I’ve been very graphics-heavy in my LJ lately, and I’ve just decided to embrace it. My reading list on the side has grown to include both books I’ve read lately (though I certainly am not going to include an icon for every book I read this year! That wouldn’t work, I don’t think–though perhaps I might just make it a post I continually update rather than a sidebar thing) and the latest of the books I’ve edited (that are available to the public, at least). Well, that’s not technically true–I included the first books of trilogies. And I’m not going to link A Practical Guide to Monsters until we have final cover art, so I linked A Practical Guide to Dragons instead (which I didn’t edit).

But the sidebar feels a little more like a sidebar now. You’ll have to tell me what you think of the site here, after all the changes I’ve been making. I love that LJ now has a Seattle Expressions style–not exactly the dark feel of a grimoire, but I’m sure I’ll tire of it and change to a darker style again sometime.

I’ve been finding lots of great Avatar usericons through various links from my friend and fellow Avatar fan yedijoda (particular users credited on each icon). But I kept forgetting to upload them! Finally tonight I was thinking I should finally upload the icons I’ve made of my cats, and saw the Avatar icons. So, this is a gratuitous post to use at least one of them. 😀

Tonight has been an infuriating night of kitten mischief. I think Mogget is getting disoriented by the moving boxes–I’m moving in a few weeks and have started to collect boxes at work.

Remember the puzzle I talked about the other day? I started a new one on the card table, and he’s been chewing on it ever since. Today he knocked the entire nearly-completed puzzle off the table onto the floor so he could get at some inner pieces to chew up. So much for that puzzle, I’m thinking.

He’s also getting up on shelves and purposely knocking things down. He loves to do this regularly, but it’s usually shiny little baubles that look like they’d roll or fly well. This time it was a bowl. Thankfully, a wooden one!

He also loves to tip over glasses so he can drink whatever’s in your cup, but I haven’t had one out tonight or I know I’d have a wet spot on the floor.

The more frustrated I get, the more ornery he gets. I know he can sense my frustration, and not just because I tend to yell “NO!” a whole lot more.

Sigh. Time
to put everyything away and just go to bed. He’s rather clingy since I went to LTUE, so when I go to bed he usually follows me and drapes himself across my feet rather possessively. Tends to make me not move while sleeping, which can make for a restless night, but it makes him feel better and I like having a warm furry overgrown kitten hanging out with me. 

Also time to clip the claws. They’re getting a bit sharp and when he’s in a mood like this it’s usually best to have blunt tips!

Via

yedijoda

, pictures of my old haunt , BYU. (I lived in Utah for 4 1/2 years, and finished my undergrad at BYU.) Apparently LJ featured

provophoto

 on the f
ront page today, and she caught it. I rarely go look at the LJ front page, so I’m glad she did, because this guy has some great shots. I’d love to have a digital camera to play with that kind of stuff. I mean, I can do a lot of that stuff with my film camera, but lately I’m just not patient enough for my film camera and I kind of feel like I’d be able to improve my shots if I could see them as I’m taking them.

At any rate, if you want a good idea of what Provo, Utah looks like, this LJ is a great place to see.

(This is where LTUE happened, actually, the conference I’ve been yammering about all week.)

I was curious who was reading me–and how many, because who knows? it could be 2, it could be 20–besides the obvious (people who have friended me), so I’ve been trying for months to figure out how to do something like my Blogger friends do with a sitemeter.
I’ve finally figured it out. It took a while because LJ doesn’t allow javascript, so you have to do HTML only, but I’ve had it up and running all this week, and I’m simply amazed at how far away people are reading. (You can browse it yourself and see how fun it can be. Button is on my sidebar.)
Australia! Not one, but at least two people in Oz are reading. Plus a Canadian in Alberta… hm. Actually, I think I know who that is. Then there are readers all the way from Tampa to Berkeley to Tennessee to Long Island. I can’t imagine what the person in Egypt found interesting. Also, at least one visit from each of Germany, France, and the UK. And Hong Kong, too. Very cool. No South Americans, but the rest of the continents (excepting Antarctica) seem to have at least one visit.
I figure the Somerville, MA person is a
friend of mine, and I think I know who the Delaware person is, though I could be wrong. Actually, come to think of it, I might know who the Germany person is. I know I have lots of friends who read, though most of them have already friended me so the only time the tracker would pick them up is if they comment. (Comment! I love comments!) But there are about 40 of you out there who I never see except through this new handy device. Who knew there were more out there than just the handful who comment?
It’s rather daunting, actually. Does this mean I have to keep doing meaningful posts and not just posts about my cats? The pressure!
But that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll come up with stuff to talk about. And as I’ve said before, if you leave a note in the comments letting me know other things you’d like to know about–questions that can be answered publicly that haven’t already been answered or that wouldn’t readily be answered by the submission guidelines, etc.–question away. It gives me direction for my posts. 🙂

Thought I’d share a few pictures from the conference, too. These are just the ones taken from my cute little cameraphone, as the pictures taken on my real camera have yet to be developed. Ah, that’s something I should be doing today.

Wednesday night, Feb. 14–Pre-con dinner with guests of honor and special guests

I  can’t name everyone in the picture, because I had to absorb so many names (if you’re in these pictures, please comment with your name so I can remember!), but that’s Nancy Fulda in the foreground (

nancyfulda

) and Howard Tayler in the center wearing black (

howardtayler

). To Howard’s left (the right of him in the picture) is Mark Daymont.

Our hosts, Aleta and James Clegg.

Symposium staff Peyton and Josh. Josh was the guest liaison, very helpful guy. Peyton has been on the staff for a couple years, too, I think.

A moment of fun. Josh’s wife in the foreground.

Peyton and her husband. On the left, Mark Daymont, a 5th grade teacher who is involved with the Christa McAuliffe Space Center in Pleasant Grove where we did a Star Trek spaceship simulator earlier that day. Very fun, and I can see how fascinating it would be for the kids it serves. They’re doing a great thing there.

Um… yeah. Attempt at self-portrait. Why do my attempts at self-portraiture often come off looking like I’m sickly? I suppose it doesn’t help that I was a bit on the sick side that week, battling a sinus infection that I’m still trying to get rid of. Add the fact that I’d traveled all day and wasn’t wearing makeup… Yeah.

Me and

nancyfulda

.

More pictures of the rest of the weekend later–that’s enough for one post.

Continued from Part 7

(We’re getting near the end, don’t worry! This was only a one-hour talk.)

Now, we’re on to Tiffany’s second draft. With this particular draft, Tiffany focused on improving the initial buildup.

 Then she turned in the next draft (just like the other thumbnails).

I love that last line, “If only I had the key, she thought. But she knew where it was–six feet under the soil of Alexandria, circling her mother’s wrotting wrist.”

• Go to conferences
• Do local promotion—library, school visits, actively talking to booksellers before the book comes out and let them know you’re a local author, be willing to do what it takes to get out there and promote your book
• Keep a blog or LJ.
• HAVE A WEBSITE—and make it as good and informative as you can make it
• network with other writers—sense of community, and gets the word out to other book-loving people

%
3Cp>And keep writing! Make your second book and your third book even better than your first. Tiffany has already written book 2 and is now working on writing book 3 and revising book 2.

Oh, I lied. That’s something they didn’t hear in the presentation! …because I have been thinking about it ever since.

There are happy ever afters, too.

Because when you’re doing what you love, that is a happy ever after, despite–and because of–all the work you continue to do. 

Thanks for listening. Hope this has been helpful. Any questions? (Really, I mean it. Ask your questions and I can address them in a later post.)

Continued from Part 6

Yesterday, we left off with the outline stage of In the Serpent’s Coils. Let’s continue with the rest of the revision process. Like I said yesterday, Tiffany went through 6 different drafts with me from first sample on 8/29/05 to turning in final draft to me on 7/31/06. So, over the course of a year—and this includes writing time, due to the nature of this kind of series work—she went from sample chapter and outline to full, fleshed-out manuscript.

Then, when you’re working with an editor, this process continues, and that editor will be the person asking even more questions. 

• Mostly big-picture, but some details
• How can we increase the sense of mystery?
• Why are the letters so intriguing to Corrine? (be more specific)
• What is Corrine’s motivation? (perhaps she’s a “detective”/snoop, curious girl who can’t stop investigating) How can we establish her personality better? 
• What is Corrine’s talent (magically)?
• How can we flesh out the characterization of minor characters?
• How many students at the school?
• How did reform schools work in that time period?
• How can we condense/expand to give a better
  sense of the passage of time?

My friend invited me to a movie night up in Seattle, but I wasn’t really feeling up to driving all the way up there tonight after work (still fighting this stupid sinus infection–so much that I even decided to give up dairy again, this time for at least several weeks to see if it will help), so instead I finished the puzzle I’ve been working on from time to time. 

(Aside: I’ve been doing it on a card table that is actually from the back of my car. Did you know that the wheel well cover in a Honda CRV is a card table? I think that’s the coolest feature of my car.)

I want to start a new puzzle. They’re strangely relaxing. Mind-numbing. Don’t require the thought that the knitting projects I’ve currently got going do.

So, perhaps this nice pretty picture will
let me tear up the old one. It’s too pretty to take apart again!

Continued from Part 5

(For anyone coming to this late, this is a talk from Life, the Universe, and Everything, a symposium/convention hosted at BYU in Provo, Utah, every February.)

Now we get to the most interesting part! You’ve found a publisher who is interested in your book. You get an offer! Now what?

Philip Pullman: This is where editors come in. Their function is to snatch the book from you and run away quickly!

Tamora Pierce: Yes, and then to come back and say, “Okay, here’s what you were doing.” And you’re sitting there: Wow. I’m smarter than I thought. 

• A good partner brings out the best in you
• Trust your editor, and she’ll trust you
• A good relationship is all about compromise
• Honesty is the best policy (or, hell hath no fury like an editor scorned)

 
A good partner brings out the best in you

This is the crux of the editor-author relationship, I think. The collaboration that occurs during this process should bring out the very best in you as an author.

Specific examples

 

So let’s look at the collaboration between one editor (me) and one author (Tiffany Trent/

tltrent

) and talk about the work that went into In the Serpent’s Coils, the first volume of the Hallowmere series.

%2
6nbsp;

In this ten-book dark fantasy series for teen girls, six girls from around the world are drawn together to rescue their missing schoolmates and prevent catastrophy in an epic battle between dark Fey worlds and the mortal world.

 

From the back cover: Ever since her parents died, Corrine’s dreams have been filled with fairies warning her of impending peril. When she’s sent to live at Falston Manor, she thinks she’s escaped the danger stalking her. Instead the dreams grow stronger, just as girls begin disappearing from school.

 

Then Corrine discovers letters of forbidden love by a medieval monk who writes of his entanglement with a race of vampiric Fey—the same Fey who haunt Corrine’s dreams. Who are these creatures and what do they
want? Corrine knows only one thing for sure: another girl will disappear soon, and that girl just might be her.

 

This book will be released this fall, so that means from conception in the summer of 2005 to publication it’s just over two years. More, if you count the time that Tiffany worked on her original idea that led to her being chosen to write Hallowmere, but you’d have to ask her how long she’d been mulling the idea around.

 

In series publishing, I as the editor get a chance to see the creative process at a much earlier stage. It’s very exciting to be there from the initial concept. So I think that as I take you on the journey of developing a series and one volume in that series, you’ll be able to think about how you might apply the things I talk about to your own manuscript at any stage of the process, both in your self-editing process as well as in how you work with an editor.

 

Back when I first started working for Mirrorstone, I was given a task: to find a series for teen girls. I’m a big fan of the work of Holly Black (

blackholly

 ) and Libba Bray (

libba_bray

)—if you aren’t familiar with Tithe or A Great and Terrible Beauty, you should be!—and I was interested in seeing something like that, only set in the U.S. and perhaps historical, definitely dark, involving the Fey world (fairies). I wanted it to be creepy and suspenseful, but not gross hack-and-slash horror. I wanted it to be dark, but not gory.
So with this and a list of other ideas in mind, I contacted several authors and asked them to pitch a story to me.

 

It was actually a local author, Shannon Hale, who led me to Tiffany. I asked Shannon if she had any friends who wrote the kind of teen dark fantasy I was interested in acquiring. As a matter of fact, she had a friend who wrote just what I was looking for!

 

So Tiffany Trent, Shannon’s friend from grad school, “auditioned” alongside many other capable authors. Each author sent me a proposal that included a series outline, an outline of the first proposed book, and a sample chapter. (It should be noted that of the authors who auditioned, each had also completed at least one novel, whether published or not, as well–so they had shown they could write a full novel, in addition to their proposal.)

Here’s the first two pages of Tiffany’s sample chapter. (click on the image for a better look)

Let’s look at some of the things that attracted me to this sample:

 

• the writing was evocative, very good at using imagery
• she created a clear sense of mystery from the beginning
• the letter was a great way of bringing a different time period story into the mix, and I’d been very intrigued by her proposal of letters because I’d been recently intrigued by Possession
• the main character gets into immediate trouble, and you want to know what’s going on and why her uncle is so upset
• Tiffany’s writing was lyrical—a really well-established voice 

But her sample wasn’t perfect, and her outline needed clarification. I actually asked her to flesh out the outline before making a final decision.

Questions at this stage: 

• Very big-picture, plot-oriented
• Is this the right place to start the book? (actually, I’m not sure that I asked this one, but you’ll see in later drafts that she asked it herself)
• How can we build the relationships between the characters?
• What are the rules of this magic system?
• What point of the story is the climax?

Hallowmere was then born.

 
And the work was just beginning. Tiffany went through 6 different drafts from first sample on 8/29/05 to turning in final draft to me on 7/31/06. So, over the course of a year—and this includes writing time, due to the nature of this kind of series work—she went from sample chapter and outline to full, fleshed-out manuscript. 

As this post has already gotten disproportionately long, we’ll look at that process further in depth next time.