Useful Writing Tools!

As I worked through my writing session this morning I kept wondering what is the most useful resource I have for writing? 

Jeffe’s post yesterday named ourselves as the most important piece. And I absolutely love that. It’s so true because if you don’t take care of yourself your well will run dry and you won’t be able to create. 

But I can’t be redundant, right? Even when it’s a really good point. 

So let’s say you’re taking care of yourself. You’re feeling good. The writing vibe is strong. You’re typing along and then—[fill in word here]. You need a synonym, or you need the word to describe a specific piece of something, you need—the Thesaurus. 

I have the Thesaurus bookmarked and yes, I went to it nigh two dozen times this morning alone. I’m a stickler for not using the same description on the same page. But how do I know what paragraph will end up on which page? Great point! So I aim for no repeats within 350 words. 

All that means is I love the thesaurus. Do I go overboard and find archaic words nobody will understand? Maybe. Did I attempt to avoid repeating Jeffe's pick for most useful writing resource only to nearly mimic KAK's? Definitely. But what's a thesaurus without a good dictionary?!

How about you? What’s your most used writing tool?

The Most Important Writing Resource: You

A new local bookstore, Purple Fern Books, has a lovely display of my books.

This week at the SFF Seven we're asking: What is the most useful resource you have for writing?

Usually with this sort of topic, we talk about reference materials or computer programs. I think this time I'll riff on last week's topic, which included an array of really good advice on self-care and avoiding burnout. I'm thinking about this because one of my Unpopular Opinions is that writers really don't need Stuff. It's one of the lowest overhead creative enterprises there is. Yeah, okay, to submit or publish work, a writer needs access to a computer at some point. That's the world we live in. But no writer actually NEEDS a fancy program or reference books or, or, or...

There are only two necessary resources for writing: a way to put the words down and ourselves.

I mention this because, in our quest for great tools, we tend to forget that WE are the critical component in the equation, the limiting reagent in the magical, chemical reaction that is bringing a book into the world. And yet we don't always treat ourselves as the treasure we are. Imagine if you had a laptop as expensive as the single-use body and brain you were gifted with. How much would you baby that laptop? Do you treat yourself that well?

I think my most useful resource is a rested body and quiet mind. Do I always go the lengths I should to make sure I'm running at top operating condition? Not always - but I try. I often get in bed around 8 or 8:30pm, if I'm sleepy enough, because getting plenty of sleep is key for my ability to sustainably create. Do people sometimes think I'm weird and crazy for doing that? Yep. Do I care? Nope. It's easy to let other people push and pull us to suit their ideas of how we should be, but we are the only ones who know what we truly need. Treat yourself as that expensive, delicate, and precious resource that is most important for your writing and see what happens. 

Burnout

Have you been staring at your blinking cursor, wondering how you’re going to fill the page? Have you been sitting down to write only to find yourself doing the dishes or scrolling your socials? Have you been experiencing burnout?

There are numerous ways burnout hits. Which also means there’s a lot of options to work through it—yay! But none of it’s easy–boo. 

I’ve been through burnout, I wrote about it here. And the most important takeaway I can share is that you have to be able to give yourself grace. If you can’t write. It’s okay. If you can’t focus and lose every writing minute you had in the day. It’s okay. If you couldn’t bring yourself to even open your WIP. It’s okay. 

Give yourself grace and avoid piling on the guilt. In my experience, guilt adds to the burnout. Refilling the well takes time, if you don’t have time and are on a deadline check out Jeffe’s post from yesterday. 

How do I take care of my writer self? Surrounding myself in nature refills my well. So does being creative in any way that isn’t writing. When burnout is really depression in disguise, it’s okay to ask for help. You’re not alone.

Self-Care & Refilling the Well When Things Are on Fire

 

Exciting news!!! For all of you who have been waiting waiting waiting for the audiobook of ROGUE FAMILIAR, it is liiiivvveeee! Just on Audible for the next 3 months, then it will be wide. If you'd like to review, I do have some free downloads available. Comment here or email Assistant Carien via the website contact form.   

        

 

Amusingly enough, our topic at the SFF Seven this week is self-care and burnout. I say amusing because this has been a topic of discussion in Jeffe's Closet, my Patreon and Discord, these last couple of weeks. One thing I love about that space is that people can ask me questions and it gives me the opportunity to mull answers I hadn't previously given thought to.

One gal asked me about advice on getting through when you're faced with deadlines and your well is empty. I talked about this on Monday's podcast, too, but I'm going to reiterate here because I think our group mind hit on something really important.

We often think of refilling the creative well as something lovely, peaceful, and largely passive. Self-care often carries the sense of similar calm. We think of leisurely strolls, hot bubble baths, a glass of wine, gazing at the sunset with friends, lingering over moving art at museums and galleries. All of these things are lovely... And not terribly useful when you're facing deadlines, dealing with crises, and you're already short on time with a well so empty you've got nothing left to put out the fires, much less create something to meet those deadlines with.

So, what do we do then?

The thing is, burnout is something we must take very, very seriously. I've been there - and once you hit full burnout, the bottom of the well is dry as a bone, then it can takes months or years to recover. It's easy to put off our mental health, to decide that refilling the well can wait until this family member is doing better, or this deadline is met, or after some future date when we have time to deal with it. Except that mental health and burnout don't obey our schedules. Taking this approach is like deciding that an infection can wait until we've finished some other projects - by the time we're ready to deal with it, we could have blood poisoning or lose a limb.

What's the answer then? This was my advice to her: cut out everything that is not actually on fire and aggressively fill the well.

I was concerned that this was too vague, but it worked for her! Sometimes we need permission to ignore everything that is not a crisis - to ask ourselves "is it on fire?" and set it aside if not. As for aggressively filling the well - an image that seemed to amuse everyone - I can't tell you how to do that. We all have to find what refills our own wells. But as for going about it aggressively, that is the key. That means you're prioritizing those activities, going after them with gusto, rather than waiting for the water to seep in. Muster your army of brooms and aggressively fill that well!

Fantasia Brooms GIFfrom Fantasia GIFs

Exploiting Emotion

Jeffe told the perfect Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier story earlier this week. I'm happy to report the incident DID happen, according to Dustin Hoffman. 

Riffing off of what Jeffe talked about, I've come to say the story gives us a glimpse into the two distinct acting traditions these two men came from. Hoffman is a Method actor. It's a very American (by way of Russia) way to approach veracity in acting. The short theory behind it is that only honesty reaches through the divide between actor and audience. The actor must feel whatever the character feels or else the character won't read as true to the audience. Olivier came from the British acting tradition which, based as it is, so firmly in Shakespeare, focuses on technique. Another infamous Olivier quote goes something like "It isn't my job to feel anything. It's my job to make you feel what I want you to feel.' This one likely is apocryphal, but I can't prove that as a search for it took me straight to one of those 'hi-jack your box attempt' websites. It was just a story that got told at acting school. Since it shores up the technique (I don't feel) versus Method (I feel everything) acting arguments, we'll accept it. The theory to technique is that by mastering text, subtext, vocal range, and physicality, a technical actor can evoke emotional reaction in an audience.

The different schools are about establishing honesty. Modern audiences don't want to see actors acting, very much like readers don't generally want author intrusion in stories. In both cases, viewers and readers long to be swept up in the story as if they were standing in the protagonist's shoes themselves. To bring viewers and readers  as close to the work as humanly possible, actors and writers must play on some deep-seated psychological truths about humans.

Humans are deeply empathetic creatures. Whether we want to be or not, we are social animals. Our survival as a species relies on our ability to unconsciously and universally identify emotion from the faintest shifting of an expression or body language. This skill is available to us as infants. It's that important. More interestingly, for a brief moment, when we identify an emotion in someone else, we mirror it as if by trying on the expression we see in someone else confirms for us what feeling is associated with it.  Performers of all kinds learn to leverage it.

Can you see where Method and technique come at exploiting human emotional hot buttons from different directions? Method makes you mirror the feeling you see the actor experiencing. A technical actor has the physical, vocal, and body language skills so well rehearsed that they can choreograph the exact sequence of techniques to hit so as to elicit the emotions they want from an audience.

This is a lot of words to come at how I approach emotion in a novel. My only goal is to make emotion clear, clean, and cutting. If my character is laughing, I want you smiling along with her. If she's terrified, I want you looking over your shoulder. Method - me feeling the feelings  and then jotting them down is fast and easy. However, it's also easier to muddy the emotions and it's easy to get lost in the emo. Also, it's  a tough lesson, but just because I feel the fear, it doesn't mean I'm going to do a good job of communicating it to readers. Actors have faces and bodies for audiences to read. Writers have to build those things before readers can be impacted by them. Technique - word choices, paring complex emotion stacks down to bare bones, describing clear physical cues, sentence length, and white space - offers a tool kit that helps me manipulate readers into feeling what I need them to feel.

It will be no surprise to you that I feel like both are necessary. The trick with Method work is to use it to call up a reminder of a feeling. Technique then catalogues the details. Where do I feel that in the body. What does it feel like? What's my breath doing? What's the sensation? Where? What happens if it heightens? What does it feel like as it drains away? It's interesting to me that every human on earth may experience fear in personal and specific ways, but the experience is so recognizable, that even our 6 month old infants can identify and mirror it. That means I can give you my personal experience of emotion in a story and you will experience your version of that emotion - not mine. And I don't care. My job is not to make you feel what I feel. My job is to trigger you to experience your own emotions with the story I'm telling. My emotions will ring hollow to anyone but me. A story only comes to life if the emotion I write accesses your emotions. That's the only way a book can read as true to a broad audience.

So the answer is both. Both is good. I do need to feel. Some. I need to not feel enough that I can remain critical and objective enough to leverage solid technique.

Writing Emotion and Owning Your Process

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is writing emotion and whether you as the author have to feel the exact emotion you're writing.

There's this tale about acting that's been making the rounds for ages - it's possibly apocryphal - about Dustin Hoffman being a method actor. (Oooh, Marcella found it!) That method asks actors to find the emotions within themselves to play the character, to find essentially their alternate self who would be that person and feel that way. The story goes that Hoffman spent an hour getting into that character's skin and Sir Laurence Olivier strolled in, did his bit, and left again, saying, "My dear boy, it's called acting."

The point of this (again, possibly apocryphal) tale is twofold: the first that you can create the appearance of emotion without feeling it, and the second that everyone does things their own way.

You all should know by now that my primary mantra is this: figure out what your process is and own it.

People like that story because they can smirk at poor Dustin Hoffman doing things the American way, the overly-complicated way, the fancy way, but... is he wrong? Hoffman has an amazing acting career. He's widely acknowledged as a brilliant actor. Clearly his approach isn't "wrong."

Is Olivier wrong in this story? Clearly not, for the same reasons as above. There is no wrong. There is no right. Both things can be true. Both processes work for those performers.

So, do I have to feel the emotion I'm writing in order to put it on the page? Nope. Do I sometimes? Sure, though it depends. Do other writers need to feel the emotion to write it? I've heard they do.

And it's all good. Both things can be true.

 

Trusting the Creative Process

 Happy Summer Solstice, all!

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about our greatest writing challenge and how we manage it.

In some ways, this is a moving target for me, because it seems that - like clockwork - each book presents its own challenge. With 64 published titles under my belt, I feel like I should have this process down and there shouldn't be surprises.

No such luck.

What I have to constantly remind myself is that the creative process is its own creature. It's this connection to something beyond ourselves and thus is not within our control. Particularly for a writer like myself - I am incapable of pre-plotting and write for discovery, relying entirely on intuition - letting go of that desire to control is critical. It can also be difficult, especially when I'm trying to write to a particular idea or market.

For example, I recently wrote one-hundred pages of a book for my agent, according to a very particular comp. Let's call it Ghost meets Out of Africa. (That is NOT it, but that's one of my all-time favorite fictional comps. Points if you can name the movie it's from.) In thinking about this project, I consulted my friend, Melinda Snodgrass, incredibly talented novelist and screenwriter who counts among her credits the Star Trek: Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man. I asked her how closely I should follow the beats of Ghost, if at all. She gave me an incredulous look and asked why, when I had a hugely successful story blueprint right there, I would do anything but follow those beats?

So, I tried.

Turns out that, not only am I incapable of pre-plotting, I also can't follow an outline to save my life. I struggled to write that book. Having the story laid out in essence should have made it easier. Instead it made it 1,000x worse. For me. Because that's not my process. Once I abandoned that outline (sorry, Melinda) and followed my intuition, the words began flowing.

That's the major challenge for me: remembering to trust the process. Particulars change with every book. This principle endures.

Pinch Points: WTF Are They??

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: Pinch Points or small turning points. We're asking each other if we plan them, use them as foreshadowing, or just let the story flow?

So, I read KAK's excellent post from yesterday explaining WTF "Pinch Points" are and how she uses them. Spoiler: yes, she plans them out.

Cannot possibly be a spoiler for anyone who knows anything about me: No, I plan them, I might use them? 

YES, I LET THE STORY FLOW.

I swear, I need to start adding topics like "when you're intuitively letting the story flow, how do you.... " Except then I get stuck because there's just not a whole hell of a lot to say about writing intuitively. Yep, here I am, letting things flow. Still flowing. How will it end? I have no idea!

LOL.

Amusingly enough, however, what KAK explained in her detailed analytical post is pretty much the exact scene I wrote yesterday in my current manuscript: ONEIRA.

(If you haven't been following the podcast, ONEIRA is a Totally New Thing - new world, new magic system, unrelated to anything I've written so far. I've been calling it the book I'm not supposed to be writing - it fell on me from out of the sky and insisted on being written - but all of my friends have finally convinced me that clearly I am supposed to be writing it, so I'm trying not to say that anymore.)

It's almost eerie, how the scene I wrote yesterday matches exactly what KAK says the pinch point with the villain is supposed to do. But I didn't plan it at all. In fact, this scene introduced a new POV character and a new plot element, totally unexpected. But this is how I write and how I write this book in particular. It's insisting on doing all sorts of things that I haven't done before and don't expect and I've just surrendered and am going with it. Which actually makes this project really fun, because I'm just letting it be whatever it is and not worrying about reader expectations or where it will fit in the marketplace.

All of this is to say that we all have our own process. My mantra: figure out what your process is and own it. 

KAK loves to geek out on analysis, minutely controlling her stories down to pinches.

My stories just go their own way and I try to cling to the saddle. 

It's all good.

(Except sometimes I end up writing something I'm not supposed to be writing....)

Chapters and Scenes: Determining How Long They Should Be

 This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about Managing Word Count. Do we rewrite to hit a certain number? Do we have a chapter/scene word allotment?

So, a lot of you know that one of my nicknames is the Meticulous Volcano. This comes from me being born on the Leo/Virgo cusp, which a friend informed me makes me a meticulous volcano and they're not wrong. I really am half and half - and this shows up in many ways. Yes, I have the passionate Leo nature, but I'm also the detail-oriented lover of spreadsheets. In my writing, this manifests in my total, far-end gardener/pantser/write for discovery process, which I track down to the tiniest detail, with charts. 

Do I have a chapter/scene word allotment? Yes, I do. It varies from book to book - something I land on intuitively - with some books and series running to longer chapters and some to shorter. The shortest chapters, which creates a brisker pace, are generally about 6-7 pages long, or about 1,700 words. Longer chapters give a more epic feel, a more luxurious pace, and can be as long as 23 pages (my record) and about 7K words long. On average, however, I keep longer chapters to around 16 pages or 4,500 words.  

For scenes, I follow the 3-Act 8-scene structure, which looks like this:

Mostly I use this structure as a series of guideposts, to know where I am as I write the book, which is always linear, from beginning to end. And this helps me to predict when I'll finish. Once I have Scene 1 complete, I can predict the final word count (8 times the word count of Scene 1). This number is solidified once I have Act 1 in place. Generally my books are 85K - 120K words long, so how long the individual segments are varies from about 11K to 15K words. 

In truth, "segment" is probably a better word than "scene," as applies to my novels. This structure is from screenwriting, so scenes can be more or less a single sequence. For me, a scene in this context is a contiguous segment of the story, one where a particular mini-arc is begun and completed. 

As for rewriting to tighten the shape? Sometimes I do that. Usually not. I often worry that some segment will bulge out and need trimming, but it usually is fine by the end. Sometimes I break up chapters or trim parts that go on too long. Mostly I let the numbers be a loose guideline and I decided intuitively how to edit. 

Analyzing Genre Expectations

I just returned from WisCon, which was a delightful, warm, sort-of summer-camp version of a con. I had a great time. I also got to visit the farmer's market and get a wonderful jump start on spring. 

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: How to analyze genre expectations for your genre.

You know, I have one answer to this question, which is pretty much the same as what KAK said yesterday: READ.

I feel like people are often looking for the shortcuts in this business. And certainly there are the shovel-salesmen eager to sell the gold-miners the newest-fangled device that will make their job SO MUCH EASIER. So, sure - there are tools and surveys out there that purport to analyze trends and bullet-point the expectations of the hot genres. 

But nothing substitutes for reading. And reading what's current, as well as the canon the new stuff builds upon. Genre and the expectations readers bring to their reading are fluid and ever changing. I once advised an aspiring author - a woman who'd been very well published 20 years before, had a life-lull, and was looking to get back into it - who hadn't read anything published in her genre in the last couple of decades. She couldn't understand the feedback she was getting from agents and editors because her reading lens was calibrated to what amounted to ancient history genre-wise.

Also, reading refills the creative well. All writers begin as readers first. (At least, I hope so. A writer who doesn't love reading seems to me like a fish who swims but doesn't like water.) If you don't have time to read, make the time. Replace watching shows or scrolling on your phone with READING. You don't have to finish everything you read (I certainly don't), but you should read at least some of what's popular and what your readers are reading.

Did I mention read? Yeah: do that. 

 

Resisting the New Shiny: How to Decide What to Write Next

 I've just returned from Nebula Conference and this moment was a highlight: the photograph of SFWA past-presidents in attendance. From left is Gay Haldeman, SFWA Ombudsman; Joe Haldeman, SFWA Grandmaster and past-president; Michael Capobianco, past-president; Karen Silverberg, novelist; Robert Silverberg, SFWA Grandmaster and past-president; and lil' ol' me. Quite a heady experience!

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about the Picking and Choosing—how do you decide which idea to write?

This is the eternal question, with many factors affecting the answer.

Some factors are practical, especially if you make your living as a writer, as I do. To keep that income flowing, I have to think about the next book in the series - both for the sales and to keep my readers happy - and I have to look at what's selling best for me. Likewise, in working with my agent - the fabulous Sarah Younger at Nancy Yost Literary Agency - I coordinate with her on what she thinks she can sell for me, along with her schedule, balancing me with her other clients on reading, editing, etc.

Then there's the creative side...

As we develop as writers, one of the primary skills and disciplines we must learn is how to *finish* a work. There are a lot of would-be authors out there with a few to dozens of unfinished manuscripts. It's a thing and you HAVE to learn to overcome it. A big piece of learning to finish a work is setting aside the New Shinies - the ideas that turn up, alluring as fae lights in the darkness, luring the unwary writer into a merry chase that leads nowhere. By the time the writer returns from the wild pursuit of flickering delight, their work in progress has aged and they have nothing to show for their efforts.

Then again...

Sometimes an idea descends and demands to be written. It's only happened to me a few times, but it's happened recently and - though I have lot practice, skill, and discipline at resisting the siren song of the New Shiny - I finally capitulated to writing it. We'll see what happens.

The Business of Writing

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking the business side of being a writer. 

In our fantasies of being famous and beloved authors, we envision many things: bucolic writing sessions, romantic candlelit garrets with wine- and quill-strewn desks, celebrations with adoring fans, bookstore windows filled with our bestseller. (What's yours? I'd love to know!) We (or, at least, I didn't) don't picture ourselves slaving at the computer, going cross-eyed over royalty statements or struggling to ramp up on the newest social media trend.

Many of us creatives don't love the business side of being a writer. I mean, there's a reason we took literature, theater, and art classes in college instead of Economics, and that we only knew where the business school was because we occasionally had to meet one of our friends there. With a few exceptions, as creatives, business is not our favorite learn.

But we have to learn to do it and we have to learn to do it WELL.

If we don't, people will take advantage of us and, believe me, there are plenty lined up to do just that. There are ample cautionary tales of authors handing over the business aspects of their careers to someone else and losing everything. Even if it doesn't go that badly, we run the risk of making foolish choices out of ignorance. 

How much time do I spend on the business aspect of my writing life? A lot. At least as much time as I spend actually writing, possibly even twice as much, or even three times. Because I'm a hybrid author, self-publishing my books counts as me running a small, highly exclusive publishing company. It takes hours every day. On the trad publishing side, even though I have an agent who is amazing and efficient, I still have to spend a fair amount of time on back and forth with her - all business. And then there's conventions and conferences, which are basically all business. Chatting with my author friends is fun and social, but also? Business.

The way I see it, since I write full-time and have no other job, anything I spend my time on that isn't drafting or editing words counts as business. I take it very seriously.

 

Advice for Writers: Combatting Boredom

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is somewhat cryptic, at least how it's noted on our calendar: Long books - how not to get bored.

It's not entirely clear to me who's attempting to avoid boredom here. The writer? The reader? 

Hopefully not the reader! Most of us readers who love to read long books are totally in it for the long, for the full immersion into another world, living other lives. I suspect the principles for writing a long book that won't bore readers are the same as writing *anything* at all. We never want to bore readers.

So, I'm going to assume we're asking about getting bored writing long books. How to avoid that?

You can't.

Sorry, but... sometimes writing is boring. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's agonizing. Writing novels, especially very long ones, requires a particular skill set of paying attention to, and working incrementally on, a work that takes a very long time to complete. 

The whole point is not to try to avoid boredom with the process. The point is to revise your expectations. 

Writing is work. This is why there are so many people who SAY they always wanted to write a novel and such a vanishingly smaller percentage who have. An even smaller percentage of that subset ever write more than six books. It's hard work and there's a reason we distinguish work from fun. Writing may be occasionally fun, but it's always work.

What's important to keep in mind is that the experience of writing is not the experience of reading. Don't conflate the two. One of my least favorite pieces of "writing advice" is the saw that "if the writer is bored writing it, the reader will be bored reading it."

NOT TRUE.

Writing takes vastly longer than reading. Every one of us who has spent months writing a book that releases at midnight and then wakes up to comments from readers who read it overnight understands this truth viscerally. Writing a novel, especially a long novel, requires patience and attention over a long span of time. 

So: don't worry about finding ways to not get bored while writing long works. Accept that boredom is part of the process. It's part of the price we pay. 

 

One Piece of Advice for Aspiring Authors

       

Just in case anyone missed the news: ROGUE FAMILIAR is now out and available in ebook and print from all of your favorite retailers! The audiobook is coming, but probably won't be out for a few weeks. Because I ran late on this book, I lost my time slot with my narrator, the fabulous Deborah Balm. She has the manuscript, but has not yet started recording. I'll keep you all updated on that! 

This week at the SFF Seven, we're offering one piece of advice for aspiring writers.

It's funny because we were just discussing my favorite piece of advice for ALL writers on my mentoring and coaching Discord. This is shaping up to be a really fun community of authors at all levels. You can get there by joining my Patreon. At any rate, in the General Writing Advice channel of the most basic Patreon level - Community Member - one of the gals said that this piece of advice is "one of my favorite Jeffe Mantras." I love that! We may even make a special emoji to denote this mantra, as it's a recurring point of discussion.

So, what is it? 

Figure out what your process is and own it.

 

See, the point is that every single creator has the0ir own creative process. It's as individual as retinal patterns. While it can be helpful to take classes on writing processes and techniques, to learn from other authors, in the end we all find that our process is unique to us. I've seen SO MANY writers struggle to change their process and try to "make it be" something or other, to no avail. The whole point of learning various techniques is to triangulate on what works for you. It can be a long and iterative process, but that's the "magic formula." Figure out what your process is and own it. Don't try to make your process be something other than what it is, even if you are occasionally frustrated by it. (I often am by mine!)

Like learning to love yourself, learn to embrace your process. Own it. It's yours. 

 

Releasing Monday: ROGUE FAMILIAR

 

     

 

It. Is. Finished.

Yes, oh my lovelies: I completed the final proofing of ROGUE FAMILIAR this morning and will have it uploaded everywhere tomorrow for release on Monday, April 24. 

Cue the rejoicing!!!

And, since this is coincidentally (OR NOT???) spring promo week here at the SFF Seven, it's actually apropos for me to be mentioning this book. I know a lot of you have been waiting for something like mumble mumble two months mumble for this book. All I can offer is.... 

Now you can haz!

He left to save her from herself… But who will save him from her?

When Lady Seliah Phel wakes from a drugged sleep to find herself abandoned by her newly bonded wizard, she vows revenge—and to hunt him down. Tracking him through the familiar wilds of the marshlands of her home is the easy part; learning to use her nascent magical skills is something else entirely. So is facing the vast, uncaring society of the Convocation in a time of brewing war.

Jadren El-Adrel is not known for doing the right thing, but getting as far away from Seliah as possible before he drains her dry will be his one noble gesture. So what if she weeps a few tears. Better than her dying in his service—or enabling him to become the ravenous beast that crawls beneath his skin. Unfortunately, in his self-imposed exile, and without the power of his familiar, Jadren quickly runs afoul of the enemy.

As her vengeful quest for recapture becomes a rescue mission, Selly faces all she still doesn’t know about the greater world of wizards and familiars. And Jadren, once determined to walk his own path and stay far, far away from the idealistic fools of House Phel, finds himself aligning with them against the house of his birth. War is coming to the Convocation, which means a clever wizard should pick the side most likely to win.

Sadly, Jadren has never been all that clever…

 

     

 

As a special treat, here's a little excerpt:

It wasn’t as if magic made logical sense at the best of times anyway. Closing his eyes, trying to screen out the worry that he hadn’t heard Seliah’s heart beat in far too long—you wouldn’t be able to hear it from here anyway, idiot—he let his fingers drift over the gadgets. Waiting for one to speak to him. As if a metal doohickey could speak.

You’re wasting time, his inner voice observed. Wasting what little life Seliah has left.

I’m not. She wouldn’t survive a trip to find a healer. She might not survive the next few minutes.

At least finding a healer has a chance of working.

An infinitesimally small chance.

Still a non-zero chance, whereas this… What are you even thinking? You might as well dance around the bed beseeching the spirits of our ancestors to intervene.

He paused. Is that something people do?

You’re asking me? I am you. I don’t know anything more than you do.

I’m not asking you. I’m wanting you to shut up.

Then shut up.

You shut up! Cursing in frustration, Jadren took his own advice and attempted to quiet his mind. If this had any chance of working—It doesn’t. Shh.—then he needed to give it his all. Quiet mind. Trust his wizard’s intuition. Seliah deserved his best effort.