A.J. Maguire

Tag: Books

  • The Importance of Positive Reinforcement

    Dead Magic is officially in the hands of my publisher.  (Woo!  Happy confetti is getting tossed about my apartment right now!)  I’ve also started poking around review sites to see about getting the book out there … and there will probably be Giveaways and all that jazz when it’s time for the release.

    But as a special treat for myself for finishing the edits and meeting the deadline, I totally got my hair done.  First time getting it professionally highlighted and all that jazz.  It was definitely an experience.

    Is it morbid that the first thing I thought about when they put me under the dryer thing was that episode of Supernatural where the lady totally got fried under one?  (Relax, those machines can’t really do that to you.  The Winchester boy’s were hunting a witch at that point.)

    Anyway, that was my positive reinforcement for meeting the deadline.  Rewards are so very important for writers.  Yes, we love good reviews (and by that I mean our hearts flutter) and finishing a book in itself can be a reward, but physical rewards are important too.

    Let’s face it, the act of writing is a solitary event.  It requires that we agonize over verbs and nouns and fighting between active versus passive voice, and it’s really frigging hard.  And most of us never really think what we’ve written is worth the paper to print it out, even if the marketing people insist that we pretend it’s incredible.

    So after weeks and months of self-imposed solitary confinement, staring at words until they burn into our retinas, struggling to make a clear statement out of messy plot complications, and fighting tooth and nail to make a believable character arc appear on the page … we writers really do deserve a reward.

    It’s all about the positive reinforcement, people!

  • The Editing Domain

    The single greatest lesson I’ve learned as a writer is how to eat humble pie.  Editing, even self-editing, forces me to look at my own silly nonsense and try to make it something readable.  I mean, there are honest mistakes like the one I ran across this morning …

    “Staring at hew as though …”

    Which should have read like this — “Staring at him as though …”

    (By the way, thank you Word Program for assuming I meant “hew” there.  Go team failure!)

    Typo’s happen.  I know that.  I write everything by hand first so when I’m actually typing things I’m not really looking at the screen.  So I can forgive myself — and often laugh — at such mistakes.

    But there are other mistakes that make me blush.  Mistakes dealing with a very broken mythology that require an Alpha/Beta Reader to come along and tell me the harsh truth in the nicest way they know how.  And really, my Alpha’s and Beta’s are awesome.  They know me well enough to know how to crush my soul without making me cry.

    Or … well … I cry on the inside.  But normally it’s a frustrated — “Why would I write that in there?” cry and not a “They all hate me and I want to go eat worms” cry.

    The editing domain for me comes in two parts.  The first part is the most extensive and it requires absolute focus.  I sometimes loathe myself for the fact that I have to print out the pages so that I can mark on them, but I try to make up for that by recycling.  (What can I say?  I have a Go-Green spirit and a ruthless work ethic warring each other.)

    Anyway, during that first editing pass I can’t split my attention between projects.  Which is frustrating because I like to have multiple projects going on at the same time.  But when I hit the second editing pass things go really quickly.  Generally, all the work is already done and all I have to do is transcribe it onto the computer.

    Which, in turn, frees up my brain power.  And since I’m on the second pass of Dead Magic right now I was able to finish the rough draft for Tapped this week.   I have to admit that I surprised myself with Tapped.  I wasn’t expecting to have it done until the middle of the summer.

    But hey!  It’s done!  That leaves me with Usurper to finish before the end of the year and a couple of mountains to climb.  I’m starting to think I didn’t challenge myself enough with my New Year’s Goals or something.

    All I can say is … I own 2013.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.”

  • John Carter

    I know that John Carter is the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but I haven’t actually read the books.  I spotted them, but never picked them up.  I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing yet.  Because I loved the movie.  Normally, I hate the movie but love the book.  (Like Timeline by Michael Crichton — good heavens, if ever a book was murdered by a movie, it was that one.)

    I will read the books, but for right now I’m happily hoping that they resemble — at least in part — what the movie showed.  And this movie showed a strong, capable man whose major flaw was his compassion.  That compassion of his got him in more trouble than his mouth ever did, which was refreshing.  And he had a seriously tragic event lining his history that explained why he was desperately trying to kill off that compassion.

    But aside from the hero — who I fell in love with as a writer — I have to admit that I loved the monster dog creature, too.  And the aliens … I guess I can call them Martians since they live on Mars.

    I’m not going to give spoilers to the movie or anything, but I will say that I loved it and highly recommend it to any science fiction/ fantasy fans out there.  Ignore the science, suspend your disbelief, and watch the very human elements in the story.

  • Book Review : Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

    I’ve been a fan of Writing Excuses for a long time now.  I promised myself that I would start to read all of the books from the authors who put out Writing Excuses since they take the time out of their busy schedules to put out this podcast for free.  I started with Brandon Sanderson because he writes Fantasy and I love to read and write Fantasy, so that just made sense.  I read the Mistborn series, which I loved.

    And now I’ve read Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal — and she totally gets props for having a cool name.  (I mean, really, say her name three times fast.)

    Being a Jane Austen fan, I walked into this book with a small amount of trepidation.  (Of course I did, have you heard of the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?)  But as I realized that the author was handling the setting, the time period, the language, with the respect it deserved, I relaxed and truly enjoyed this story.  While I saw who the dastardly man was before he was revealed in the book, I was too busy trying to figure out which man Jane would end up with.

    I was cheering for two specific men, and since I don’t want to give it away for anyone I will refrain from any spoilers.  Still, the fact that I was guessing while halfway through the book says something about the writing.  One of the saddest moments for me when I’m reading a book is when I figure out the ending before I get there.  This book managed to keep me uncertain straight up until … well … I can’t say because then it would give it away.

    Basically, this is a classy book.  It’s a book that takes romance without running it through the hot-and-steamy-bath that everyone seems to want these days.  It’s refreshing and wonderful and I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.  (Mothers, you can totally let your daughters read this book.)

  • Book Review : Redshirts by John Scalzi

    As already admitted on this blog, I am a nerd.  I love Star Trek.  I enjoy Star Wars.  I read science fiction, fantasy, romance, and just about anything that crosses my desk.  I have an active Audible account thanks to the people at Writing Excuses (a podcast that every single writer in the world should listen to) because they introduced me to it.  I’m also on Goodreads, where I can share my love of the written word to anyone who wants to listen.

    If that wasn’t nerdy enough, I also play Star Trek Online.  Granted, my time is limited with work, son, writing, but I have managed to reach the level of Captain — *insert squeal of pleasure here* — and sometimes allow my son to help “fly” the ship.  He’s four, so I don’t feel too bad when the Borg constantly destroy us.

    With that in mind, Redshirts by John Scalzi was right up my alley for reading material.  Quasi-trekkie, playing off the known joke about how red-shirted individuals on the original show would inevitably die a horrible death, I walked into this book ready to laugh.  And when I discovered that none other than Wil Wheaton was performing the book, I positively beamed with delight.

    I loved this book.  I listened to it while at work and was laughing so hard in some places that my coworkers were concerned for my mental health.  (I work in an upstairs area from them so they couldn’t see the headphones, they could only hear my laugh.  Which, now that I think about it, might have seemed a little creepy. )

    I won’t give any spoilers, but I will admit that about a quarter of the way into the book I was concerned because I was getting attached to these Redshirts.  I didn’t want to see any of them get their faces eaten by exotic alien creatures.  But they had the dreaded red shirts on, so one part of my brain was always waiting for the curtain to come down on them.

    There was one portion of the plot that was a hiccup for me — the discussion of back-stories, which I won’t explain because I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone.  Suffice to say, my rational brain was trying to make sense of a purely irrational thought-process.  But in the end, I chose to ignore this hiccup because … well … I was enjoying the book so much that I just didn’t care.  And … I mean, come on, it’s science fiction.  Fiction being the operative word.

    If you’re on Goodreads, then you can see I gave it 5 stars.  If you’re on Audible — I don’t think you can find me because that’s got a different name on it — but I gave it 5 stars all around there.

    Thank you, John Scalzi, for the wonderful book.  Thank you Wil Wheaton for the wonderful performance.  It was truly a blast.

  • Moral Compasses

    One of the joys of writing a character whose moral compass goes askew is that you never know exactly what is going to happen.  For instance, blackmailing a woman into a marriage would be completely wrong in my book, but to my sordid character Faxon Mylonas it is business as usual.  (For those familiar with the Sedition universe, you might recognize that name from the first book as the pipe-smoking shady character who gave Prince Brenson a hand when it was needed.)

    Writing Faxon has been a challenge and a blessing.  I’m not one to say that my own moral compass has always pointed true North, but there are certain boundaries that I’ve stayed away from.  When exploring Faxon’s character, his thought process opens up a whole slew of possibilities that I would never consider.  A prime example is in the scene I just wrote for him this week, where he “stretched the truth” in order to get an extra few vials of blood from someone.  (Don’t ask, it’s a complicated mess of Blood Magic.)

    But he got me to thinking about all those characters who I love whose moral compasses go a little wonky from time to time.  They aren’t necessarily villains, because they are mostly-kinda-sorta on the right side of the story line to be considered a good guy.

    The first one that comes to mind is Dexter from … yeah … that creepy serial killer TV show called Dexter.  If there ever was a character who made my sense of morality sit back and cry, it is Dexter.  (For those unaware, Dexter is a serial killer who hunts serial killers.)  By the end of each episode I was in a bizarre state of moral shock, condemning myself for rooting for this guy.

    The second shady character I can think of is Jack Sparrow.  I mean, we all know he will eventually lean on the right side of things, but there are moments where you just don’t know.  I also have to note with good old Jack that his moment of redemption at the end of each of the movies is just plain wonderful.  (Thank you, Mr. Depp, for always keeping me guessing as to which way this character was going to fly at any given moment.)

    The third character on my list is John Cleaver from Dan Wells’ I Am Not A Serial Killer.

    And after reading my list again, I’ve decided that there are too many titles in my life with “serial killer” in them.  I’m going to go read The Chronicles of Narnia or something.