Illumination 6.9: Did She Love You?
This entry is part 9 of 9 (posted so far) in the series Illumination 6: Fragmentation. Ajax gave Kwan a narrow-eyed, hostile look, but an expression that would have made all the boys at his high school back off had no effect on the teacher. Kwan’s eyes crinkled at the corners instead. “How are you feeling, Jehane?” Ajax’s irritation eased. He’d wondered how Jehane knew that Kwan was coming to...
Read More
Illumination 6.8: Retraining Instincts
This entry is part 7 of 9 (posted so far) in the series Illumination 6: Fragmentation. The gym was almost empty at this time of day. Jehane waited in a corner, unnoticed, until the last of the adults taking their exercise had returned to work. Then she moved to the practice mats, picking up a practice sword along the way. She looked at it steadily for a long moment, then made the glow of a stage 1 weapon...
Read More
Most Recent Articles
Titling a novel (a love story)
I love good titles and I work hard at coming up with them. But I had a lot of trouble with the title for Matchbox Girls.
I think a good title needs to both sum up a central element of the story and, if possible, provide additional insight into the whole story. It’s the capstone of the project: what is first seen and often last applied. At least half of my projects have only working title until more than halfway through the first draft, until I can gather up everything I want the title to convey and analyze it and dig through dictionaries and thesauri.
The first title I remember for Matchbox Girls was Under Bridges. I was pretty sure that it was just a working title; I knew conceptually what I was referring to, but it was a stretch and mostly made me think of trolls instead of celestial entities. When I finally sat down to brainstorm, I’d decided I wanted the title of the book to focus attention on the relationship between Marley and the twins. And I wanted a reference to something small, and I wanted a reference to fire. So I made a list of various words and combined them into titles.
(Oh, and I wanted something that could set up a scheme that could apply to a whole series of books.)
And Matchbox Girls just came to me. I loved it immediately. But I wouldn’t let myself have it. “It sounds too much like a totally unrelated Hans Christian Anderson story,” I told myself, and I settled rather glumly on Sparksister.
But secretly, my brain kept whispering Matchbox Girls, Matchbox Girls. I’d Google the term late at night to see if anybody else had used it (not really), or how often it led to a HCA story (practically never). I’d argue with myself about all the reasons it was perfect (which I won’t inflict on you). I asked my housemates about it. Then I asked them again. I told my friends how perfect it was, and how tragic it was that I couldn’t use it.
I whispered it so much to myself that it finally wore through the HCA block. “It’s striking,” I admitted to myself (“Hah, I see what you did there,” myself whispered.) “I guess I’ll let book and title come together, and somebody else can suggest changing it.” I figured it couldn’t hurt any more than Sparksister, which sounded to me like it belonged on an other-world fantasy with witches and forests. (I was really rather irritated at poor Sparksister by then.)
So I sent out the book to agents, and, well, I didn’t get many nibbles. Maybe the title was to blame! But it was too late to change it! So I moved onto publishers, and Candlemark & Gleam accepted it! No title change required!
So my manuscript and its title got a Happily Ever After. Yay!
(Hmm. Story needs more conflict. Exclamation points do not substitute for tension, except maybe in a silly blog post.)
Monday Matchbox Girls update
Hey guys! It’s MONDAY! That means you get an update on how the Matchbox Girls launch is going!
First, (Moderately) Famous Authors are reading it and seem to be liking it. There will be blurbs! This is really nifty, in a subdued I’m-cool way and totally dazzling in a stars-in-my-eyes way.
Second, my lovely Publisher and I have put our heads together and come up with another stretch goal for the Kickstarter. It involves handwritten postcards from characters! With three weeks to go for the Kickstarter I have high hopes we’ll reach it, and I’ll have an opportunity to get a really cramped hand. Although if we reach it TOO soon, I’ll probably have to come up with yet ANOTHER stretch goal reward and that… that could get challenging. Although this current stretch goal was also a challenge and now it’s my favorite idea. So, you know.
Third: Other people are saying nice things, too. This is probably not that interesting but it makes me very happy and I appreciate it. 
Fourth: I’m still slogging away on Gravity’s Angels and the prequel story (which I really ought to name but probably won’t until it’s done). I’m also slogging away on things like ‘bargaining for a bassinet’ and ‘wondering where the baby clothes are’ and ‘when will I sleep again’ so it’s definitely a slog. However, progress is being made.
Fifth: There have been rumors of bookmarks. Oh yes.
Kickstart for Matchbox Girls!
Guess what! I’m posting again. Well, cross-posting.
Hi there! It’s time to announce the Kickstarter campaign to fund the print run for Matchbox Girls. This Kickstarter project also serves as the preorder process for the paperback version of the book, and includes high-level rewards such as an extra story (a prequel, in fact), some toys, and a hand bound special edition.
So! If you want a paperback copy of Matchbox Girls, this is a great way to get one!
I’ll probably be mentioning this a few times over the next month or so, but I’ll try to keep it low key. And of course if you follow me in multiple formats, you’ll see it a WHOLE BUNCH today and tomorrow.
I’m hoping to have one of my INFAMOUS TEXT TRAILERS attached to the video soon, but if that doesn’t pan out I might share it on youtube instead.
If you’ve already pre-ordered, know that you are the stuff dreams are made of. <3
Twelfth Night
Hello! I hope everybody had a pleasant set of late-December holidays! We’re getting back into the swing of things around here, although it’s… not really the swing we had planned.
See, my husband and housemate both got laid off on the same day, ten days before Christmas. (Not a huge coincidence since they both worked on the same project.) It does rather change things, though. They paid all the bills while I worked on getting this writing thing off the ground! And while they have various things on various burners and everything may be glorious and stable again by the time March rolls around, it’s a bit uncertain right now. (And sometimes bloody terrifying.)
Right now I’m not planning on changing how I’m posting Nightlights (although I do want to talk about the ebook variant later). I will definitely be pushing Matchbox Girls when it comes out on February 21st, though. Hopefully early next week a Kickstarter will be appearing, in which interested parties can help fund the initial print run.
I’m currently about a month and a half out from my due date– yes, the Handy Small Child’s sibling will be debuting around the same time as my first published novel. Yay! However, I’m often pretty dozy as a result. I’d like to say I’ve been hard at work on Gravity’s Angels (and maybe write a post about how the current economic and social climate has influenced it) but I sometimes feel like I’m barely managing to keep my head above water. All the changes at home as the guys set up a home office and work on a playroom for the Handy Small Child have been distracting, too.
All right, so on the ebooks: I’m no longer committed to putting out the monthly ebooks. This might be a mistake in light of the layoffs, or it might be a good idea, in light of being rather pregnant and having other priorities. Only time will tell! But they haven’t really been selling (which is fine, it was an experiment) and I’d rather save the promotional energy for other projects. I am planning on putting out the full text of Nightlights as an ebook after it finishes its run on the website, which will probably be in May or June? As usual, if this is a huge disappointment, please let me know. I don’t like disappointing people (or even abandoning ideas, really) but I’ve talked myself into the idea that people are pretty much enjoying things as they are.
I really wish there was a way to connect up WordPress and Google Plus. I always feel like I’m writing letters to distant family when I write these blog posts. I’m really much chattier in the short form! Oh well. Someday!
It’s been busy around here.
Although not so much with things that are relevant to this blog.
Okay, maybe a little. The promotional efforts for Matchbox Girls are ramping up, and that’s exciting. I’m not sure December is a great time to be promoting a book that comes out in February, since everybody is focused on the holiday season, but hey, that’s what January and the first part of February are for. But the cover has been announced, and there’s a giveaway running on Goodreads, and my publisher has been assembling ARCs and scouting around for names willing to consider blurbing it and other names willing to review it.
I also have a cover for the third ebook volume of Nightlights but so far I haven’t had the energy to go about formatting and uploading it. My cover designer (and husband’s) new Facebook game just launched so I haven’t really been pushing him or myself. (If you like Glen Cook’s The Black Company series, it might be worth checking out. It isn’t your standard Facebook game. Indie efforts all ’round!)
And then there’s holiday stuff. It turns out that 4 years old is the age where the Handy Small Child really starts getting excited about Christmas. So I feel extra incentive to bake and do other holiday celebratory events. Unfortunately, I’m a lot more tired than usual, too. I’m recovering from a pretty awful cold, and, well, I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy. Supposedly that’s a bit of a drain.
So that’s where I’ve been for the past month or so, and where I expect to be for at least the next three weeks. I’ll try to stick my head in around the new year.
I hope you all have some great holidays.
Reminder: Character Poll
I think I may leave it open through Thanksgiving weekend, but hey, character poll!
I’m hoping to have updates on the ebooks for Nightlights, and also maybe a cover reveal for my unrelated novel, Matchbox Girls, in the near future. Meanwhile, working on Nightlights and the sequel to Matchbox Girls, and planning Thanksgiving dinner. Yay!
I mean, not with a stick or anything.
I’m working on outlining a new story.
Well, I say ‘working on’ but the last couple of days have been exercises in cat-vacuuming. I’ve gotten a lot of the basics of character, worldbuilding, and theme down. I even had a sense of the ending, and the overall developing action. What I didn’t have was a plot to string all this together.
I mean, plot is hard for me. In this case it was even harder because I almost could have made a story out of meandering character development and world exploration, a sort of magic realism– and part of me wanted to. But the story is a direct sequel to a definite contemporary/urban fantasy, and I’ve read far too many complaints about sequels being incredibly different books from the original to want to tread that route by switching whole _subgenres_.
Plus, I know what a solid plot adds to a story: it adds action, it adds pacing, and it usually brings a whole bunch of secondary character definition and scene ideas. Without knowing my plot in advance, my characters would spend a lot of time in the kitchen drinking coffee.
Anyhow, backstory explained: [Copied from Google Plus.]
Well, at least I got almost six hours of sleep before getting smacked in the face with a (relevant) idea about how to solve my plot hangup and a third of a novel unfolded before my eyes.
(Well, I say ‘getting smacked in the face’ but it wasn’t the ‘wake up out of a sound sleep with the Muse standing over me with a shovel’ variety. I’d woken up naturally, was having trouble drifting off again, and started the Hour of the Wolf, in which I chew helplessly on the problems afflicting me. I hate the Hour of the Wolf. But in this case, almost as soon as I turned my attention to the issue, I asked myself the Right Question about it. And lost all ability to go back to sleep.)
And, as is starting to feel suspiciously ordinary, it is the kind of idea that seems like it might get me into… trouble.
Plus, it breaks about half the guidelines I set out for narrowing in on a plot.
So now here I am, listening to the sun rise, thinking about all the work I have to (get to?) do now. I’m pretty sure I’ll do about a fifth of it before realizing ‘oh no, this idea won’t work!’. That’s just the way these things go. And it _will_ work. With some, er, work.
Nightlights Table of Contents
Ebooks
(For more formats, see the Books link above!)