A.J. Maguire

Tag: AJMaguire

  • What I’ve Learned from Vampires

    I’ve had this week off from school and was focused almost exclusively on writing/editing for Tapped. (Yep, I’m still not in love with that title.) With a few Vampire Diary deviations I’ve been pretty well focused on getting this draft completed so that I can go to work on editing Persona.

    Yes, you read that right, I’ve been watching The Vampire Diaries. Me, the “vampirism = socially acceptable necrophilia” woman who constantly wrinkles her nose at all things bloodthirsty and angsty actually became addicted to this show. I blame Ian Somerhalder for that. Or rather, I blame the writers who created Damon Salvatore’s snarky, hilarious character for Somerhalder to sink his teeth into. (Pun totally intended. You can kill me later for it.)

    **Author’s note: if you follow the link on Mr. Somerhalder’s name it will take you to the IS Foundation, which is all kinds of awesome. You can look up The Vampire Diaries if you want to actually see him.**

    Now, I should probably mention that there are vampires in the Sedition series, they just aren’t undead and their consumption of a specific kind of blood gives them magic. So it’s not like I totally hate vampires, I just hate broody vampires constantly complaining over their eternal youth and fixation on killing people. Which, I’ll give the writers over there at Vampire Diaries two thumbs up for making Damon very different from this stereotype. They have one broodster on the screen (Stefan) so it’s nice to see a counter.

    But I think the real thing that caught me in this show was that the characters were complex enough that I honestly wasn’t certain what any single character would do in any particular scene. Each character brings a certain dynamic to the story and the writers really know how to use that dynamic well. What one person would do when presented with a half-starved, blood-craving, twitchy man is completely different from what Damon would do. So viewers are left wondering what’s going to happen next and who it’s going to happen to.

    And because I relate everything to my personal craft, this teaches me the value of understanding not only the characters on my page but the dynamic that exists between them. The relationships are paramount. Each character exists within the context of these relationships, has a history grounded in these relationships that will dictate future motivations, and every action/reaction that occurs on the page impacts these relationships.

    There are always conversations in the writing community about how important it is to know your character(s). I’m going to stretch that a little further — know your character(s) and how they exist within the context of their relationships.

    I’ve taken to using 3×5 cards dedicated to discussing just one relationship. For example, using the book I am currently editing, one card reads Johanna Rorry vs. Seach Barlow and everything below discusses how Jo feels about Seach, why she feels it, and how it might hinder/help her in the story. One day I will find a program that I actually like and make these notes on the computer instead, but for right now I need something tangible and easy to access.

    In any case, this is what I learned from vampires.

    Or at least what I learned from The Vampire Diaries. I still consider vampirism a weird form of necrophilia and fully admit that I am torn while watching the love stories unfold in the show. On the one hand, I’m a sucker for a good love story. On the other hand, I see dead people kissing. Or worse, living people kissing dead people. How is this not a problem?

    But for now I’m just going to ignore it and enjoy Damon’s snark. He is the king of snark.

     

     

     

  • What Makes a Hero? – Round Robin

    In order for me to continue reading (or watching) a story then the hero has to be intelligent. There are reasons why I enjoy Sherlock and Elementary (or any variation of the Holmes mythology) and it has very little to do with the physical appeal of either lead actor. It’s because I loved the character when I read him.

    I wrote a Top Ten list for myself several years ago and I revisited it in order to see if my tastes had changed any. The answer is no, by the way. I’m pretty much still on the hunt for a real life James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser. That’s the main hero from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, which I hear is coming to television in the spring.

    In order to answer this month’s Round Robin topic I decided to really dissect Jamie and see what made him so likable for me. Here’s what I came up with.

    #1) He’s smart.

    The poor guy is engulfed in political machinations between his two uncles when we meet him. But he’s managing to keep from having to swear allegiance to the clan (they’re Scottish, for those who haven’t read the books) until the girl comes along and kind of messes things up for him. But even when he is presented to a mob of drunk Scottish men he manages to decline swearing to the clan without getting himself killed in the process.

    #2) He’s brave.

    In the series Jamie has managed to live through several battlefields, but more than that he faces down his personal demons quite often. I don’t want to tell more because I don’t want to ruin the books for anyone who hasn’t yet.

    #3) He laughs.

    I meant it last time when I said that laughter was the truest sense of strength in a person. It isn’t just for women, it’s for men too. A hero has to be able to see his own weaknesses and faults and laugh at them just as much as a heroine does. (Double points if they can laugh at each other and not get annoyed at the other person because of it.)

    So … that’s it. Those are the three reasons why I love Jamie Fraser, and they’re what I look for when I’m doing my writing as well. It probably goes without saying that I dislike brooding characters no matter which gender they happen to be. Broody people make my eye twitch.

    That goes for real life too.

    But honestly, there are authors and genres that I specifically avoid because of the “brood factor.” If a character is so torn up about their past then they are far too weak for me to enjoy. I get that there is a period of grief for loss, I really do. And I know that grief is something that lasts a lifetime. But what I need, what I want, what I look for in a hero is someone who has managed to deal with that grief and live again.

    And I prefer if they’ve managed to do this before Chapter One.

    Round Robin Continues! Check out what some of my fellow authors have to say about this subject!

    Diane Bator at http://dbator.blogspot.ca
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
    Lynn Crain at http://lynncrain.blogspot.co.at/
    Beverley Bateman at http://beverleybateman.blogspot.com/
    Ginger Simpson  at http://mizging.blogspot.com
    Connie Vines at http://connievines.blogspot.com/
    A.J. Maguire at https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (You are Here)
    Rhobin Courtright at http://rhobinleecourtright.com/

  • The Dream Life of an Author — AKA Conquistadors?

    I cannot be the only author out there who wakes up after a dream and wonders what the heck just happened.

    Case in point — last night as I slumbered I found myself being chased by ex-communicated 15th Century Conquistadors.

    I should qualify that statement with the fact that I am not in history class at present, nor have I browsed the history channel since I’m in the middle of a semester and truly do not have the time. So … I have no idea how or why these Conquistadors would show up in my dream. I just know they didn’t like me very much.

    From what I could gather from the one Conquistador who actually befriended me and attempted to aid in my escape from said ex-communicated faction, I had written a book which exposed something about them that they were particularly displeased with.

    Which is ridiculous as I have never attempted to write anything about Conquistadors before. (Though I am sorely tempted to use them now.)

    Oh! And the Conquistador who befriended me?

    Yeah, he totally looked like Benicio Del Torro. Don’t ask me why, but for the sake of this post let’s go ahead and name my Conquistador friend “Benny.”

    So … Benny helps me on this escape, which for reasons unbeknownst to me takes us through an amusement park featuring none other than the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. At this point in the dream I have established that it is, in fact, one of the most bizarre dreams I have ever had but … Hey, Benicio Del Torro is leading so I’m gonna just go for the ride.

    But then we hide in one of those old photo booth things. Because obviously no self-respecting Conquistador will be caught dead checking out a little photo booth regardless of the fact that our feet can clearly be seen under the curtain.

    At this point I push the button for the photo booth to take our picture. (Heck yes, I did! It’s Benicio Del Torro!) Only instead of spewing out real pictures, it spits out three totally different photographs. Benny proceeds to explain that said photographs represent what we desire most, what we fear the most, and one lie. In no particular order. So you sort of have to guess which is which.

    Bizarre, right?

    Anyway, I only got to see one of the pictures before the alarm woke me up. I’m thinking it was the picture for what I feared the most, but I can’t be sure. All I know is that I sort of laid there for a while wondering what had just happened and where that had come from.

    I cannot be the only author who has moments like this, can I? I mean, I had a dream where I was Medusa once and that was weird, but Conquistadors? Really?

    And if I’m honest, I did use the Medusa dream to write my short story “The Man Who Loved Medusa” so I’m not necessarily complaining. I’ll probably use that photo booth idea somewhere, too. It’s just that these dreams are sometimes so bizarre that I just can’t help mentioning them. I truly hope that I’m not alone in this.

  • Sequels & Teasers

    I did not finish Usurper by the 2014 deadline. I felt a little bad about that, but then I looked at all I accomplished in 2013 and decided one miss wasn’t going to kill me.

    Besides, I was stuck in Usurper because I knew Trenna and company were going home to Kiavana and I needed to figure out what had changed while they’d been away.

    And boy, a lot has changed.

    When I wrote Saboteur and Nelek had his brief visit home I didn’t have much trouble because … well, because 20 years hadn’t passed and there wasn’t much different. But walking into Kiavana Fortress now has to be both familiar and foreign.

    This is the key to sequels, I think. This mesh of familiar and foreign, the appearance of beloved characters and the surprise of new situations … this is what can make or break a sequel. And it’s supremely hard to do.

    Honestly, I don’t think I quite managed it in Saboteur. In my defense, Nelek isn’t in Kiavana long enough for it to really matter. But in Usurper we get to spend quite a bit of time in the castle, and I am very excited by it.

    Fans of the books should be pleased by what they find. (At least I hope they are. I was.) And because I promised a bit of a teaser on my Facebook page, I’ll post a bit of what I wrote this week.

    —– NOTE: This is an unedited version ——

    Troy dismounted his horse and frowned at the ruins. They’d ridden most of the night, resting the horses just long enough to eat and this was what they were looking for?

    It might have been a manor once but age and weather had crumbled the walls to an almost unrecognizable state. The dilapidated building was situated on a small inlet with a wide, undisturbed lake surrounding it. The forest seemed to be doing its best to overtake the half-collapsed conical towers. Vines and weeds crawled over pale stone, and peppered throughout what he could only assume had once been the courtyard were small trees sprouting between bits of rock.

    He didn’t know whether to be sad that a manor could be reduced to such a state or amazed at the relentless growth slowing eating away at it.

    “What is this place?” Liana asked.

    Her voice was quiet, almost reverent, and when Troy looked at her he saw her shiver. She kept hold of her horse’s reigns but her blue gaze was fixed on the highest wall. She looked unsettled, maybe even frightened, and Troy frowned some more. He looked back at the ruins, trying to see what she saw, but could only find rough rock and greenery. He wondered if something in her Eldur blood was speaking to her but was afraid to ask. He found everything dealing with magic to be deeply troubling.

    “This was my mother’s home,” Nelek said.

    “Grandmother Auliere?” Kaden asked as he dismounted.

    Troy moved to tie his horse to the nearest tree. He felt painfully out of place and needed to do something so he busied himself with unloading his saddle bags. He knew Kaden would scoff at him for thinking it, but when it came to Dyngannon family history he knew he didn’t quite fit. He was human, the son of their mother’s rival, and while Trenna had always called him a sign of peace for the future, his love and involvement in their family could not blot out the past.

    He pulled his sword from the saddle and started strapping it on, barely listening to the conversation behind him.

    “Brenson and I used to spend hours swimming in the lake,” Nelek said. “There’s a river that runs just past Kiavana fortress and ends right here. One of my earliest memories of your mother is in that river. Our camp was overrun and we had to flee.”

    “I didn’t take mother for the running sort,” Liana said.

    “I’m sure your mother would have loved to stay and fight,” Nelek said. “But she was my bodyguard at the time. Her first duty was my safety. So we ran.”

  • Series Review – Fringe

    I stumbled upon Fringe in Netflix and started watching it back in November because … Well … Because I was writing a science fiction that dealt with some strange occurrences. The show followed along similar lines as my writing so I was able to stay on track.

    (By similar I mean it was modern science fiction at play. Other than that the show has absolutely no resemblance to my story at all.)

    I fell in love with this show. The overarching story was beautiful. The relationships on the screen were deep and powerful.

    Since the series finale is already out I’ll go ahead and do a small spoiler and say that I enjoyed the love story. It was complicated, it had hiccups, and yet it wasn’t so paramount that it got cheesy.

    (Though I have to say that the episode when alternate Olivia gave birth had a moment of pure, heart-wrenching beauty in it. Thank you Seth Gable and Anna Torv for that.)

    But there was one character in particular who truly stole the show for me; Walter Bishop. John Noble’s portrayal of this broken man was both delightful and heartbreaking. He was both vulnerable and brilliant, and I spent half the time wishing I could be Astrid in the lab with him.

    There were a couple of things that made me twitch — the lack of Charlie at one point, and the smudging of the subplot for Massive Dynamic’s darker side at another — but on a whole I enjoyed this series. The series finale had a bittersweet taste, something I had come to expect from this story.

    So if you like science fiction then I happily suggest this show to you. It can get a little gory at places so I wouldn’t suggest trying to eat while you’re watching, but it’s well worth your time. Just save the popcorn for a safer show.

  • Books that Help

    There are many things that have affected my writing over the years. The Army taught me how to capture snippets of scenes on 3×5 cards so as not to lose them. It also gave me my primary character pool — soldiers. (I do so love soldiers. The sense of duty, honor, and respect that goes with them is hard to understand outside of a uniform.)

    I’ve read countless books on how to be a better writer too. My two favorites are Fiction First Aid by Raymond Obstfeld and Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer by James V. Smith Jr. Neither are very well known but both have impacted my writing career in big ways.

    I’ll go ahead and give you a rundown on the three main things I garnered from these books. If you’re an author and you haven’t read them, I encourage you to give them a try. But if you don’t have either the money or the time for another writing craft book then let me give you these three things.

    1) They taught me to view my writing as a craft. 

    “Craft” is a verb. It’s an action, and like any martial arts move you see flaunted on the movie screen it has to be honed in order to be any good. That means practice, and lots of it.

    2) Character boxes

    I adapted this one from Fiction First Aid. On my first pass through the editing process I highlight little boxes around each major and minor character when they show up in the text. Anything that has to do with physical description in particular needs to be drawn out so that I can compare and make certain I haven’t altered anything later in the text.

    I don’t normally have this problem with the main characters, but the people who intersect the story at various points sometimes get lost. These boxes help me find them again and keep them straight.

    3) The Brain Stretch

    This one I adapted from Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer. Near the end of the book Smith gives this worksheet to use to help bring fresh content into your writing. I call it “the brain stretch” and I try to use it once or twice a year.

    It’s a challenge. You find a certain number of expressions, puns, emotional moments, and what have you. I took some of his suggestions out and put my own in so I’ll give you a sample from the one I am working on this month;

    – List 10 characters in 100 words or less.

    – Write the “nugget” for your current work in progress. (The “nugget” is the main thrust of your story in 100 words or less.)

    – List 10 expressions you’ve either heard or read and how you might use them in fiction. (Normally I just write the character most likely to use said expression off to the side.)

    That’s just a sampling of what I’ve adapted this “brain stretch” into. Sometimes I use what I’ve found but often it’s just a way to reset my mind. By the time I’m done with it I feel more capable of doing the work in front of me.

    So! If you haven’t read either of those two books I highly recommend them. But I also have to give the disclaimer that what worked for me won’t necessarily work for you. There’s a reason why the examples I gave above are adaptations of what I read; I’m different from those two authors and had to tweak those exercises to fit me.

    Which, I think, brings me to a fourth lesson they taught me …

    4) Don’t be afraid to adapt teachings into something you can work with.

    In the end, it’s your craft. Other people might write, but only I can write like A.J. Maguire.

  • Round Robin Discussion – Growth as a Writer

    This month’s Round Robin discussion is on how we have each grown as writers!

    Every book I write is an adventure. I learn something new about the craft of writing and how I can hone my own style with each chapter. I’ve learned that I can’t have an outline at the beginning of a book, but that I can’t finish a book without an outline either.

    It sounds strange, I know. But I think Brandon Sanderson has mentioned that he does the same thing so I think I’m in good company here.

    I need the freedom of not knowing where the book is going in order to pay attention to the characters on the page. And then, once I feel I know those characters and their motivations, that’s when I need to find out where the story is going and build toward it.

    Subsequently, I’ve learned that I have to write my outline in a notebook with a base color – often blue. And then I add to it in different colors; red for plot issues, green for character arc questions, purple for graphics like setting, and sometimes pink for mechanical and/or magic questions that need to be addressed in the storyline.

    It’s a mess when you look at it, but it’s a mess that makes my brain happy. Somehow, in the middle of all those colors and questions, that outline is able to carry me through to the end of the book.

    Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned comes from the fact that I’ve been in school for the past three years. So many people say they don’t have time to write and, let’s be honest here, it doesn’t look like I should have the time to write either. Between a full-time job, a full schedule at school, and being a single parent, writing should be impossible.

    But I’ve learned that if you love something enough, you’ll make room for it somewhere.

    So if you truly love writing, you’ll find the time to do it. Even if you’re scribbling notes on the back of a receipt from Barnes & Noble, you’re writing. Even if all you’ve got is twenty minutes on your lunch break with a notepad, that’s twenty minutes more time with pen to page and you’re writing.

    I’ll graduate in May 2014, which will free up a lot of time to write. I’m hoping that with all this new time I’ll be able to get at least four drafts done before 2015 hits us. (That’s four separate stories, not four drafts of the same story.) I have a pretty full publication schedule in 2014 as well, which will require my attention in the marketing department.

    Five or ten years from now I hope to still be telling stories. For me it’s not about the sales so much as it’s about telling a compelling story that challenges who I am as a person. If I’m not challenged by what I’m writing then I’m not going deep enough into the characters on the page. Maybe in the middle of challenging myself I’ll be able to challenge someone else. We can all be better people, we just have to find the inspiration to spark us into movement.

    The Round Robin Continues with author Connie Vines at her blog. So hop on over there and check out how Connie has grown as an author!

  • A Look At 2014

    Woot! It’s time to make my list of things for next year!

    Really, I love this post. It gets me all excited for what I’m about to work on. I did spend a lot of time playing with this new computer and its handy little calendar, so I have a lot of big ideas to put up here.

    So, without further ado, here is my list for 2014.

    #1) Graduate. (That’s right, people. In May 2014 I will officially graduate from Northwest Nazarene University with my Bachelor of Arts.)

    #2) Submit Persona to the ABNA contest in January. (That’s the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. It’s worth a shot, you know?)

    #3) Implement edits from developmental editor (Yay, Gabriel Fitzpatrick!) on Tapped. (Yes, that book I finished last year that went out to Alpha/Beta readers and a supremely wonderful editor will be edited during the first 5 months of 2014. It wouldn’t normally take that long to do edits but … you know … I’ll still be in school around that time.)

    #4) Finish Residual Haunting. (Yep, that’s the novel I started for NaNoWriMo this year.)

    #5) Revamp the synopsis and query letters for the revised Tapped novel. And then Send. Out. Those. Queries. (Non-negotiable there.)

    #6) (Starting in September) Revise Persona and start formatting it for publication.

    #7) Participate in NaNoWriMo again. (Hopefully I’ll win, too. I won’t be in school anymore so I won’t have that excuse if I lose.)

    #8) On December 2, 2014 Persona will be released as my first self-published novel. (This would be my big, scary, impossible goal for the year. I’ve never released something on my own and it’s going to be a challenge.)

    #9) I would really, really, really like it if I could climb a mountain. (Let’s hope that I get a car that works and the state of Idaho doesn’t catch fire again.)

    #10) If I can swing it, I would love to be a Secret Santa for someone next year. I’ve had one this year and it has been wonderful fun.

    … And there you have it. My goals for 2014.

    There are a lot more on there than last year, and most of them have to do with writing. Yes, that is deliberate. After graduating I intend to make a big professional push in that direction. That’ll mean marketing and all that jazz as well — which I admit I have no idea how to do.

    But I figure I went to school so I could do what I love. And what I love is telling stories that examine who we are as people, that expose both the ugly parts of us and the beauty we are capable of. The degree that I’ll have is really just another tool to help me tell those stories.

    So here I am rolling up my sleeves, getting ready for one awesome 2014. I hope everyone is as excited as I am for the future.

  • New Computer Fun

    Well, it’s actually been a couple weeks since I got this computer but I wanted to wait a while to discuss it since it has Windows 8 and a ton of bells and whistles that I’ve been playing with. And I should probably note that I don’t buy computers for fun, my old Acer was having fan issues so I needed a new laptop.

    I shall miss the Acer. I shall miss all the Star Trek I played on its 13″ screen.

    I shall now enjoy Star Trek on a 17″ screen. (A screen that makes it look like I’m really right there with the Borg trying to assimilate me. My geek-self might have squeed.)

    I like Windows 8. I like all the pretty tabs — I think they’re called jewels — on the start screen. (I didn’t like that I had to get an Audible technician on the phone to figure out how to get my downloads delivered straight to my iTunes again, but I think that has more to do with me being clueless than the system itself.)

    And I love the calendar.

    In fact, I love that calendar so much I went through and mapped out almost all of 2014 for my writing goals. (Hey, I’ve just about finished all of my 2013 goals so I’m allowed to look ahead.)

    I’ll be graduating in May so the last 7 months of 2014 are going to free up a crap ton of time for me. Which means more time for writing, editing and even the dreaded marketing that everyone whimpers about. (I’ll probably whimper about it too when I finally sink my teeth into it.)

    By the end of this month I’ll have finished the first draft of Usurper. And yes, I was nerdy enough to map out December on the calendar too.

    I can’t help it! It’s pretty and easy to use and I really don’t know what all the fuss was about when Windows 8 first showed up. I heard several people complain about it when they first got it but now that I’ve used this computer for a while I’m going to have to assume that those who complained are mostly people who “know what they like” instead of “liking what they know.”

    In short, I have a shiny new toy. It’s pretty and I love using it. Hopefully it spur me into writing faster and with more quality. (But more than likely it will just tempt me into hours and hours of Star Trek.)

  • Congratulations to all NaNoWriMo Participants

    I hope you all had as much fun as I did writing during the month of November. I do so love National Novel Writing Month and I was so happy to have the chance to participate this year … even though I lost.

    I was short by about 14,000 words which if I hadn’t gone to visit family for the last week of November I would have managed to surpass. But in the end I really, really, really needed four days away from the computer screen. (Remember, I work in front of a computer, do homework in front a computer, and transcribe my novels onto a computer, I think I deserve a little down time every now and then.)

    As much as I would love to continue working on Residual/Print (I can’t decide on a title yet) I have to set the book aside to finish up work on Usurper. I know Trenna fans will be happy to hear that her third novel will come out late next year. I promise she’s just as sassy as ever and has a riot in this third installment.

    For Residual/Print/I’ll-figure-out-the-title-someday I have to admit that I had a blast writing it. This would be my first try at a semi-horror type novel. I did scare myself once while I was in the middle of writing it, and not because I had forgotten to save the manuscript to my USB device.

    In fact, it was late at night and I was in the middle of a particularly creepy scene when my cat leapt onto the back of my chair and scared the skittles out of me. It took a good minute for my heart to calm down and I decided I’d better finish that scene before I went to bed.

    To everyone who participated this year — Congratulations!

    Even if you didn’t win, you sat down and got words on paper and that is just plain amazing. We all know it’s a crappy first draft — everything starts as a crappy first draft — but now there’s something to work with.

    Well done! And I hope you had as much fun as I did. (Without having your cat scare the skittles out of you.)