A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • Gutter Space

    Last year I made a few print copies of Persona for my family. (No, it is not for sale. Yet.) But anyway, I discovered this rather annoying problem with my Word program when it came to converting the text for printing.

    Every page needed a designated amount of “gutter space.” This is the space that you see right in the middle of the book when you open it up, the little “gutter” that is created where the binding comes together. For whatever reason, my Word program could not target even versus odd pages, forcing me to spend FOUR HOURS going through each individual page and shifting them over.

    As evidenced by what happened next, shifting text is quite boring.

    “Gutter space” sounded so … sordid. Kind of seedy, you know?

    I decided that what “Gutter Space” really stood for was that place where all rejected novels go, and for four hours that late November night I let my creative brain run rampant. It was quite entertaining. I had a main hero named Partial (standing for Partially Formed Idea) who was met by several different novels, all of them with some form of book disease.

    My personal favorite was Multiple POV Disorder where the inflicted novel kept switching characters mid-sentence.

    In any case, I sort of let “Gutter Space” fade away after I finished shifting text but this week I caught myself in that weird transitional period between projects. And, lo and behold, Gutter Space came back to mind. As much as I loved the concept of Partial being introduced to every manner of writing mistake (like Purple Prose Syndrome, which was so full of unnecessary description that it continued to just describe things around it rather than address anything of worth to the plot) I’m not quite ready to write that short story.

    But trust me, I will.

    For now, I’ve decided that “Gutter Space” will be anything and everything that my brain needs to clean out before it’s ready to start on a new project.

    So what is my “Gutter Space” comprised of today?

    Well … Here’s my line-up …

    1) Residual Haunting — needs completion (But it’s also my next project so I don’t need to worry so much.)

    2) Persona — needs a new ending (Already got this baby scheduled.)

    3) Usurper — needs an edit or … uh … 5 (Pardon me as I hide from all Trenna fans. I already promised it would be out in 2015!)

    4) Primal — needs re-written or … brainstormed or … something

    5) Dead Weight — needs completion

    6) The Abolitionist — needs research

    … My car needs cleaning too.

    And I should wash my carpets ’cause … Winter is coming.

    And there you have it … That’s what’s in my Gutter Space today. Starting next week I’ll be diving headlong into Residual Haunting and posting it, as promised, for free on Wattpad. It will be completed by the end of October, which frees up my November for NaNoWriMo where I will either be working on Primal or The Abolitionist.

    We’ll see.

  • Research as a Writer

    Writers are really life-long scholars. Sure, we get to play around in fiction and make up rules in our fantasy worlds sometimes, but when push comes to shove we are constantly having to “Google” one thing or another. Whether we’re researching words (Hello, online Thesaurus) or we need to find out just how far away Pluto is from Earth (NASA has a really cool site for that) the research of a writer never seems to be done.

    With each book comes a new set of questions, new things we need to know to make the novel believable because the last thing we want to do is insult our readers.

    Science Fiction authors find themselves having to explain gravity on a ship. Historical Fiction authors need to know their time period well enough to keep readers rooted in the story. Crime writers need to know police procedure and proper investigative techniques. And the list goes on.

    The bottom line is, if you’re a writer then you’re a researcher too. There’s just no getting around this work.

    Now, I’ve heard horror stories of authors who get lost in the library, researching so much that they never actually start to write the story. When I started my first historical fiction (Persona) I was seriously afraid of this happening.

    I absolutely love history. It would have been easy for me to get sucked into all the facts and true stories about what happened in WWII and I knew it. So I made a list of rules for myself before I started the project and, because I’m about to start my second historical fiction (The Abolitionist) in November, I thought I would share those rules today.

    1) Write the Character First

    Before I did any research I had to have my main character firmly in my sights. With Persona this was Megan Crossweathers, and I wrote the entire first chapter before I began researching. Now, I did have to go back and edit that chapter quite a bit after I’d done my research, but that first chapter helped me ask very specific questions for my research.

    Example: After writing that first chapter I knew I had Megan on a boat that was about to sink. So I researched boats that sank until I found the S.S. Ceramic (No, really, that’s its name) which sank right about where I needed it to and had only one reported survivor. 

    2) Know What You Need

    I’m pointing to the first rule up there “Know your character” again because if you know your character and the story you’re meaning to tell then you won’t get lost in a sea of information as you’re writing. As much fun as it is to learn about history (or science or crime or whatever your passion is) there’s only so much that’s actually going to be useful.

    So, you need to know what you need.

    Example: During my recent editing of Tapped I found my characters walking on Pluto. (The dwarf planet, not the Disney character or the Roman god of the Underworld.) In order to do that I needed to know the climate of the dwarf planet (which is very, very cold by the way) and the terrain and … you get it. 

    Generally speaking, you come up with these questions as you write which brings me to my third and final rule …

    3) Keep Writing 

    Many things constitute as research in my book. Preparing for The Abolitionist, I’ve begun watching movies centered on the Civil War (just watched Gettysburg this weekend) and gathered documentaries which I will slowly begin to consume. These help me two-fold because documentaries let me get my learning on (I totally love The History Channel) while also seeing the styles (hair, clothing, weaponry) right in front of me.

    Here’s the thing …

    All that information is useless unless I have someplace to put it. And I’ll never find a place to put it unless I’m still writing.

    So for every hour I spend watching a documentary, I have to spend an hour writing too. Sometimes I start the day writing and then watch a documentary, other times I watch first and then write. Either way, I’m researching as I go.

    Disclaimer

    I’m one of those bizarre hybrid writers who can never start a novel with an outline. The first dozen chapters are what I like to call “cause and effect” writing, which presents the character and a particular problem and then watching said character try to resolve that particular problem. But I can’t finish a novel without an outline either.

    By the middle of the book I have a firm enough grasp on the character, theme, and plot of the novel that I can write a sketchy outline to help me reach the end. I call this “Muse Central” because I go about a week or so where I don’t write anything on the novel itself, but instead let my Muse take control to write the outline.

    These are just my rules. It’s not a “one size fits all” thing here.

    Authors who like to have an outline from the get-go probably won’t benefit here. Discovery writers (writers who don’t use an outline) might.

    Maybe.

    I don’t know. I’m really just winging it here. These are rules that helped me and on the off chance that they might help someone else, I decided to share them. Writing is a craft, after all, and no one way is going to work for everybody.

  • Clearing Off the Cork-board

    Early Thursday afternoon — on my lunch break, no less — I was able to type “The End” on Tapped. This was my most extensive round of edits. I solicited an editor to help me develop the story and couldn’t be happier with the results. Gabriel Fitzpatrick helped me see the strengths and the weaknesses in the manuscript and it is now totally awesome. 

    Ahem.

    Well, after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears it’s really quite a lot better than it was.

    In a week I’ll probably hate it, but I’ve come to expect the roller-coaster that is the author’s psyche. One week I love it, the next week it’s dribble not worth looking at.

    Whatever.

    This week it’s awesome and I have happily cleared off my cork-board, making way for the next project. All of the 3×5 cards with plot notes, sketched outlines, and character questions have been tossed into recycling. It is now a blank bit of brown cork with festively colored push-pins just waiting to be used again.

    ajmaguire-ResidualHaunting-COVER
    Cover art done by the amazing Chris Howard!

    And what is that next project?

    Residual Haunting!

    The original plan was to serialize Residual Haunting through the summer because I had so much fun bringing Persona into life that way. (Why yes, Persona has seen an editor and I will begin brushing it up in January. I’ll be completely changing the ending since the editor sorta … uh … hated it. No, I mean it, he HATED it.)

    AJMaguire-PersonaCover-1280h
    Remember Persona? It’s cover art was done by Chris Howard!

    Anyway … Residual Haunting is in a sorry state of incomplete and since it is another one of my experiments in genre/POV/and all things the craft of writing, it meets my arbitrary qualifications for serialization.

    So! Starting October 1st, 2014 I will be posting a chapter a week on Wattpad  — because Wattpad is awesome and I totally love it —  and on a story blog of its own — because I like to accommodate people who either do not use or do not understand how to use the Wattpad site.

    This is FREE! Yes, absolutely free. I will post links to each site (Wattpad and Blog) every time a new chapter goes up. Just like Persona, this is a draft and it is subject to massive amounts of change. Also like Persona, after its completion it will be removed while it undergoes said change.

    What does that mean?

    It means it will only be up for a limited time after the final chapter has been posted. If you follow along week by week you have nothing to worry about. If you wait until it’s all up there, you’ll only have three months to read it before I remove it from the public eye.

    And now I’ll leave you with a blurb telling you what Residual Haunting is all about. 

    Follow Doctors Jared Foster and Cal Murphy as the infamous Residual Haunting Museum is hijacked by ghosts, a witiko, and a girl named Rachel who is trying very hard to retire from all things supernatural.

    As Cal works hard to decipher his newest “Print” — or ghost — things inside the museum start to go haywire; the ghosts inside their exhibits disappear, power fluctuates and threatens to poison them all with the gases used to maintain each exhibit, and Cal finds himself doing the impossible by speaking to a ghost. But there’s far more going on than the mystery of just one ghost and the closer Cal comes to understanding how this woman died, the closer he comes to the real danger hunting them all inside the museum.  

  • Author’s Roast and Toast

    The lovely people at Author’s Roast and Toast are hosting me at their blog today!

    Let me just say, it was a great deal of fun filling out their questions!

    Go check them out at their blogsite and see what it is they do with a new release.

  • Nearing “The End”

    By the close of this week I will have finished the edits on Tapped. I started this book two years ago for Camp NaNoWriMo and sent its second draft to a wonderful editor by the name of Gabriel Fitzpatrick. (Authors, if you ever see him advertising to do some work, take him up on it. He’s professional and he’ll infuse you with the belief that your book can conquer the world when it’s finished.)

    My original deadline for completing these edits was the beginning of May, but I was still in school and things got a trifle crazy and an avocado bested me during a salad-making contest.

    Yes, I’m talking about stabbing myself in the hand. And I’ll say it again — I really do know how to core an avocado. I was just in a hurry and wasn’t paying enough attention.

    Still, the damage done to my hand in that escapade was extensive enough to make typing (a core element of the writing craft) really frigging hard, thus throwing my deadline back even further.

    But I am not one to go quietly into the night.

    Which is why the draft will be complete this week.

    I’m not sure if I’m the only one who has this problem but sometimes, particularly in the last week of a novel, I want to finish so badly that I actually have to coach myself to slow down. So this week is all about taking my time to get it right. These last two chapters include a space battle where the ship we’ve been traveling on for several hundred pages now finally gets to show us what she’s capable of, and resolution moments for a couple of subplots.

    And if I don’t get both of them right then the entire book is a wash.

    So here’s me, rolling up my sleeves and preparing for the week-long plunge into all things “climax” and “conclusion.” I’ll see you all on the other side.

  • Hey! I did another guest post!

    Follow me to LJ Cohen’s blogspot to see how I walked the tightrope between making a fairly intense political book without using it as a soap-box.

    Lisa is a longtime friend and all-around awesome person. If you haven’t read her current works you really should! Future Tense and Derelict are my two favorites at this point, but I know I’m going to love her new releases — when they get here.

  • Meet My Character Blog Tour

    Shen Hart tagged me in the “Meet My Character Blog Tour” and I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of days, trying to decide who I was going to “tag” in response. I’ve decided on Lisa (LJ) Cohen, RJ Blain, and Skye Taylor. Good luck and have fun! 

    1) What is the name of your character?  Is she fictional or a historic person?

    Johanna Rorry — otherwise known as Jorry. She is purely fictional. 

    2) When and where is the story set?

    The story is set many, many, many years into the future. We get to go spelunking on Pluto, lay siege to a space station orbiting Neptune, and infiltrate a military base on Europa but in between all of that the characters are on board the hauler-class vessel known as the Zephyr. 

    3) What should we know about him?

    Ahem. You mean “her.”

    And you should know that when she sets her mind to something she doesn’t waver. She’s a complicated mix of soldier and mother, capable of hacking into computer systems and constantly focused on the safety of her family. 

    4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his her life?

    Her son Devon wants to go to University, but because Jorry and her counterpart (Seach Barlow) are both deserters from the military this poses many problems. Sending Devon to school could reveal their whereabouts to the military they’ve been running from. So Jorry makes a black market deal to get Devon some security tags that won’t alert the Universe that she’s still alive and still allow him to go to school. 

    And … you know … things go very, very wrong. 

    5) What is the personal goal of the character?

    She wants to see her son safe and happy. 

    6) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

    The tentative title is Tapped and you can read a snippet of it on my main website ajmaguire.com. (HINT: It’s under the science fiction tab.)

    7) When can we expect the book to be published?

    Well, I have a rule that I send out everything to the traditional market first and if it doesn’t get any bites then I look into Indie publishing. So I’m really not sure. It could be out sometime in 2015 or it could be later.

     

  • Writing Hard Scenes

    For the past several weeks I have agonized over one particular scene. It’s an important scene. Plot happens. Torture happens. Characters react in various ways to said torture, thus revealing more about who they are as people and making the book quite a bit more profound than it would have been otherwise. 

    One problem. 

    I don’t know how to torture someone. 

    Honestly, there’s a part of me that’s quite annoyed at having researched proper torture techniques. I mean, who wants to know that stuff?

    This scene was extremely difficult to write both because I didn’t know anything about torture and because I didn’t know how to properly convey someone being tortured. I almost tried scrap the scene, to just “fade to black” and let the Reader’s imagine what was going on, then come back later during the rescue. 

    But I couldn’t do that because the scene really does reveal more about the relationship between our hero and the antagonist. It shows how far both are willing to go to get what they want.

    And I knew that if I scrapped it, I would be cheating myself out of a growth moment as a writer.

    Writing the hard scenes is what helps challenge us as writers.

    Yes, we need editors to help us do that too. Yes, we need to read books that help us grasp story structure and characterization.

    But we also need to face those scenes that frighten us because it is only through those scenes or genres or points of view that we can truly take ownership of our craft.

    So.

    I wrote a torture scene.

    It took me several weeks and I cringed while I was doing it, but I know (and the Readers will know) just who these two people are because of it.  

  • Guest Post – Dealing with the Crushing Blows of Editing – Shen Hart

    The lovely Shen Hart is a developmental editor, a book reviewer, and a business coach. You can see many of her reviews on The Review Hart where she and her colleagues seem to devour novels whole. She just finished her debut novel Wyrd Calling and has undergone the dreaded editing cycle for the book, which she was kind enough to describe below. 

    Dealing with the crushing blows of editing.

    I’m a developmental editor and author, and I recently went through the first round of professional developmental Shen Profileedits on my debut novel. It was… interesting.

    The first thing I saw was all of the comments and the changes (he did proofreading stuff at the same time). It was very much an, “Oh My God I need a big bucket of Mai Tai and a gallon of chocolate. Now.”

    Yes, I did explicitly ask my editor, who’s a perfectionist at the best of times, to be brutal. I told him I wanted every flaw pointed out; this book needs to be nothing short of absolutely perfect. That being said, seeing all that red made me close the document and go in search of alcohol and chocolate. I was expecting it, but seeing it didn’t make it much easier.

    This is my little tale of how I got through it.

    I found that you need to break it down into little bits. Make it bite size and easier to handle. If you think about the entire document as this big, red-splattered monstrosity that everyone will hate, you’ll never get through it. Start by reading the book write-up at least twice to make sure it’s secured in your head.

    That means that you’ll know any big sweeping changes you need to make, and will help reduce any wasted time and effort. Once you’ve done that, do it page by page or chapter by chapter, depending on how brave you are. Read the chapter write up before you start on that particular chapter, for the same reasons as you read the final book write up – there’s no point in wasting time and energy.

    As mine was both proofreading and developmental, I also broke it down into three stages. First I checked the proofreading stuff. Was I happy with the grammatical changes he’d made? Did he keep the character’s first-person narrative voice? The answers were both, “Yes, oh dear gods he got it spot on I love him.”

    Ahem. Once I’d been over that (and made a point of completely ignoring all developmental stuff), I went back and moved onto the second stage: Dialogue. Now, every writer has something they struggle with, a weakness. We all have strengths, too, but this isn’t about that. Grab your ice-cream, we’re talking the stuff you fail at. In my case, that’s dialogue. And, Michael told me (yes, I’m making him a person rather than a scary editor creature) that my dialogue sucked. It was stiff and generic, to the point where he wasn’t really sure who was talking half the time.

    I wept.

    I hid.

    I devoured chocolate.

    I consumed much alcohol.

    Then I finally emerged from my cave ready to try and tackle the beast which was dialogue. Now, I hate dialogue to the point where my first two books had no dialogue whatsoever. It was all reported speech. I did it, though! I broke it down, I focused, and page by page I rewrote that dialogue so that now it’s fabulous!

    That left me with the final stage. I was really getting there. I was going to do this! The developmental stuff, the fixing of the scenes, the plot holes, the missing bits of description, all those bits. This bit made Michael laugh because I kept a close track on the number of comments left, and that number wasn’t going down very much as I went through the manuscript.

    That led to him commenting on how I’d come up with some convoluted formula relating to my “Dear gods the ending is going to be all comments he hated it, oh gods.” It made sense to me! I knew there must have been a big cluster of comments around that ending; therefore, he must have hated it, and it was going to be horrifying and awful.

    Do you know what actually happened? I had to fix some description, change a bit of pacing, and that was it! And Michael helped me figure out how to do it. It was actually… ok.

    What have I learned through it all?

    Chocolate and alcohol mean I can do anything. Ahem.

    As an editor, I do pick out as much as I can in my clients’ manuscripts (like Michael does), because I want to help them make them shine. That will probably make my clients quiver and dive into their vices, but I can’t afford to keep them in ice-cream.

    No, no, that wasn’t it. Oh! Breaking things down into little pieces and stages helps a lot. Yes, it’s scary, but when it’s lots of little chunks it’s far less scary. And editors (me included) are lovely people who’re there to help. At the end of all the ice-cream eating and chocolate devouring, you’ll have a much stronger manuscript which you can be really proud of.

    As an editor, that’s what I’m here for. Helping writers make their manuscripts into the best books they possibly can be. As a writer, I’m happy to have such a good editor that really helps me do that.

    Thanks to A.J for having me 😀

     

  • How to Write a Dude

    Devon Barlow is a headstrong young man nearing his twenty-first birthday. He’s highly intelligent, very physically active (he goes spelunking on Pluto, how cool is that?) and he has a strong suspicion that his parents might just be pirates. Save for brief forays on Mars or Earth during the holiday seasons, Devon has lived the bulk of his life on board Zephyr, a hauler-class space ship. 

    I am a thirty-something single mother who reads too much and spends an embarrassing amount of time on video games. (Hey, games help keep my creative brain fresh and stuff. Don’t judge.)

    So how does a thirty-something single mother find the “voice” of a twenty-year-old boy in order to believably display his character on the page?

    Well … I read a lot. 

    I did say I read too much, didn’t I?

    In this case I deliberately hunted for books with young male points of view (really not that hard to do, you can find them in just about every book you pick up) and I studied them. I looked at what they thought or felt or did differently from how I might have reacted in any given situation and I jotted it down in a notepad. 

    I also talked to guy friends. If there was a situation happening on Zephyr in the book that could be easily translated into day-to-day life, I would nudge a guy and ask; “Hey, when you were twenty what would you have done if …”

    Disclaimer: These friends know I am an author. They find it highly amusing when I quiz them about what it’s like to be a dude and are more than happy to help out. However … most of them still think I’m crazy so … do this at your own peril. 

    That said, Devon Barlow might be a twenty-year-old young man but he is also a human being. He may think and feel differently from me but that does not mean I cannot relate to him. (Except for the pirate thing. I never suspected my parents of being pirates.)

    Fiction is the place where we can mind-meld with the world around us. It helps us understand people precisely because we find ourselves relating to characters vastly different from us. It teaches us to look at the core motivation in people because we know that, male or female, that motivation is what’s going to define them as a person.

    So!

    How to write a dude when you’re a girl?

    1) Read. (You should be doing this anyway if you’re a writer.)

    2) Observe and/or ask your guy counterparts.

    3) Find the core motivation.

    … and if anyone else has tricks to writing the opposite gender I’m happy to hear them. I’m sure I missed a few.