A.J. Maguire

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  • Nora, Updates, and Radio Silence

    For those who have been following along, they’ll notice that aside from Round Robin Blogs it has been a little quiet on my end. Which is unusual for someone who tries to get a post up a week while shouting excitement about the upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding. ((See that COUNTDOWN at the side of the page!!))

    To be blunt, life has been happening.

    And when Life has not been happening, I have been working steadily on edits for Nora and the Autumn Duke – the second book in Nora’s series, due to be released in 2024.

    Which brings me to a Writing Truth — Sometimes you have to sit back and deal with Life. It isn’t being lazy and it isn’t something to criticize yourself for. There is a major difference between procrastination and not having the brain space necessary to approach the page, and it is important to learn that difference.

    And honestly, once you’ve dealt with Life in whatever capacity you need to, your writing always benefits. You’ve learned something new to put in the pages of your work, and that is equally important.

    So.

    Where have I been?

    I’ve been doing Life.

    What am I doing now?

    Still hard at work with Nora’s second book, which I hope to have completed this month. If not this month, then certainly the beginning/middle of next. I’ve included some pretty covers – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding’s official cover is easy to recognize, but we have some placeholder covers for the second novel too.

    Once this book is done, I’m looking at a change of pace. I have several fantasy short stories that I would like to compile into an anthology and set out for sale in time for Christmas. This is partly because Torven – that tiny novelette I wrote all those years ago – cannot be printed anymore due to new guidelines at Amazon. The anthology will include a copy of Torven precisely so that you can get it in a printed version again. So don’t be shocked when you find it is no longer for sale. It’ll be back.

    That shouldn’t take me past August, though, and I still hope to start working on Tango Five – the third book in the Tapped series – starting in September.

    ALSO…

    Advance Reader Copies of Nora and the Werewolf Wedding are starting to generate some reviews. Thus far these reviews have made me smile. Readers are enjoying Nora and I look forward to seeing what more might be said. If you want to join my review team, you can find it at Book Sirens, which is a new thing for me. It’s free, with the request that you leave an honest review after, but the spots are limited.

    Happy Reading/Writing everyone!

  • Making Pretend People Seem Real – April 2023 Round Robin

    This month we’re looking at how we breathe life into the characters on the page.

    Or, as I like to put it, how we make pretend people seem real.

    Without sounding completely unhinged… Or, well. I suppose it’s going to sound completely unhinged no matter how I put it, but the majority of my characters show up in my head with voices and mannerisms intact. That isn’t to say I know everything about them, but that their behavior is there, and the process of writing the first draft unveils the why of that behavior.

    If I were smarter, I would design a character from scratch, but I’m afraid that’s just not me.

    The best way to make the character come to life and feel like a three-dimensional, honest to goodness human being, is putting them in a situation that everyone can relate to. In Sedition, the opening pages have my main character Trenna in a bar-fight-duel thing, which is a lot of action and not many people can really relate to that. Her mannerisms are clear, her desire to maintain neutrality in a highly tense political setting is seen, but she doesn’t come to life until she is standing with her ex-boyfriend saying goodbye.

    Because everyone has an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever.

    We’ve all been there. We know that unsettled pang that hits when you see that person fresh after a breakup. Everything that happened hangs in the air and everything that might have been taunts you. Giving Trenna that moment is what made her come to life.

    In Tapped, we have Devon Barlow trying to fix hauling equipment on an interstellar ship. Again, not something a lot of people can relate to. But we have all worked somewhere that has faulty equipment because the powers-that-be haven’t coughed up the cash to fix it proper. His frustrations hit a familiar chord, which brings him to life.

    Last example, I promise…

    In my upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we open with Nora waiting for a vampire and an elf to talk to her. Not precisely something we can experience in real life, but sitting in an uncomfortable chair, listening to a clock ticking, and getting a knot in our shoulder is a bit more common. Focusing on the immediate details and allowing the character to share not only what they see, but how they see it, brings that character – and the story itself – a vibrancy it otherwise would lack.

    Nora doesn’t just see a vampire. She sees a svelte, opulent woman with more poise in her fingernail than Nora possesses in her whole body. And this tells us more about Nora as a person than three pages of backstory ever could.

    So that is my trick, I guess, for bringing fake people some realness.

    I take real stuff that people can relate to – a breakup, a cheap boss, feeling frumpy – and I put it front and center. Check out what some of my fellow authors do to breathe life into their characters by following the links below.

    Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

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

    Diane Bator https://dbator.blogspot.com/

    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2TY

    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

    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

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

    Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/

  • Character Backstories – March Round Robin 2023

    This month we’re unveiling the topic of Character Backstories, why they’re important, and how we manage to get the information onto the page without a snooze-worthy info-dump. Because nobody likes an info-dump. Even if it’s told in a snarky voice in the narrative, readers recognize an info-dump when they see one.

    So… how do I convey important information on the page?

    First, let me express that not everything in a character’s backstory is necessary for the narrative to move forward. So the very, very first thing I have to ask is if this information is relevant. If it isn’t, it’s tossed. Maybe one day it’ll come out in an anthology somewhere, but if it has no bearing on the current storyline it can be set aside.

    Yes, even if it explains why Character A is so emotionally closed off.

    The truth is, sometimes a little mystery is good. Readers are smart, and creative, and allowing them to wonder is a good thing.

    The character of Johanna Rorry – also known as Jorry – stars in my Tapped series and she is complicated: she’s commanding, overbearing, and too sharp for gentler company. Granted, she’s in charge of a starship and everything in outer space is designed to kill humans. She is also a veteran who has been through a galactic war. Just knowing those two pieces is enough to explain some of that overbearing behavior away, without diving into a major info dump.

    You know there’s trauma hiding behind her, even if it isn’t expressly explained.

    What I do give are small snippets of memory.

    People are the sum total of their experiences. Memories crop up in the natural course of the day. It’s no difficult thing to imagine such happening for our characters on the page. So if the information is relevant, if it hints toward something I’m going to unveil later on, I go ahead and put something in the way of my character that brings out a memory.

    For instance, in my upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding we see an empathic wizard coming to terms with how different the cultures are between living in Boston and living in Fairy. There is some trauma in her past, which I reveal through tiny snippets of memory, the first of which can be seen below.

    –SNIPPET — Nora and the Werewolf Wedding —

    Except for the occasional hairdresser, no one had brushed my hair since I was a child and for a heartbeat I was distracted by the gentle scrape of bristles across my scalp. Memories uprooted, unbidden but clear, and I could almost hear the melodic hum of my mother’s voice as she helped prepare me for bed. I could not have been more than seven, hugging a doll whose name was something like Regina, and basking in the attention. She was all warmth and light and gentle teasing, with a soft chuckle that seemed to echo into the quiet room.

    But on the tail of that memory a dark staircase leading down, my own voice sounding small as I called for mother. I could feel the chill of the basement reaching for me, long shadows pooling at the bottom of the stair, and dread crept up my spine.

    Grief pricked fresh and I blinked back the burn of tears, shoving hard at the memories. Meredith was not my mother, she was performing a service, not providing comfort, and I needed my wits to survive whatever dinner was waiting downstairs.

    SO!

    Readers can glean that Nora remembers her mother a little, but thoughts of her mother turn to a shadowy staircase and a strong sense of fear. We know something important happened in the basement, and there’s the promise that eventually this part of her backstory will come to light, but we keep a little mystery in the mix because there are things happening and Nora needs to concentrate.

    Memories like these are an organic means of adding backstory into a narrative without clogging the page with an info-dump. The majority of my books use them and until I learn how to be better at it, I’ll probably keep adding them.

    Check out how my fellow authors manage Character Backstory!

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

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

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

    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2Sr

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

  • An Author’s Journey – Recording an Audiobook

    I have long held the dream of recording one of my books on audio. It’s why I bought a fancy microphone years ago – which loitered on a shelf collecting dust until I started producing this blog into a podcast. I love audio books. I listen to them often.

    Or, well, my husband listens to them more than I do now based solely on his use of the car. I am blessed with the ability to sit down and read and call it “work” because authors must also be readers. It’s the single best means of learning how to tell a story effectively. I am also blessed with a husband who works very hard to permit me the time to do all that reading and writing.

    But not every is as blessed as I am.

    And in fact, it wasn’t all that long ago when I relied on audiobooks to get my reading in because I was a single mother and there just weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, let alone read.

    So when I say I understand the value of audiobooks, I mean it.

    Now we come to the nitty-gritty of recording an audiobook, which… isn’t as nitty-gritty as I feared it would be. I walked into this fearing the worst, that I would not be able to afford the programs to help me record and that I would not be able to understand how to edit an audio file.

    Well, there are other fears too. Such as the idea that people would wrinkle their noses at the sound of my voice, and I’m sure some people will. My pitch and tone could remind them of a hateful person from their past, or they might just dislike it in general, but those are issues that are outside of my control. So while there’s a small portion of me screaming in self-conscious dismay, I cannot let the things I have no control over hold me back.

    If you hate my voice, I’m sorry.

    Happily, you can pick up the stories I tell, or even this blog, and read it without having to hear me.

    Circling back to the nitty-gritty… I found a lovely site called Podcastle that has helped me immensely with recording Nora’s book. I’m still working with it because, quite frankly, it got super cold for a little while and you could hear my space heater rumbling away in the background. The choices were to hear my teeth chattering away as I read the manuscript, or wait until the weather was more amenable. And because I’m already a bit of a baby when it gets too cold, I chose the latter.

    For editing the audio files… I confess I am still working on that. Thus far it seems alright? But I am also not an audio-master and I suspect before I’m done I will be reaching out to try and find someone who is more familiar with the task. They will probably hear things/catch stuff that I haven’t been able to.

    Regardless, it’s been a brave new adventure for me and I’m excited to see the finished product.

  • Book Review – House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J Maas

    Alright, so we all know I loved the first book in the Crescent City series. I got it for Christmas and lived in that book for three days, so it should come as no surprise that I picked up the second book in the series, House of Sky and Breath.

    Now, I don’t give spoilers in my reviews because I don’t like being given spoilers myself, so I’m going to hedge the line a little here and say it does end on a cliffhanger. I don’t mind cliffhangers occasionally, I really don’t, but given the length of these two books I wouldn’t have made that choice. There comes a point when you’ve crossed a threshold of several thousands of words and people deserve a HFN ending so they can sleep better at night. And I am still quite nervous about how this cliffhanger came about, but I can’t get too much into the reasons why without shoving spoilers at people. Suffice, I will walk into the third book with no small amount of trepidation.

    However, I understand this is my personal opinion and thus it doesn’t count for much beyond my preferences when I’m reading, so don’t let it deter you from reading the book.

    This book comes with a STRONG CONTENT WARNING for those of you with young adults who like to read. Admittedly, there were some conversations between the romantic characters that left me feeling awkward, but I am also a blushy-conservative-prude. Which, hey, my husband finds endearing and really he’s the only one who matters when it come to those sorts of conversations. I only mention it as a warning to those of you who might be like me. Reading is cool in that you can glaze over the spots that make you blush a lot.

    For the plot of the novel… There is quite a lot of it.

    I did enjoy this book, but it felt like we were keeping a breakneck pace and there just wasn’t enough room for Bryce and her companions to actually, truly, sit down and process everything that had happened in the first book. What made me fall in love with this author was the SECOND book of Court of Thorns and Roses series, when her main character had to sit down and actually deal with what she had done in the first novel. Trauma wasn’t just shouldered, it was confronted and eventually overcome. This wasn’t the case in House of Sky and Breath.

    Sure, we’re told that the two main characters cried on each others shoulders, but you don’t really get to feel it.

  • 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?

  • Star Trek First Contact Re-Watch

    Yes, I really am doing a re-watch of the films.

    Why?

    For those of you who haven’t been following along, I am doing this because my up-coming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding features a character inspired by Deanna Troi from the Next Generation series. Deanna as an empath had a lot of power in that series, she brought to light that even the Captain of a starship sometimes needs some guidance navigating emotional waters, and the importance of confronting those emotions.

    I wanted to make a story where an empath was the centerpiece instead of on the sidelines, and I fear Star Trek First Contact reinforced that desire in me. Unlike Star Trek Generations, where Deanna had a lovely scene with the Captain discussing mortality, in this next movie she is more of a backdrop character. We see she is there. She has a small scene with a drunk character where Riker is highly amused to see her in an equally drunken state, but otherwise she has nothing to do.

    It is a little sad because there were a couple of opportunities in there where she might have been able to shine, but for pacing/storytelling purposes it seems she got the back seat in this one. That said, having Picard apart from Deanna, who might have been able to confront him sooner about his behavior, left some space open for Picard to have a bit of a tantrum. He got to go a little crazy precisely because Deanna wasn’t there to check him, so I can see why it was done.

    I still think Deanna could have been given more opportunity to shine down on the planet’s surface with the rest of the crew and all of the stuff going on down there, but, hey, such is life. I still enjoyed the movie and the Borg Queen Lady is still creepy enough to make me squirm.

  • Book Review – Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare

    I have long been a Cassandra Clare fan. The Infernal Devices series remains one of my favorites of all time and I will often re-read the series just so I can listen to Will and Tessa and Jem tell me their story again. So it should come as no surprise that I was delighted to hear she had written about the offspring of my favorite characters in Chain of Gold.

    I enjoy the period in which these books are written far more than I do the modern series.

    I quite loved Lucie Herondale and her brother James and I did enjoy Cordelia. It was fun meeting the Merry Thieves and watching them interact, even if I was having remind myself who was related to who and how. There really are a lot of names on the page, which I imagine shows the Institute bursting with life and thriving under the leadership, so there is a purpose to having so many.

    However…

    There were so many points of view that I simply couldn’t fully attach to one. I still love them and I will get the rest of the series, but there were sections of the book that felt rushed, as though the author were not given the proper amount of time to let their voices come through. It may be a space issue, since this is a larger book, but I am not shy of large books and would have loved more.

    Parents, these are safe. There are no explicit scenes to be wary of, though there are adult conversations.

    I am looking forward to the next book, but this series cannot unseat the Infernal Devices from my favorite shelf. I’m afraid I just could not “befriend” these characters like I was able to do with Will, Tessa, and Jem.

  • Worldbuilding and Me

    So, not that long ago I picked up Million Dollar Outlines by David Farland and I loved it. I have often struggled with Outlining versus Discovery writing because I fell into the category that once I had dreamed up the whole thing into an Outline, I no longer had the motivation to write the story. Mr. Farland’s advice to take the middle ground has been life-changing. I do still write that sketchy outline (I’ve shown pictures of it before) but especially at the beginning of a novel I feel free to toss that puppy out the window once I get going.

    Like I did with Last Child of Winter recently.

    No, seriously. 30% of that outline got tossed because the characters on the page led me to something a little different.

    So I’m still Discovery Writing, seeing where the characters lead, but I have a rough idea of where I need this story to end. And since this book is about a Talent Show, all roads lead to the stage.

    But I think the part that I loved most about Million Dollar Outlines is that he gave me space to brainstorm. He admitted to sometimes staring at a blank screen for an hour and working things out in his head, and to be frank… I always got frustrated with myself for doing that.

    An hour staring at the screen with no words pouring onto the page? Such waste! Such laziness!

    Except, it isn’t.

    There might not be anything written down, but every single time I do it, I come away with a better grasp of the story I’m telling. This is why I keep notebooks and pens beside my computer. Because I can jot things down and circle/highlight/underline juicy bits that I need to explore later.

    But when it comes to worldbuilding, sometimes things come out in the process of discovery writing too. Such as when this last week I was confronted by a Faery tradition regarding the Fates. No spoilers here, but suffice… it took me by surprise. I had been so centered on the fact that Fae folk had been forced to acclimate to living on Earth that I hadn’t really looked at all the traditions they left behind. Looking into this aspect of their culture has deepened my understanding of the world, the characters, and the story I am telling.

    So, Worldbuilding and Me… I suppose this is all to say that writing is amazing and I deeply enjoy being surprised by what shows up on the page.

    Happy writing, to those of you who do so. Happy Reading to everyone!

  • Getting Back Into the Groove – Round Robin January 2023

    Welcome back to the Round Robin Posts! This first topic is New Beginnings – how do you motivate yourself to get back to writing when life has interrupted your flow?

    I did take some time off from writing for the holidays and, as per usual, had to drag out some tricks to get back into the groove of writing. These tricks mostly include re-reading what has already been put on the page and visiting the ever-evolving outline. For Last Child of Winter, I actually made a skeleton outline before I got started and I am quite amused at how the story has changed.

    I should say first that I adore outlining.

    It makes me feel smart.

    However, when it comes to the actual act of writing the novel, that poor outline gets burned midway through. Or in the case of this novel, it was burned by chapter three. Now I’m sitting with no outline, but a pretty good idea of what happens in the next chapter, and while I have no idea how it’s all going to come together in the end, I am confident that my characters are leading me in the right direction.

    It is always exciting when the novel takes a life of its own, so do not take any of that as a complaint. I am captivated by what is happening with this story and can sense the threads are leaning toward one another correctly, but with the holidays letting my mind wander for as long as I did, a little refresher was still needed.

    So here are some of the things I do to get me back into the groove.

    #1 – The re-read.

    This one seems self-explanatory. Nothing helps more than revisiting what I’ve already written.

    #2 – Dust off the outline.

    Admittedly, my outlines are precisely one handwritten page. Yes, the picture off to the side is a real example. These ones work for me, particularly when I’m in the early stages of the novel. When I go to do the first pass of editing, a more detailed outline is created for help with the synopsis.

    #3 – Work on the Blurb

    The blurb is that thing that goes on the back of the book. The thing that’s supposed to grab a reader’s attention and get them to pick up the book. It is forever evolving, but I know when it’s done its job if it makes me excited to get back to work. And because this was recently re-worked, I’ll go ahead and conclude the current working blurb for Last Child of Winter.

    Last Child of Winter

    In the aftermath of the great war in Faery, bright folk raced through the divide to live as refugees on Earth. But Old Man Winter’s death had far-reaching consequences and earth’s landscape dramatically changed. Blamed for the loss of resources and despised for crowding an already over-populated planet, bright folk carve out lives for themselves working menial labor and low-paying jobs.

    With a new law on the table that could allow bright folk to vote, prejudice has never been higher. When fanatics threaten his foster father’s life, Jack Selvik takes the only path open to a mistweaver like himself and signs up for the wildly popular Bright Talent show. Pit against other bright folk, Jack must undergo several challenges to win a seat at the judges table or be forced through the only working portal back to Faery.

    Check out what some authors do to get back into the groove of things!

    Dr. Bob Rich             https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2OQ

    Anne Graham           https://goo.gl/h4DtKv

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

    Diane Bator               https://dbator.blogspot.com/

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

    Victoria Chatham     http://www.victoriachatham.com

    Fiona McGuire          http://www.fionamcgier.com/

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