You Just got Kicked In the ****!

We all have those moments in a book that we are really enjoying. You know, where you think the protagonist has done what they set out to do or you just settle into really, really liking a character and getting used to their voice when....



You all know the feeling I'm talking about. My fellow BWBers know EXACTLY what I'm talking about because the High Priest of this is George RR Martin. I mean: Ned Stark's fate, Jaime's hand, the Red Freakin' Wedding, the end of AFFC. The man mastered the art of kicking his readers squarely in the junk...and we love him for it.

Suzanne Collins proved to be another master of this literary technique. I was sick to my stomach at the end of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire left me so emotionally scarred that it's been almost 2 years since I read the book and I still can't read Mockingjay, I just don't know if I can handle it. Seriously.

I write this because I think that I wrote my "kicked in the ****" scene last night and I was so jarred by it, so to speak, that I actually couldn't move on to the next chapter because I needed to recollect my thoughts. Seriously.

Now, I know mine isn't the steel toe to the soft parts that the above mentioned examples are, it's more of a catching the corner of the lab table in biology class, glancing blow kind of a thing, but it still has a degree of impact in the story. It's the moment in the story when it feels like the stakes have changed, usually for the worse. There is even a part of me that thinks my betas will read the section and think that I'm overestimating the gravity of the scene, but it really feels like I've done something I've never done before in my writing.

Last night I hit the point in the book where suddenly the risk has become very real. I don't know if I've ever written anything like this and it made me squirm a little. Not in a bad way, but a way that made me very, very uncomfortable. All of a sudden, my little book about kids dealing with the sins of their parents switched from being indirect to direct. They were now involved. And that changes a lot about the story itself.

The next chapters are going to move much faster. It's not going to take me a shorter time to write them, but they are going to be in a constant state of movement and action. The stakes have been raised now and my characters are going to have to do things that they might not have done earlier in the book. And I don't know if that was my intent for them, but it's a good thing that's what they decided to do.

As anxious as I'm painting myself in this, I'm excited too. It means I'm taking risks as a writer. (A motif in my life for the last seven months, by the way.) It means I'm growing as a writer.

I start the second chapter of this section, the beginning of a cycle of, as one of my betas called it, PB&J sections rotating around the three main characters. (Oooh, maybe a return of the trope of the week and talking about the number 3????) Sprinkle in a mad princess (should I have said SPOILER alert) and a new threat and Spring's Tempest will be done!

Victory is mine!

Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi May Not Crave These Things But I'm No Jedi

It's Winter Break. That lovely time of year where there is no school that dates back to the 70s oil crisis when schools were given a week off to alleviate some of the heating costs in the northern part of the country. Winter break is writing time for me and I'm hacking away like crazy at Spring's Tempest. I think I've got a handle on things and I really think I can have this beast in some kind of decent shape by April. It's not going to be easy, but I know I can do it. And I figure it's time to return to the blog.

Winter Break is also one of those magical times you remember as a child because there were loads of adventures and excitement that often took place during that week. (Spring Break is another beast altogether!) I have fond memories of Winter Break. Getting in all kinds of exciting adventures (see what I did there?) hanging out with friends. So much of my high school days revolved around skiing during that time of my life, I always associate Winter Break with it. Because of my physical condition (bum hip and back), I haven't skied in close to 20 years and miss it terribly.

Life changes, we all know that, and instead of skiing, I'm hanging out with my little girl (almost 4) and my niece (4 1/2). We watched the movie "Up" this afternoon and, when I wasn't weeping or laughing, it got me thinking about the idea of the adventure story. Now, I seriously think that "Up" may be the best adventure movie I've seen since "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Raiders is an old movie. 31 years old, truth be told. And you want to know what...it holds up. I recently did a lesson plan on suspense in writing and showed the opening 5 minutes of "Raiders." I had two classes full of inner city HS freshmen mesmerized by it and BEGGING to watch the rest of the movie, which we eventually did and they were just as mesmerized by it the second time. It fascinated me on many levels as I tried figuring out why a 30 year old movie with no CGI in it appealed to them on such a level.

What is it that makes a movie like "Up" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark" appeal to me? What is the appeal of "adventure?"

There's plenty of things to list, I'm sure. There needs to be excitement. There needs to be urgency. There almost certainly needs to be a McGuffin. There also needs to be some stakes. Without the stakes, there isn't much that adds any tension that is so important in the adventure story. But there was one thing that both of said movies had that I think is sorely missing in a lot of adventure stories now a days...fun. Really. We've become so consumed, especially in YA lit, with addressing "issues" in our works that the fun of being a young person is completely overlooked. The fun of adventure is often sacrificed for some misbegotten message or theme the author is trying to cram in our cram holes.

YA isn't the only place this is happening. My first literary love, fantasy, is falling victim to this. The pursuit of "grittiness" and "realism" has sacrificed the sense of fun in the genre.

Fun doesn't mean you can't be serious. Fun doesn't mean you have to write something humorous. though there might be more of that in your story if you do. Fun has become like the word Romantic in a lot of ways. You absolutely can be serious when you write something is "fun" but you can

I want people to call my books "fun" when they are done reading them. I think Winter's Discord, while playing with some pretty serious themes at times, is a fun book. I think Sisters of Khoda is a book rooted in the concept of a "fun" fantasy. I think my YA scifi I was working on clearly embraced the concept of fun.

Where have I seen this recently? Well, I think Arthur Slade's Hunchback books do a hell of a job. They are fun books even though there is a clear sense of danger in all of them. Scott Westerfield's Leviathan books are the same things. Obviously, the above mentioned Up and the timeless Raiders are terrific examples. One other example I can think of is my friend Mike Winchell's book that I had the honor of reading. It had all the benchmarks of a good adventure story and was most excellent. It made a flight to Orlando a lot less boring.

Think of the adventures of your youth. Of your adolescence. Of you early 20s. They were fun on some level, right? Especially when there was law enforcement involved...okay, maybe you didn't have the same kind of fun I had when I was growing up.

Okay, back to writing.

Christmas Comes Early To The Zeleznik Compound

I'm not going to beat around the bush...I have an agent! That's right, rub the eyes and check your glasses. I am now a fully represented author. So who is the lucky agent? First, we celebrate:




Okay, now that it's out of our system...my new agent is:

Bob Mecoy

To say I am giddy is an understatement. It's all very exciting.

Now, I won't bore you too much with the story. It's really quite simple. It was a Hail Mary pass. No, really. I had shelved Winter's Discord and was moving on from it, leaving it out where it was still out. I was perusing the internet and saw something about a new book coming out in January called Seven Princes that had similar concepts, themes, etc. as Winter. I researched the author, John R. Fultz and noticed that his agent was Bob. Poking around, I discovered that Bob was someone that I hadn't queried, so I shot him an email. That was late September. The next day Bob wanted to see my first three chapters. A few hours later, the whole book. After some back and forth with Bob, he offered to rep me yesterday!

Now starts the hard part: working towards publishing, getting my ducks in a row so Bob can get me a deal. It's daunting and exciting and I can't wait to begin! The next adventure begins. December is a good month.

My Dance With Dragons

So, it is well known that I am an unabashed George RR Martin fan/sycophant/apologist and I will be until it is known that Samwell Tarly is the Prince Who Was Promised and he rules the Seven Kingdoms atop the Iron Throne with Danaerys at his side as his queen along with his seven little princelings because his seed is that strong. (This is merely my own theory and can be debunked by a thousand other members over at Ran’s board!) Because of George, I am the writer I am today…well partially, it’s not his fault I am yet undiscovered as a talent. This last summer was a very exciting one for me and many other fans of the classic series, as we were allowed to return to the world of Westeros and catch up on some fan favorites (Dany, Jon Snow and Tyrion most notably), while having some supreme questions answered and getting perhaps my most favorite POV character in the entire series: Barristan Selmy. Now some complained it was dragged out and it took too long for anything to happen, but I disagree completely and the book jolted me into a realization about my own writing, Winter’s Discord and the other books of Seasons of Destiny especially, that I needed to address immediately. Namely, back story.

Series, especially fantasy, need back story. Think about it. Can you name any fantasy series that doesn’t have a complex and deep back story? Tolkein, Brooks, Eddings, Martin, Jordan, etc. All of them have intense and layered back stories involved in them and they are completely necessary.

Now, the perils of writing a series are pretty self-evident. But that seems to be what publishers are looking for and from a business perspective that makes sense. Stand alones make money one time; series can make money multiple times over. So most of us that choose to write in the speculative area realize that we very much need to write series in order to entice publishers (and agents) to our work and we write series. But we have to write that first book and almost frame it as if it is a stand alone (a paradox of the publishing industry). Now, Jon Sprunk had a great article about the difficulty of working on a series and I was faced with that recently when an agent made a subtle request for an outline of the series.

I don’t like to be unprepared, but the only outline I had was a very vague outline of “Parts” of the following three books with the POV characters who had something to say in that section in my writer’s notebook. Actually, they were literally cut from the loose leaf paper they had been written on and PASTED into the notebook. The outline for book 2 was missing. (Damn my organizational skills) So now I’m piecing it together bit by bit, but it’s a painstaking process. Why? It’s a complex story with a lot of back story necessary for me to know in order to write what happens next. Now, I told you this story to talk about back story and A Dance With Dragons.

Dance is loaded with back story. Important back story that is necessary for what happens in the last third of the novel to make sense. (I’m not going to spoiler anything, so put the “NO SPOILERS” signs away!) Reading it inspired me to actually plot out what happens BEFORE Winter’s Discord in a sort of narrative outline of a prequel trilogy. (How’s that for being arrogant, I’m planning the prequel before I finish planning the series I am trying to sell!) But it was a practical endeavor because, unlike George, I cannot keep everything in my head. It is impossible. I forget where I put my car keys and wallet more often than I should ever admit in a public forum, how am I going to remember the significant events of something like Robert’s Rebellion or the War of the Ninepenny Kings? So after I finished Sisters of Khoda, I set about doing what I was calling a “macroplan” for the entire series. I was going to plot out the “prequels” (complete with titles and tentatively titled The Prince’s Folly) and then transition into Seasons of Destiny. Then school started and the overwhelming of life began.

I’ve been peeking at what I wrote already and doing some rudimentary outlining of the next book of Seasons, Spring’s Tempest, but I’m still working at it. The odd thing about Spring is that I wrote it once already. Really. But it’s a completely different book now and very little of what is in that draft is even part of what’s going on in this book. The interesting thing is that there are parts of Spring Draft 1 that may actually work for book 3. It’s crazy, but some tweaking and a lot of that book might already be written. I’m going to try and hit some of it tonight. It’s another big book and very different than the first version of it I wrote 4 years ago. So for the second time, George RR Martin has moved me forward in my writing. Currahee!