A.J. Maguire

Category: Publishing

  • 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.

  • 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 Great Genre Battle

    For those of you who have been along for the ride, you know that I have been writing a series of books that revolve around a supernatural counselor. Or rather, a counselor who counsels the supernatural who live amongst us.

    Both work, really. She is a wizard, after all.

    In any case, I have fought with the defining genre almost since the moment of the book’s inception. I thought at first it was straight Paranormal Romance, but as the story grew I became convinced it was Urban Fantasy because, quite frankly, the love story isn’t the main focal point of this first book. In fact, it isn’t the focal point of the second book either. However, when stepping back and looking at the whole of the series, the love story written there actually is the focal point.

    There’s just a lot of world/setting/stuff to get through in order for that love story to come to fruition.

    I will be honest and say that I thought it couldn’t be Paranormal Romance unless there was a vampire-killing group who all wore leather pants and kicked some serious batoosh on the page. But I am also honest in that I am basing that assumption on a bazillion book covers. It isn’t a genre I normally read, which is weird because internet algorithms keep flashing their covers at me. The books I frequent are marketed as Fantasy Romance.

    Which…

    Yes, as a matter of fact, Nora’s books could feasibly be called Fantasy Romance as well. The only issue being that it is set in contemporary times and in our world, which lends itself to the Ubran Fantasy genre.

    However, the setting is not a major player, which my research tells me is one of the defining elements of an Urban Fantasy. Something about that setting has to be made into a plot issue in order for the book to qualify, and I’m afraid it’s all just trimmings insofar as Nora’s books go. The main driving force behind Nora’s books are the relationships between the people.

    Because she’s a counselor. And an empath.

    This is what leads me to the idea that it is Paranormal Romance, even if we don’t have the love story as the focal point. Nora’s story is complicated. We learn a lot of things about bright folk living amongst humanity, the existence of Fairy, and the policing force set out to keep bright folk in line.

    We’ll put it this way: it bends genres.

    It mixes and matches.

    It’s the beginning of a love story.

    It’s an adventure.

    And it has werewolves.

    So it’s a lot of fun and in the end, don’t we want to have fun when we read?

  • Where I Pretend I Know What I’m Doing…

    I have a plan and it’s a good plan.

    Or at least I think it is a good plan.

    Ask me again when all this is over.

    So here’s the plan… Last Child of Winter is nearly complete. It turned out longer than I intended, which I think is probably good because it means I have more I can edit out come the revision pass. In any case, my beloved husband got me a Planner for Christmas and I have plotted out the first several months of 2023.

    Why am I telling this to you, gentle, kind, lovely Reader (or listener, if you prefer the podcast version)?

    Because those plans include a release date!

    On May 9th, 2023, Nora and the Werewolf Wedding will be out for sale. And, fingers crossed, I hope to have an audio version released at the same time. It’s a learning process with audio rights and things, but hopefully we will see them both available on the same date.

    Nora’s stories are my first real leap into Urban Fantasy, and for those who have been following along, I’m sure you recognize her name. She’s only been stirring around my creative brain for three years now, after a Twitter conversation gone awry. I started her story as alternate history fantasy, based in a steampunk version of our world but her voice was too sharp and by chapter four of the rough draft I had to change it.

    This was the right call because her story opened up as soon as I made the choice and it’s grown enough in my head to be an entity of its own. In fact, her second book was written in three months flat and her third is being outlined.

    And really, it makes sense since Nora’s character was inspired by Deanna Troi from Star Trek the Next Generation. (More on this in a later post.) Trying to shove Nora into 1820’s Boston stymied my creative Muse, as it were, and I came to a standstill. So, even if I think Nora doesn’t wear enough leather pants to truly qualify for Urban Fantasy, this is where we are.

    I suppose it does have werewolves, and that seems to be on the Urban Fantasy Checklist these days.

    This is vastly different from the recent release – Paw Prints on the Wall – which is still doing fabulous and I keep hearing from readers who enjoyed it. Thank you, forever and always, to everyone who has picked up a copy.

    Nora’s book is a popcorn novel. Which means it’s a lot of fantastic adventure and fun, something you can enjoy while munching on popcorn or nestled in for a rainy weekend. I poke fun at a couple of tropes, lean into some cliches because, I mean, werewolves, guys. All around, Nora’s stories are great fun to write and I am looking forward to digging into the book once more as we prepare for that May 9th release.

    P.S. Totally a placeholder cover. I have another cover in the works. A better cover. The best of all covers.

  • The Article of Doom


    She’d heard all these things before.
    She knew the chances of landing a traditional publishing deal were astronomical. All the statistics were the same. All the naysaying was the same. And that nagging voice telling her the minimum wage day job was all she would ever know?
    Yes, that too was the same.
    So why was this article different?
    Why did this one make the flickering candle of hope inside her gutter out?
    Certainly she was older now. She had experienced a plethora of rejections, and deep down she knew she was no Hemmingway reincarnated, but she had always accepted it as paying her dues. That some time very soon would be her time to shine.
    After all, there were books out there that made her cringe and she knew she was better.
    She put down her iPhone, desperate to forget the past ten minutes of reading. The irrational side of her considered unfriending the fellow author who had shared so horrible an article, but that would not give her back those last ten
    minutes. It would not light the candle of hope that had carried her through years of writing and re-writing manuscripts.
    And really, she knew it was not her friend’s fault. They were probably feeling the exact same about this dismal accounting of the publishing business.
    Her notes and carefully constructed outline sat on the desk, closed and waiting for her return, but she turned away from them. She ignored the laptop sitting in sleep mode even though the manuscript was in there, its characters begging for more life, more time, for the plot to reveal the entire point of their existence.
    She could not go back to them yet.
    Was there a point in going back to them at all?
    Her dog enjoyed a longer walk than usual, some extra belly rubs. Her cats took turns sitting on top of the closed laptop because that was how they preferred the desk to be. It meant she would stop and give ear rubs as she passed the desk like a good peasant.
    She made an unsavory snack of celery and carrots, because no fiction could melt away the calories she’d eaten at lunch.
    And then her son came home from school.
    “Why does walking down the road give me so many ideas to write?” he exclaimed, all excitement and joy.
    She smiled, heart aching because of statistics she could not dream of sharing with him. His candle still shone so bright!
    “Because you’re a creator,” she told him and kissed his forehead.
    They sat down together and with a sigh, she opened her laptop as together they began to write.

  • Faking Originality – June Round Robin 2018

    IMG_1806Slogging through the middle of my current work in progress I ran into a wall.

    Not just a wall, but a fortress insurmountable complete with lichen-covered stones and drizzles of what is likely the dumpings of the privy pot. I think my Muse lives up in that tower and takes great pleasure in the fact that I keep smacking my nose into her waste.

    The book that I have loved for twelve chapters suddenly feels bland, lacking all sense of originality, and it is a chore to sit down and open the document every day.

    Wherein we come to the tragic but predictable plight of the author and I begin to wonder why I bother with this writing thing. What could I possibly have to offer the world by way of this story, or any story ever?

    This is a normal thing and I thank every author who has revealed their own insecurities regarding the writing life. You give me hope.

    I actually just got to spend some time with a local author (L.J. Cohen who writes amazing science fiction and you should totally check her out) and we discussed this very issue. Most authors hit this wall in the writing process and, for some of us, it only seems to get worse with each project.

    So what do I do when I hit this wall?

    Well, to be honest, this wall was different from the others. All the other walls I’ve hit have been about the language and the writing style and all those things I knew I could clean up in the next draft.

    This one…

    This refuse-drizzling, moldy fortress wall barring my path insists that medieval fantasy novels are so last century.

    “Nobody wants to read another Kid in King Arthur’s Court. Ugh, everything is so grey and blah and already done, and there’s no amount of editing that’s going to cure this thing. ”

    It is possibly the hardest wall I’ve ever come up against.

    And the only way I have been able to barrel through is my outline.

    That’s right, my outline saved my butt. Because I put my headphones on and pulled my manuscript up and read through the whole of my outline, start to finish, and it made me remember why I started writing this thing in the first place.

    Because I love Kevin and I want him to survive. And I want him to come to that moment in the end where he confronts his own grief and learns how to live with it. Because the genre may be tired and maybe some people will groan at the idea of another medieval fantasy, but there’s enough new in it to breathe life into the setting.

    And if, when I’m revising, I feel like it needs something more to set it apart, then yes, I can still do that.

    Check out what my fellow authors do to keep moving forward in those tough moments…

    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1gQ
    Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
    Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
    Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
    Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
    Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
    Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

     

     

     

  • The Hateful Synopsis

    Nearly every author I know bemoans synopsis writing. This is the part of our job that isn’t the red-headed stepchild, but rather the creature we keep locked in a closet, too ashamed to call it ours.

    Which I know is a horrible analogy, but we’re trying to be honest here.

    None of us enjoy this part of the process.

    We skirt around that closet door for as long as possible. Sometimes we even skip submitting to certain places that require the synopsis and move on. (Though I suggest you take a long hard look at places that do not require it before hitting that “send” button.)

    In the end, most legitimate agents and publishing houses require this 1 to 3 page summary of your 75 to 120 thousand word novel. So we find ourselves cracking the door open on that dreaded closet to try wrangling the beast that is our synopsis.

    This is not for the faint of heart.

    There are any number of agents and editors out there that have examples of synopsis writing to help us along the way. In particular, I like to frequent Writer’s Digest. They have a whole section of this stuff. Go check them out.

    Now then – assuming you’ve glanced through the sundry of articles Writer’s Digest has to offer and you’re still intimidated by the roar emitting from your personal synopsis closet – I do have one or two tips that have helped me in the past.

    Before you write the synopsis, have a separate sheet of paper (or Word document) with the following information clearly defined:

    1. Main character, their motivation, and something that marks them as unique. EXAMPLE: Tessa Pines is a veteran trying to overcome the trauma she endured in Afghanistan. 
    2. Major characters and how they intersect the main character’s life. EXAMPLE: CORDON MORANT is Tessa’s ex-fiancee and high school sweetheart. He shows up unannounced at the bookstore Tessa has been frequenting since her return home and forces her to confront both the distant past of their relationship and her more recent losses. MARISOL WILLIAMS is Tessa’s roommate at the university and a psychology student who seems to have chosen Tessa as a subject to observe and learn from. 
    3. Inciting incident. AKA – What pushes your character out of status quo and into the main story. EXAMPLE: When Marisol’s lab partner leaves her hanging with a large paranormal investigating project, Tessa finds herself volunteering to help. 
    4. Twist moments/Game Changers/Major Plot Moments. Call them what you want, there should be two or three of these in the book. These are the moments in the story that push us toward the ending. EXAMPLE: Oops, this place is really haunted and now everyone is in danger. 
    5. Climax. I’m pretty sure we all know what that means. EXAMPLE: Tessa faces off against a possessed former comrade in the middle of the investigation, who is rightly upset by her avoidance tactics throughout the book. (If this were the real thing, I’d explain exactly what happens here. No cheap withholding of information, agents/editors want to know that everything makes sense.)
    6. Resolution. EXAMPLE: Tessa admits that she needs some help facing everything that has happened – from Afghanistan to the incident at the investigation – and prepares to move forward. 

    OK. With all that information already scribbled on a separate piece of paper, you know the bare bones of what your synopsis needs. Different agents and editors want different lengths, so I write three; a one page, a two page, and a three page.

    The bare bones I have on the sheet can pretty much boil down to the one page synopsis already, so that one is easy. I just have to go in and clean it up. For the two and three pages I go in and add pertinent elements and important character moments, which tends to fill up the extra space.

    Anyway, that’s my tip. The bare bones sheet has helped me in recent years so maybe it can help you too.

    Don’t sweat the beast in the closet, guys. As hard as it is, writing a full novel is harder and you already got through that. I promise, you’ll get through this too.

  • Book Release Mayhem!

    UC front cover-sample-2Usurper has made its way to virtual shelves! You can find it on Amazon in both eBook and paperback.

    This is the third installment in the Sedition series that follows Trenna Dyngannon and her husband Nelek as they struggle to find peace between humankind and the Eldur nation.

    Fans of the novels – who may or may not have threatened to hunt me down if I didn’t stop writing other things and finish this book – will be pleased to find Nelek and Trenna in fighting shape. The quirky pair were left in exile in the second book (Saboteur) so I know a lot of you were left hanging.

    In my defense, the reason this book took so long was because I discovered that I was Saboteur-WEBtrying to fit two books into one.

    Why yes, this means there is a fourth book.

    And yes, that book is already underway. It is in the outlining phase and I’ll be rolling up my sleeves to work on it later this year.

    Sedition was my first published work so it holds a special place in my heart. I remember floundering with that first draft, trying to piece together things on 3×5 cards and make a sensible plot out of the personalities on the page.

    Sedition-WEBWell, I remember coming to terms with what a plot was in general. When I started it was just a bunch of characters doing different things that occasionally intersected. It wasn’t until I joined a writers group (The Dreamers from the Forward Motion for Writers website) that I was able to see the work as a bigger picture.

    At the time I had no idea there would be more books coming. Now, as I begin the process of ending this series, there is a part of me that dreads coming to the last page. Trenna and Nelek, and now their children, have become a part of my daily life.

    As strange as it sounds, it will be difficult to say goodbye, no matter how the story ends.

     

  • Let’s Talk About Fantasy

    My writing career started with Sedition, a fantasy novel about a pair of brothers trying to Sedition-WEBrescue their mother. The book went through several revisions – and so many titles it hurts my head to think about  – but in January of 2011 its story line was set in stone.

    (Mostly because the publishing house would have smacked me if I tried altering anything after the Galley Proofs were done.) 

    When I first started writing it, I was doing it for fun. I enjoyed stories and wanted to tell one, so I started writing snippets on 3×5 cards that I carried with me wherever I went.

    Fans of the novel might be surprised to learn that Trenna Croften was not the original hero. In fact, the book began with Brigetta Isleen Chridhe – the woman magically abducted from home and dropped in the middle of a political war between a King and his sons.

    I learned about Kiavana – the kingdom where the first book takes place – through Brigetta because she was just as new to the stage as I was. At the time I knew very little about writing, so I stumbled through the countryside right along with Brigetta, encountering senile knights who continually “squired” whoever happened to be the most helpful, and a prince who hid his motivations under a veneer of disinterest and materialism.

    As I began to uncover the secrets of the world I was creating, Trenna Croften emerged. In fact, her first appearance was the scene where she interrupted an assassination attempt on the eldest prince. When she asked if assassins were paid well, she made me laugh, and essentially stole the book from there.

    Saboteur-WEBOr… well… a whole series, as it turns out.

    Saboteur, the sequel to Sedition, was released in January of 2012 and in February we will see Usurper make its way onto virtual shelves.

    While Brigetta may have been reduced to a minor character in the original novel, I’m happy to report that she has a much larger role in Usurper. I had thought that writing her would be easy since I knew so much about her origins, but as it turns out I was wrong.

    For the timeline of the novels, it has been over 20 years since we last saw Brigetta and she has undergone quite a few changes. She’s a Blood Mage, for one, and for another… she married an assassin. (Because apparently I can’t get away from assassins in these novels.) Her voice is different because she has changed as a character, so I had to re-learn who she was in order to portray her correctly.

    Now, I recognize that it has been many years since Saboteur was released and I do UC front cover-sample-2apologize for that. Usurper was a joy to write, it truly was. But between school and being a full-time single-parent and working full-time and… ahem… my other novels (Is it weird I feel like I cheated by writing all that science fiction in the interim?)… I just didn’t have enough time to do it all.

    I should take this moment to mention that there is at least one other book – Warpath – that I am constructing. It isn’t on the list for this year, but will be next year. The good news is that much of Warpath is already done because part of my problem with Usurper was that I was trying to pack two books into one.