It’s new book day! Rebels Rising is out now. Go, buy, read!
And before anyone asks, yes, the series will continue. I’m planning at least one more book. How many more will depend on how hard it is to get the characters out of the trouble they’re in. I don’t know when the next book will be coming. I’m tentatively planning to start writing it this fall, but that is subject to change depending on what else is going on in my life and my career, and how long it takes me to write the other things I’m trying to get written. I’m juggling a lot of stuff right now.
Other FAQ stuff:
I don’t know when/if the books in that series beyond Rebel Mechanics will be out on audio. Apparently, the sales of the first one in audio were “modest,” so the audio publisher isn’t jumping to grab rights to the rest. I don’t know how Audible membership sales affect their sales (this one was published by someone else, not Audible), so I don’t know if using Audible credits counts or if they only care about outright purchases, or what. So, anyway, the answer is still I don’t know, and I’m not sure what can be done to change that, other than perhaps requesting that your library get the CDs, which might mean enough sales that they want the rest of the series. The idea with going with that publisher in the first place, rather than Audible, was that they were supposedly good about getting their books into libraries, while Audible was at the time only talking about doing digital versions.
If you can’t find this book at your library or in your library system, you may have to request that they add it to their collection. This is different from requesting it from their collection or putting it on hold. Most libraries have some way for you to tell them about a book you want that they don’t have. You can ask a librarian about that when you visit the library. There may be a form to fill out. Your library system may also have an online form for you to request a book. Look for something like “request to add item to collection.” You just fill in the author, title and whatever other info you have (most of it you can get from the Amazon listing). You can do this for any book, audiobook, movie, CD, etc. They may or may not do it, but they do listen to what patrons want if they think it’s something more than just one person would want. In this case, there’s a pretty good chance they have the first book in the series, so they may just need cluing in that there are more books in that series.
I don’t know exactly when the next book will be out, since I don’t know for certain when I’ll be writing it. I’d guess maybe around this time next year would be likely, but that’s not set in stone.
Showing posts with label steampunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steampunk. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 04, 2017
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
One Week to Rebels Rising
I guess time flies when you’re busy because it’s only one week until Rebels Rising comes out!
And I have pre-order links:
Amazon
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo
These are all for the e-book. It takes a little longer for the paperback and hardcover editions to come up.
And if you just want to see the cover without having to go to a bookstore site, here it is:
And I have pre-order links:
Amazon
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo
These are all for the e-book. It takes a little longer for the paperback and hardcover editions to come up.
And if you just want to see the cover without having to go to a bookstore site, here it is:
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Double Release Day!
It's double release day for me! Rebel Mechanics in paperback and Rebel Magisters released into the world. Fly, fly my pretties! And yes, I know, the Kindle version of Rebel Mechanics is now more expensive than the paperback, but I don't get to set those prices.
To address a frequently asked question:
Yes, there will be more books in that series. I originally plotted a trilogy, but the second book veered from my original outline, which may have a major ripple effect on the next book, so I don't know if the next book will end the series or if it will take more books after that. There are a couple of other things I need to work on first while this one brews in the back of my head, and then there will be some research required. I hope to get to work on the next book this fall.
In fact, that was a big distraction for me yesterday, when I was supposed to be writing. I found myself fantasizing about a writing retreat -- going away somewhere without a lot of distractions and just writing for a few days. I had this idea in my head of a cabin on a lake in the woods, then I got really sidetracked searching for such a thing. I kept finding places that were near lakes, but not on lakes. A lot of the state parks in Oklahoma have cabins, but very few on lakes.
Then I found one that's not too long a drive away (near the Texas border) that has lakeside cabins they call "primitive." They're not too terribly primitive, as they have electricity, AC/heat, and a bathroom. They just don't have TVs, WiFi, or kitchens. But they are right on the lake, with a screened in back porch overlooking the lake. I figure there's a lot I could do with an electric teakettle and my mini crock pot for food without needing to haul around perishables, and think of what I could get done with nothing to do other than read or write, with no Internet or TV. I could spend most of the day sitting on that porch and writing. When I hit a rough patch or get stuck, I could take a walk along the lake or in the woods. You have to supply your own bedding, but that just means I can haul up my featherbed and make myself a comfy nest. So, that's my incentive -- when I finish the project I'm working on and one other thing, I'll go to Book Camp and get a solid start on the next Rebel Mechanics book.
But in the meantime, here's a little something I put together last night, using vintage film footage from around the turn of the century. It's not actually taken from an airship, but rather a pan around from the top of a tall building, but it feels like you're flying, which reminded me of the airship scene in Rebel Mechanics.
To address a frequently asked question:
Yes, there will be more books in that series. I originally plotted a trilogy, but the second book veered from my original outline, which may have a major ripple effect on the next book, so I don't know if the next book will end the series or if it will take more books after that. There are a couple of other things I need to work on first while this one brews in the back of my head, and then there will be some research required. I hope to get to work on the next book this fall.
In fact, that was a big distraction for me yesterday, when I was supposed to be writing. I found myself fantasizing about a writing retreat -- going away somewhere without a lot of distractions and just writing for a few days. I had this idea in my head of a cabin on a lake in the woods, then I got really sidetracked searching for such a thing. I kept finding places that were near lakes, but not on lakes. A lot of the state parks in Oklahoma have cabins, but very few on lakes.
Then I found one that's not too long a drive away (near the Texas border) that has lakeside cabins they call "primitive." They're not too terribly primitive, as they have electricity, AC/heat, and a bathroom. They just don't have TVs, WiFi, or kitchens. But they are right on the lake, with a screened in back porch overlooking the lake. I figure there's a lot I could do with an electric teakettle and my mini crock pot for food without needing to haul around perishables, and think of what I could get done with nothing to do other than read or write, with no Internet or TV. I could spend most of the day sitting on that porch and writing. When I hit a rough patch or get stuck, I could take a walk along the lake or in the woods. You have to supply your own bedding, but that just means I can haul up my featherbed and make myself a comfy nest. So, that's my incentive -- when I finish the project I'm working on and one other thing, I'll go to Book Camp and get a solid start on the next Rebel Mechanics book.
But in the meantime, here's a little something I put together last night, using vintage film footage from around the turn of the century. It's not actually taken from an airship, but rather a pan around from the top of a tall building, but it feels like you're flying, which reminded me of the airship scene in Rebel Mechanics.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Airships and Wizards
I'm still sitting around in a warmish house, though fortunately we had rain and cooler temperatures yesterday, so it hasn't been so bad. I have an appointment on Tuesday afternoon, so I hope that means it'll be fixed then. I resorted to social media shaming and got a response from customer service, so I'm currently mentally composing an epic e-mail.
But I will prevail! I have a lot of stuff I need to get done to prepare for this week's trip, and I'm still in reading/research mode. Ideas are starting to take shape in the back of my head. After today, I start seriously working on developing a plot.
I fell down a rabbit hole of On Demand documentaries from the Smithsonian Channel yesterday, with one on the Hindenburg disaster, one on the Masada massacre, and one on Merlin. There's a lot of airship stuff in Rebel Magisters, with some of the characters taking a long airship trip, and when I researched what the cabin would be like and how long the trip would take, a lot of the info I was able to find led back to the Hindenburg and previous airships like it. There are lots of photos of the passenger lounge area and cabins, and then what helped me for figuring out how long the trip I had in mind would take was a press voyage of one of them that went up the east coast. That gave me how long one part of the trip would take, and then I estimated from there based on distance how long the other parts of the trip would take. My interior would be different because mine is a smaller private ship instead of a commercial passenger ship, and it's Victorian rather than 1930s (and runs on magic), but the photos gave me a good sense of what the layout might be and what the private cabins might be like (a lot like a private compartment on a passenger train). Even though the book is done, I still couldn't resist watching the documentary to see if I got any other ideas, but the focus was more on the aftermath and the investigations.
I may have to re-watch the other two because I was working crossword puzzles at the time and only halfway paying attention. The Merlin one was mostly about how that kind of character has been used throughout history and literature. No mention about a dapper gentleman in a business suit. Hmmph. I also got a little sidetracked during that one because there were a lot of paintings of Welsh bards with harps, and that made me want to play my harp. I'm getting pretty good at "Scarborough Fair," in an arrangement that actually uses both hands playing different notes at different times. I may even be ready to move on to the next lesson, finally. That playing with both hands thing really hung me up for a long time.
And now to praying for rain (and cool) while doing laundry and fuming.
But I will prevail! I have a lot of stuff I need to get done to prepare for this week's trip, and I'm still in reading/research mode. Ideas are starting to take shape in the back of my head. After today, I start seriously working on developing a plot.
I fell down a rabbit hole of On Demand documentaries from the Smithsonian Channel yesterday, with one on the Hindenburg disaster, one on the Masada massacre, and one on Merlin. There's a lot of airship stuff in Rebel Magisters, with some of the characters taking a long airship trip, and when I researched what the cabin would be like and how long the trip would take, a lot of the info I was able to find led back to the Hindenburg and previous airships like it. There are lots of photos of the passenger lounge area and cabins, and then what helped me for figuring out how long the trip I had in mind would take was a press voyage of one of them that went up the east coast. That gave me how long one part of the trip would take, and then I estimated from there based on distance how long the other parts of the trip would take. My interior would be different because mine is a smaller private ship instead of a commercial passenger ship, and it's Victorian rather than 1930s (and runs on magic), but the photos gave me a good sense of what the layout might be and what the private cabins might be like (a lot like a private compartment on a passenger train). Even though the book is done, I still couldn't resist watching the documentary to see if I got any other ideas, but the focus was more on the aftermath and the investigations.
I may have to re-watch the other two because I was working crossword puzzles at the time and only halfway paying attention. The Merlin one was mostly about how that kind of character has been used throughout history and literature. No mention about a dapper gentleman in a business suit. Hmmph. I also got a little sidetracked during that one because there were a lot of paintings of Welsh bards with harps, and that made me want to play my harp. I'm getting pretty good at "Scarborough Fair," in an arrangement that actually uses both hands playing different notes at different times. I may even be ready to move on to the next lesson, finally. That playing with both hands thing really hung me up for a long time.
And now to praying for rain (and cool) while doing laundry and fuming.
Thursday, February 04, 2016
Recommended Rebel Mechanics Reading
Yesterday as I was working out how to incorporate actual conflict into my story, I realized I should probably map out the rest of the major events, and then I figured it might be a good idea to take another look at the synopsis for this book, and then I realized that there was a whole plot line I'd planned but was neglecting. I remembered pieces of it, but I'd forgotten the underlying reason. And it's good, so it's not one of those things where once I start writing I can forget the synopsis because I'll have internalized all the good stuff. Of course, I got the idea for what to do about it right as it was time to leave for choir. Fortunately, it wasn't a normal children's choir night. It was the children's worship service, and my kids' role was to sing the prelude, so after they were done standing in front of the church, clapping occasionally and making no sound at all, I slipped out the back and sat in the fellowship hall, frantically scribbling out notes and ideas before I forgot everything.
While I was digging through my notes, I found some of my original notes and thoughts for Rebel Mechanics. I spent about a year doing reading and research related to that story idea before I even had a full plot, and I read more than 50 books while I was developing and researching that story. Since it may be a while before anyone gets to read the sequel, I thought I'd share some recommended reading of things that went into this book that you might also enjoy.
One of the first things I did when I had the first germ of an idea that my heroine might be a governess was re-read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I read a few other Bronte works while I was at it). My initial concept was to go kind of Gothic with it, with my heroine working in a house full of secrets and her employer a mysterious single man responsible for children. That went by the wayside once I started developing characters because I don't really do dark and brooding very well, but this is kind of the ultimate governess book.
Another inspiration book was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emma Orczy. That's where I went with the bandit thing once I realized dark and brooding wasn't going to work. This novel is about a nobleman who secretly helps rescue people from the Terror following the French Revolution, and he deflects suspicion by acting like a fop. I decided to make my bandit act like a nerd instead. This book reads surprisingly well even now, and it's fun to think of an adventure novel from the early 1900s that was written by a woman.
To get a sense of the Gilded Age New York in which I wanted to work, I read several novels by Edith Wharton, including The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. There was also Washington Square by Henry James. These are actually set about a decade earlier than my book, when living up by the park was practically being pioneering, but the manners and activities of the upper crust are similar. For the opposite side of the equation, Maggie by Stephen Crane provided a look at life in the tenements and among the street kids. I wielded that book like a weapon at every editor I dealt with who questioned the slang and language of the kids (particularly the term "outta sight"). The book was written in that period, and I took a lot of my street kid slang right from it (though I also made up some of the Rebel Mechanics' slang).
I know that novels don't necessarily count as a reference, but in these cases, the novelists were capturing a particular era and were trying to do so at least somewhat accurately. They were novels written either in the period itself or written by people who had lived that life in that era, so they were based on first-person observation. I also read a bunch of entirely unrelated books that were written around that period. I was particularly interested in the use of language by novelists working in that era because it gave a good sense of what words were and weren't in use at the time. For instance, there's a lot of question about when the word "okay" came into common use, but since I didn't find it in any novels of the period, I'm not using it in these books. That can be a real struggle. I didn't realize just how much I use it.
On the non-fiction side of things, I got some sense of the life growing up in Gilded Age New York from Consuelo Vanderbilt's memoir, The Glitter and the Gold (if you get the Smithsonian Channel, her story is one of those featured in the Million Dollar Princesses series). She was the heiress who married the Duke of Marlborough, and her story is fascinating, but for my purposes, I focused on the story of her childhood.
For the other end of the economic spectrum, How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis is a heartbreaking look at lower Manhattan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I think one of the earlier editions in which the photos were turned into engravings is available on Project Gutenberg, but it's worth it to find a more recent edition that has the actual photos. Riis was a journalist and social reformer who took a camera into the tenements to document the living conditions, especially among recent immigrants. We studied this book in journalism school, and I dug it out again as a reference for this book.
There were dozens more books on life in New York in the 1800s, as well as books on the American Revolution, since I had to research how things happened in order to move the events to a different time. I read about a few other revolutions to see what other things might happen. Plus I researched airships and steam engines, the development of electrical power, other transportation technologies, clothing, and interior design of the period. Fortunately, most of those mansions along Central Park were well-photographed because almost all of them were torn down within a couple of decades. I suppose I should find my list of sources and put a "read more about it" page on my web site.
While I was digging through my notes, I found some of my original notes and thoughts for Rebel Mechanics. I spent about a year doing reading and research related to that story idea before I even had a full plot, and I read more than 50 books while I was developing and researching that story. Since it may be a while before anyone gets to read the sequel, I thought I'd share some recommended reading of things that went into this book that you might also enjoy.
One of the first things I did when I had the first germ of an idea that my heroine might be a governess was re-read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I read a few other Bronte works while I was at it). My initial concept was to go kind of Gothic with it, with my heroine working in a house full of secrets and her employer a mysterious single man responsible for children. That went by the wayside once I started developing characters because I don't really do dark and brooding very well, but this is kind of the ultimate governess book.
Another inspiration book was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emma Orczy. That's where I went with the bandit thing once I realized dark and brooding wasn't going to work. This novel is about a nobleman who secretly helps rescue people from the Terror following the French Revolution, and he deflects suspicion by acting like a fop. I decided to make my bandit act like a nerd instead. This book reads surprisingly well even now, and it's fun to think of an adventure novel from the early 1900s that was written by a woman.
To get a sense of the Gilded Age New York in which I wanted to work, I read several novels by Edith Wharton, including The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. There was also Washington Square by Henry James. These are actually set about a decade earlier than my book, when living up by the park was practically being pioneering, but the manners and activities of the upper crust are similar. For the opposite side of the equation, Maggie by Stephen Crane provided a look at life in the tenements and among the street kids. I wielded that book like a weapon at every editor I dealt with who questioned the slang and language of the kids (particularly the term "outta sight"). The book was written in that period, and I took a lot of my street kid slang right from it (though I also made up some of the Rebel Mechanics' slang).
I know that novels don't necessarily count as a reference, but in these cases, the novelists were capturing a particular era and were trying to do so at least somewhat accurately. They were novels written either in the period itself or written by people who had lived that life in that era, so they were based on first-person observation. I also read a bunch of entirely unrelated books that were written around that period. I was particularly interested in the use of language by novelists working in that era because it gave a good sense of what words were and weren't in use at the time. For instance, there's a lot of question about when the word "okay" came into common use, but since I didn't find it in any novels of the period, I'm not using it in these books. That can be a real struggle. I didn't realize just how much I use it.
On the non-fiction side of things, I got some sense of the life growing up in Gilded Age New York from Consuelo Vanderbilt's memoir, The Glitter and the Gold (if you get the Smithsonian Channel, her story is one of those featured in the Million Dollar Princesses series). She was the heiress who married the Duke of Marlborough, and her story is fascinating, but for my purposes, I focused on the story of her childhood.
For the other end of the economic spectrum, How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis is a heartbreaking look at lower Manhattan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I think one of the earlier editions in which the photos were turned into engravings is available on Project Gutenberg, but it's worth it to find a more recent edition that has the actual photos. Riis was a journalist and social reformer who took a camera into the tenements to document the living conditions, especially among recent immigrants. We studied this book in journalism school, and I dug it out again as a reference for this book.
There were dozens more books on life in New York in the 1800s, as well as books on the American Revolution, since I had to research how things happened in order to move the events to a different time. I read about a few other revolutions to see what other things might happen. Plus I researched airships and steam engines, the development of electrical power, other transportation technologies, clothing, and interior design of the period. Fortunately, most of those mansions along Central Park were well-photographed because almost all of them were torn down within a couple of decades. I suppose I should find my list of sources and put a "read more about it" page on my web site.
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Charging Forward!
I'm diving into my latest stab at being super organized and productive. We'll see how long this one lasts. I figured out how much time I really need to be devoting to various priorities, and it was surprising how much time that still left me in the day. So I set out to schedule all those priority activities on my calendar, leaving the rest of the day unscheduled. I also got specific about what I wanted to do for each of those priorities. I've tried things like this in the past, where I said I wanted to spend an hour a day on publicity and marketing activities, and then it fell through because I wasn't sure what to do with that time. So I'm making a to-do list within the priorities.
If I go by my usual pattern, I'll be gung-ho for about a week, and then life will intrude on my carefully prepared schedule, and it will all fall apart. But I'm hoping this makes enough sense that it might stick. If I feel like I'm making progress and accomplishing a lot, I'm more likely to just make it part of my life. If I find myself realizing that I'm getting so much done, producing work, increasing sales, and getting my house in order, and I still feel like I have free time, then it may become routine. I've already adjusted some things when I realized that my overly ambitious schedule that I put together last night wasn't at all realistic.
But I have actually accomplished something publicity-wise. For that video I had to do for that subscription box service, I found some cool vintage film that's from a little later than Rebel Mechanics is set but that still gives the same feel. As I was doing my reading from the opening chapter at WorldCon, several lines jumped out at me as perfectly matching the footage. So, here's a short teaser/intro video I put together, just playing around with iMovie to see what I could do:
I don't know if it will sell any books for me, but apparently YouTube is a big deal among YA readers, so having a presence there is a good thing. So far, though, most of my social media efforts seem to just sit there without getting a lot of traction or feedback other than from my personal friends. I'm trying to figure out how to get some impact there.
This was also good for getting me back into the mindset of that world because this afternoon, I'm going to start work on book 2 in that series. I wrote a synopsis for that book way back when I was writing the first book so that we could submit the proposal for the first book with the plans for the series. I'm sure that a lot has changed in the past five years, so it may require some reworking, and then I have to figure out what happens in the first few chapters so I can write the beginning.
At least I already have a title in mind, so I won't have to go through that process again for a while.
Now, off to go be productive some more!
If I go by my usual pattern, I'll be gung-ho for about a week, and then life will intrude on my carefully prepared schedule, and it will all fall apart. But I'm hoping this makes enough sense that it might stick. If I feel like I'm making progress and accomplishing a lot, I'm more likely to just make it part of my life. If I find myself realizing that I'm getting so much done, producing work, increasing sales, and getting my house in order, and I still feel like I have free time, then it may become routine. I've already adjusted some things when I realized that my overly ambitious schedule that I put together last night wasn't at all realistic.
But I have actually accomplished something publicity-wise. For that video I had to do for that subscription box service, I found some cool vintage film that's from a little later than Rebel Mechanics is set but that still gives the same feel. As I was doing my reading from the opening chapter at WorldCon, several lines jumped out at me as perfectly matching the footage. So, here's a short teaser/intro video I put together, just playing around with iMovie to see what I could do:
I don't know if it will sell any books for me, but apparently YouTube is a big deal among YA readers, so having a presence there is a good thing. So far, though, most of my social media efforts seem to just sit there without getting a lot of traction or feedback other than from my personal friends. I'm trying to figure out how to get some impact there.
This was also good for getting me back into the mindset of that world because this afternoon, I'm going to start work on book 2 in that series. I wrote a synopsis for that book way back when I was writing the first book so that we could submit the proposal for the first book with the plans for the series. I'm sure that a lot has changed in the past five years, so it may require some reworking, and then I have to figure out what happens in the first few chapters so I can write the beginning.
At least I already have a title in mind, so I won't have to go through that process again for a while.
Now, off to go be productive some more!
Friday, July 31, 2015
Victorian Dime Novels
One of the things I did to prepare for writing Rebel Mechanics was to read as much as possible of the literature of the period. That didn't just mean the classics. I wanted to find the "popular" fiction of the time. I wanted to read period fiction to get a sense of the use of language -- what words were in use and which ones hadn't yet made it into the vocabulary -- as well as the mindset of people living at the time.
I've often defended commercial fiction by pointing out that many of the books we now consider classics were the popular commercial fiction of their time. Dickens's books were the Victorian equivalent of soap operas, since they were published as serials. But after having read some of the less classic literature of the period, the "trashy romance novels" of the time, which mostly survive thanks to Project Gutenberg, I have to amend that. Dickens wrote books that were more the equivalent of the serialized quality dramas on TV, like the sort of thing that HBO does. Because I have now read the equivalent of the soap operas.
To give you an idea of what these books are like, I'll recap an example from 1891, Pretty Madcap Dorothy: How She Won a Lover by Laura Jean Libbey. Since you probably haven't read it, I'll warn that there are spoilers, but although you can get this book on Project Gutenberg, I really wouldn't recommend reading it, unless you want to punish yourself.
Our heroine (to use the term very loosely) is Dorothy, a teenaged girl working in a book bindery in New York. She's pretty, prone to stamping her tiny foot, has tiny white hands and, as we're often reminded, golden blond curls. She's been seeing Jack, who works at the same book bindery -- actually, she's engaged to him, since she's wearing his ring. At least, he thinks so. She has her eye on Harry, a handsome streetcar conductor who's been seeing Nadine, her co-worker and housemate. When Dorothy ditches Jack after work, he then sees her getting in a cab with Harry, and when he can't follow them, he heads to her place to confront them with a gun when they get back (believe it or not, this is our hero). Dorothy's friend Jessie gives an excuse for Dorothy and calms him down. Jessie counsels Dorothy to be careful, but Dorothy says Jack's poor, but Harry isn't just a streetcar conductor. He's actually rich and educated and is only working on a streetcar because he lost a bet, and this was the penalty. But then things get heated when she lies to Jack about her plans for Labor Day, since he'll be working. She says she's going out with friends but goes with Harry to a festival on Staten Island. Jack finishes work early and tries to catch up with Dorothy, only to learn where she really went. With his gun in his pocket (remember, good guy), Jack catches the last ferry to Staten Island and catches Dorothy with Harry when they get on the ferry to come home. Jack shoots and misses, but Harry cries out about being hit as a way of trying to get Jack in trouble, but no one notices because Dorothy faints (she does that a lot) and falls overboard. Harry runs off, but gallant (and violently jealous) Jack dives overboard and rescues her.
The doctor brought to tend her recognizes her as the daughter of a woman he once knew who vanished when her child was a baby (I'm not sure how he recognizes a teenager from an infant), and he instantly decides she has to come home with him and live in luxury on his palatial Westchester estate. Poor (violently jealous) Jack, who was also a bit out of it, has no idea what happened to her, and Dorothy neglects to inform her friends. Then guess who turns out to be the doctor's trainee, who'll be living at the palatial estate? Harry! He begs her not to tell the doctor about the streetcar thing or about him running off on her. She falls more in love with him than ever and acts it out by being wacky and madcap. He's more worried about the fact that his childless mentor now has someone else he could leave his huge fortune to. To test his concerns, he plans to ask his mentor for a loan, and he figures that if he's willing to lend money, that means he still plans to leave him something. But before he can finish asking, his mentor has to go off on a ride. Of course, he then has a tragic accident, is mortally injured, and with his dying breath, he makes Harry promise to ask Dorothy to marry him, but then they can't get married until his will is read six months later.
She's overjoyed with the proposal, while he's less happy, but he figures that if his mentor demanded he marry the girl, either he'll get the money so he can support her or she'll get the money, which he'll get by marrying her. Then tragedy strikes again when they're at a bonfire festival, and a couple of cinders from the fire fly into Dorothy's eyes, blinding her. The housekeeper sends for her orphaned niece to serve as a companion. But the niece, Iris, is a game-playing, man-stealing bitch, the kind who doesn't so much want the men as she wants the thrill of taking them away from other women (I had a frenemy like that in college). She goes after Harry with guns blazing, and poor, blind Dorothy doesn't stand a chance. At a ball, she overhears everyone talking about how Harry seems to be so in love with Iris and flees outside, falls and hits her head. When she wakes up, her eyesight has been restored (yes, she went blind because her eyes were burned, but she gets her sight back from a bump on the head). She heads back inside, comes upon Harry and Iris in the conservatory, hears him declare his love for Iris, and faints. Meanwhile, Nadine (remember her -- Harry's ex he dumped for Dorothy) has tracked him down and has gone rather mad. She's planning to kill Dorothy, but she doesn't get a good look at Iris and tries to stab her, thinking she's Dorothy, and then runs off. Iris's screams wake Dorothy, who comes across the knife Nadine dropped just as Harry sees her, so of course he thinks Dorothy was the one who tried to stab Iris. He sends Dorothy off, then tells Iris it was a falling shard of glass from the conservatory roof that hit her. He then tells Dorothy their engagement is off. Dorothy refuses to end it, and he says either he leaves or she leaves. The next morning, he's surprised to find that both Iris and Dorothy are gone. Iris left a note saying that the doctor who tended to her wound was very wealthy, proposed to her, and insisted they be married right away. Dorothy's just gone. The next day is the reading of the mentor's will, and it turns out that Dorothy gets the whole estate -- but only if she marries Harry within two weeks.
Meanwhile, back in the city, poor (jealously violent) Jack has been in agony about Dorothy's absence. He quits going to work because he's spending all his time searching for her, worried about what might have become of her. He refuses to listen to the people who remind him that the last time he saw her, she was cheating on him, insisting it must have been a misunderstanding. She's his one true love, and he'll never love anyone else, and he says so in many speechy monologues. One day as he's walking along, a sign falls and hits him on the head, and Jessie -- Dorothy's friend -- is on the scene to tend to him, get him home, and nurse him back to health. As she does so, she falls in love with him, but he doesn't notice because he can think of no one but Dorothy. And then Jack suddenly inherits a vast fortune from a distant relative (which happens all the time).
Harry's frantically searching for Dorothy, so he can have his one, true love: the money. He resorts to seeing a psychic -- and would you believe, the psychic is Nadine! Not that he knows this, but she thinks the woman he's seeking is her and that he's looking for her because she killed Dorothy, so she runs away.
And what about Dorothy? She runs away in the night and is considering throwing herself off a cliff into the sea when she sees a man throw in a bundle. She goes down below to see what it is and finds a baby, and it's still alive. She does what anyone would do in that situation: she gets on a train to New York with the baby. Then she has a hard time finding jobs because having the baby around is a liability, until she sees an ad for a companion to an elderly woman, and she's okay with the baby coming along. One problem: she wants a middle-aged woman. Dorothy's landlady used to work in the theater and fixes her up with a wig, glasses and makeup to look older. Then, would you believe, the job is with Jack's mother, in Jack's house! Dorothy starts to realize that she really does love Jack, after all that's happened (I'm sure the vast fortune and Manhattan mansion have nothing to do with that). But Jack is engaged to Jessie. But Jessie is ill, and she refuses to have the doctor sent for. She confesses to Dorothy that she wants to die. She loves Jack, but she knows Jack doesn't really love her and that he's only marrying her because his mother made him promise to after all she's done for them, nursing him through injury and illness and then taking care of his mother through a near-fatal illness. Now that the wedding is approaching, Jessie isn't sure she can go through with it, knowing he doesn't really love her.
She's so ill that Dorothy insists on sending for the doctor. Their family doctor is ill, so his new assistant shows up. Guess who it is? Harry, of course. He says Jessie will need round-the-clock nursing, and his employer has just hired a nurse. Guess who that is? Nadine, naturally. Nadine sees the way Harry cares for Jessie and becomes convinced that he's in love with her, so she devises a plot to gradually poison Jessie. Jessie's near death when the regular doctor returns, gets suspicious, calls in an expert colleague, and the two of them figure out she's being poisoned. They start thinking of who the suspect might be, and the expert sees Dorothy and is like, "Dude, she's wearing a wig and stage makeup." They figure if she's disguising her identity, she's up to no good, and they watch the way she looks at Jack and figure she's eliminating her rival. They gather the household and announce that they've figured out who might want to kill Jessie, and Dorothy, thinking they're going to accuse Jack, confesses, and the doctors then yank her wig off and reveal her identity. She then runs away, completely forgetting the baby.
But outside, Harry catches her, throws her into a carriage, and rushes her off to marry her, since the deadline is coming up. He's driving so fast, he loses control of the carriage and it crashes. When Dorothy wakes up after the crash, a young woman approaches her. She takes Dorothy to her home, and she seems so sad that Dorothy asks what happened. A wicked servant who had been dismissed vowed revenge, kidnapped her baby and said he threw it off a cliff. Dorothy realizes this is the baby she found, and she knows where it is, but she can't go back there because she's suspected of murder. It turns out that this woman's husband is Jack's business partner, so he'll listen if she vouches for Dorothy. They go back to find that Nadine left a note of confession before disappearing, so Dorothy is cleared. Now Dorothy and Jack can marry, and it turns out Harry did fall in love with Jessie while he was tending her, so they marry. Funny, no one mentions what happens to the money since Dorothy didn't marry Harry. So now they all live happily ever after, violently jealous Jack with the girl who cheated on him, and sweet, caring Jessie with the fickle cad.
Now, aren't you glad that while I tried to play on the tone and structure of Victorian dime novels, I didn't draw too much from their plotting and characterization? I'm not even sure airships would have helped this story.
I've often defended commercial fiction by pointing out that many of the books we now consider classics were the popular commercial fiction of their time. Dickens's books were the Victorian equivalent of soap operas, since they were published as serials. But after having read some of the less classic literature of the period, the "trashy romance novels" of the time, which mostly survive thanks to Project Gutenberg, I have to amend that. Dickens wrote books that were more the equivalent of the serialized quality dramas on TV, like the sort of thing that HBO does. Because I have now read the equivalent of the soap operas.
To give you an idea of what these books are like, I'll recap an example from 1891, Pretty Madcap Dorothy: How She Won a Lover by Laura Jean Libbey. Since you probably haven't read it, I'll warn that there are spoilers, but although you can get this book on Project Gutenberg, I really wouldn't recommend reading it, unless you want to punish yourself.
Our heroine (to use the term very loosely) is Dorothy, a teenaged girl working in a book bindery in New York. She's pretty, prone to stamping her tiny foot, has tiny white hands and, as we're often reminded, golden blond curls. She's been seeing Jack, who works at the same book bindery -- actually, she's engaged to him, since she's wearing his ring. At least, he thinks so. She has her eye on Harry, a handsome streetcar conductor who's been seeing Nadine, her co-worker and housemate. When Dorothy ditches Jack after work, he then sees her getting in a cab with Harry, and when he can't follow them, he heads to her place to confront them with a gun when they get back (believe it or not, this is our hero). Dorothy's friend Jessie gives an excuse for Dorothy and calms him down. Jessie counsels Dorothy to be careful, but Dorothy says Jack's poor, but Harry isn't just a streetcar conductor. He's actually rich and educated and is only working on a streetcar because he lost a bet, and this was the penalty. But then things get heated when she lies to Jack about her plans for Labor Day, since he'll be working. She says she's going out with friends but goes with Harry to a festival on Staten Island. Jack finishes work early and tries to catch up with Dorothy, only to learn where she really went. With his gun in his pocket (remember, good guy), Jack catches the last ferry to Staten Island and catches Dorothy with Harry when they get on the ferry to come home. Jack shoots and misses, but Harry cries out about being hit as a way of trying to get Jack in trouble, but no one notices because Dorothy faints (she does that a lot) and falls overboard. Harry runs off, but gallant (and violently jealous) Jack dives overboard and rescues her.
The doctor brought to tend her recognizes her as the daughter of a woman he once knew who vanished when her child was a baby (I'm not sure how he recognizes a teenager from an infant), and he instantly decides she has to come home with him and live in luxury on his palatial Westchester estate. Poor (violently jealous) Jack, who was also a bit out of it, has no idea what happened to her, and Dorothy neglects to inform her friends. Then guess who turns out to be the doctor's trainee, who'll be living at the palatial estate? Harry! He begs her not to tell the doctor about the streetcar thing or about him running off on her. She falls more in love with him than ever and acts it out by being wacky and madcap. He's more worried about the fact that his childless mentor now has someone else he could leave his huge fortune to. To test his concerns, he plans to ask his mentor for a loan, and he figures that if he's willing to lend money, that means he still plans to leave him something. But before he can finish asking, his mentor has to go off on a ride. Of course, he then has a tragic accident, is mortally injured, and with his dying breath, he makes Harry promise to ask Dorothy to marry him, but then they can't get married until his will is read six months later.
She's overjoyed with the proposal, while he's less happy, but he figures that if his mentor demanded he marry the girl, either he'll get the money so he can support her or she'll get the money, which he'll get by marrying her. Then tragedy strikes again when they're at a bonfire festival, and a couple of cinders from the fire fly into Dorothy's eyes, blinding her. The housekeeper sends for her orphaned niece to serve as a companion. But the niece, Iris, is a game-playing, man-stealing bitch, the kind who doesn't so much want the men as she wants the thrill of taking them away from other women (I had a frenemy like that in college). She goes after Harry with guns blazing, and poor, blind Dorothy doesn't stand a chance. At a ball, she overhears everyone talking about how Harry seems to be so in love with Iris and flees outside, falls and hits her head. When she wakes up, her eyesight has been restored (yes, she went blind because her eyes were burned, but she gets her sight back from a bump on the head). She heads back inside, comes upon Harry and Iris in the conservatory, hears him declare his love for Iris, and faints. Meanwhile, Nadine (remember her -- Harry's ex he dumped for Dorothy) has tracked him down and has gone rather mad. She's planning to kill Dorothy, but she doesn't get a good look at Iris and tries to stab her, thinking she's Dorothy, and then runs off. Iris's screams wake Dorothy, who comes across the knife Nadine dropped just as Harry sees her, so of course he thinks Dorothy was the one who tried to stab Iris. He sends Dorothy off, then tells Iris it was a falling shard of glass from the conservatory roof that hit her. He then tells Dorothy their engagement is off. Dorothy refuses to end it, and he says either he leaves or she leaves. The next morning, he's surprised to find that both Iris and Dorothy are gone. Iris left a note saying that the doctor who tended to her wound was very wealthy, proposed to her, and insisted they be married right away. Dorothy's just gone. The next day is the reading of the mentor's will, and it turns out that Dorothy gets the whole estate -- but only if she marries Harry within two weeks.
Meanwhile, back in the city, poor (jealously violent) Jack has been in agony about Dorothy's absence. He quits going to work because he's spending all his time searching for her, worried about what might have become of her. He refuses to listen to the people who remind him that the last time he saw her, she was cheating on him, insisting it must have been a misunderstanding. She's his one true love, and he'll never love anyone else, and he says so in many speechy monologues. One day as he's walking along, a sign falls and hits him on the head, and Jessie -- Dorothy's friend -- is on the scene to tend to him, get him home, and nurse him back to health. As she does so, she falls in love with him, but he doesn't notice because he can think of no one but Dorothy. And then Jack suddenly inherits a vast fortune from a distant relative (which happens all the time).
Harry's frantically searching for Dorothy, so he can have his one, true love: the money. He resorts to seeing a psychic -- and would you believe, the psychic is Nadine! Not that he knows this, but she thinks the woman he's seeking is her and that he's looking for her because she killed Dorothy, so she runs away.
And what about Dorothy? She runs away in the night and is considering throwing herself off a cliff into the sea when she sees a man throw in a bundle. She goes down below to see what it is and finds a baby, and it's still alive. She does what anyone would do in that situation: she gets on a train to New York with the baby. Then she has a hard time finding jobs because having the baby around is a liability, until she sees an ad for a companion to an elderly woman, and she's okay with the baby coming along. One problem: she wants a middle-aged woman. Dorothy's landlady used to work in the theater and fixes her up with a wig, glasses and makeup to look older. Then, would you believe, the job is with Jack's mother, in Jack's house! Dorothy starts to realize that she really does love Jack, after all that's happened (I'm sure the vast fortune and Manhattan mansion have nothing to do with that). But Jack is engaged to Jessie. But Jessie is ill, and she refuses to have the doctor sent for. She confesses to Dorothy that she wants to die. She loves Jack, but she knows Jack doesn't really love her and that he's only marrying her because his mother made him promise to after all she's done for them, nursing him through injury and illness and then taking care of his mother through a near-fatal illness. Now that the wedding is approaching, Jessie isn't sure she can go through with it, knowing he doesn't really love her.
She's so ill that Dorothy insists on sending for the doctor. Their family doctor is ill, so his new assistant shows up. Guess who it is? Harry, of course. He says Jessie will need round-the-clock nursing, and his employer has just hired a nurse. Guess who that is? Nadine, naturally. Nadine sees the way Harry cares for Jessie and becomes convinced that he's in love with her, so she devises a plot to gradually poison Jessie. Jessie's near death when the regular doctor returns, gets suspicious, calls in an expert colleague, and the two of them figure out she's being poisoned. They start thinking of who the suspect might be, and the expert sees Dorothy and is like, "Dude, she's wearing a wig and stage makeup." They figure if she's disguising her identity, she's up to no good, and they watch the way she looks at Jack and figure she's eliminating her rival. They gather the household and announce that they've figured out who might want to kill Jessie, and Dorothy, thinking they're going to accuse Jack, confesses, and the doctors then yank her wig off and reveal her identity. She then runs away, completely forgetting the baby.
But outside, Harry catches her, throws her into a carriage, and rushes her off to marry her, since the deadline is coming up. He's driving so fast, he loses control of the carriage and it crashes. When Dorothy wakes up after the crash, a young woman approaches her. She takes Dorothy to her home, and she seems so sad that Dorothy asks what happened. A wicked servant who had been dismissed vowed revenge, kidnapped her baby and said he threw it off a cliff. Dorothy realizes this is the baby she found, and she knows where it is, but she can't go back there because she's suspected of murder. It turns out that this woman's husband is Jack's business partner, so he'll listen if she vouches for Dorothy. They go back to find that Nadine left a note of confession before disappearing, so Dorothy is cleared. Now Dorothy and Jack can marry, and it turns out Harry did fall in love with Jessie while he was tending her, so they marry. Funny, no one mentions what happens to the money since Dorothy didn't marry Harry. So now they all live happily ever after, violently jealous Jack with the girl who cheated on him, and sweet, caring Jessie with the fickle cad.
Now, aren't you glad that while I tried to play on the tone and structure of Victorian dime novels, I didn't draw too much from their plotting and characterization? I'm not even sure airships would have helped this story.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
My Writing Themes
Either it's a temporary fluke or my summer body clock schedule has kicked in early because I was up earlier than normal again this morning, without setting an alarm. I don't know what I'll do with all this extra time. Because OnDemand remained on the fritz, I couldn't do my usual online TV analysis, so I got a lot of writing done yesterday. This morning I've already washed my sheets and towels and done my usual morning Internet stuff (minus TV discussion), so I guess I'll be ready to run errands when the sheets and towels come out of the dryer, and then I'll have the afternoon free to work. Or else I'll give in and get the episode via Amazon or iTunes and make up for lost time online.
A few days ago, an online writing group I'm part of got into a discussion about themes in our work. I don't consciously put any particular theme in my writing, but thinking about it made me notice a few patterns. It's possible that more objective people will notice even more that I'm not aware of, but here are a few I've identified:
1) One really odd one: The heroine of every novel I've had published has an -ie or -y name. Just in the last two series, there's been Katie, and then Sophie and Emily, and then in the upcoming steampunk book it's Verity. I forgot the names of the heroines of my romance novels, but it also applies to them. I don't do this on purpose (I don't have a name like that). I do write heroines with different names, but those books haven't sold. This is now making me a little superstitious. Part of me wants to break the pattern, but part of me is worried that I'd be jinxing myself.
2) I think if there is any kind of personal, overarching theme to my books, it's something to do with finding one's place in the world. Sometimes that's about being an outsider, sometimes it's about discovering gifts or talents and how they should be used, and sometimes it's about finding a niche. I do tend to write about people who don't quite fit perfectly anywhere, and that probably does come from me. I always seem to be a bit of an oddball, no matter where I go. I'm a little too "normal" in geeky crowds (I'm kind of a stealth geek), but too geeky in non-geek groups. I'm not quite as pious as a lot of people in church groups (as in, I prefer "secular" entertainment rather than anything falling into the "inspirational" category -- though this has become better since I switched from Baptist to Methodist), but I'm far more religious than anyone outside of church groups (probably the biggest reason I'm still single because finding that balance is difficult, and yet it's pretty critical for me in a person I could live with). Growing up, I was always the newcomer. Feeling out of place wherever I go is practically my comfort zone, so that's where I seem to stick my characters. There's also a lot of story potential there because the conflict is inherent.
3) I tend to write heroines who have difficult relationships with their mothers -- not abusive or dark, just a personality clash. This is something that doesn't come from me, as I have a great relationship with my mother. This has mostly been generated by the particular stories I've been telling. I'd established Katie as a very down-to-earth, practical person, so when I introduced her mother, I thought I'd get a lot more comedy out of making her mother be the total opposite and be somewhat flighty and histrionic. With Sophie, a key part of her personality is her feeling obligated to take care of people, and that was a huge part of the situation she found herself in, so I had to give her a very clingy, dependent mother who was willing to let her daughter take care of her. I wouldn't have had as much story if her mom had been more compatible with her. This has barely shown up in the books yet, but I have this whole mental backstory about Mari, Michael's police partner, who ended up moving in with her mother and paying rent so her mother could stay in her home in the very expensive New York real estate market, and we have the case of two very strong-willed women, one very traditional and one very much not, living under one roof and driving each other insane. I do break the pattern in the upcoming steampunk book, where my heroine had a good relationship with her mother. It's her father who's the problem, for plot reasons.
4) I tend to write nice, boy-next-door guys. I've never seen the appeal of the bad boy, either in real life or in fiction, so this isn't a character I'm drawn to writing. I get so tired of all the so-called "alpha" men who are basically jerks. Since I'm not writing genre romance where the conflict between hero and heroine is the core of the story and instead am doing the "you and me against the world" story where they're taking on some other conflict together, I think I can get away with having a more low-key guy. I did try to add a little more "alpha" to Michael in the Fairy Tale series by making him a cop, but then I turned around and made him so much a straight arrow that it's become something he's teased about as a cop. I think I've somewhat moved away from the "Best Friend" archetype in the steampunk book, but it's hard to say more there because these guys aren't quite exactly what they seem to be. I do have a story planned with a hero who's more of a charming rogue type, but we'll see how he shapes up once I actually start writing him.
5) I seem to write about New York a lot, and again, that's not something I actually set out to do. I've written books in other settings, but they haven't sold. I guess I think of New York as some kind of magical fantasy realm. You expect to see strange stuff just around the corner. I can't imagine the same thing about Dallas. I ended up setting the steampunk book there, too, because I was using an alternate version of the Gilded Age for a setting, so I needed those Fifth Avenue mansions and the whole social set, contrasted with the tenements. But after this series, I do have ideas for an alternate world "traditional" fantasy, an alternate world whose setting is more or less Not!London, and something set in the English countryside. I have an inkling for a paranormal mystery series set in central Texas, so that would be a switch.
A few days ago, an online writing group I'm part of got into a discussion about themes in our work. I don't consciously put any particular theme in my writing, but thinking about it made me notice a few patterns. It's possible that more objective people will notice even more that I'm not aware of, but here are a few I've identified:
1) One really odd one: The heroine of every novel I've had published has an -ie or -y name. Just in the last two series, there's been Katie, and then Sophie and Emily, and then in the upcoming steampunk book it's Verity. I forgot the names of the heroines of my romance novels, but it also applies to them. I don't do this on purpose (I don't have a name like that). I do write heroines with different names, but those books haven't sold. This is now making me a little superstitious. Part of me wants to break the pattern, but part of me is worried that I'd be jinxing myself.
2) I think if there is any kind of personal, overarching theme to my books, it's something to do with finding one's place in the world. Sometimes that's about being an outsider, sometimes it's about discovering gifts or talents and how they should be used, and sometimes it's about finding a niche. I do tend to write about people who don't quite fit perfectly anywhere, and that probably does come from me. I always seem to be a bit of an oddball, no matter where I go. I'm a little too "normal" in geeky crowds (I'm kind of a stealth geek), but too geeky in non-geek groups. I'm not quite as pious as a lot of people in church groups (as in, I prefer "secular" entertainment rather than anything falling into the "inspirational" category -- though this has become better since I switched from Baptist to Methodist), but I'm far more religious than anyone outside of church groups (probably the biggest reason I'm still single because finding that balance is difficult, and yet it's pretty critical for me in a person I could live with). Growing up, I was always the newcomer. Feeling out of place wherever I go is practically my comfort zone, so that's where I seem to stick my characters. There's also a lot of story potential there because the conflict is inherent.
3) I tend to write heroines who have difficult relationships with their mothers -- not abusive or dark, just a personality clash. This is something that doesn't come from me, as I have a great relationship with my mother. This has mostly been generated by the particular stories I've been telling. I'd established Katie as a very down-to-earth, practical person, so when I introduced her mother, I thought I'd get a lot more comedy out of making her mother be the total opposite and be somewhat flighty and histrionic. With Sophie, a key part of her personality is her feeling obligated to take care of people, and that was a huge part of the situation she found herself in, so I had to give her a very clingy, dependent mother who was willing to let her daughter take care of her. I wouldn't have had as much story if her mom had been more compatible with her. This has barely shown up in the books yet, but I have this whole mental backstory about Mari, Michael's police partner, who ended up moving in with her mother and paying rent so her mother could stay in her home in the very expensive New York real estate market, and we have the case of two very strong-willed women, one very traditional and one very much not, living under one roof and driving each other insane. I do break the pattern in the upcoming steampunk book, where my heroine had a good relationship with her mother. It's her father who's the problem, for plot reasons.
4) I tend to write nice, boy-next-door guys. I've never seen the appeal of the bad boy, either in real life or in fiction, so this isn't a character I'm drawn to writing. I get so tired of all the so-called "alpha" men who are basically jerks. Since I'm not writing genre romance where the conflict between hero and heroine is the core of the story and instead am doing the "you and me against the world" story where they're taking on some other conflict together, I think I can get away with having a more low-key guy. I did try to add a little more "alpha" to Michael in the Fairy Tale series by making him a cop, but then I turned around and made him so much a straight arrow that it's become something he's teased about as a cop. I think I've somewhat moved away from the "Best Friend" archetype in the steampunk book, but it's hard to say more there because these guys aren't quite exactly what they seem to be. I do have a story planned with a hero who's more of a charming rogue type, but we'll see how he shapes up once I actually start writing him.
5) I seem to write about New York a lot, and again, that's not something I actually set out to do. I've written books in other settings, but they haven't sold. I guess I think of New York as some kind of magical fantasy realm. You expect to see strange stuff just around the corner. I can't imagine the same thing about Dallas. I ended up setting the steampunk book there, too, because I was using an alternate version of the Gilded Age for a setting, so I needed those Fifth Avenue mansions and the whole social set, contrasted with the tenements. But after this series, I do have ideas for an alternate world "traditional" fantasy, an alternate world whose setting is more or less Not!London, and something set in the English countryside. I have an inkling for a paranormal mystery series set in central Texas, so that would be a switch.
Friday, March 01, 2013
Drumroll, Please!
Finally, after a long wait, here's the big announcement I've been hinting at:
YOUNG ADULT: FANTASY
Author of the Enchanted Inc. series, Shanna Swendson's debut YA in which a young governess in an alternate 19th century New York finds herself caught up in a budding revolution when she's recruited by a group of mechanically minded rebels to spy on her employers in the magical ruling class, in a nice deal, to Margaret Ferguson at Margaret Ferguson Books, by Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency.
That's the official version. This is that YA steampunk fantasy I've mentioned a couple of time and that I've read from at a few conventions. Apparently "steampunk" is something of a touchy subject in publishing (there have been a few hits, but the rest hasn't done as well as they hoped), so they avoided that term in announcing it. But really, this is probably one of those most pure "steampunk" books you're going to find because it really is about a group of steampunks -- or, in terms of the book, Rebel Mechanics. To rebel against a magical ruling class, they need technology, so they build it. And they also dress like steampunks, making their own rules for Victorian-esque clothing. I even came up with a plot reason for sticking gears on everything, since that's the emblem of their movement. I sometimes refer to this book as "Jane Eyre meets the Scarlet Pimpernel in a steampunk 1880s New York."
This book has been an exercise in persistence, both writing and selling it. I first came up with the idea in the fall of 2009. I love the steampunk esthetic, and I'm into Victoriana, so I liked the idea of it, but hadn't quite found the book that embodied what I wanted it to be, and I hadn't come up with an idea for a steampunk book. Then as I was working on something else, I found myself gazing at my bookcase, and I saw very close together my copy of Jane Eyre and a Madeleine Brent book. Jane Eyre is, of course, a classic gothic, and Madeleine Brent wrote gothic-esque romantic adventures. Then I decided that's what my book needed to be. That idea collided with an idea fragment I'd had when snarking about a literary trope, and the story idea built gradually over the next year, based on all sorts of little bits and pieces. I read about 60 books to research this one -- non-fiction books on the era, on steam engines, on airships, on clothing, on various aspects of society. Novels written during the era, to get a feel for the language (I tried to write in a sort of pastiche of 19th century first-person). Plus, it's an alternate history in which the American Revolution doesn't happen until the late 1800s, so I had to research the real American Revolution to find the patterns that might repeat.
I was finally ready to start writing in the fall of 2010. My agent loved it and said if she couldn't sell it, she'd eat her hat. She started shopping it around to fantasy publishers, and none of them "got" it. Or else they said they were overbought on steampunk, and it wasn't doing as well as they hoped. Sometime the next year, it occurred to me that my main characters were pretty young, and I could make them just a little younger and I'd have a young adult book. My rebels were already all college students. So I revised the entire thing to make it a young adult book, which I think ended up making it a better book because it was tighter and faster-paced, and I also didn't have to worry about finding the fine line between fantasy and romance. I could just let it be what it wanted to be. We had discussed whether I could turn it into a romance, but I did some market research reading there (reading even more books) and concluded that I'd be happier doing it as YA.
So then it went back out onto the market, and the response was better, but kind of heartbreaking because there was a lot of "we love it, but we can't publish it" kind of stuff. On the second round of submission, an editor snatched it up. And the rest, I hope, will be history. It's currently set for a 2015 release, so I'll have plenty of time to talk about this book and what went into it before it hits the shelves (in hardcover!).
I guess you can tell from what I went through to sell this book that I love it with an intense, fiery passion. If it hadn't sold, I was going to self publish it because I believe in it that strongly. I've seen the way audiences respond to it when I read from it at conventions, so I believe that if people discover it, they'll like it as much as I do. Now I have a couple of years to work to make sure absolutely everyone is dying to get their hands on this book so my new editor and I can do the "Ha! So there!" dance to the rest of the publishing world.
And now I have even more news that I think I'll save for Monday because I've got a lot of intense work to do today.
YOUNG ADULT: FANTASY
Author of the Enchanted Inc. series, Shanna Swendson's debut YA in which a young governess in an alternate 19th century New York finds herself caught up in a budding revolution when she's recruited by a group of mechanically minded rebels to spy on her employers in the magical ruling class, in a nice deal, to Margaret Ferguson at Margaret Ferguson Books, by Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency.
That's the official version. This is that YA steampunk fantasy I've mentioned a couple of time and that I've read from at a few conventions. Apparently "steampunk" is something of a touchy subject in publishing (there have been a few hits, but the rest hasn't done as well as they hoped), so they avoided that term in announcing it. But really, this is probably one of those most pure "steampunk" books you're going to find because it really is about a group of steampunks -- or, in terms of the book, Rebel Mechanics. To rebel against a magical ruling class, they need technology, so they build it. And they also dress like steampunks, making their own rules for Victorian-esque clothing. I even came up with a plot reason for sticking gears on everything, since that's the emblem of their movement. I sometimes refer to this book as "Jane Eyre meets the Scarlet Pimpernel in a steampunk 1880s New York."
This book has been an exercise in persistence, both writing and selling it. I first came up with the idea in the fall of 2009. I love the steampunk esthetic, and I'm into Victoriana, so I liked the idea of it, but hadn't quite found the book that embodied what I wanted it to be, and I hadn't come up with an idea for a steampunk book. Then as I was working on something else, I found myself gazing at my bookcase, and I saw very close together my copy of Jane Eyre and a Madeleine Brent book. Jane Eyre is, of course, a classic gothic, and Madeleine Brent wrote gothic-esque romantic adventures. Then I decided that's what my book needed to be. That idea collided with an idea fragment I'd had when snarking about a literary trope, and the story idea built gradually over the next year, based on all sorts of little bits and pieces. I read about 60 books to research this one -- non-fiction books on the era, on steam engines, on airships, on clothing, on various aspects of society. Novels written during the era, to get a feel for the language (I tried to write in a sort of pastiche of 19th century first-person). Plus, it's an alternate history in which the American Revolution doesn't happen until the late 1800s, so I had to research the real American Revolution to find the patterns that might repeat.
I was finally ready to start writing in the fall of 2010. My agent loved it and said if she couldn't sell it, she'd eat her hat. She started shopping it around to fantasy publishers, and none of them "got" it. Or else they said they were overbought on steampunk, and it wasn't doing as well as they hoped. Sometime the next year, it occurred to me that my main characters were pretty young, and I could make them just a little younger and I'd have a young adult book. My rebels were already all college students. So I revised the entire thing to make it a young adult book, which I think ended up making it a better book because it was tighter and faster-paced, and I also didn't have to worry about finding the fine line between fantasy and romance. I could just let it be what it wanted to be. We had discussed whether I could turn it into a romance, but I did some market research reading there (reading even more books) and concluded that I'd be happier doing it as YA.
So then it went back out onto the market, and the response was better, but kind of heartbreaking because there was a lot of "we love it, but we can't publish it" kind of stuff. On the second round of submission, an editor snatched it up. And the rest, I hope, will be history. It's currently set for a 2015 release, so I'll have plenty of time to talk about this book and what went into it before it hits the shelves (in hardcover!).
I guess you can tell from what I went through to sell this book that I love it with an intense, fiery passion. If it hadn't sold, I was going to self publish it because I believe in it that strongly. I've seen the way audiences respond to it when I read from it at conventions, so I believe that if people discover it, they'll like it as much as I do. Now I have a couple of years to work to make sure absolutely everyone is dying to get their hands on this book so my new editor and I can do the "Ha! So there!" dance to the rest of the publishing world.
And now I have even more news that I think I'll save for Monday because I've got a lot of intense work to do today.
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