A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • Round Robin Blog Tour – Bucket Lists

    I’m still relatively young but I do have some things I’d like to do before I kick the proverbial bucket. And honestly, I’ve done a lot in my thirty-plus years that I’m really proud of.

    I’ve submerged in the ocean in both Alaska and Hawaii, visited the Caribbean twice, road-marched through South Carolina with the Army, starved on Virginia Beach hunting for fifty bucks a day to pay for my hotel room, traveled across the continental U.S. in the middle of winter and gotten snowed in for three days (in Colby, Kansas), graduated with honors from the school of my choice, and become the parent of one amazing little boy.

    Oh! And I saw Wicked on Broadway with a very dear friend who lives on the East Coast.

    So what would I like to do now?

    1) I want to go to DragonCon or some other science fiction and fantasy Convention. 

    Seriously. I think WorldCon might be the one I manage to get to. I don’t know. I keep watching. My son is getting old enough that he could come with me on this little adventure and I certainly wouldn’t want to deny him that. He’s as much of a geek as I am. (He is totally playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii as I am writing this.)

    2) I want to go on the Writing Excuses retreat. 

    Right now they’re putting it on a cruise ship, which is really cool. If they continue to do that I might actually manage to go next year. My son can come with me, they have stuff for him to do and safe places for him to be while I’m working with some of my all-time favorite authors.

    3) I want to go to a Supernatural convention. 

    If there is one show that I absolutely love, it’s Supernatural. I am enough of a fan to want to support them this way.

    I think that’s it. Generally speaking, I go out and find adventure on a week by week basis. I think perhaps the misadventures of my youth have spoiled me some. I mean, it’d be cool if I could visit Ireland one day, or travel through Germany, or knock on the door of my friend who lives in Britain, but I don’t consider those part of the bucket list.

    Find out what’s on the bucket lists of some of my fellow authors!

    Skye Taylor  http://www.skye-writer.com/
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
    Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
    Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.webs.com/
    Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
    Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Rachael Kosnski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com
    Geeta Kakade http://geetakakade.blogspot.com/
    Kay Sisk http://kaysisk.blogspot.com
    Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
    Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
    Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/

  • Breaking the Outline

    My writing process is a little odd. I can’t start a story with an outline but I can’t finish without one either. Generally speaking I can write three quarters of the book before I have to sit down and map out the last few chapters. This allows my creative mind to build the story focused on the characters and what they’re after without feeling restrained by the outline.

    Residual Haunting, however, has broken every single outline I’ve made for it.

    I’m in the final leg of the journey for our intrepid heroes and I know where I want to end it, weird crap just keeps happening.

    Don’t get me wrong, I know the important bits. I know how and why the witiko escaped. I know it’s hungry and coming for them. And I know what the heroes need to do in order to kill it.

    It’s just that every chapter for the last several weeks has given me something to sit back and go; “Whoa …”

    It keeps breaking the outline.

    Part of me is alright with this. The other part of me keeps looking at my 3×5 cards and wondering how much smaller my handwriting is going to have to get in order to fit everything on there. It’s crazy. If it were any other book I’d set it aside for a month or two and come back to it, but I started serializing Residual back in October so it’s kinda … you know … important that I get stuff written every week.

    This experience is making it very clear to me that I am just not cut out to be a “pantser” … or someone who writes “by the seat of their pants.” At this point I really do prefer to have that outline in place. It helps me know the ending (once I reach it) is going to make sense.

    So … this is me to my WIP; “Knock it off. I’m trying to finish you.”

  • Supernatural Re-Watch

    A while ago I started re-watching Supernatural. I started from the beginning and only skipped one episode (Bugs) because I really didn’t like that one. Spiders and me just … no. I suppose if I ever really want to write a horror book I’ll just cram super-spiders in there and let them take over the world, but I digress.

    I just finished with Swan Song last night and, due to the way instant video works, watched the most recent episode of the new season via Amazon as well. It’s amazing to see how Sam and Dean have changed in ten years, and how they have stayed the same.

    Physically speaking I’d have to say that Sam (Jared Padalecki) has changed more than Dean (Jensen Ackles) but in terms of character motivations and what have you, both have been on a roller-coaster. Of course, they’ve both died a bazillion times and visited Hell or Heaven or Purgatory, not to mention the whole apocalypse thing, so you kind of expect them to be different now.

    But as I was watching the show last night (About a Boy, which was wonderful, by the way) I couldn’t help wondering what it was about this show that hooked me. Why do I keep coming back to this story?

    Supernatural is currently in its 10th season, which is amazing in and of itself. Shows don’t normally last this long. I’m not supernaturalcomplaining or anything, I love these guys. I love that it’s not the run-of-the-mill drama you find on television these days, rife with broken romances and people trying to find their place in the world.

    Sam and Dean know their place. There might have been some question earlier on in the show, but when push comes to shove they’re built to “help people” and “hunt things” and while they might take a break from time to time they always come back to it.

    But that’s not why I keep coming back to this show.

    I keep coming back to this show because I would love to just hang out with Sam and Dean. They’re regular guys who make me laugh. Castiel and Crowley can come along too, though if you ask me they’re just as attracted to the very “humanness” of these brothers as I am.

    What it comes down to is character. Dean’s jokes and Sam’s careful observation, the brokenness of both men from crap they’ve dealt with in the past or are currently dealing with today, it all adds to this complex brotherly relationship that is both common and extraordinary.

    And on top of all that we get ghosts and monsters and the occasional apocalypse.

    So … yeah. Supernatural is my favorite running show for all the reasons above. I’ll keep watching, and re-watching, for as long as I can. If you’ve never tried it, I encourage you to look it up. Currently you can find it on Netflix or you can go the Amazon route.

  • Historical Fiction and the Suspension of Disbelief

    When I first made the decision to try my hand at historical fiction I knew there would be a lot of research involved. But since I find WWII fascinating I imagined this would not be such a big issue for me. And it wasn’t. I enjoy hunting through history to find little tidbits that I can put in my fiction.

    That being said, I recognize that the opening chapters of Persona require the reader to suspend disbelief in a major way. While the SS Ceramic was a real ship that was sunk by a German U-Boat in December 1942, Megan Shepherd is a fake creation and her survival of said sinking is absolutely made up.

    That isn’t so much where the suspension of disbelief comes in, though. It’s when she’s picked up by the enemy and said enemy doesn’t immediately ship her off to a work camp somewhere that I know I’m walking a very, very tight line.

    There’s a part of me that keeps suggesting I scrap the first few chapters and have Megan already in Germany when war breaks out. That would take care of the belief problem. She was in Germany, the war began. Borders closed. She was stuck.

    But when push comes to shove, this book isn’t really about WWII. It’s about one woman having to decide who she is. WWII is just the vehicle by which she arrives at her decision making point and what better way to start her on that journey than by making the war very vivid and very real right up front?

    Historians and such might murder me for it, just like scientists would likely enjoy stringing me up for the space travel I created in Tapped and Deviation, but this is just one of those places where my instincts are telling me I need to bend the rules a bit.

  • Poetry Challenge 2015 Entry #4

    Explanation: I’m reading a poem a week through the year 2015. I’m not going to explain them or discuss them in any way, I’m just going to post them. Some are famous — like this one — but others will not be.

    The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson

    Half a league, half a league,
    Half a league onward,
    All in the valley of Death
    Rode the six hundred.
    “Forward, the Light Brigade!
    Charge for the guns!” he said:
    Into the valley of Death
    Rode the six hundred.

    “Forward, the Light Brigade!”
    Was there a man dismayed?
    Not though the soldier knew
    Some one had blundered:
    Their’s not to make reply,
    Their’s not to reason why,
    Their’s but to do and die:
    Into the valley of Death
    Rode the six hundred.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon in front of them
    Volleyed and thundered;
    Stormed at with shot and shell,
    Boldly they rode and well,
    Into the jaws of Death,
    Into the mouth of Hell
    Rode the six hundred.

    Flashed all their sabres bare,
    Flashed as they turned in air
    Sabring the gunners there,
    Charging an army, while
    All the world wondered:
    Plunged in the battery-smoke
    Right through the line they broke;
    Cossack and Russian
    Reeled from the sabre-stroke
    Shattered and sundered.
    Then they rode back, but not,
    Not the six hundred.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon behind them
    Volleyed and thundered;
    Stormed at with shot and shell,
    While horse and hero fell,
    They that had fought so well
    Came through the jaws of Death
    Back from the mouth of Hell,
    All that was left of them,
    Left of six hundred.

    When can their glory fade?
    O the wild charge they made!
    All the world wondered.
    Honour the charge they made!
    Honour the Light Brigade,
    Noble six hundred!

  • Auditioning Characters – Experiments with the Writing Excuses Class

    I’ve been a long-time fan of the Writing Excuses Podcast. I’ve listened to everything they’ve put up to date and was completely excited when I learned they were making this year into a sort of “writing class” format. If you haven’t listened to them and you are an author, aspiring author, writer, whatever-title-you-give-yourself then I highly recommend you check them out. Start with season 10 so you can join the class. I promise you won’t regret it.

    The latest assignment for the class is to “audition characters” for your story and because this concept was entirely new to me I have been struggling to complete it.

    Normally my stories start with a character and then the plot sort of sprouts out of them and their motivations, so I’m thinking I must have done the first exercise quite a bit differently from many other people. For the sake of this post (and all other subsequent posts dealing with this class) I’m going to go ahead and share portions of my “homework.”

    Here’s the story idea we’re working with:

    Ashton Bainbridge is a wildlife photographer who manages to catch something on film he never should have seen; a fight between a shockingly large dragon and a shadowed creature with fangs and an obvious lust for blood. As any sane person would do, Ashton flees the scene only to be targeted by the vampire once he gets back to civilization. But the vampire isn’t the only creature who’s caught Ashton’s scent; Percy Pru Alturas, socialite, night club owner, and dragon, isn’t ready to just watch Ashton die.

    Part of a dying breed, Pru’s millennia-old mission has always been to protect and serve humankind. But the resurgence of vampires is a harbinger of something darker, something older than she is, and even Pru isn’t certain she can protect Ashton from what’s coming.

    So you see I have the two main characters already set; Ashton Bainbridge and Pru Alturas. This is a mashing of an older novel concept about dragons that I have been sitting on for several years and a newer story idea about vampires — which is very weird for me because I think I’ve made it very clear I hate vampires.

    Now then, I’m always one to go ahead and stretch my limitations, try new things and what have you so I’ve gone ahead and named Pru and Ashton as “Audition #1.”

    Audition #2:

    Tessa Pines is a veterinarian doing fairly well for herself on the professional front. She has her own practice, loyal patients – or at least loyal pet-owners, and a condo she can breathe in. She refuses to be bothered by the fact that her little sister is getting married for the third time and fully intends to endure the scrutiny of the family with dignity and aplomb. She likes being alone.

    When several cattle and horses under her care begin mysteriously dying, Tessa finds herself scrambling for answers. With every death Tessa’s reputation is slowly tarnished and in a desperate attempt to find out what is going on, she goes on a personal stake-out at one of the ranches. But what she discovers is far more horrifying than any disease she might have imagined.

    Obviously what she would discover is the whole vampire-dragon standoff thing, but you can see how the whole feel of the story would change with it. I like Tessa, even if she does feel a bit like a modern romance novel character there in the first paragraph.

    Audition #3:

    Doctor Isaac Jefferson is a thirty-something analyst working in JPAC (Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.) His work takes him across the globe in search of military personnel who have gone missing but his most recent assignment to the Solomon Islands brings about an unexpected surprise.  

    I stopped myself on this one because, quite frankly, I’d rather tackle JPAC in a less fantastical setting. (AKA – no vampires, no dragons, just good old fashion mystery.)

    I have two others for this assignment but I’m not going to share them. One is a YA translation of the novel and I really, really, really have a hard time writing YA. But, hey, I wrote the audition anyway. The other is a 1920’s murder mystery based in Egypt. Both of which have promise but I find myself drawn more to the first two auditions.

    In any case, this was an interesting exercise and I’m glad I took the time to do it. Tessa’s story actually sounds like it has a little more meat to it than Ashton’s but I haven’t quite decided yet. I’ll keep playing around with them before I make a concrete decision.

    I do know that I love Isaac Jefferson and the whole JPAC scenario. I had the opportunity to visit CILHI on Hawaii once and remember being fascinated with what they do there. I’m setting him off to the side to simmer while I work on other things.

    Thank you, Writing Excuses! This has been fun so far and I’m looking forward to what comes next.

  • Poetry Challenge 2015 – Entry #3

    I missed this over the weekend due to the Round Robin tour so I thought I’d go ahead and start the week with the poetry challenge. For those just joining me, the challenge is to read one poem a week for the year. I won’t be commenting on many of them, just sharing what I read that week.

    This is one of my favorites, though.

    Entry #3 – A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe

    Thus much let me avow–
    You are not wrong, who deem
    That my days have been a dream;
    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less gone?
    All that we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream.

    I stand amid the roar
    Of a surf-tormented shore,
    And I hold within my hand
    Grains of the golden sand–
    How few! yet how they creep
    Through my fingers to the deep,
    While I weep–while I weep!
    O God! can I not grasp
    Them with a tighter clasp?
    O God! can I not save
    One from the pitiless wave?
    Is all that we see or seem
    But a dream within a dream?

  • Round Robin Blog Tour – Time to Read and Write

    The alarm goes off at 6:30 AM every morning and I drag myself from bed just long enough to hit the snooze button. It’s a ritual at this point; no sooner has the Band of Brother’s soundtrack begun than I’ve cut it off, grumbling something incoherent before flopping back onto my pillow.

    At this point the Orange Beast crawls onto my chest or back, depending on how I’ve landed, and begins pawing at my face until I pet him.

    The Orange Beast
    The Orange Beast

    Ten minutes later the orchestra goes off again and I trudge over to my kitchen to start the coffee because, let’s face it, I just can’t function without at least one cup of coffee in me. Somewhere in the foggy minutes before the coffee is done brewing I manage to fill my kid’s bowl up with cereal and make the first call to get him out of bed.

    I’ve learned not to put milk in the bowl until I see him emerge from his room, otherwise the cereal gets soggy.

    I’ve also learned to dress myself first before making sure the child gets everything he needs for the day. Shoes, jacket, computer bag, school bag, lunch bags, and we’re off!

    Most of the time I “read” books by listening to them via my iPad. I have an active Audible account but I do hunt for podio-books or other forms of audio books to listen to while I’m at my day job. For actual “sit-me-down-to-read” time I have to wait for my break.

    Or there’s the bedtime story for the kiddo. We’ve been reading Star Wars novels lately but that’s bound to change.

    In any case, my time is severely limited and I tend to focus on the audio books these days because it frees up my break for personal writing. I’ve found that if I use my break to write something then it sticks with me, ruminating in the back of my mind for the rest of the day so that, when the child has been bathed and put to bed, I can sit down and do my “real” writing.

    “Real” writing is when I know I’m going to have uninterrupted blocks of time to dive into the work. Though, to be completely honest, these are very rare. I am a single parent and so there is no such thing as “uninterrupted” time anymore.

    (AKA – He’s supposed to be in bed at 8:00PM but wanders out every now and then for water, a hug, or to tell me something his seven-year-old brain has determined is of the utmost importance.)

    What I’ve discovered I have to do to get any work done is shove my headphones on, listen for 5 minutes to something orchestral like the Captain America Winter Soldier soundtrack or the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack or … you get it … with my fingers poised over the keyboard until I get into the groove again.

    This is almost always interrupted by the child, who wants or needs my attention for something, and … frankly, can be quite frustrating sometimes. There are days I have to shut the whole thing down and go play with the kiddo. There are days when I get all of 500 words written.

    But there are other days when I get 3,000 words written.

    It’s alright, though. Words are written. Plots are discovered. Somehow I manage to meet my deadlines on time and my kiddo knows that there is nothing more important to me than he is.

    I’m happy to roll with the punches so long as that fact remains embedded in his mind.

    Check out what my fellow authors do to keep reading and writing a priority!

    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Geeta Kakade http://geetakakade.blogspot.com/
    Margaret Fieland http://www.margaretfieland.com/blog1/
    Skye Taylor  http://www.skye-writer.com/
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
    Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
    Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    Rita Karnopp  http://www.mizging@blogspot.com
    Rachael Kosnski http://the-doodling-booktease.tumblr.com/
    Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
    Heidi M. Thomas http://heidiwriter.wordpress.com/
    Ginger Simpson http://www.cowboykisses.blogspot.com/
    Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/

  • Self-Publishing Journal Entry #6

    Dear Diary,

    As expected I made every mistake there is to make while self-publishing a novel. After its “Hydra leak” on the 1st of January I went through the Kindle version and found no less than 25 translation, formatting, or just-plain-dunce errors that had to be fixed.

    Orange Beast
    Orange Beast

    The Orange Beast is still laughing at me for that.

    However, I do feel better about this because if I hadn’t been so hopped up on cold medication I would have found those errors in the week prior to its official release anyway. This just means that those unfortunates who purchased the leaked novel are going to have a one-of-a-kind “whoopsie” version that no longer exists.

    I’ll laugh about it in a couple of years, I’m sure.

    In any case, the novel was fixed before its official release. (To include the spacing issue that had the printed version sitting at over 500 pages. That would be one of the just-plain-dunce errors.)

    What have I learned from this whole self-publishing adventure?

    1) Editors are worth their weight in gold. 

    No, seriously. They are. Those 25 errors were mostly formatting and translation problems that happened while I was bouncing between Scrivener and Word.

    2) Never work while on cold medication. 

    ‘Nuff said.

    3) Marketing is pretty much the same on your own as with a small press. 

    Yeah, there’s really very little difference here. As much as I love my publishers and the validation they gave me for even accepting my work to begin with, a book doesn’t just fly off the virtual shelves on its own.

    That said, I’m still not doing much marketing-wise. I’ll submit Tapped to various review sites and all that, but Scornedotherwise I’m not going to stress this point. I made this decision way back when Sedition was first published and while it makes no “business sense” I’m sticking to it.

    I want to be a better storyteller. I want to tell stories that move people, even if it’s only a select number of people. I feel totally awesome about the readership I already have. (Hey, Readers! I uber loves you all!)

    4) This is fun.

    In spite of my fights with Scrivener and my frustration with Word and staring at documents for hours on end while trying to make the formatting right, I had a lot of fun doing this. Don’t ask me why. I think only writers can really understand it.

    To sum up, I will probably do this with more than just the Tapped series.

    Yes, I understand the stigma that comes with self-published authors but I’m going to lean back on the real tradition here; the tradition of storytellers wandering from place to place, giving their entertainment away for lodging or food. Celebrities for a night or a day, or a holiday week, and then they faded into the background directly after their job was done.

    They didn’t have publishers back then, just word of mouth and a distinct love for what they did.

  • Poetry Challenge 2015 – Entry #2

    For those just joining me, the challenge is to read a poem a week for the whole year. I’ll be posting which poems I read for the given week (or at least portions of the poem with a link to the full poem elsewhere.)

    Because poetry — good poetry — is meant to be profound and intimate, I will only post reactions to the poems on rare occasions. In other words, read the poem yourself and see what jumps out at you. What I see isn’t necessarily what you’re going to see.

    Entry #2 — Longing by Matthew Arnold

    Come to me in my dreams, and then
    By day I shall be well again!
    For so the night will more than pay
    The hopeless longing of the day.

    Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
    A messenger from radiant climes,
    And smile on thy new world, and be
    As kind to others as to me!

    Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
    Come now, and let me dream it truth,
    And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
    And say, My love why sufferest thou?

    Come to me in my dreams, and then
    By day I shall be well again!
    For so the night will more than pay
    The hopeless longing of the day.