A.J. Maguire

Tag: Novels

  • Prepping for Launch

    Gutter space and margins … check.

    Cover art … check. (FYI, Chris Howard is still a genius.)

    Back blurb … hmmm … that’s gonna change a couple more times, I’m sure.

    (Pause to remove new kitten from the desk. He’s too curious for his own good and he’s constantly attacking my hands while I’m using the mouse. I’ve decided to call him Nuisance even though he’s my son’s pet.)

    Font size and spacing for both print and ebook versions … check and check.

    Re-read the manuscript for the zillionth time and STILL find a typo on page 96 … ugh, check.

    Dedication … aw, that’s easy … totally check. DSCN5894

    Acknowledgements … er … hmn. That one’s a little more tricky. I’ll probably add a few people before the December launch date.

    IMG_0051(Pause again because kitten is now attacking my ankle and his little kitten claws hurt. Try to convince him that he should be playing with Pest, my cat, who eyes me with frank disgust but … everyone’s gotta compromise here.)

    Go back to my regularly scheduled writing … I’m on chapter 10 of Dead Weight now, so it’s coming along nicely. I’m not sure I’ll make the three month deadline for a first draft, but I’ve had to swap between writing on the computer and writing by hand a couple of times so I won’t feel bad if I stretch it for another month.

    Four months to write a rough draft isn’t too bad.

    And really, I’m not JUST writing a rough draft, as evidenced by all the book preparation I’m doing. Persona will be my second attempt at launching a book on my own and I’m trying to remember all the mistakes I made last time — such as working while under the influence of cold medication and accidentally launching the book 2 weeks early.

    And forgetting to adjust line spacing for the print version, leaving one truly massive novel that cost an arm and a leg to ship.

    And not justifying the text.

    And … er … so many other things.

    Here in the next couple of weeks I’m supposed to start marketing for Persona, letting people know the exact date it will be out (December 6th 2016) and what the book is about (historical fiction/romance/women’s fiction/ … this one I probably need to narrow down a bit more).

    Which means that, on top of all of the above, I have to research venues (blogs, magazines, etc.) that might be willing to host me and give me a second to promote the novel before it comes out and during the first two weeks of its launch.

    … I think I’d rather have the kitten attack my ankles some more.

     

  • Confronting Reality

    In the last couple of weeks I’ve revisited Les Miserables. I do this every now and then because the story is rich and the music is beautiful and, while supremely tragic, it confronts a profound reality that forces me to stop and think about my life.

    Each time I revisit the story I find myself connecting with a different character, be it the greedy inn-keeper or the criminal on the run or the single-minded officer, and each time I sit back and ask myself how I can make such vivid, real characters in my own fiction.

    This time, however, I came to the conclusion that I can’t make such characters because I am unwilling to break my own heart.

    For example, Fantine and Cosette.

    As a mother, I can’t imagine being separated from my child for any real length of time. The very idea squeezes something in my chest and I have to shove it away. Moreover, as a daughter I cannot imagine losing my mother while she is so far away.

    It hurts to even think about it.

    Comparatively speaking, I have lived a very charmed life. My parents may be divorced, but they are both alive. I may be a single parent, but my son is healthy and strong and full of adventure.

    How then does someone whose life has been so blessed even begin to settle into the mindset of a character who has had none of these things? How do I push past the heartbreak to really hear the character and what they have to say?

    Beyond my own cowardice at living in so dark a place for the length of time it will take to write this sort of character, there is a fear that I will get it wrong.

    Rather than writing a character whose tragedy draws readers into the same introspective state that Les Miserables manages to give me, I fear that if I attempt writing this way that my own pity for these characters will shine through and thus cheapen the whole experience.

    Yes, what happens to Fantine is pitiable, but you never lose sight of who she is in the story.

    And that’s the balance I am trying hard to find as an author. I need to be able to confront the ugliness of the world without losing the beauty in the people. And in order to do that, I have to put my big-girl pants on and be brave enough to break my own heart.

     

  • Editing Outlines

    Alright, so I was intrigued by the idea of editing an outline before you’ve gone in and started your story. Normally I get one outline done and then I have to edit it midway through the book to compensate for all the extra things I’ve learned about the characters and little subplots that have cropped up during the drafting process.

    So!

    Imagine my delight when, on my third draft of Dead Weight’s outline, my Muse woke up and fixed something I hadn’t even noticed was broken. It changes 80% of the book, adds tension, drives home the concept of what a tapped soldier is, and reminds everyone (including me) just how far the Consulate has gone in its hunt for power.

    And the best part?

    I’m not cringing about having to go back and re-write a ton of words. Because they haven’t been written yet. 

    On top of that, my excitement for actually getting to the writing part of this book has increased exponentially. And I still have 3 weeks left of Outline edits to go.

    Because I want to cash in on the inspiration I’ve got going on right now, I’m going to go ahead and start writing little snippets here and there. The next few passes at the Outline are going to focus on character reactions/motivations. I’ve got a solid plot foundation under me now and I just need to tweak who recognizes what and things.

    In the meantime, I’m using Camp NaNoWriMo to get caught up on some other works. Residual Haunting, for example, is in a tragic state of nearly-complete. And in other announcements, I managed to get Persona prepped and ready for print-launch.

    As with all my books, I do try the traditional market first. There were a couple of nibbles from agents and the like with Persona and, while I intend to send out another volley of queries within the month, I also wish to make sure I get at least one book out a year.

    So unless Persona gets picked up in the interim, we can expect a launch date sometime in December. (Imagine me throwing all sorts of confetti and jumping up and down in excitement. This poor book has been in the works for a couple decades now. It’s time it sees the light of day.)

    To everyone else who’s working hard at their Camp NaNoWriMo stuff … Good work! Keep going! Get words on the page! You’re six days in and all the world is at your fingertips.

     

  • Writing and Business and the In-Between

    As of this evening my novelette “Torven” has a completed rough draft. Given its very small length (16006 words) I have been toying around with the idea of giving it away for free or really, really cheap (after it’s gone through a rigorous editing) which has led me to the normal marketing spiel/debate.

    I’ve been here before. Often.

    In fact, I’d like to say I’ve dipped my toes into murky depths of marketing since Sedition was first published five years ago. (Five years? Really? Sheesh.)

    I have not, however, really committed to a marketing plan. Up until this point my focus was on my craft, wanting to just write the next story and grow as an author, and while none of those goals have changed (and never will, because that’s the whole point of taking ownership of your craft) … I can say that I am going to step intrepidly out into the realm of marketing.

    I started, quite comically, with a giveaway of Tapped today on Amazon. The giveaway lasted all of an hour, which … really showed me how bad I am at math. (5 books + every 5th entrant wins = about an hour’s worth of giveaway time. Just in case anyone else needs this information.)

    But I learned a great deal about what I want to do in the future. I’ve set up a pretty little timetable to follow for marketing – when I want to do what promotions and at what sites – and even color-coded it … because I’m a geek like that.

    I am also in the process of revamping my website … with help because I’m really not great at it.

    As to writing itself …

    With “Torven” done I can go back to Dead Weight, the sequel to Tapped. I’ll be revamping the outline based on the things I learned in James Patterson’s Master Class (still an awesome thing and if you write, you should check it out.)

    Basically, I’ll be going over the outline once a week through the month of April. Start to finish. Tightening the plot. Adding elements of the suspense genre into my science fiction … basically implementing everything Mr. Patterson set out to teach me in 22 lessons.

    I’m excited.

    It’ll be fun.

    And I’ll record all the mayhem here because I can … and maybe it’ll help someone else down the road.

     

  • Throwing Confetti! (AKA – Persona’s Re-Write is done!)

    Technically I started this book over a decade ago while working at a Clinic & Hospital. I toted it around in a notebook and copied pages off for my mother since typing on the electric typewriter (shut up, I couldn’t afford a computer back then) took more time than I had.

    Yes, she still has those copied pages buried in a closet somewhere and no matter how much I beg her, AJMaguire-PersonaCover-1280hshe refuses to use them for kindling.

    Mothers, you know?

    Anyway, seven drafts and a decade later I finally, finally have a completed story.

    Many will remember that the original re-write was posted online, chapter by chapter, in 2013 but I hired an editor (like you do) and he loathed the ending so much I had to re-think what I was trying to do with this particular story.

    After many nights with mint-chocolate-chip ice-cream, pouring over his notes and sketching outlines (there were at least a dozen before I came up with the one I used) and after an agonizingly long rehabilitation process from the avocado incident in 2014 (I know how to properly core an avocado now, so there’s no worry for me stabbing myself again) I have learned a great deal about the writing process through this one book alone.

    First, I learned that editors are worth their weight in gold. Yes, they’re expensive, but I don’t regret the money I’ve laid out.

    Second, and this is going to sound weird, but I work better with Courier New font during the draft process and then turning it into Times New at the end. It’s just a quirk of mine.

    Third, sticking to a single point of view is hard. At least for me it is. But forcing myself to do this brought the character into more detail, forced me to dig deeper and really explore who she was and how she felt about what was happening.

    Fourth, I must be careful of what I’m reading while I’m in the drafting process because my personal style begins to mimic the style of what I’m reading.

    Fifth, I am a romance author. I may have Fantasy and Science Fiction and, now, Historical Fiction under my name but in the end, I am a romantic and I want to see my characters find someone who will support and build them up as people. The romance may not be the focal point of the story, but it is there and I refuse to be ashamed of that anymore.

    Now then, this does not mean I’m going to start writing straight romance novels. I can’t. I tried that once and ended up with Witch-Born.

    It just means that I’m not going to shy away from it anymore.

    Love is an integral part of human life.

    I mean, even Star Wars has romance in it.

    I can write things like that. I enjoy writing things like that, so I’m going to.

  • Gearing up for NaNoWriMo

    Woo!

    National Novel Writing Month starts in just a few short weeks!

    For those who are unaware of the awesomeness that is NaNoWriMo, take a quick visit to their website and see for yourself. The basics: you try to write 50,000 words in 30 days on a new novel/story.

    I consistently lose but I love every minute of it anyway, and I greatly encourage any potential writers/aspiring authors/even my own kid to give it a go.

    This year I am participating in a new way. Instead of a novel I will be writing my first ever non-fiction book (How To Change The World) and, while I think it will fall short of the 50,000 word mark, it will stretch out into 7 weeks instead of just 4 due to research and things.

    Now then … I don’t think my brain can survive without fiction of some sort, so during this time I will also be editing/re-writing Usurper (particularly its ending) and I do hope to have that done within the 30-day NaNoWriMo time frame. If not, it will definitely be done before December 31st.

    I do have to shake my fist at Bioware right now since the new Star Wars Knights of the Fallen Empire game will come out at the end of this month and I’m going to have to find a delicate balance between swooshing a virtual lightsaber around and buckling down to write.

    I’m a nerd. Sue me.

  • Gutter Space – Chili’s Edition

    My characters all met at Chili’s last night, crowding around booths in their respective groups, sometimes mingling with characters from books or series outside of their own, and generally causing mayhem to my REM cycle.

    At this point in my career I have 6 books out for sale, 6 books on my desktop in various states of incomplete, and several trunk novels that will never see the light of day. That made for a terribly large Chili’s reunion in my head and, since it amused me and I don’t mind sharing my crazy from time to time, I’ve opted to detail (and elaborate) on the dream.

    First off, I don’t know why Chili’s was chosen. I rarely go there. Sedition-WEB

    Trenna and Nelek (Sedition series) were at the bar, eyeing me with varying degrees of contempt since their third book is still being edited. I avoided them as much as possible since I’m fairly certain Trenna would have kicked my butt if I’d come close enough.

    Also at the bar stood Rachel, Jared, Cal and a gruesome witiko (Residual ajmaguire-ResidualHaunting-ARTONLYHaunting), which was awkward in its own right since the witiko is a nasty beast of a creature that should not have been allowed in the building. They seemed to be avoiding me since I’m pretty sure they’re all a little scared of how that story is going to end.

    I sat at a booth with Megan, Sam, and Gunter (Persona) since that’s the book I’m currently focused on at present. I won’t tell you how they were treating me since it might be a dead giveaway as to the ending of that novel, but the booth across from us was full of Jorry, Seach, and Devon (Tapped series) and they were mostlyAJMaguire-PersonaCover-1280h laughing amongst themselves.

    I think that’s because I have them written into my writing schedule to begin work on Dead Weight in January.

    Behind Jorry and Seach sat Alex Huntley (The Abolitionist) in all her Civil War Era glory. She had several people surrounding her but I couldn’t make them all out, which I attribute to the fact that I haven’t begun working on her story yet and don’t quite know who they are.

    Deviation-510On the peripheries of the restaurant were tables full of characters from my completed novels and stories; Deviation, Witch-Born Series, Medusa and the like. Most of them looked satisfied and amused with all the tension going on in the center of the room.

    There was one big table full of dead characters, which was sad and I thought about going over to visit with them but … I mean, if Trenna would have kicked my butt just for not being done with her third book yet, imagine what those guys would have done to me.

    And then there were the tables full of vague shapes, almost apparitions, and at first glance I thought they might be more of my casualty count but after a bit I realized that these were the stories my subconscious was still working on, stories I hadn’t even considered yet. Percy Pru and Ashton Bainbridge (Primal) were somewhere in there and I may feel guilty about that because I keep meaning to sit down and write that noire/dragon/mystery.

    Weirdly, the confusion of tables and characters actually made sense to me. I can see what’s coming deadmagic-510next on my writing schedule (or what needs to come next) standing at the bar. I imagine once I’ve set Persona aside and started shopping it around, Trenna and Nelek will come to my booth and someone will take their place at the bar.

    So … that’s my subconscious organizing my writing schedule in my sleep.

    Using Chili’s.

    I know I’m crazy, but hey … it works.

  • Round Robin Blog Posts – Social Issues in Fiction

    I’m so happy to be joining the Round Robin Blog Hop this month. This month’s topic discusses social/current event issues that are important to me and how, when, or if I allow them to seep into my fiction. 

    Deviation-510Let me start off with admitting that I definitely allow social issues to be addressed in my fiction. Anyone who has read my work, particularly my science fiction, will have noticed this for certain. Deviation, for example, has the very blatant conversation about women’s rights. Tapped is the start of a much larger conversation on religion that will be spanning several novels. The Abolitionist (which I’ll start later next year) is fairly self-explanatory.

    All of these issues are very important to me and I believe that every author has the responsibility to Scornedsay something with their fiction.

    However …

    I also believe that every author has the responsibility to thoroughly research, understand, and clearly provide counterpoints to any social issue they address in their writing.

    I shy away from making my personal opinions known here on the blog because honestly, I hate fueling the fire for these sorts of debates. They’re pointless and detract from the more important social issues that we should be spending our energy debating and attempting to fix … like homelessness, children living in poverty, the fact that some employment applications (or other legal forms) still ask for your “ethnicity” and therefore support a racist social structure, or the shameful amount of people going hungry everywhere …

    But all of those things I can and do address in my writing. I “address” them, but I do not answer them because honestly, if I’ve written it right then I won’t have to.

    Readers don’t need me to tell them poverty is bad, they already know it. My job as an author is to help somehow bridge the gap between the Reader and that poverty, to help them experience it so that they understand why poverty is bad.

    This is terribly idealistic of me but I truly believe that we can change the world. Books can change the world. Stories can change the world. Authors … can change the world. Not by telling the world what to think, but by exposing these issues for what they are and bringing them forward in a terribly intimate way.

    Have a look at what some of my fellow authors believe in and write about in today’s Round Robin Blog Hop …

    Skye Taylor  http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Beverley Bateman  http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    Margaret Fieland  http://www.margaretfieland.com/blog1/
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
    Victoria Chatham  http://victoriachatham.webs.com/
    Connie Vines  http://connievines.blogspot.com/
    Bob Rich  http://wp.me/p3Xihq-vQ
    Rachael Kosinski  http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
    Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
    Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
    Rhobin Courtright  http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/

  • Authors Who Inspire Me

    My son knelt beside the sofa, his Lego toys spread out on the cushions as he created little stories involving Star Wars and Batman and the occasional Ninja, while I curled up nearby with a book. It was a familiar book, a favored volume with yellowed pages and a cracked binding from too much use, and I had chosen it in spite of the many unread novels surrounding it.

    I’ll get to those other novels another day.

    For now, I’m content to relive a story that has managed to stay with me for over a decade; Sara Donati’s Into The Wilderness. 

    I’ve read other works by Donati as well, but this one is my favorite. There’s a richness to it that draws me in, a vivid depiction of life in another time and complex characters all fighting for what they want, and I can get fully engrossed in its pages.

    This is a book that inspires me. It challenges me to be a better writer and reminds me that being an author is not merely about telling a story, but about the art of telling a story. Donati knows the art of language, as does Diana Gabaldon and Cassandra Clare.

    I’m sure there are others but these are the authors who inspire me. I find that when I read them, my own work improves. Not because I’m emulating them or anything, but because they remind me to focus on my word choices, on the internal conflicts of my characters, and on the setting in which those characters live.

    I know that there are more books in the world than I could ever read in this lifetime, but there is something to be said about re-visiting a work that you love.

  • Owning Your Craft – Sedition Version

    I began reading Sedition to my son recently. He’s seven now and the whole Fantasy world of Dyngannon seems to appeal to him.

    Sedition-WEBThat or he just really likes the sword on the cover. I’m pretty sure much of the story is over his head but, he picked it and all. (Don’t worry, we read picture books before we settle in for a chapter of this one.)

    In any case, it’s been nearly six years since that book was first published and Trenna Silvanus remains one of my most popular characters. I get loads of commentary from people wanting to know when the next segment of her story is coming out (soon, I promise) and … yes, this does make my little writer’s ego fluff up in pleasure.

    That being said …

    If Sedition weren’t already published I would be doing a major overhaul on it.

    The dialogue is hard to get through in places. There are dozens and dozens of peripheral characters whose involvement in the story itself could be richer – sometimes shorter, but richer in content at least. The exposition is clunky. The narrator’s voice bounces (particularly in regards to Brenson and Nelek, which I’m going to blame on the fact that I wasn’t handling the male POV right).

    The one bright, shining light in the book so far (and we’re only in Chapter Seven) is that Trenna really is likable. She’s spunky, tough, and has a sense of humor that exerts itself in some of the oddest places.

    Why am I telling you all this?

    This book is out for sale. What sane writer points out the flaws of their own work in a public forum? Who’s gonna go out and buy this thing now?

    Honestly?

    Because any sane, professional writer also owns their craft.

    I own the fact that the book I wrote nearly ten years ago (NOTE: it did not get published as soon as it was finished, it took a long time to find a home) is not as strong as the books I’m writing now.

    I own that my personal style has changed with every book I’ve written.

    I own the mistakes that are in Sedition just as much as I own the things I did right.

    What did I do right?

    Trenna.

    In fact, the main cast of characters were done right; Nelek, Brenson, Faolan, Marsali, Brock. They have individual voices, concerns, arguments, and motivations. And while I remember it was complicated to the max trying to get all those individuals out into the open without making a 300,000 word book, it worked out in the end.

    So this is me owning my craft. Maybe I’ll start working on a 10 year anniversary edition of Sedition and clean up some of my mistakes.

    Maaaaybe.

    Probably not, though. Because after Usurper is done there’s at least one more book in this series. And the Tapped series has at least 4 main books with several novellas in the queue. And I have a Civil War/Western that has been simmering on the back burning for a while now. Annnnnd … my Dragon Noir.

    You get it. There’s lots going on in my head. But hey, if there’s enough interest maybe I will.