A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • The Importance of Having Fun (With Writing)

    Nora and the Werewolf Wedding will be out for sale on WEDNESDAY the 9th of August!

    Hurray and happy days!

    I absolutely love Nora and her books. She is a lot of fun. And the world she is in is a lot of fun to write. Writing her first book took longest because I was worldbuilding a lot, but her second book took me 4 months to draft. And because I’m editing in preparation for next year’s publication date, I just re-read it and still love it.

    These books are like Jim Butcher’s Dresden files meets Sarah J Maas’s Court of Thorns and Roses and I really am having a blast writing them. And it’s showing in the work. I know because of the feedback I have been getting from readers. They are having fun reading Nora, which tells me I’m doing something right.

    I don’t know how other writer’s work but for me, if I’m not having fun then the work crawls along and I often don’t finish. I move on to something else that is fun and then I dissect the old book and implement the elements I enjoyed into the new work. Which is a legitimate means of morphing your craft, but the point still stands — You have got to be having fun.

    If you’re not having fun, if you’re not engaged and lying awake at night wondering how your character is going to make it through the obstacles in front of them, then I can guarantee that your readers won’t be either.

    This isn’t to say there have been no roadblocks.

    I spent four days grouching about a menu because I had no idea what to serve on board a dirigible.

    I spent a week trying to figure out the ending of Werewolf Wedding. (My husband helped me brainstorm during one of our drives. You guys can thank him for like… everything that happens there.)

    I spent two months revising Werewolf Wedding to make it steampunk 1890’s, and then another 4 months returning it to contemporary urban fantasy.

    But from start to finish, I have been having fun with the story. Even in the middle of the roadblocks. And I am excited to see what comes next, which motivates me to be at the computer long after I should have closed it for the day.

    There are some books that I’ve written that were a grind from the mid-point to the end. Some halted completely for months. In these cases, I have to start from the beginning, remind myself why I started the story in the first place, and ignite that joy again before I start writing. Because readers can sense when you’ve lost your way too and no amount of professionalism is going to cover that.

    So here is me, diving back into Nora’s world to get Book #3 Drafted. In the meantime, the first book is out August 9th! And here’s the placeholder cover for Book #2.

  • Mostly Mid-Year Check Up

    I finished Last Child of Winter last week! Confetti is still flying around the house and I continue to nurse my celebratory bottle of wine in the evenings.

    Now I get to take a peek at what I meant to have done this year and… have a mild panic attack about how little has been completed. Last Child of Winter was supposed to be completed back at the end of March? Sweet Bananas on Toast, how did we stretch it to July??

    Well, that’s easy to explain.

    And I suppose it’s time to fess up.

    Those who have been following along will remember that I said “Life Happened” some time ago that derailed several things. Now that we have come to the other side of it, I will admit that I had a bit of a cancer scare. Long story short, my schedule was interrupted by a biopsy and then a surgery and my mind was just not in the right space to get more than 100-500 words done daily.

    Which is significantly less than my 1k-3k normal workday.

    So, my panic attack is short lived today because, quite frankly, I’m still alive to work and that’s good enough for me.

    But how shall I spend the rest of this year?

    So glad you asked!

    This week I am building a book (ie: outlining / character sheets / charts) for the next project that I will begin next week. But I am ALSO going to take 2-3 days this week to write a short story for Nora.

    It’s been stuck in my head so I want to do it while it’s there.

    Nora and the Minotaur’s Husband will, hopefully , star in a Fantasy Anthology that I want to release in December. I have several fantasy short stories that have not found homes and, as you will recall, Torven is no longer available in paperback form because it is too short. So I will have it in the anthology so that people who don’t like digital versions can still read it.

    These projects should last me until the beginning of October (new book / Fantasy Anthology) and then I will pick up Nora’s second book (tentatively titled Nora and the Autumn Duke) for editing straight through National Novel Writing Month in November. If this goes the way it normally does when I put an editing project in NaNo instead of a fresh novel, I will probably be picking up Last Child of Winter and doing its third round of edits straight through December.

    Everything else I put on my plate for this year can simmer in the background until next year.

    Because, hey, I’m alive. And barring any freak accidents, I should be alive next year too.

    All that said, take time today to breathe and enjoy something. Life really is short and the minutes/hours/days that pass by will never come back.

    P.S. Nora and the Werewolf Wedding comes out August 9th! Advanced reviews have been spectacular and I cannot wait for everyone to get to read this one!

  • July Round Robin – Character Arcs

    The good people at Round Robin Blog Hop are having a conversation about Character Arcs this month and I am happy to join in. The question is how important character arcs are in our works and how/if we plan these things out.

    I am going to admit that until recently I have not paid much attention to character arcs in my story. I’ve mostly been along for the ride with my stories and delving into arcs and structures is still relatively new. Some of my characters have made the journey naturally, and I’m mildly proud about having stumbled into success there.

    Trenna, for instance, begins in Sedition as a wild-hearted swordswoman who can’t commit to a relationship or responsibility and ends with a fiancé and the burden of leadership.

    Johanna Rorry from the Tapped series begins as emotionally unavailable and ends in a committed relationship. (Yes, I enjoy love stories. I will probably always write them.)

    But both of these examples happened on accident as the story progressed.

    The novel I am working on right now is different. I have CHARTS for this one. Which is weird for me, but I have found it extremely useful. My two protagonists – Jack and Ryssa Rose – come from very different backgrounds and their voices need to be just as different. Their emotional journeys collide at times, but for the most part it’s felt like I’ve been telling two stories as one.

    It’s… interesting.

    But their arcs are so very important.

    I don’t do spoilers, but Jack starts the story as someone who is ready to leave the world behind. He has stepped away from his father and the woman he loves because he believes it is the only way to keep them safe. By the end of the story he has to come to a place where he understands that love will always have risk, and it is better to have taken that risk than to run away from it.

    Ryssa Rose starts the story as deeply focused on winning. There’s no room for failure for her. But by the end of the story she has to come to a place where she understands that failure is, in and of itself, a kind of winning. Because you learn who you are when you’ve fallen flat on your face. There’s more, of course, but I don’t want to spoil anything when I haven’t even gotten a chance to shop this book around.

    For the nitty-gritty of the character arcs, I will admit that I started using what David Farland put in his book Million Dollar Outlines. I don’t fill ALL of it out because I need the joy of discovery while I’m drafting, but by the time I go through the 3rd draft I should have it all noted down.

    Check out what my fellow authors have to say about Character Arcs!

    Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

    Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

    Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/

    Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

    Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/

    Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com

    A.J. Maguire https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ ( YOU ARE HERE)

    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

  • When Social Media Goes Right

    I am not awesome with social media.

    But other platforms are used for my professional self – Twitter, Instagram, etc. – and unless the weekend trip included a eureka moment for a work in progress then, quite frankly, I doubt anyone truly cares. Everyone has struggles. Everyone has opinions. NOT everyone wants to hear about my struggles and my opinions.

    Side note: Opinions change as new information is absorbed and thus I find it rather silly to blast what I think at any given moment. Often I am wrong. Often that opinion changes drastically. I would prefer to give myself the grace of being able to change in private rather than get strangled by society.

    All of that said… I have one moment when social media went right for me.

    We were having a weird chat about mashups that we would love to see. I believe the conversation derived from the Lucifer television show and how amusing it was that the devil had a therapist. And then, somehow, we wound up with supernatural creatures needing a marital counselor. And Nora Grayson was born in my head. She just showed up.

    Gentle. Quirky. A little lost. Chocolate loving. Sassy. And an empath.

    Because I love Deanna Troi from Star Trek and I did, in fact, wish to see her in a story of her own. So I snagged the empath ability and shoved it into Nora’s already mildly neurotic mess and wham!

    I had a story.

    Now, I will admit that the original intent was straight murder-mystery with supernatural creatures. In my head it was Clue meets Fairy creatures, but what ended up on paper was a little bigger. Because… c’mon. If Fairy creatures are living next door, wouldn’t you want to investigate a little more than one book would permit?

    So now I’m sitting with two books written and a third getting outlined and I owe it all to that original conversation on social media. I have to put a major shout to the writing community on the Twitter platform. Whatever your opinions are about the swap of ownership, the writing community got me to Nora and for that I am grateful.

    Pre-Orders Available for Kindle, or you can snag the book in Hardback or Paperback from Amazon!

  • Author’s Take on BookSirens

    A few weeks back I went ahead and gave BookSirens a try. I will put their link at the bottom of this post if they interest you, and if you’re an Indie author looking for reviews, they probably do. They have two plans you can choose from when you sign up, one for if you’re doing multiple books a year and one for if you are like me and only have one (maybe two) coming out.

    First note — It has to be an ARC. They deal with Advanced Reader Copies only. There’s no shoving an old book up there. The reviewers on this site have been promised to see books that haven’t hit the market yet.

    You put your Cover Art up – in my case, we went through several and it was informative to see which cover caught the most attention.

    You put up multiple formats of your book (all digital formats) so that you can reach the widest base of readers.

    And then you sit back and wait.

    Just like you would if your book just came out, only in this instance you have BookSirens pushing your book to their Readers. And as I signed up to be a Reader as well, I can tell you that they are on top of this. I even reviewed several books and intend to review more.

    The cost is perfect. Especially if you’re like me and paying 50-100 bucks for a single review makes your little Scrooge come out and snarl.

    Note to Other Review Sites out there — I’m a parent. While I understand that to earn money you have to spend some money, that’s the price of a decent pair of glasses for my kid. Or a night out with my kid. If I have to choose, it will always be the kid. And I guarantee you, in today’s economy, we are all having to choose right now.

    BookSirens has a nice, clean site that is easy to navigate. Payments are made as you go, so you aren’t paying a bulk price up front for X amount of reviews because they don’t guarantee that you will get any. If a reader wants to check out your book, they charge you only when that book has been downloaded.

    I will say that the most popular books on there are the same popular books out for sale – Romance books. So if you’re like me and your book is only glancing in the romance department, the reviews are going to be less than if you have a scantily clad person on your cover. That said, reviews are worth their weight in gold, so even if you only get a half dozen, that’s still a half dozen you didn’t have before.

    SO!

    I do recommend them if you are looking to publish a book in the future. You can check them out HERE.

  • The Media Kit and Me

    I’m a little late in the game here.

    Blame good books keeping my occupied.

    Or parenthood.

    Maybe even my fur-babies.

    Whatever the reason, I am late to the game of Media Kits, which are apparently something I should have been doing this whole time with my novels. I might have done something smallish for Paw Prints on the Wall last year, but it was nothing like what I have discovered is customary for a new book release.

    I’ve had a Bio for ages that I quite like, but it has been… you know… ages. So I thought to freshen it up some for this new book. But, you know, I prefer to talk about fake people and fictional scenarios. It’s gross to talk about myself. I feel so… weird.

    100-200 words about me?

    Ugh.

    Fiiiiiiiine.

    BIO:

    A.J. (Aimee Jean) Maguire has been writing about women rescuing their men since 2008. She loves stories in all shapes and sizes, which means her novels tend to run the full spectrum of fiction, but her favorites tend to be fantasy and science fiction. She is currently living her own happily ever after in Central Massachusetts with her husband and son, where they are surrounded by far too many pets. On the weekends she enjoys exploring the many historical sites peppering New England or hunting for lighthouses on the coast.

    So that’s just shy of 100 words, but it’s a work in progress and it’ll fit nicely on the back end of a book.

    But you know what else is supposed to be in a Media Kit?

    A Q&A Tip Sheet.

    Yes, that means I ask myself 10 questions and then answer those 10 questions for people to use as an easy cut and paste for their blogs and things.

    I’m still working on this one.

    And for the record… there’s a ton more on the list. Some of it is already done, such as book information with the synopsis, cover image, contact information and book details, but it can be more than a little overwhelming to look at on the surface.

    For those curious, I got most of this information from Reedsy, which has some invaluable information in it for authors. You should check them out CLICK HERE.

  • Writing and Parenthood

    School is officially out for the summer here. My son is happily lazing for these first few days – probably a week, really – and as his parent I am dutifully hunting for ways to keep him occupied and learning. Which, to be fair, will probably only last a week or two and we’ll both get into a routine where I’m constantly interrupted from writing due to his very existence.

    Because he needs food.

    Or he found a funny video.

    Or he wants to include me in on his own writing schemes and ask for advice. (Be still, my beating heart!)

    Yes, I have encouraged him to do this. He’s 15. I’m 90% certain he can get a tiny part-time something or other at this age doing something on a farm or landscaping or whatever. Because this experience is important. Clocking in and out and being held accountable for certain hours of your day is, in fact, paramount to survival in our society.

    And it’s humbling.

    I hated working in fast food, but I wouldn’t trade the experience of having done it. You won’t ever see me snarling at some poor Schmoe at the cash register for getting my change wrong, because I was once that poor Schmoe. So, yes, I want my son to put himself in those shoes for a summer or two.

    Not at fast food yet, though. That can be next year or the year after.

    So where, or where will my writing time be?

    I suppose we will have to see. He does have interest in web design and such, so I might let him try his hand at building me a brand spanking new website over the summer, which would cut down transportation costs and permit me to write more, but it loses the “Clock in and Out” part because… you know… I’m his mother.

  • Evolution of a Book Cover – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    SO.

    Book covers are hard.

    We’re coming close to the release of Nora and the Werewolf Wedding and I thought for sure I had my book cover all settled. You’ll recognize it. Its sort of been everywhere at this point. And I’m not saying I don’t love it, because I do. I just realized that there wasn’t much TO it. And that it might not be a great representation for everything the novel has in it.

    I mean, the title alone tells us it is supernatural. You can’t have werewolves and not be smack dab in the middle of paranormal or fantasy genres. And I suppose the title hints to romance as well because of the whole wedding aspect, but it’s vague because we don’t know if Nora is the one getting married or someone else. (Yes, it’s someone else.)

    So I went back to the drawing board, as it were, and was hunting for maybe something else that might fit. This one got shot down by my husband pretty quick because he felt the wolf aspect was overdone for the genre. I’m still not sure I should have listened to him, but he DOES read the Paranormal/Urban Fantasy genre, which this book fits into. The romance is really secondary to the plight of poor Nora and Derrick, FYI.

    As a woman, I like the picture. It’s pretty. And I want to ruffle some wolfie ears and snuggle in the snow. But. I’m not sure it really tells us what the story is about either. So again back to the drawing board and hunting for ideas here. I want mystery and danger and romance and werewolf-paranormal-magic-something in my cover!

    So, I really liked the moon in this one. There was a sense of romance because of the couple, and that great big moon is a little unsettling. The tree, however, did not really match the setting. The majority of the book takes place in Allegany New York, near the lake and some super pretty forests and such. There seems to be too much black on the screen too. It’s not super eye-catching, you know? And while the wolf aspect can be subtle with the moon, it didn’t quite hit the spot.

    And BEFORE you ask, no. None of these are AI generated.

    SO!

    Now we come to the one I think I have settled on. It could change between now and August, but presently I love the blue in this one. It catches the eye. And I have the romance of the couple, and the wolf howling in the background. And that great big moon.

    (Brief reminder that you can PREORDER Nora’s first book through Kindle!)

  • Book Review – A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J Maas

    This is a lovely, quiet book. It shows the aftermath of a massive battle and how the characters are coping (or attempting to cope) with all that they saw and were forced to do. In a way, I wish I had read it first out of the pile of books I got for Christmas because it would have fit the setting of Winter Solstice.

    Maas is very good at confronting trauma in her work, which I’ve mentioned before. A Court of Frost and Starlight is no exception here. I was able to read it in a day and carried a sense of healing and understanding away from the novel. The characters are all quite real, their reactions understandable, and it was heartening to see them taking steps toward the future.

    As an author myself, I take certain things away from every book I read. Cassandra Clare and Naomi Novik always teach me the beauty of language, for instance. Sarah J Maas, and this book in particular, put on display the need to slow down and let the characters just be. Let them be “human” on the page. (I put that in quotation marks because none of her characters are human in this book, but their reactions and emotions most certainly are.)

    We tend to get all huffy-puffy about the need for plot. For entertainment. For something to be happening. But we can get all those things from a movie or a game. Reading is the only place where we can connect to characters on a human level. Where we can take a breath and go — Yes. I understand that completely.

    So, thank you, Sarah J Maas for this book. You’ve taught me a lot.

    For the disclaimers, these books are adult in nature. There are explicit scenes, so be mindful for younger readers.

    PURCHASE LINKS – Amazon – Barnes and Noble

  • Star Trek – Picard – Review

    So!

    For those who haven’t been following along, I have a book titled Nora and the Werewolf Wedding that is due to hit bookshelves on August 9th. Nora Grayson’s character was born of a desire to see someone like Deanna Troi from the Star Trek universe stand center stage rather than as a background character. Because I love her. Because she was strong and gentle and complex and she challenged me to pay attention to the emotions around me.

    I have been doing a re-watch of all of the Star Trek Next Generation movies, but Season 3 of Picard came out and to my delight, Deanna Troi had a lot of screentime in it.

    I don’t want to give spoilers, so I am going to steer away from the main plotline and look at the Riker/Deanna marriage for a moment. Without giving too much detail here, they are having a rough time of things. Tragedy hit their family and they all had to deal with it. Deanna and Riker still love one another – which, let’s be frank, is refreshing to see in a world where relationships get treated like winter coats – but they are deeply hurt and not communicating.

    There is a point in the storyline where Deanna and Riker are able to talk about this and it is lovely. Granted, they are also in a lot of danger and the talk is only able to last a minute, but Deanna makes a valid and wonderful point in that you cannot skip to the healing part. Grief has its place. We cannot ignore it, no matter how much we want to.

    It’s become cliche to have a “strong” character shove their grief aside as though they will deal with it later so that they can “get the job done” on the screen or page. I know I have at least two characters in my own fiction that do exactly this – Trenna and Jorry, if you’re wondering – but there is always a reckoning for this behavior. And to be frank, Picard as a character is precisely this cliche. He has just had Deanna nudging him from the corner since Season One of Next Generation.

    Grief comes to everyone. We all learn to carry it until one day we look back and realize we have a scar instead of an open wound.

    I suppose this doesn’t seem like much of a Review for the show, so I had better make some quick notes.

    #1 – I loved it.

    My mother raised me on Star Trek. So I must say that I am 100% pleased with how they handled this final chapter of Picard’s journey. They treated the characters with respect. They gave us a grown up conversation about grief and parenthood and what it means to have true human connection. (Again, I don’t want to give spoilers this soon, so maybe I will dissect that last statement in full after a year has gone by.)

    #2 – I am sad to say goodbye.

    But the ending was lovely and they are in a good place. I want them to stay in that good place.

    #3 – I do hope a particular Crusher gets a spinoff because he was fantastic.

    Nope. No details there. Go watch the show.