That Finished First Draft Feeling

 Yesterday, I finished a first draft of the cozy fantasy Walking on Moonlight that I've been working on since January. It came out to 94k which is a long first draft for me (65-80 k is more typical), but no where near the monster 140k that Little Mansion in the Jurassic topped out at.

As always, even though there is at least two more drafts and much work to be done, I like to spend a little time basking in the glow of accomplishment. I created another novel out of nothing but my mind which is pretty cool when you think about it. Walking on Moonlight is my 49th novel written (not published, written) which is not nearly as prolific as some, but still a respectable body of work.

As I near the end of a draft, my pace always picks up, my word counts rising from an average of 700 during the middle of the novel to 1200 a day. Yesterday in my frenzy to finish, I wrote 3388 words.

Am I going to take today off? Um, no. While Walking on Moonlight will rest on my hard drive for a few months so that I can revise with fresh eyes, I will be moving my Project B into my Project A slot and continuing with that. A change is as good as a break for me. However tonight we will order out so I don't have to cook and I will read the ebook I bought myself as a treat yesterday.

Accomplishments should always be celebrated.

 

 

First Drafts

I keep a spreadsheet of every novel I've written, from first to last. (I'm currently working on novel forty-eight.) It's color-coded. Purple for published. Gray for abandoned. Red for current projects, yellow for on submission. Light green for first drafts, dark green for Complete (which ranges from third to fifth drafts depending on the project.)

I currently have seven first drafts on file. Seven. And as I mentioned that's not even counting books abandoned along the way.

I always build in time for a book to sit and rest before revision. This is part of my process and is normal for me, but... I have to be careful. Because I enjoy plotting and drafting more than I do revision, it can be tempting to chase the new shiny idea that always, always promises to be much better than the not-so-great first draft sitting around in a drawer. Finishing books is part of writing. I need to strike a balance between drafting and revising.

One of those seven first drafts is in its natural "resting" phase since I only finished the manuscript a few months ago. However three of them have been resting for over a year and one for over a decade. By this point, I'm unsure if I will ever get back to them, but I'm not yet ready to count them as abandoned.

Things get even more complicated when I write series books. The first drafts need to be written reasonably close together so that the books have a similar feel and tone, but if book one hasn't sold yet, there's very little pressure to revise book two or three. Two more of my first drafts fall into this category.

The last  remaining draft has only been resting for a little over a year. It was intended to be the first in a series, but it's my first attempt writing a new subgenre and it did not go well. There are things I like about the story, but there's some heavy revision to do, and I'm no longer sure a venture into this subgenre is a good idea for my career, so it may also end up abandoned. Time will tell.

Abandoning a novel is always a little bit sad and a little bit of a relief. Writers have many ideas and only so much time. Decisions have to be made about what I put time and effort into.

Romantasy - My Favourites

 So it looks like Romantasy is the new hot thing. If you're like me, this is a subgenre you've been avidly reading for years, called fantasy romance or romantic fantasy or fantasy with romantic elements and you're excited at the idea of the genre taking off.

So what is Romantasy? Romance + fantasy, obviously, BUT I think it's important to make a distinction between romantasy and both urban fantasy and paranormal romance. What's the difference? Paranormal romance and urban fantasy are set in a contemporary-ish setting. Technology levels are generally compatible with current life in North America and Europe (though tech like cellphones may be magic-based) and will often share the same history. Romantasy IMO refers to novels set in a secondary non-Earth world with magic. There is, and always will be, wiggle room for things like historical fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds with fantasy which may have the same "feel" as secondary world fantasy.

Without further ado, here are some of my favourite romantasies.

1/ Bonds of Magic and Renegades of Magic by Jeffe Kennedy - Jeffe writes a lot of romantasy (I'm also a fan of her long-running Twelve Kingdoms/Uncharted Realms/Heirs of Magic series) but this series is currently my favourite. Set in a dark world where wizards "bond" familiars and the Convocation Academy hunts down anyone who dares rebel against its rules. Wizards and familiars may be of either gender and there is hot sex magic. Bonds of Magic is a trilogy starring Gabriel and Nic while Renegades of Magic features Jadrian and Gabriel's sister Selly. Book three of Renegades just released giving them their HEA and promising a new trilogy for Nic's sister Alis.

 

 

 

 

2/ The Saint of Steel series by  T. Kingfisher (a pseudonym for Ursula Vernon). Delightful voice and world-building. Premise: the Saint of Steel died leaving his berserker paladins (both male and female) stranded and despairing, adopted by the White Rat (a god of lawyers and good works). Book four, Paladin's Faith just released and I finished reading it last night. These books are so much fun!

3/ Romances of Arquitaine duology by Lilith Saintcrow. Set in a fantasy-version of the decadent French court, book one The Hedgewitch Queen is from the heroine's POV and book two is from the heroes. I adored how gone Tristan was on Vianne. 

 

 

 

 

4/ Wraith Kings series by Grace Draven. Lovely, sensual writing. Book one, Radiance, features a political marriage between a human woman and a Kai man, but what is supposed to be political and convenient soon develops into a genuine love-match.

5/ A Gathering of Dragons series by Milla Vane (AKA Meljean Brook). If barbarian warlords are your thing, try these. I've been waiting impatiently for  book three for awhile now.

Honorable Mention: Chronicles of the Warlands/Epic of Palins series by Elizabeth Vaughan, Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk

What are your favourites? (I'm writing this post in a rush and am certain I've forgotten some...)

The Darwinian Method

 

My writing method is a bit odd. I write a first draft, then take a break from that book while I work on something else (these days two other projects, one drafting, one editing).

I have my reasons. The mental break allows me to read the story as a whole novel and to come at revisions with a fresh eye. I can see and tackle large problems better once I have a bit of perspective. I then usually go straight from the second draft onto the third and keep working until the book is (mostly) done.

However, I don’t stick to a strict schedule. I’m not currently under deadline, so I work on what I want to work on. There are a number of first draft files languishing in my folders that I’ve simply never gotten back to. Some I still intend to finish, others I’ve given up. (The number of my first drafts currently sits at seven. Four I have intentions to revise, three I suspect I may give up on. Only one am I actually eager to fit into my schedule and revise.)

These unfinished novels used to make me wince and feel guilty, but lately I’ve decided to embrace it. This is just Darwin’s method of selecting the fittest and best. Some novel ideas just never quite pan out. Some first drafts aren’t worth the effort it would take to pull them up to par. If the idea of revising them makes me tired, I can just… let them go. That can be very freeing.

After all, if I ever do want to revisit an idea, the file is still there.

Because sometimes a writer has an idea that they don’t have the chops to pull off early in their career. Or sometimes a failed draft is just waiting for another spark to take fire. Waiting patiently for an epiphany.

I wrote the first draft of my YA novel Frost the summer after I graduated high school. The initial idea grabbed me and I started writing without much of an outline. The resulting draft was terrible, and I had no idea how to fix it. It languished in a file drawer for I think a decade before I revised it. I was pleased with it but my beta reader pointed out a significant problem that I didn’t know how to fix so I put it away again and worked on other books until a chance conversation made me realize I needed to change the setting and add another POV character. After that third draft the book was much better, and the fourth better yet—but I still couldn’t get it published. So it waited, patiently, for another few years, another epiphany. The changes I made for the fifth draft were relatively minor, taking only a week or two to complete, but oh, what a difference they made. The book sold, and then went on to win one award and be a finalist for a number of others.

Some seeds never sprout, some merely need time and care to mature and bear wonderful fruit.

 

 

Conventions, Epiphanies and a Sale!

 I just got back from When Words Collide, a fabulous writer/reader convention in Calgary, where I was a Special Guest. (Because this was the Final Chapter under current management they had not only a slate of Guests of Honor but a second slate of Special Guests, including some like me who would have been Guests of Honor during the Covid years.) I had a lovely time. I gave two readings, taught two workshops, participated in two panels and signed autographs. I met lots of writers, both published and unpublished, at all stages of their writing journey.

The highlight for me was getting to meet and talk to Tanya Huff, whose books I have been a fan of for years. She is funny, wise and an entertaining speaker. I bought her new fantasy book Into the Broken Lands and am halfway through rereading it already.  It's terrific! Buy it. Seriously.

I also had an Aha! moment about one of my own projects. Ironically, it came about because of the workshop I was teaching. I told the participants that during revision it was important to look critically at every scene to see if it advanced plot and character or if it could be cut. "Sometimes," I said, "when we're writing the first draft, we write the next thing that the character does, instead of the next thing that is relevant to the book's plot." I even had a little example that I showed.

Hours later, in my hotel room, it hit me that I had done this EXACT THING in one of my works in progress. The novel has gone through five rounds of revision and every time when I hit this scene I thought, "There's something wrong here," and I added more action, more dialogue in an attempt to make it work INSTEAD OF JUST CUTTING THE DARN THING. This particular novel is currently running about 25 k too long, so now I'm going to be looking to see if there are other chapters I can cut as well. I'm betting there will be.

So that's what I'm working on this week. I hope everyone else who was at the convention is feeling similarly energized and ready to dive into writing!

Oh, and before I go... My publisher, Great Plains, has done a 25% price drop on the the ebook version of my teen werewolf novel, Feral.  If you like Girl Alphas, try it!

17-year-old Chloe fears she's a Dud, a child born to two werewolves who can't change into a wolf. If she's still a Dud by the time she reaches adulthood, she'll be exiled. In the meantime, she's at the bottom of the pack hierarchy and the other teens in her small town make her life miserable.

Then she encounters a feral werewolf with the opposite problem: he's trapped in wolf form. Chloe suspects the feral is her old classmate, Marcus, who everyone believes died along with the rest of his family in a mysterious plane crash. Chloe vows to help Marcus regain his human self because giving up on him would mean admitting possible failure for herself, too. But she must act quickly. Pack law mandates killing ferals.

Buy on Amazon   Kobo   

Kobo Plus Gems

 Everyone knows about Kindle Unlimited, but Kobo now has its own "library subscription" service called Kobo Plus, which I recently subscribed to. Like Kindle Unlimited it's a platform for indie authors so you won't find traditionally published novels here. Unlike Kindle, it doesn't demand exclusivity on the part of the author.

So far, I'm mostly using it like a library. Which is to say that I still purchase outright my tried-and-true authors and series I'm invested in. Instead I've been using Kobo Plus for new authors to try, to catch up on author backlists, to read novellas and to give a  second chance to authors with some good books and some that I personally found a little lackluster.

Here are some gems I've found, that deserve more love:

1/ The Amsterdam Institute series by R.Z. Held. 

These are SF novellas set in a future galaxy of populated worlds with Pax Romana on one side and Libertad Fransa on the other and the characters caught in the middle. High stakes, quick beginnings, new tech and its consequences. There are six novellas out so far and they come in pairs. The first two feature Genevieve Amsterdam, who has been infected with super-soldier nanites on the battlefield, then we jump forward along the timeline and switch to Sienna, who has an AI personality dumped in her head as part of a hostage exchange, for novellas three and four. Then another time jump forward to Chloe for novellas five and six.

2/ Star Cruise series by Veronica Scott

Some (but not all) of Veronica's series are available on Kobo Plus. I had previously bought and read both Wreck of the Nebula Dream (the Titanic in space) and Star Cruise Marooned, but fell way behind. I recently read Star Cruise Time Loop on Kobo Plus and found it a lot of fun.

3/ Demons of Oblivion and Livi Talbot urban fantasy series by Skyla Dawn Cameron

I've raved about the Livi Talbot books before (Tagline: ex-debutante, single mother, treasure hunter) so I urge you to try them out. The first book is Solomon's Seal. 

4/ Death's Lady series and House of Shadows by Rachel Neumeier

Most of Rachel's books are only on Kindle Unlimited, but both of these fantasy series are available on Kobo Plus and they are very good. Death's Lady is quite interesting, being a reverse portal fantasy in which a woman from a fantasy world comes to ours--and ends up in an insane asylum. The very nice pyschiatrist thinks her story is an allegory but he nevertheless helps her deal with her all-consuming rage, and of course in later books it's the psychiatrist and his daughter who end up in the fantasy world and have to adjust.

5/ Nine Worlds series by Victoria Goddard

Most of  Goddard's books fall into her Nine Worlds umbrella series, but there are sub-series within them. I love her Greenwing & Dart novels, lighthearted fantasy of manners, and her Red Company books. She has also written a lot of novelettes and novellas adjacent to the series which I've been reading on Kobo Plus.

6/ Heirs of Magic/ Bonds of Magic by Jeffe Kennedy

These are excellent fantasy romances. I've been buying and reading the Bonds of Magic and its sequel series Renegades of Magic as it came out, but I'd missed the Heirs of Magic series entirely, so I've been using Kobo Plus to catch up on it.

7/ Talia Hibbert romance books

Her self-published books are on Kobo Plus so I've been catching up on her backlist. If you liked the Brown sisters, you'll like her other stuff too. I recommend the Ravenswood series. Book one is A Girl Like Her and features a neuro atypical heroine with an undeserved bad reputation.

And that's all for now! If you have a series on Kobo Plus, that you either wrote or love, drop it in the comments and I'll take a look for it!

Horror Recommendations

 I am not a big horror reader, so this is by no means a Best of or comprehensive list. These are just a few horror books that I read and enjoyed this year.

1. Beneath the Rising trilogy by Premee Mohamed

I love how the plots go up and down along with the friendship between Johnny and Nick.

Book one, best friends working together save the world from eldritch horrors but their friendship takes a severe blow.

Book two, wary former friends try to save the world from eldritch horrors. Both end badly.

Book three, ten years later, much-changed Nick and Johnny are now hostile enemies and Nick no longer believe anybody can be saved especially by Johnny, but he’s wrong.

 

 

 

2. Dweller on the Threshold by Skyla Dawn Cameron

Pandemic forces the heroine to live in a haunted house inherited from her estranged father. More than just ghosts going on here, and I loved the reveal and the ending. Great voice.

 

 

 

 

 

3. The Broken Room by Peter Clines

 

Badass ex-assassin character is pulled into helping a kid who’s escaped from an evil government lab. Great pacing and tension with excellent action scenes and a found-father-daughter relationship at its heart.