, an employee, and all my writing time was sucked dry?

    Yeah, that thing!

    I am going to finish it. That’s my Nano Goal.

    But I am also going through it and updating it with the things I have been learning in the Apex Writers classes. Because writing is a craft that constantly grows as we improve. (Brief shout out to David Farland for his excellent classes. He’s an amazing author as well, so if you haven’t read his work, I have to highly suggest Rune Lords.)

    SO!

    For those of you who were following along and became disgruntled when I had to duck out of updating, guess what? I’ll be shoving them back up chapter by chapter until I’m all caught up and the whole thing is available. I will mention that this will be for a limited time only, so the novel will only be available for FREE at Wattpad (because I like Wattpad better than the other formats out there) through the end of the year as I complete this draft.

    Here’s the link, if you’re interested.

    Now excuse me, I have more work to do. Happy Writing, everyone!

  • NaNoWriMo 2020

    Here we are, nearing the end of the craziness that is 2020, and I honestly didn’t think I would commit to writing for National Novel Writing Month. For one, I have kid doing remote learning, which is 120% more challenging than I imagined it would be. I cannot count the number of times I have to draw up an assignment and keep the kid on task. Left to his own devices, he would daydream (he’s like his mother that way) or play with the dog.

    For another, the whole year has been a wash, so why not NaNoWriMo too? (Though that might be a semblance of depression talking.)

    But the leaves have changed. There’s that smell in the air again. And I have decided that I’m too stubborn to surrender my favorite event of the year to COVID.

    We’re standing a few days away from November 1st and I am torn between three projects. I don’t think I have the energy this year to start something from scratch, so I’m looking at the works in various stages of incomplete sitting on my desktop.

    So it’s going to be a surprise this year.

    On November 1st, I will make my decision. The only thing I know for certain is that I will be participating. And I encourage any and all writers out there, if not to participate in full, then to take a deep breath, reset their minds on whatever works they have in front of them, and have fun in the month of November.

  • Casting the Book

    Recently I began reading a new book from one of my favorite authors. I had been looking forward to this book because it was revisiting 1800’s London and the author had done a beautiful job describing that time period. I also love the fantastical elements of the world she created. Urban fantasy is fascinating to me and I am attempting to write within that subgenre (unsuccessfully at present) so anything I can learn from novels like this is welcome.

    But…

    I began reading this novel several months ago and have yet to finish. Normally I consume these books in a day or two, so I had to sit back and as myself what was going on.

    After careful inspection, I have to say that the novel is too full.

    Too many personalities on the page.

    Or rather, too may point of view (POV) characters to follow. The original books were full of personalities, but the selection of POV characters was more narrow, and thus less overwhelming. It’s not that I’m lazy as a reader and want the selection smaller because I can’t keep them straight, it’s because I grow frustrated when the POV only skims the surface of a character’s problems and then moves off to the next scene.

    I have seen the question “How many characters is too many” within writer groups a lot, and I have to admit that I never paid it much mind. The world is full of people, after all, and it seems silly to limit the number of personalities in a book. However, I would submit that you should always, always cast your point of view characters with care.

    I think it was Dan Wells of the Writing Excuses podcast (and a brilliant novelist in his own right) who said that you choose your point of view character for any scene as the character who is in the most pain. But there’s a pretext to this – the character has to already be established as a POV within the novel.

    Meaning that if we’ve never been in Susie’s POV before, but suddenly we are because she had her leg broken, then that is generally not acceptable. Instead, you go to the next best POV character who has already been established in the narrative. Example – Susie’s mother was established early on as a POV character, and seeing her daughter in pain would be an acceptable alternative to leaping into a character whose voice hasn’t been heard in the novel before.

    I know that there are novels out there with numerous point of view characters. And without getting into the difference of third person limited versus third person omniscient, I would like to point out that my issue with the current novel I am reading is more geared toward a feeling of being rushed.

    The scenes do not delve deep.

    They do not allow me to settle into the skin of the point of view character long enough to enjoy them.

    And part of me can’t help feeling that the reason behind this shallow characterization is because the author was stretched thin between their cast.

  • Exploring New England – Martha’s Vineyard

    A while back, my husband and I took a trip to Martha’s Vineyard and stayed at the Dockside Inn. With COVID restrictions slowly being lifted, we were anxious to get out of the house and stretch our legs, and what better way to do that than to go somewhere we’d never been before?

    I should give a small disclaimer that as a relatively new resident to New England, it isn’t hard to find a place I’ve never been. And with family stretched across the United States, I have decided to share my discoveries on this platform both because it delights me to do so, and because it might help members of my family when they opt to make a trip this direction.

    For you dear readers who visit my site for conversations on writing, I do promise to give a small writer’s insight to each place I go as well. Because I am a writer and my viewpoint is tinted through the lens of fiction 100% of the time.

    First off, the trip to Martha’s Vineyard was amazingly fun. My husband does the freeway/highway driving in our partnership at the moment. I imagine one day he’ll grow tired of it and ask me to take a leg of the journey, but I’m content to let him keep that task for as long as he wants it. And really, the freeway/highway drive wasn’t the fun part.

    The ferry was the fun part.

    We opted to park our car on the mainland rather than cross in the belly of the ferry, seated in our car. COVID restrictions required you to remain in your car for the duration of the ferry ride, and that didn’t appeal to us.

    I’ll admit to a small amount of claustrophobia dictating that decision. (Writerly Brain Moment #1 for the trip – I couldn’t help imagining catastrophe and the last place I wanted to be stuck if the ship went down was in its belly, squashed in my car, while seawater and sharks gushed in.)

    We started the trip on deck, but ended in one of the cozy booths inside. We did have to wear masks (COVID and all) but we dealt with it just fine. There were relatively few people when we went because the restrictions had only just lifted and we were braving the new COVID world of travel, so there wasn’t a crowd to deal with.

    There also weren’t refreshments unless you brought it on board with you.

    Once on the island, we hailed an Uber – Yes! They have Uber people – and went straight to the Dockside Inn located in Oak Bluffs. Upon arrival, the owner of the establishment met us at the door and, after delivering our key and explaining where our room was, proceeded to take us on a tour of the Inn.

    I cannot express how friendly this gentleman was. The little Inn had several rooms, a shed with complimentary beach supplies (umbrella’s and such) and a breakfast nook where you could snag some of the usual snacks. It also had a complimentary gumball machine thing, but it was full of malt-balls instead, which was fantastic.

    Our host suggested several spots to go that were in walking distance and we did follow his guidance. Being fairly reserved people ourselves, it was refreshing to be greeted with such casual friendliness, and I recommend letting your host direct you to the best eats nearby.

    The room was comfortable, our view on the second floor overlooked the harbor, and we were in walking distance of the beach. Which, I will add, the beach was not nearly as crowded as I anticipated, but again this was shortly after restrictions had been lifted so that might not be the experience now.

    We rented a vehicle so that we could circle the whole island, but you wouldn’t have to do that if you brought your own car via the ferry. (AKA – risk a shark infested ferry belly.) We missed the Mytoi Japanese Garden in Edgartown but intend on going back to visit again. Instead, we made our way to Aquinnah, which houses a beautiful lighthouse and bluffs.

    I am a sucker for lighthouses.

    Fight me on it if you want, but if I see one, you’re going to see a picture of it.

    Aquinnah is, according to some research, considered the center of culture, tradition, and pride for the Wampanoag tribe. Writerly Brain Moment #2 – I love history, so my writer’s brain is often hungry for knowing what happened in a place, who it happened to, and the stories the people who live there tell. Naturally, this means I had to research them.

    Sadly, this often means I am cringing during that research as well. Suffice, the Wampanoag were the various tribes who first encountered pilgrims/colonists when they sailed to America. I would like to note that they were here for a good 10,000 years prior to those first settlers.

    SO!

    Back to Martha’s Vineyard and the trip. We had a lot of fun. We didn’t bring the kid, but we plan to next time so we can highlight some of the family friendly things to be done, and so we can visit the Japanese Garden there. But if you want a quiet, relaxing time as a couple, I highly recommend the Dockside Inn at Oak Bluffs and wandering the island for history and beautiful scenery.

  • Chagrin – Tempering the Writer

    A while back I finished my 3rd and I’d hoped final revision of Song of Bones/Melody of Bones/that dragon story I always wanted to write but kept putting off. My stubborn brain insisted it was complete, that I had told the story the best way I knew how, and that it was time to set it free. Since I’d written the synopsis in the middle of the process, I waited a scant two weeks before I started submitting to agents and editors.

    Without, you know, re-reading more than the first pages required for the submission process.

    I can hear the rest of you writers out there cringing.

    And you’re right.

    After thirteen unsuccessful submissions I fell into that funk we all get at rejection. Because, you know, rejection is painful. I know editors and agents hate to do it, too. I think most of what makes the whole process bearable is knowing that they are in that socially awkward position where they must say; “No, thank you.”

    Unless, you know, you get that editor/agent who enjoys tossing rejections like snarky confetti, but those are few and far between.

    Mercifully, I stopped submitting after thirteen. And I know some of you are going to point to James Patterson’s 42 rejections before he sold that first novel, but I promise you this was the right move. Because six months after I sent that first submission I opened up the manuscript again and realized how much I’d gotten wrong.

    My dragon culture was not fully fleshed out. The first chapter was trying to cram too much information without enough characterization. And I was struck with the fact that I needed to keep the novel centralized in one setting rather than trying to fly between continents.

    My Muse seemed to be snickering at me from the corners of my writing space.

    I had broken that cardinal rule of writing – Thou shalt wait at least three months before picking up the work in progress.

    If I’d given myself the time and space, I could have saved myself and the agents/editors who I submitted to a lot of awkwardness. I could have saved myself from a little of that funk of rejection.

    I say a little because I know in its completed form that Melody of Bones/Song of Bones will still be rejected by those agents/editors who do not feel it is a good fit for them.

    I am so grateful that I gave myself the time I needed with Enemy Souls. (That novel hit shelves on September 8th and is doing quite well! I am supremely pleased by the reception it has had and should be working on the third installment of the Tapped series during National Novel Writing Month this year.)

    Dear writers, learn from my mistake. Put that manuscript away. Give it fermentation time. And, of course, read the thing before you start submitting it.

    Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later.