A.J. Maguire

Tag: Writing

  • Happy Holidays 2024 & The Yearly Wrap-Up

    We’ve made it to the end of 2024!

    It was a rough ride, but we’re here and we’re still kicking.

    What did I get done in 2024?

    Available Now!

    Well, first we had Nora and the Duke of Autumn come out for sale. It came out staggered, with the paperback in April and the digital rights in August, and I learned valuable lessons in this. Basically, you won’t see me do that again. There’s a weirdness in how the publishing dates work with the platform I use, but I’ve adapted and I know how to do it better in 2025.

    Second, I completed Nora and the Siren Song. It is scheduled for release in April 2025 (both paperback & digital) and is already generating reviews with advanced readers.

    Third, I began drafting Nora and the Vampire Court. This book is also scheduled for a 2025 release, but you won’t be seeing it until October. It has several drafts yet to go, and I am nervous as a cat in a tree about making sure all the little plotlines come together in the end.

    Fourth, I began edits for a re-release of previously titled Witch-Born. I still quite love this book, but its publisher sold to another publisher and long story short, I’m getting publishing rights back to it. This is also in the running for 2025 publishing release sometime over the summer. When I know more, you’ll know more.

    Fifth, The Last Child of Winter saw its final revision pass and has been on query for some time now. The querying trenches are brutal and frightening, with long stretches of nothing as you await word from various agents and sudden barrages of rejections that seem to come in rapid succession. I still have hope for this one, but if my next attempt at querying is unsuccessful, I may bring it back to the drafting table.

    All in all, not a bad year.

    I’m excited to say that insofar as orders go for my books, there have been over 500 more orders this year than what I managed to do last year. Which is exciting. Especially since my holiday sale of Nora’s current books won’t hit virtual shelves until the 9th, so that number is bound to go up before the end of the year.

    I am sincerely grateful to everyone who has picked up my books. Whether you liked them or not, I appreciate the time it took. I hope every Reader has a book fort made of their TBR piles, the cozy drink of their choice, and maybe a fuzzy pet to curl up with them as they read.

    Most of all, I hope everyone has a warm, safe holiday and I will see you all in January.

  • Thoughts on Indie Publishing – 2024 Edition

    We are preparing to close out the year on 2024. I am preparing my end-of-year summary and planning ahead for 2025, but in the midst of this preparation comes some larger conversations going on in the publishing world right now.

    I already touched on a couple of the BookTok controversies that I spotted in a previous post but some other aspects of the conversation have been nagging at me and I am going to take my, admittedly quite small, blog here and unpack them a bit.

    First, let us admit that Indie Publishing has become a massive money-maker for quite a few people, and quite often these are NOT the writer. And no, I am not talking about Vanity Presses. Those still exist, of course, and you should avoid them. Suffice, if the publishing house requires you to pay money to get that book onto shelves, then you should walk away.

    You can quite literally go into debt to publish a book and never see that money fully returned. From editors to cover artists to marketing, we funnel money out to see this work put into the world because – for me anyway – it is my craft and I love telling stories.

    I mention this because I have seen an alarming influx of emails and DM’s on various social media sites targeting me for services. I am promised X amount of people will see their marketing posts if I pay them Y amount of dollars. I am guaranteed reviews on Amazon. I am told, for the low price of five-hundred-bucks, I can get my manuscript edited and professionally formatted.

    Given that five-hundred-dollars is actually on the extreme low-end for a professional editor, please hear me when I say that it feels like we have come to a place where only the extremely privileged can truly move forward in this business. Sure, anybody can make a social media account of their choice and start throwing themselves out there, but the chances of that truly making an impact are so slim it’s painful. AND, let us be honest, if that person hasn’t edited their work a dozen times over and hired an editor… Well. It’s dead on arrival, really.

    So where does this leave us?

    I promise I am not all doom and gloom here. I’m not throwing in the towel or anything like that. I am merely expressing some displeasure at all the noise, really. For those of you professional editors/ cover artists/ vocal artists out there trying to make a living in this business too, I’m afraid your voices are being swallowed up. My kneejerk reaction any time I get a new email or DM is to cast some serious salt and ignore it, which isn’t terribly fair to all of you and I know it.

    The question comes down to… how do we cut out all the noise?

    For me, I use Writer Beware a lot. Is there anyone who has something else they use? If so, I would love to learn of it.

  • Novel News – September 2024

    For those who may check my Amazon account you might have noticed that Witch-Born and Deviation are no longer available in Kindle. Long story short, something went down between the publisher and Amazon and they are no longer able to sell any of their books on Amazon’s site. There are paperback copies still available on the site, but insofar as I understand it, any purchases made from this point out are not going to be reflected in royalties.

    Leastwise, that’s what the publisher announced when they sent the email.

    I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s going on over there. To be frank, I had already contacted this publisher to request a termination of the contracts so that I could get the publishing rights back to all books under their label. They were very professional and agreed to the termination and we had set things up to be official in February 2025.

    In the meantime, I have been going through a brand new edit of Witch-Born that I intend to release in the Spring. This includes new cover art and, after much deliberation on my part, a whole new title.

    For funsies, it’s good to know that titles are not really under copywrite. I did not know this until recently, but there you have it.

    I digress.

    The current circumstances that the publisher finds themselves in with Amazon has pushed the timetable up for announcements and what have you. I hadn’t intended to announce the switch until January, with a publication release in May or June . Because this is a re-release, I felt it would not overshadow Nora and the Siren Song, which is still due to release in April.

    Now, it should be noted that Witch-Born is not the only title I have under this publisher. And really, the original publisher was Double Dragon Publishing but they sold to this newest publisher several years ago. I feel like that’s an important detail. I stuck with them because at the time I could not conceive of seeking out a new book cover, and there are some sticking points about material that has been edited by in-house editors at a publishing company.

    It’s a weird gray area, but suffice… the book would require both new edits AND a new cover because the publisher paid for both, and Past Aimee was too busy to do either.

    Present Aimee, on the other hand, has rolled up her sleeves and is getting the work done.

    The other two books under this publisher are Deviation and Dead Magic and yes, I have plans for these as well. I know more about the business now than I did back when they were first sold to Double Dragon, and I am a better writer today than I was yesterday, so you can safely assume I’m working on them.

    Bottom line… If you have a copy of any of these books, they are about to be Out of Print. Everything is OK. We’ve got a handle on it.

    Happy Reading!

  • Controversies on BookTok – 2024 Edition

    While I do not post videos on TikTok, I do follow the #booktok conversations going on over there. I do this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to discover what readers are enjoying and get some book recommendations for my reading pile. I’ve gotten several books from these videos and many of them are quite delightful.

    Maybe one day I will post a video of my own highlighting a review or two.

    Big Maybe.

    The other reason I follow BookTok is to keep myself abreast of the current goings on and wider impact that novels are having on society. Which is good because writing is a very lonely venture most days and if I don’t pay attention then I could write something that people would consider blind to current events. Such as the current issues revolving around National Novel Writing Month, which has saddened me to no end.

    If you’re not familiar with what’s going on with National Novel Writing Month, suffice to say that I hope they tighten their security for the youth who may still frequent that site. I find that error from 2023 far more egregious than the AI conversation they’re in now, but I do have thoughts on the use of AI insofar as the creation of written works goes.

    I try not to judge other people for their choices. Lord knows that’s not my job. I’ve got enough to deal with for myself without judging anyone else, so let’s put that out there first, alright? So everything I’m about to say, know that it comes from a place of honest self-reflection as to why I personally won’t use AI in writing.

    Any writer will tell you that writing is hard.

    It’s really hard.

    Most days I feel like a complete nincompoop and illiterate when staring at the blank page before me. But the truth is, I will never get better as a writer if I don’t do the work. If I am not brainstorming my own creations, then my imagination will stop developing on its own. If am not putting the hours in with words on the page, then my use of language will never develop.

    For me, AI cuts a creative corner that will severely hinder my ability to craft my works.

    That’s not even getting into the conversation about where AI learns to “write” too.

    Reminder, this is not coming from a place of judgement, but those are my two cents on the matter.

    There are other controversies swinging around BookTok that I’ve taken note of, such as the concept of Booktok and the books popular therein somehow not being intellectual enough and contributing to a lesser quality of writing/reading. Honestly, that controversy is nothing new. They have just relabeled it to encompass BookTok instead of merely genre fiction.

    To that controversy I have one thing to say: Leave people alone.

    Of the myriad ways we can entertain ourselves in this year of our Lord 2024, the fact that they’re picking up a book instead of video gaming, staring at their phone, or watching movies/shows , is amazing. Do you know how many people in my own social circle shrug and admit they don’t like reading or don’t have the time for reading or… whatever the reason they have for not picking up a book?

    Leave people alone. There is space enough in this wide world for you to let them have their own tastes and preferences. It really has nothing to do with you.

  • Letting the Characters Speak

    I’ve mentioned before that writing is a craft and I am constantly improving. It should come as no surprise then, that I have stumbled on a new and shiny understanding of my beloved craft.

    Granted, I’m 99% certain someone somewhere has said this already and it somehow managed to go over my head, so let’s keep that in mind as I unveil my new and shiny understanding. I’m dense sometimes and I admit that.

    A little backstory…

    The publishing rights to one of my books are coming back to me (doesn’t matter why) and I have decided I will be re-releasing it myself. This means that I have already dusted off the manuscript and begun combing through it with editorial eyes.

    Since I am also editing Nora and the Siren Song, this fits my schedule just fine. I’ve learned that I can either draft a novel or edit novels, but never both in the same day. I’m not sure why. There’s a weird clunkiness to my brain when I try to switch gears and my drafts are always deeper and more imaginative if I haven’t split my time up that way.

    Now then, I have blushed a TON over the mistakes I’ve found in this older, supposedly polished and published book. This is a book that went through multiple edits before it found its way to a publisher, and then went through several edits AT said publisher. It’s amazing how much slipped through the cracks and I am doubly grateful for the opportunity to take it back and fix it.

    Among the things that I have stumbled upon in this edit is this — I need to let the characters speak.

    Yes, we all have internal dialogues and what comes out of our mouths is not the whole of what we are thinking and feeling at any given moment, but a lot of the information that needs to be relayed on the page can be done so through the characters as they speak to one another.

    Let them ask questions.

    Let them answer those questions.

    The narrative flows smoother and the voices of each character keep things fresh and entertaining.

    So that’s what I learned this week whilst bumbling around an old manuscript. And like I said earlier, I’m 99% certain someone has already said this, I just happen to be the dunce in the corner who wasn’t paying attention at the time.

    Happy Writing!

  • Settings and Mood Boards

    I learned a new trick and it seems to be seriously helping me with descriptions of the setting in particular, so naturally I’m going to share it here in case it helps someone else with their writing. Settings are often a struggle for me. I have read books on writing and gone to classes on writing and they always give this detailed list of the things you should know about your settings, and to be frank… these make my eyes gloss over.

    I’m not saying you don’t need to know that there are pock marks in the western wall where your character’s father once practiced knife throwing, I’m saying that making a list of these things was not helpful for me. And I’m saying that making such lists turned out to be a waste of my time because they rarely got looked at beyond the initial effort it took to make them.

    If these sorts of things work for you, then I applaud you and I am so glad. Seriously. Whatever works for you to get words on the page is what you should do.

    So what’s my trick?

    Images.

    Literal images.

    Deviantart and Pinterest are two places you can go to see some seriously beautiful artwork. This does come with the warning that oftentimes you’ll start browsing and before you know it, an hour has past, so make sure you go in with an idea of what you’re looking for.

    Now, for this next part, make sure you are looking at FREE images or that you’re not yanking someone’s hard work without somehow paying for it. Artists spend just as long on their craft as we writers do ours, so be respectful.

    What I do, is I start a Mood Board on Canva.

    I do love Canva. You can have a free account and do a lot with it. A lot of my marketing images and things come from Canva.

    Anyway, I start a Mood Board on Canva. They even have Mood Board templates you can use.

    Using the images that I stumbled across in my DeviantArt/Pinterest dungeon crawl (with permission if they are not free) I then fill that Mood Board. OR, I use MidJourney to help me create some images.

    Yes, Midjourney is an AI art generator. Yes, I understand there is a huge debate going on about AI in the arts. No, I’m not going to expound on this debate. Suffice to say, budgets are tight and if I could hire a flesh and blood artist to do some of these then I most certainly would. These images are for my personal use as I write/edit my drafts and I have found them supremely helpful.

    I digress.

    Here you can see a Mood Board that was made for a setting in Nora and the Winter King. Notice that I’ve paid particular attention to specific rooms, and that there is a distinct feel that all of the rooms follow. Identifying what is working for this setting is important. In this case, it’s a lot of stonework, a dusty and neglected feel while still be cozy in places.

    Oftentimes the very act of creating this mood board is enough to settle me into the scene I’m about to write, but having it on hand to reference as I go through the draft is helpful. Especially if I’m coming back to a setting that was left behind or returning to the work to begin edits.

    Anyway, that’s my trick. It seems to work better than making lists, at least for me, and it allows me to sort of “sit” in that setting and feel it.

    Happy writing, everyone!

  • Limbo Week – May 2024

    For those just joining us, I finished a manuscript at the end of April and have since been in what I like to call Limbo.

    Limbo is where I get to consume all the fiction I possibly can.

    Books. Movies. Video games. If it has a story, I’ll consume it.

    That’s not to say I’m not reading books during other weeks of the year. This is just the week where I get to spoil myself rotten with it.

    Reading and experiencing stories is so very important for writers. I know there are some out there who claim they are too busy writing to read, and I have to admit this makes me cringe. Because if you’re not reading then you have no idea what is being said out in society. Sure, you might get the highlights from the news, but there’s a deeper conversation happening in society and the only way you can access it is by reading.

    This is why I have been focused on bouncing Book Reviews up here lately. It’s not just because I enjoyed a book, it’s because I’m joining that deeper conversation.

    Even if that deeper conversation happens to be Romantasy novels with Vikings and Fae creatures running about.

    As I head into this next week, Limbo is officially over and work is beginning for Nora and the Winter King. I’m still hopeful that this is the final full length novel for Nora’s storyline, and that I will be able to deliver both Siren Song and Winter King within a couple months of each other.

    This is because Siren Song ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.

    My first ever cliffhanger, guys. I’m not sure if I’m excited or worried.

    Anyway, Limbo is closing out and I have some more reading to do.

    Happy Writing, everyone.

  • Release Shenanigans – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    I try to alternate weeks between writing posts and book review posts buuuuuut….

    But this week the paperback edition of Nora and the Duke of Autumn was released and so I am going to steal today for shouting my excitement from the rooftops.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    For those just joining us, Nora’s story sparked with a X (then Twitter) conversation about how I loved the concept of Lucifer having a therapist in the show of the same name. Another writer and I were chitchatting about how the characters in our novels all deserved some therapy after what we put them through, and I made the offhand comment about how a lot of the romance couples needed this too.

    Bam.

    Nora’s story was born.

    An empathic wizard living in Boston who provides counseling to the supernatural living amongst us? The possibilities were endless.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    In the first book, I had a lot of fun introducing the world(s) where Fairy and Earthside coexist and teasing at the deeper lore hidden behind Nora’s ignorance.

    I knew a couple of things walking in. First, I knew I wanted relationships to be highlighted. In Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we saw several relationships throughout. We saw a bride and her mother, a bride and her groom, a son and his mother, and a grandson and his grandfather, all of which played significant roles in the story.

    In Nora and the Duke of Autumn, we see Nora struggling with her personal relationships, and we see a young son rebelling against his parents, as well as a broken mother and daughter relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything here, so I’m going to be purposefully vague. There are brothers and lovers and friendships throughout the book that Nora is able to influence in some way.

    The second thing I knew walking into this series was that I wanted magic to be hidden in plain sight of humanity. Don’t ask me why, but this story can only exist with the parallel between Earth and Fairy. In Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we stuck real close to Earthside, but in Duke of Autumn we take that major plunge into the Fairy. Sixty percent of the novel is traipsing through my steampunk version of Fairy, and I had a blast writing it.

    Everything else about the books has grown over time and will likely continue to grow as I delve deeper into the series.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Siren Song

    SPEAKING OF WHICH…

    I am excited to announce that by the end of April, I will have a completed draft of Nora and the Siren Song. (Yes, that’s only a couple of days away. Yes, I am THAT close. Currently I am sitting on the final chapter and the epilogue.)

    So here is me, throwing confetti for the paperback release of Nora and the Duke of Autumn AND finishing the draft of Nora and the Siren Song.

    Come on, 2024, let’s see what else we can get done.

    PURCHASE LINK – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    PURCHASE LINK – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

  • Ventures Into Fairy – Nora Grayson Edition

    When I set out to write Nora’s story I did not know what I was getting into. I had a vague premise – marital counselor for supernatural creatures – and a sort of Clue setting for Werewolf Wedding. I quite like the game Clue, and massive old houses with loads of history, and since my other books were feeling a bit too heavy, I wanted to have some fun with this one.

    It did not take long for me to realize I had a lot more here than Clue meets Fairy Creatures, but I fought the desire to dig further because I didn’t want to write a series. I wanted a standalone novel and I struggled mightily to force this narrative into submission.

    (Insert manic laughter here.)

    The fact is, I had too much fun with Nora and her world. I’m still having boat loads of fun, in fact, and I sincerely hope I continue in this vein.

    For those who haven’t read Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, the basic summary is that Fairy was created so that Bright folk (aka Fae creatures) could hide from humanity, who were hunting them for their magic. Bright creatures can access the way to Fairy through any body of water, and make frequent crossings between Fairy and Earthside.

    With Nora and the Duke of Autumn being released in paperback next month, it seemed prudent to mention that we dive heavily into Fairy in this book.

    Nora has not been to Fairy, for reasons you’ll have to explore in the books, and her brief forays into Fairy in Werewolf Wedding leave a whole wide world out there unexplored. Happily, this gets remedied with Duke of Autumn. Nora not only gets to see more of Fairy, she gets to meet — you guessed it — Fae nobility.

    Why did I choose Autumn for the setting?

    Uh… because it’s my favorite.

    I also revisited one of my favorite steampunk settings with a dirigible. However, fans of Witch-Born will notice this dirigible is a bit different, particularly with the amount of fairy creatures and the heavier focus on steam powered items on board.

    Among the more challenging aspects of writing Fairy has been the need to show a kind of mish-mash of cultures. Having Fairy lean on steampunk has been a fun physical means of differentiating between it and Earthside, however, and I look forward to continuing in this vein. It shows that humans have still left their fingerprints on Fairy, and while they have many traditions they call The Fairy Way, there are still some bits of technology that have been fused with magic to make their way of life a little easier.

    I could go into a deep dive in the books, but I have chosen not to. The books already edge toward the super high end of the word count spectrum and while it’s fun for me to know Nicola Tesla was a wizard in my world setting, it might bog down the pacing.

    But hey, the series has at least one more book for me to write. Maybe it’ll come to light in the narrative naturally.

  • The Nitty-Gritty – Writing a Series

    I will preface this blog entry with the reminder that what works for me might not work for others. Writing is an ever-evolving craft wherein I learn something new with every single book. What follows are simply the steps that I’ve found work for me.

    Maybe this will change in a year. Maybe my writing process will remain the beautiful chaos it is now until the day I pass on from this life. I honestly don’t know.

    Let me also say that I never set out to write a SERIES.

    I simply set out to tell a story. Sometimes that story winds up being far bigger than original anticipated, is all.

    The Nora Grayson Series is by far my largest undertaking, and the possibilities for offshoots keep cropping up. Which is either super exciting or daunting, I can’t decide which. Regardless, the fact that it has grown so very large in my head means that I have had to take some serious steps to keep things in line.

    I’ve mentioned the Story Bible before, which for me is a singular notebook that has the outlines, draft notes, and character notes of every book in the series in it. When I say it’s chaos, I mean that it is absolute chaos. There are different shades of ink, there are scribbled notes in the margins, there are highlighted bits and then question marks beside those highlighted bits and timelines and character questions everywhere.

    I pity the man who picks it up and tries to make sense of it.

    For me, however, it is my happy place.

    It’s my Muse at her most free, dallying here and there with tantalizing possibilities. I have no rules for the Story Bible other than I’m concentrating on this one series and no other books. There are, however, what I call KEY pages.

    For instance, I have one KEY page titled: SET IN STONE.

    This seems self-explanatory, but these are the key elements of the story that have already been published. Details go in here that I often need to reference such as Nora’s home address. It is sectioned out between books, so for Werewolf Wedding I have a running list of names for those she met in that book and how they correspond to her and then any unresolved matters that did not get addressed in that particular novel.

    With each new book, the SET IN STONE page grows. For obvious reasons.

    Readers are smart, and I don’t want to upset one by assuming they aren’t going to notice that Delilah’s eyes changed from green to blue between Books One and Three. Or if they do change color, it better make sense in the story.

    Which brings me to the most important part of writing a series…

    Reading.

    Or rather, re-reading. I’m working on these concurrently, so I have an audio version of Werewolf Wedding being narrated to me, am doing final pass edits on Duke of Autumn, am drafting Siren Song, and outlining Winter King. There’s a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of details I don’t want to miss.

    If it looks overwhelming, don’t worry. The fact is, I’m having a blast. I love Nora and these stories and I cannot wait to share them with you. Truthfully, if I am ever not having fun, it normally means I’ve lost sight of the story and need to go back to the Story Bible and flip through it.

    There are a ton more KEY pages in my Story Bible, such as the Compost Dump that I’ve mentioned before. (I still recommend Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on Writing. You won’t regret it.) But I want to highlight one more before I run off for the day. This KEY page is titled: The Lies They Believe.

    It’s a very evocative title, I know.

    We’ll take Nora for example. MILD SPOILERS INBOUND.

    Werewolf Wedding – The Lies Nora Believes – is that she is a low level empath whose only use is as a counselor. Further, she’s a burden to her Nana Bess and Uncle Martin – especially Uncle Martin. She believes Fairy is a place where criminals and reprobates thrive, that decent people never go there, because this is what Bess and Martin have told her. This lie is reinforced by the fact that her own parents abandoned Fairy before she was born, though they never told her precisely why.

    Why is this page KEY?

    Because by the end of Werewolf Wedding, Nora has to see through these lies, if not confront them.

    Happy Writing!

    Purchase Link – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    Pre-Order Link – Nora and the Duke of Autumn