A.J. Maguire

Tag: A.J. Maguire

  • Deadlines

    If you’ve been following my Blog then you know I have a deadline of March 1st for my book Dead Magic to be edited and in the (virtual) hands of my publisher.  Dead Magic is the sequel to Witch-Born and, I think, the last book in the world of Magnellum.

    Probably.  More than likely it’s the last one.  We’ll see.  I said Sedition would be a stand-alone and I’m working on its third book now.

    In any case, I am right on target for my March 1st deadline.  So don’t worry!  (Trust me, if I were worried about it I wouldn’t be pausing to write a blog, I don’t care what the Marketing people have to say.)  But the whole deadline thing got me to thinking about how deadlines have really altered my writing habits.

    Honestly, if you’re one of those writers who just writes whenever and shrugs about when they might get their manuscripts finished, then you need to start making some deadlines.  I used to be that way, too.  Until I learned that a deadline — even a self-imposed deadline — means that I really do get more done.

    Some people might groan and say that stress can stifle their creativity, but it really does work.  Sometimes we need to stress ourselves out.

    It’s almost as good as the best advice I ever read about writing.  I can’t remember who wrote the book, but the advice was to write yourself into a corner.  By that I mean, write your characters into an impossible situation.  People don’t care about run-of-the-mill situations after all, they want to see what these characters will do when they are faced with impossible situations, terrible choices, and the like.

    Best.  Advice.  Ever.

    But next up is writing with deadlines.  Contracts are fun and they make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you can say; “Oh, this one is on contract so I have to get it done.”  However, even inside a contract you have to make deadlines.

    Rough draft done by December.  Edits done by March 1st.

    Those are really vague deadlines, but they work.

    So!  I highly recommend deadlines.

    And, of course, writing yourself into a corner.

  • “Swan Song”

    As with all the shows I watch, I had to pick out my favorite episode of Supernatural.  For Doctor Who it was Midnight.  For Quantum Leap it was the last episode — though I haven’t watched that show in ages so I might change my mind after a re-watch.  And for Supernatural it has to be “Swan Song.”

    I’m not going to give any spoilers — I hate spoilers — but I might hint at some things.  If you catch on because of my hinting I sincerely apologize and give you permission to revoke all my Netflix rights for a month.

    Now then, let me tell you why I loved “Swan Song” the best.  If you’ve already seen the show then you know all about the whole Apocalypse problem Sam and Dean (our two intrepid heroes) were struggling with.  The writers of the show managed to take a global threat — the end of the world — and turn it into the most intimate of problems by pitting Sam and Dean against each other.  (Kind of.  Watch the show and you’ll understand.)

    But the reason I love that episode the most is because of one line delivered by Dean.  One simple, heartbreaking line:

    “It’s OK, Sammy.  I’m here.”

    No, Sam’s not dying at that moment.  You’d expect that line to be delivered by someone holding their brother’s guts in with a towel or something, but that’s not what happened.  Not remotely.  In fact — mild spoiler alert — the line is delivered while Dean is getting the snot beat out of him.

    It was beautiful.  Everyone told me I’d start to cringe at the show when Angels showed up, but they were wrong.  The path the writers put these two characters on sort of required the other end of the spectrum to come into play (i.e. Angels and the God question) so it made perfect sense.

    (By the way, we can thank that nasty flu bug for me getting through all 7 seasons of Supernatural in the past three weeks.  I couldn’t concentrate to get any writing done and I barely managed to keep up on my homework, so that left a lot of hours to kill whilst bedridden.  I’m better now, so don’t worry.  Edits on Dead Magic are progressing at a steady rate.)

    So!  Swan Song is my favorite Supernatural episode ever.  It’s not one you can watch without seeing the road leading up to it, though.  If you’ve never seen the show, you should.  Start at the beginning and plow right through.  (It’ll help if you’re sick or something and can’t do much else.)  I promise, it’s worth it just to get to that moment with Sam and Dean.

  • High Heels

    All right, so I was at the gym plugging away on the elliptical when I ran across a show called Castle.  Stars Nathan Fillion, who every Whedon fan knows and loves as Captain Reynolds  on Firefly.  I did an inward fan-girl squee because … yeah, I was at the gym on the elliptical machine and I didn’t need to throw around more evidence of my Geekdom whilst among weight-lifters and such.

    Due to school and a personality that almost always has something to do, Netflix is my normal means of catching up with TV and society.  (At present, I’m addicted to Supernatural — many thanks to Erick Kripke for creating such a compelling series.)  So, I hadn’t actually heard of this show called Castle.

    Let me first say that I do adore Fillion as an actor.  I enjoyed the concept of a writer helping murder investigations because … well, writers tend to be twisted and are forced to think outside the box in order to create a work that can manage to surprise our violent and jaded society.

    I even liked the acting.

    But I hated Nikki’s shoes.  Seriously.  As a martial artist and a girl, I have to complain here.  Women in heels who run for their lives generally kick those heels off at the first available moment.  You can’t run in those things.  Physics are against you.

    Anyone trained knows you move faster without them.  So a girl chasing a bad guy would naturally want more practical footwear.

    And you know … I honestly thought most people knew this.

    So, as much as I desperately wanted to love the show based on Fillion’s character alone … I just could not get past the high heels.  (Platform heels, mind you.  Not just stubby heels.  I might have forgiven them for stubby heels.)

    On a side note, I mentioned this complaint to my grandmother, who I was surprised to learn used to wear what she called “Tina Turner” high heels.  This immediately gave me an intensely funny image of my grandmother in platforms.  However, even she snerks at the idea of women in heels battling crime.

    Come on.  Women don’t need heels to be sexy and accomplished at what they do.  They certainly wouldn’t wear them to go running into a firefight.  Trust me, we’re tough enough to go all John McClane from Die Hard and kick some batoosh while barefoot.

  • Bring it on 2013 …

    As my last post talked about the goals I made through 2012 you can probably guess that this post is going to be full of goals for 2013.  And you’re right.  As I said, a friend of mine got me hooked on this and it has been remarkably helpful in my writing life.

    So!  In 2013 I want to …

    1) Submit my edited copy of Dead Magic to DDP on my deadline of March 1st. — This shouldn’t be a problem.  Honest.

    2) Finish Usurper. — This might be a problem.  Could take me the whole year to do with school and all that.

    3) World Build and (hopefully) complete Tapped. — This shouldn’t be that much of a problem.  There are only 6 or 7 chapters left … though the plot sorta exploded in my face last week and I have to revamp the ending.

    4) Climb 2 Mountains.  — I lowered it from three because, let’s face it, I never make it up three no matter how much I want to.  Plus, I have an internship that starts June 1st and runs through the summer, so my time will be limited.

    That’s it.  Those are my goals for 2013.  Anything else that happens will be icing on the cake.

  • Twas Four Days Before Christmas …

    Merry Christmas!  Well, four days early anyway, but I have no intention of being online on Christmas so I thought I’d better say it now.

    A friend of mine started me on this whole yearly goals thingy a while ago and I’ve found that it works wonderfully.  So!  Let’s see how I did last year …

    1) Submit Deviation to TOR.  — I did this.  It was scary, but I did it anyway.  They sent me a very polite rejection letter, but at least I had the guts to send it out, you know?

    2)  Record Deviation in preparation for releasing it as a free podiobook. — Uh … yeah.  I didn’t do this.  I didn’t even come close to trying to do this.  

    3)  Complete Dead Magic. — Totally did this.  Dead Magic was finished just a couple weeks ago.  It is DONE!  My Alpha readers have it and the publisher wants it by March 1st. 

    4)  Take a huge bite out of Usurper. — I actually did this too.  It’s in the last half of the book now.

    5)  Kick my schoolwork in the batoosh every semester. — Ahem … I managed to do this too, thank you very much.  Because if there’s one thing I am Miss Awesomepants with, it’s school stuff.  

    6) Climb 3 Mountains — … Well … you see … my whole State sorta caught fire over the summer.  I literally couldn’t climb any mountains because I might have been turned to cinders if I’d tried.  I did manage to go up in the Spring, so I climbed a whole one mountain.  But in the words of Gandalf the Grey; “A single solitary peak” was still a peak.  (Alas, no Thorin Oakenshield was there to greet me, but, hey, you can’t have it all.)

    And that’s it.  That’s my end of the year review.  Writing-wise and School-wise, I did pretty darn good.  And since the world didn’t end today like everyone had planned, I’m looking forward to another productive year in 2013.

     

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    Well, as I tend to do a lot of top 10 lists, I think I should do the top 5 things I am thankful for this year.  I am an optimist, so I tend to be happy about … well … nearly anything.  If I got a flat tire I’d probably be less inclined to be happy, but I’d think something along the lines of; “Well, at least I have my cell phone to call for help.”

    But I still think it’s important to focus on the things that have really made your life a good one.  It’s just plain unhealthy to dwell on bad things and melancholy.

    So!  My top 5!

    1) Always and forever — I am thankful for my son.

    2) I am thankful for the rest of my family — including the one’s who are currently in the military and in dangerous areas.  I’m grateful that we haven’t had any distressing news from them.

    3) My chance to attend school.  This has been a major growing experience for me — even if it is a headache a lot of times with tons of homework to do.

    4) My cat.  I do love my cat.  He kills spiders for me.

    5) My writing.  I love the fact that I am a writer.  It means I’m a little weird and I see things differently than a lot of people, but the actual process of writing gives me too much joy for me to ever give it up.

    I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!  If you’re doing NaNoWriMo then hurry up and eat your turkey so you can get back to work!

  • National Novel Writing Month

    It’s here!  National Novel Writing Month is here!

    Since I’m not actually participating this year I thought I would just send out a quick note of encouragement.  To all of you crazy people out there, frantically writing non-stop for the next 30 (well, 27) days, good luck!  Don’t look back.  Don’t edit.  Just go!  You can edit in December.

    Call your characters Brian Gatorade because a Gatorade bottle happened to be sitting on your desk while you were introducing him to the work in progress.  Throw a flying kangaroo in there somewhere.  Take a bath tomorrow, just keep your butt in your chair today.  (I hope you bought Febreeze so your family can spray it whenever they walk past you.)

    If you have kids they should be stocked up on candy from trick-or-treating so don’t worry too much about what they’ll eat.  (That’s actually a complete lie.  Please feed your kids.)

    But mostly, have fun.  If you’re not having fun then you’re not doing it right.

    I’d be having fun with you were it not for the 3.5 chapters I have left to go on Dead Magic.  The end is so close on that one that I can just taste it and I really, really need to finish.

    So good luck!  Have fun!  It’s writing mayhem!

  • Haunted Houses

    One of the first stories I ever wrote was about a haunted house.  I’m afraid I need to qualify that statement with the fact that this story was written while I was still in grammar school.

    By the way, I’m not sure why people call it “grade school” since every school has grades.  To me, grammar school has always signified that period of time when learning how to read and write were still relatively new.  The moment we step up into the higher grades we start focusing on more abstract thoughts.  So!  When I say grammar school I mean somewhere in the fifth or sixth grade.

    Anyway, the story was terrible.  The grammar was horrifying and my inability to fully understand how POV (Point of View) worked left me with a page full of chaotic voices.  It was called Noises Next Door and it was written in pencil on a single subject notebook.  And as awful as it was, I can point to it as one of the moments where I fell in love with writing.

    I took all of my friends and put them through an adventure, investigating a strange house that — you guessed it — made noises at night and sat right next to the home of our hero … Which, sadly, was me.  (Oh, come on.  I was like ten when I wrote it.  Give me a break.)  But everyone had their part to play in this little story.  I know I shoved my brother into a labyrinth with our cousin Peter.

    Yes, yes.  I went the parallel universe route with the house.  But I did have a witch behind it all, so it was quasi-haunted.  If you can make the leap that ghosts are actually remnants of a parallel universe trying to call for help.  (Again, I was ten.  I threw everything under the explanation of magic back then.  No rules.  Just big, unfathomable magic.)

    I did write it during the month of October and ever since then Fall has been my time of particular inspiration.  From October through December there is something in the air that spurs my muse into writing.  Maybe it’s the colors, or the changing of seasons, I don’t know, but I get excited in the middle of September when I see it coming.  Even over the last year and a half, as my plate has been full with school, I have had to keep 3×5 cards close by to record ideas and thoughts that hit me during these months.

    This week instead of new ideas I was reminded of that first story about a haunted house and a witch.  I couldn’t help smiling, remembering the excitement and my maladroit attempts at plotting.  It really was terrible, but it started me on a path that would forever shape my life.

  • Fun with Ghosts

    I really hate things that I cannot control.  I am, to an extent, a control freak.  So ghosts scare me.  Anything I can’t pick up a blunt object and defend myself against makes me nervous.  Zombies scare me too, but I’m fairly confident I can bludgeon them away from me if I have to.  That said, I still manage to use them in my fiction sometimes.

    Well, now that I think about it, there are strange apparitions in most of my novels.  Saboteur, however, had more of a “future ghost” thing going on and that was all dealing with magic.  But my favorite ghost from one of my personal novels has to be Baldemor Delgora from the Witch-Born series.

    Why?

    For starters I love his name.  Baldemor Delgora just rolls off the tongue in a pleasant manner.  It sounds old, though the ghost is of a little boy and I find that contradiction fun.  We only get to see him twice in Witch-Born, but the sequel Dead Magic has him turning up again.  (Dead Magic is nearly completed, by the way.  It should be done at the end of November.)  He’s more active in this new novel and he has lost his friendliness — inasmuch as he was ever “friendly” but he does attempt to hurt three different people this time.

    In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I might give a snippet of Baldemor in action.  This is from Dead Magic, which is under contract and will be out sometime next year.  For those unfamiliar with the novels, Witch-Born is set in the world of Magnellum, which is a steampunk/magic blend where Witches are nobility.  The Witches use their magic to hold up the barrier separating Magnellum from what is known as the Wild — a primal force bent on killing everyone inside Magnellum.

    ***

    Valeda had the disturbing sensation of something very cold sliding down her spine.  The only sound came from the waterfalls crashing into the lake just beyond, though Valeda could swear she heard a low, deep humming from the boy in front of her.  He hadn’t answered her yet and the House Witch had given no explanation, so Valeda kept quiet.  If she was being honest, she was terrified.

           There was something malicious about the boy, something intense and powerful that clung to him.

           “In truth, Miss Quinlan, I’m not sure how to introduce you,” Elsie said at last. “The form before you is that of Baldemor Delgora.  Baldemor, however, has been dead for centuries.”

           Valeda swallowed down her fear. “Centuries?”

           “Until recently he talked.  Sometimes he would warn people away from the Lake.  But he’s changed now.  He’s more Wild than anything else.” The Witch tugged at her earlobe and frowned. “The Wild is coming, Miss Quinlan.  Very soon, I’m afraid.”

     

  • Witch-Born Giveaway

    I promised that in October I would run a Giveaway of the novel Witch-Born, and so I’ve gone ahead and started it.  Or, well, it hasn’t started quite yet.  It starts September 8th and runs all the way through October.  I’ve put in the widget already, so you can click on that and go straight to Goodreads, who is hosting the Giveaway.

    Thank you, Goodreads!  You are super-fabulous!

    Anyway, as this is the first time I’ve given away Witch-Born, I figure I should take a moment to give a little background information on the novel.

    So!  There I was getting ready for National Novel Writing Month back in 2008, and I had this great outline for a straight Romance novel.  (I love National Novel Writing Month.  Seriously.  If you know anything about them then you know they are out there promoting literacy and everything in young people.)  But then a funny thing happened.  November 1st showed up and I simply could not write the novel I had mapped out.

    It was infuriating.

    I had taken all of October to create that outline and suddenly I couldn’t use it.  So I threw it aside, grabbed the two main characters (in my mind it was by the throat, even though I’m pretty sure both of them could have killed me with a wink) and let them lead.  By November 3rd I had a better idea of what the story was about.  My straight romance novel was overrun by witches, dirigibles, snake-like creatures that attached to people and took over their minds, and assassination plots.

    It was pure mayhem.   And I loved every second of it.

    I didn’t want to make Witches into the hunted creatures tradition has placed them in.  So, I decided to make a world where Witches were in charge.  This made for a strange, convoluted society that separates the Witch-Born from the Untalented, but resembles the familiar fiefdom we have in our history books.

    I barely won National Novel Writing Month that year, but I did win.  (First time, too.)  And then I took all of December to complete the novel.  For the next year I edited it.  Then I threw it out on the market where it was picked up by Double Dragon Publishing.  It was published June of 2011 and its sequel (Dead Magic) is currently under contract with Double Dragon.

    It’s actually quite appropriate that I give away Witch-Born now, since I should have Dead Magic completed by November.  (That’s not the publication date, just the day I’ll finish working on it before the editors at Double Dragon start ripping it apart.)

    I’d give you all a teaser of Witch-Born, but if you go to the Amazon page you can get the first chapter and a half for free.  So instead I’ll put up a quick snippet from Dead Magic.  (Not much, mind you.  I don’t want to get in trouble from the publisher.)

    ***

    “Are you taking me to the ark?” Valeda asked bluntly.

           Elsie smiled some more, careful not to show her surprise.  Regardless of her good nature, Miss Quinlan was a reporter.  The last thing Elsie needed was another news report about Delgora matters.  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Quinlan.”

           “I saw it last night.  From my window.” Valeda’s soft gray eyes narrowed at her. “On the southern ridgeline.”

           Elsie chuckled and turned away, resuming their hike before she answered. “First of all, Miss Quinlan, you’ll notice the position of the mid-morning sun is directly to our right.  You, being an educated woman, are well aware of the sun’s rotation from East to West, which would make our current trajectory due north of Delgora Manor.”

           From the corner of her eye, she saw Valeda look to the sky and frown. “That doesn’t deny what I saw last night.”

           “Secondly,” Elsie continued without acknowledging the comment, “Even if I were inclined to divulge Delgora House matters to you, Miss Quinlan, my better sense knows that your profession cannot be trusted.”

           “I’m a reporter, not an idiot.  If you required my silence you would have it.  I’d never cross a Witch.”