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I am trying to put together some rules for editing fiction that can be handed out to prospective editors at Daverana Enterprises.
I fumbled with it at first, and then started looking for things that others have said about the process.
The first thing that needs to be done is to read the book through completely to get an overall sense of it. At the same time, you have to keep a list of the characters, place names, descriptions, and any peculiar word choices of the writer.
And I stumbled upon this blog and an excellent post.
Editors and copy editors, even with the best of intentions, can make a mess of a book and destroy the author’s vision. This is especially true in the case of genre fiction, where the author’s vision may turn upon one or many unique concepts.
Many genre authors, especially in fantasy and sf, create their own words. The word is defined and then applied throughout the manuscript.
In the old days I used to keep voluminous notes on everything I did. Most of them were destroyed by Jean over the years. That was back when she was still Hank.
As the years progressed post-Jean, I became more and more stressed out when I attempted to keep track of things. It became a given that I would have attacks of panic and extended moments of feeling overwhelmed. This is a PTSD thing that happens in the silences, but not during the episodes that created it.
After bollocking up several attempts to keep a coherent timeline on my series, I resorted to the intellectual equivalent of counting on my fingers.
It did not work out so well.
Yesterday Steven instructed me to create a timeline (and stop procrastinating about it) for book four of the lycan series.
On reflection, I realized that I really needed to go back and start working on the timeline with the first book and work my way up to book four.
And….. (drum roll please)
TA DAH!
I had fucked up.
So I am back to fixing book 1.
Fortunately, it’s simple; just a bit time consuming.
Yesterday, Tim, AKA 50ftAnt, and I were talking about how the recession and other matters were reshaping or had the potential to reshape the face of this country. We are definitely going to see the end of long commutes as gasoline prices will never be completely reasonable again.
And then I stumbled on this article in today’s NY Times about shrinking communities. Deliberately shrinking communities.
Over the past few months that my books have not been available, I have gotten some interesting fan mail.
Some of it contained fan fiction.
Some of that fan fiction was slash fiction.
And it was from my lycan books no less.
I wonder if my usual readers are ready for this?
Kynyr Maguire and Finn MacIver in bed together?
Kynyr Maguire and his arch enemy Malthus enjoying a reach around?
I am not certain what to make of this, but my daughter says this type of fiction is a high compliment.
At the moment, I am primarily working on the revisions of Kynyr’s War, book four of my Lycan Blood series. The version that Renebooks published in 07 was only 89k words. The current revised version is 104,083 and growing.
In order to keep the length down, so that Jean did not decide to split the book up, I had dropped one of the sub plots, but that left the final book in the series insufficiently foreshadowed.
Book 7, The Shadowed Princes, is where the thanes arrive to decide who will rule Red Wolf following the death of Chieftain Claw Redhand: his bastard grandson or a thane-appointed regent for the twin infant sons of his daughter, Merissa.
Now, I am showing the full machinations of Thane Clennan Doherty and his family who believe they ought to be ruling Red Wolf.
Amazonfail is in full swing. I just examined what I could find on it and decided that it is a malicious attempt by Amazon.com to dump their agenda on us.
List of Banned Books by Amazon
Another Excellent Article This one is extremely comprehensive.
More and more I am becoming convinced that the majority of people do not understand what the term “Deus Ex Machina” actually means.
Literally it is the “God in the Machine.” The machine originated in ancient Greece. It was a platform on which a “god” was lowered onto the stage to resolve the plot at the end, rescue the protagonist, or settle disputes.
What it is not:
When something is properly foreshadowed then it is NOT a deus ex machina.
Case in point.
I gave Talons a magic horn that summons help or stirs up people to act. The horn had featured in a series of other tales. And Dynarien gave the horn to her in order to both help her and gain some favor with her.
When Aejys is in trouble and Talons can’t reach her, she blows the horn to get help.
Three people answer the call to rescue Aejys from the hands of Lord Hoon: Pieface, Dynarien, and the Mad Lich Carloff.
Foreshadowing to go along with this spoiler.
1) it had been made clear that Hoon knew he was risking the possiblity that the Lich King of Norendel would notice his presence in the lich’s territory.
2) Pieface had been following Talons around for two books already trying to get her to kiss him.
3) Dynarien had been trying to get a kiss (and a bit more) from Talons, so that demi-god was lurking about as always.
4) Talons had been looking for Aejys in the first place, so it was logical for her to give the horn a try right then.
Yet, I have been accused of using a deus ex machina there.
What do you think?
If you are going to suggest covers or send me cover art: Don’t. All of that goes to artdirector@daverana.com. My art director is Owen Kuhn and all decisions about art are his to make.
Don’t send me manuscripts.
Those go to editor@daverana.com for novels and submissions@flashingswords.com for shorts you want to sub to the magazine.
I’m the publisher, not the editor or the art director.
If you are reviewer and want a copy of the books for review, or if you want to interview one of our authors, contact our PR person, Susie Hawes.
If you are wanting to discuss advertising and such, you want to talk to our marketing director.
I never could do anything right in Jean/Hank’s view. I was constantly worn out and exhausted, rarely getting enough sleep because I was always being dragged out of bed to fix things. I worked full time outside the home, while Jean freelanced. I took care of the yard, cleaned the house, and ran the errands, cooked the meals, and helped Sovay with her homework.
While Jean freelanced, sat on his butt, and smoked pot 24/7.
I learned to bake when I was 6, and by 13 I was doing all of the cooking and cleaning because both of my folks were working outside the home. They appreciated my efforts and always told me what a good cook and baker I was. All of my extended family used to drop in on Friday afternoons and evenings because I baked cakes and cookies and pies on Fridays.
More than once my horde of little boy cousins planned and carried out cookie raids, escaping with either a plate of cookies or an entire pie still warm from the oven. It was both an aggravation and a great compliment for my ability as a baker.
However, Jean thought I could not cook or bake worth a damn.
Anyone who has baked brownies knows that when you first take them out of the oven they are still a bit soft and gooey until they cool.
One day I made a batch of chocolate butterscotch swirl brownies. I took them out to cool and while they were cooling, Jean decided to send me on an errand. When I returned from my errand, tired and just wanting to sit down with a brownie and a cup of coffee, I discovered that Jean had decided to fix my lousy baking by putting the brownies back in the oven.
The brownies had hardened into a brick.
You could not even get a knife into them.
I lost it and told Jean to stop second-guessing my baking.
Jean got ugly with me over the way the brownies had turned out.
And I threw the entire plate of brownies at him.
I sailed it across the room at his head like a dark chocolate discus.
He ducked.
The brownies smacked the plaster wall and KABOOM! The brownies made a huge hole in the wall.
After that Jean left my brownies alone except to eat them when I baked a batch.
Dagstine was just the straw that broke the camel’s back and it was connected to the thread that he started about the Locus article (Paula Guran and Mamatas etc.).
Things had been setting up for months for trouble. Mostly not connected to Dagstine.
The phone went sailing out the back patio window on the second floor. However, Mike, I did once put a plate of brownies through a wall. I was aiming at my ex-husband’s head. He ducked and the brownies made a huge hole in the wall. I don’t know if I have told the “Tale of the Brownie Brick” in this blog or not, if not ask and I’ll share it.
I am fundamentally unable to cry. I seize up and stop myself every time I start to. I swallow the urge back and beat it down until it is gone. I think that pattern of behavior is more common to men than it is to women. Maybe if I were capable of letting myself cry about things, it would not build up as bad.
I promised myself when I left my ex-husband, that I would never cry. I can probably count the times I have cried since 1995 on one hand. One of them was when I finally told someone what had happened to me. Their response was to tell me to stop sounding like a victim, so I never again cried when I talked about the dark stuff of my life.
Another time was when my dog died. That was two years ago.
But I associated tears with weakness. After I left Jean, I was determined never to be weak again.
Enough digressions.
I wanted to get more than one of my series revised and dusted off to bring them out from Daverana. I had not taken a good look at them (with the exception of the lycan novels) in several years. I intended to get a bunch out at the same time as quick as I could so that I could meet the requirements to get our books carried by Fictionwise.
It took me months to come out of that bad depression that consumed me from last October to this January, and had a few niggling strings continued to hold onto me.
The trouble began several months ago. One of the editors on my various series…
I should just have tossed them all at Steven. My bad, but I did not want to overburden him. Up until now I have been lucky. Debbie Moorhouse, Karen E. Taylor, and Steven Beeho, all understood what I had been trying for and my books benefited from that. My vision remained intact.
I especially wanted to make certain that there were no inconsistencies that had developed over the years that I have been writing these novels in their interconnected world.
Anyways, one of the editors on my 3 series that are undergoing revision and updating contacted me on IM, alarmed at the piss poor quality of the books (or at least that’s my interpretation of events). It bothered me a bit and a lot of my insecurities cropped up. But I had not had time to have a look at the edits.
Several conversations in IM later, over a space of months, it became more and more apparent that s/he did not understand my vision at all and was demanding changes and alterations that violated the entire cannon of novels set in Daverana. Then I finally looked at the edit on the first book and it was like being smacked upside the head in just enough ways to set off my old emotional injuries — I got bitten in my wounds so to speak.
I tossed the edited books at Steven and asked him to remove all of the stuff this editor had done that were inappropriate and edit them himself. But by then I was heading for a break.
Now we come to the echo chamber effect.
You see, nothing happens as a result of a single incident.
DAGSTINE
Dagstine has been gunning for me a long time. I guess I kind of gave him the opening to hit me with a comment/series of comments on Shocklines about ‘ghettoes.’
He jumped onto the bandwagon there to jump me for using the ‘term’ ghetto in connection with genre publishing. (I will save that for another time). Ramsey Campbell smacked him down.
Dagstine knew very well, because he has spent years combing through my blogs about the ruckus 5 years ago that was set off by a series of posts on my LJ. That was the debut of my use of the term ‘ghetto’ out where the horror community could see it.
Science fiction and fantasy authors have been discussing the ‘ghetto’ aspect of our genre since the 1960s when I was a teenager. It is not something new.
So then he went and dredged up Paula Guran’s article and Mamatas’ reaction to it. I don’t think I need to point you at the connection here to me.
ODARK
When Jane Letty finally threw in the towel and closed her agency, there was a lot of crying involved on her part. Tears have always affected me strongly. Even though I rarely permit myself to cry, I still intensely feel them back there trying to get out.
I made a thread at Odark about it. By then I was in wounded animal mode, because I loved Jane dearly. I offended everyone including Brian Keene. Although Brian later demonstrated that he had an inkling of what had happened, and we were able to make up our differences.
I had a long talk with Rich Ristow about Odark two nights ago on the chat channel at Warcraft. And, the reverberations in the echo chamber got bad.
During the period following my Jane Letty meltdown on Odark, they savaged me on a regular basis. It hurt, because I had liked a lot of those people.
It became clear that I had become a pariah in the horror community. My dark fantasy was relegated to the category, fantasy. My use of horror icons, such as vamps and lycans, did not make it dark fantasy in their book, just fantasy.
My gritty writing and storylines did not make it dark fantasy, just a misty gray unappetizing mess.
Then came the alt attack in 07 that left me exhausted on many levels, and I had been led to believe that it was being carried out by members of Odark.
I learned last year that it was Dagstine who did it, not Odark.
Daverana Enterprises
We’ve been having trouble getting money through to my account to pay artists, editors and LSI. The international banking system decided to have a brain fart and returned the money I was sent by my financial backer as “unable to find beneficiary”. Oh, joy.
For a few weeks, I lost my faith in both the banking system and my backer, but that’s another story.
Warcraft
My main spot for relaxing has been on World of Warcraft. That’s where I hide out when I need to de-stress, decompress, and detoxify my problems in the Real World. However, it became the source of a lot of drama as key members left my guild in high dudgeon. So I had no place to relax.
Adding it all together.
Now, pour all those flavors of agony into a bowl, mix well, and what you have is a cake that is too bitter to be eaten once it has been baked by the memories of other dark times it managed to provoke.
I threw the phone out a second floor window, cut up all my cards (bank, medical, credit and so forth), cancelled my paypal account and prepared to basically cease to exist.
Now I am trying to put it all back together. Natalie got me a new phone yesterday and some groceries.
I have been talked down off the ceiling by Tim &Co.
Haven’t slept in 30+ hours.
More details tomrrow.
I told Bodisaniwi this and then everyone started to get on the IMs to talk to me and emails started coming in.
So I am going to assume that most of you are familiar with the play by Tenneesse Williams called “The Glass Menagerie.
And you will understand what I am saying here.
I taught myself, starting in high school, to be cussedness.
But the truth is, I am Laura.
I am “Blue Roses”
I have decided not to re-issue my novels. I am probably not going to completely stop writing, but I just might.
Dagstine was right. I”m the past and I”m without a future. This is my last post. I will leave the blog up, but I will no longer be adding to it.
