A.J. Maguire

Tag: Read

  • Dead Magic Coming Soon!

    In preparation for Dead Magic’s release … which is apparently coming sooner than I’d imagined … I’ve decided to start adding some content.  You’ll noticed on the top bar that I’ve added a new page called “Magnellum” which is the world in which Dead Magic is centered.

    Also, on the sidebar (under the title Blogroll) you can see a link to a teaser/snippet page.  That will actually take you to a page with ALL my books on it.  You can click through and read teasers of each one that has been published to date.  Including a small teaser page for Dead Magic, which I will edit and make bigger after its release.  (Right now you can read the very first scene of the book.)

    When I have an actual date for its release I will start another release party.  (I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I’ve done one of those.)  And I’ll do some Giveaway’s and throw out a bunch of free content delving deeper into the world of Magnellum.

    In the meantime, the Magnellum page on the top bar goes through a list of the noble Houses in Magnellum.  I won’t lie, the political spectrum of Magnellum was difficult to create.  We get to see the noble society at its peak in Witch- Born, but in Dead Magic I got to dive into the history behind Magnellum and really work on the mythology behind what created the Witch-Born race in the first place.

    It actually took me several passes at the manuscript before I was able to settle on something that both made sense and entertained me as a writer.  (I mean, if I don’t find it entertaining then who else will?)  I’m not going to spoil the book before it’s even come out, so don’t worry.  We all know how I feel about spoilers.

    However, as an author, mythology and world building are the two most enjoyable and most frustrating parts of the writing process.  During the first draft I’m just having fun with the characters and running through what I call the “bare bones” of the plot.  So at that point world building and mythology are a ton of fun.

    When I get into the second pass of the book and start really looking at the mythology is when I get frustrated because it almost always needs to be fixed.  That’s when the real work happens for me as a creator.  I may know the characters of the story but I don’t really know the story yet, you know?  So there are weeks and weeks of brainstorming what parts of the mythology need rewriting and — most importantly — how I can take that mythology and turn it into something intimate for the characters on the page.

    Because a neat mythology doesn’t necessarily make a great story.  That mythology has to work with the characters.  It has to shake them up somehow, and that’s what I was looking to do in Dead Magic.  I’m hoping I managed it.  We’ll see what readers say.

    As with everything I write, I wouldn’t ever publish anything because I always think something needs to be improved.

  • Dreaming Word Choices

    Well, I was have a great time editing Tapped before school got in the way.  I’ve got an Environmental Science final next week and a MASSIVE reading list for two other classes as well.  I’m going to call this a mixed blessing because I was starting to see words in my sleep.

    Yes, dreaming word choices is sometimes a problem for me.  As crazy as it sounds, I always know when I’ve been staring at the same manuscript for too long when I start arguing with my internal editor during the REM cycle.  It normally goes something like this —

    Me: “He reached for the small …”

    Enter Editor’s voice: “You mean half-inch.”

    Me: “Fine … He reached for the half-inch computer drive …”

    Editor: “Are you sure you want to say ‘computer drive’?  I thought it was a hacking device.  You should keep it standard and just call it a hacking device.”

    Me: All right, all right.  “He reached for the half-inch hacking device …”

    Editor: Well, that sounds funny.  Too many “H’s” right next to each other.

    Me: (with a growl of frustration) “He reached for the half-inch device …”

    Editor: Now that’s too ambiguous  you need to tell us what kind of device it is.

    Me: I hate you.

    Editor: Oh, and isn’t the character sore and beat up at this point?  So wouldn’t he really be straining, or stretching, or fighting past his injuries to try and get the hacking device?

    …..

    Yeah, that’s about how those dreams go.  As funny as that sounds, it’s really not very restful.  I normally wake up feeling like I’ve been working all night … and in some respects I have.  In any case, that’s why I’m thinking this whole school issue is a good thing, because I might be overwhelmed by homework, but at least I’m getting sleep.

  • 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.

  • Books I Re-Read

    This morning was particularly dreary.  I woke up early because my son had crawled into bed with me at some point — he’s only four years old and he’s allowed to do that for a little while longer — but he managed to shove me off at 7:45AM.  I figured that was as good as it was going to get for sleep so I made my way to the living room, powered on my fake fireplace (Oh, how I love that little space heater) and rummaged through my bookshelves for a book.  

    I knew I should read one of my textbooks because … well … because I’m still in school and I’ll have to read them at some point, but it was 7:45AM and I simply was not going to exercise my brain like that before I’d even managed to have breakfast.  Now, normally at this point I’ve already re-arranged my bookshelves, dragging books out of storage to replace the ones that have been occupying shelf-space for the last six months — I do this twice a year and somehow still manage to surprise myself with a book I forgot I had.  However, it’s been nine months since the last purge/replace and I was a little bored with some of the titles I ran across.  

    But it got me thinking about the books that never go into storage.  These beloved volumes are the one’s I read and re-read and simply cannot go without.  As I was going through the shelves, I discovered that there are only eight of these books in my collection, and seven of them belong to a series.  They are the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, and Into the Wild, by Sara Donati.   

    These eight volumes are always on my shelves.  All the rest take their respective turns in storage each year.  As I started reading The Fiery Cross (one of the Gabaldon novels) I had to ask myself what it was about Gabaldon’s writing that had me coming back.  The story hasn’t changed.  The characters are the same.  Yet, there is a richness to the tales that beckons me back.  

    If you’ve never read any Gabaldon, I highly recommend that you do.  Her books are generally thick, so you’ll have to devote some time, but they are well worth it.  

    I was struck with the realization that many of the scenes I was reading today weren’t particularly necessary to the overall plot of the book.  As an author, I know that it has been pounded through my thick skull many times that if a scene doesn’t serve a purpose, you should cut it.  And yet, as I was reading, I couldn’t envision the book without that snippet, that detail, that moment.  

    In popular fiction today we’re taught to keep the writing tight, to let everything point toward that end goal or moment.  Gabaldon’s massive books seem to scoff in the face of that logic.  Maybe she’s found a niche or something.  Honestly, I’m just glad she wrote them in the first place.  There’s history, love, violence, and humanity written on every page and I absolutely love them. 

  • Jane Eyre

    I have fond memories of this book.  I read it while I was in advanced training in the Army.  I even remember a Drill Sergeant seeing it in my locker and asking me what in the world I was doing in the military when I read things like that.  (That’s not to say that today’s military doesn’t read, just that this particular kind of book falls out of the norm for someone you’d see in training.)

    When the movie came out last year I was so excited to see it … but didn’t.  You know, money, work, school, raising a child … oh, and writing … and I just couldn’t get out there to see it.  But I found it in the store yesterday and snatched it up.

    Needless to say my four-year-old wasn’t all that into it, but I figured I’d suffered through a gazillion hours of Cars 2 and Monster’s Inc. to deserve this little reprieve.

    And I loved it.

    I understand that they can’t fit everything in the book into a neatly packaged 2 hour film, but they did a really good job of putting the core elements of the story up there.  I’m not going to give any spoilers or anything like that, but I am going to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It’s a “big girl” story, showing us the restraint needed to respect ourselves and the hope of something better for when we do.

     

  • Goodreads Giveaway Starts in 1 Day!

     
    That’s right! This is my year of Giveaways — mainly because I won’t have anything new coming out this year since I’m hard at work with school and my writing is going a little slower than normal — but this is great news for some lucky winners out there. 

    The first Giveaway is for 2 copies of Sedition — my first book. 

    If you don’t win, don’t worry! I have two other completely different books that will be scheduled for Giveaway’s throughout the year. And! Somewhere, at some point, I’ll give away a package deal with both Sedition and Saboteur included. I’m not sure where — likely at Coffee Time Romance — but that won’t be until we’ve gotten through Witch-Born and Saboteur at Goodreads. 

     

  • Top 5 Villains (Literary Version)

    Since I compiled my list of heroes last week, I thought it only fair to dive into the villains this week.  These are the people I just love to hate.  And in actuality, the villain is what makes or breaks a story for me.  We can go into a huge conversation about the difference between an antagonist and a villain, but I’ll just define it in simple terms so I can get to my list.

    A villain has no redeeming qualities.  An antagonist has a glimmer of the redeemable in him — though he likely continues to make the wrong choices.

    It took me all week to compile this list.  I even had to have help from some Facebook friends.  But here we go!

    1) Professor Umbridge from the Harry Potter series.  This woman just got under my skin.  It was the first villain I’ve read about where I actually wanted to reach into the pages of my book and strangle her.

    2) Iago from Othello.  He gets points for exploiting the human tendency toward jealousy.

    3) Black Jack Randall from the Outlander series.  I picked him because he’s … well … politely sadistic.

    4) Professor James Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes.  This one a friend pointed out to me and I have to agree.  It’s been about 6 months since I read any of my Doyle, but yeah … he had to make a character that could put Holmes through a ringer.

    5) Sauron from Lord of the Rings.  I mean … c’mon.  Dude didn’t have a body and he still tried to take over Middle Earth.

    I do have some honorable mentions!  The first is Dorian Grey, who I think falls more under the “antagonist” category because he starts out just fine and then progresses into evil-bastard via the choices he makes.  The second two are from movies, and since this is supposed to be the literary version I can’t put them up here.

    1)  Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty.  Before you laugh, remember that this crazy lady cursed a baby, spent 16 years hunting a child, and then plotted to hold a man hostage so that he could save the day when he was a decrepit old man.  That, and, well, she turned into a frigging dragon.

    2) Guy de Lusignan from Kingdom of Heaven.  My friend at work suggested this one and my immediate response was to coo.  Because, I mean, did you see the movie?

    That’s my list of villains!  If you’ve got any that you think could beat my villains into powdery-doom, I’m happy to hear about them.

  • Top 5 Heroes (Literature Version)

    Let me start off  by saying that this is not an exhaustive list.  I read every day — to some extent anyway — and therefore my choice of who makes the best hero is likely going to change over time.

    Hero – a man of distinguished courage and ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.  (Author’s addition — someone with the oomph to carry a story for 300 pages or more.)

    Coming in first place is James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser (AKA Jamie) from the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  Taking away the swoon factor of a giant red-headed, sword-and-musket-wielding Highlander, Jamie has this vulnerable quality that just makes me want to give him a big hug.  He’s got bravado and gumption, and I’m pretty sure he’s just as bad at strategy as I am because he sort of just does things.  (Like march into an angry mob and try to save an accused witch from being killed.)

    Second place goes to Kelsier from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistorborn – The Final Empire.  No, I didn’t pick Vin or Elund (the two you might expect me to pick from that book) because they irritated me at some point or another.  Vin because she got a little whiny about where she came from and Elund because … yeah … he didn’t get all that much page-time in the book.  But Kelsier … Kelsier was my favorite.  And my coworkers can attest to the fact that I fairly squealed and spun in my chair a few times during the battle moments there at the end.  (I don’t want to spoil it, but I’m a girl and even I was impressed with the magic fight.)

    The number 3 position goes to Nathaniel Bonner from Sara Donati’s Into the Wild.  Sweet, holy bananas!  What I wouldn’t give for that man to comment about my boots.  There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about Nathaniel, he can’t use magic and he doesn’t use a sword, but he is super smart and I’m pretty sure he makes up for the no-sword thing with the tomahawk.

    Coming in at the fourth position is William Harindale.  I know, I know, he’s 17 or so, but the boy has “hero” written all over him.  He stars in Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices series and he’s the first character to make me cry in a long time.  (No, I’m not going to tell you which part made me weepy. )

    I had a hard time coming up with a fifth hero.  I almost bent the rules and dove into film and TV heroes, which would have given me people like James T. Kirk and Han Solo to pick from, but I’ve decided that film heroes deserve their own segment.  Heck, Star Trek deserves its own segment of Captains to fight between.  So!  I chose for the final hero … Harry Potter.

    Yes, yes, good old Harry Potter.  But there’s a reason why everyone loved him enough to stick with him for 7 books.  Young, fresh, tragic, lost, and pit up against insurmountable odds … Yeah.  Harry counts as one of my top 5.

    That’s it!  That’s my top 5.  Who are yours?