The Ones Who Gave Up: Great Cautionary Tales

At last, the much-anticipated next installment in the Sorcerous Moons series, THE TIDES OF BÁRA is out! About and Buy Links at the bottom of the page.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "My favorite great cautionary tale in the writing world."

This might even have been my suggestion, because I think it's really important to pay attention to the cautionary tales. Sure, there's an aspect of rubbernecking to these, or schadenfreude (or Franzenfreude, for a specifically literary metaphor). The key, however, is not to exult in the failures of others - because there but for the grace of the blessings of the universe go we - but to learn from them.

That's why they're Great Cautionary Tales. Don't cry wolf, don't be unnecessarily unkind, don't lose your soul to material possessions. Our core stories tend to be cautionary tales. It's up to us to take those cautions to heart and live by them.

There are many Great Cautionary Tales in the literary world, even more so with the internet ruthlessly detailing each to the miserable deaths of the final squirming pieces. I write a lot of them down and have been since I was a very newbie writer. In fact, lately I've been doing this enormous cleaning of my writing office, including files, and I found a set of notes I made back in 2000, when a writing teacher of mine won a prestigious statewide fellowship. We'd all applied, with shining puppy eyes, as we did every year. She won (deservedly), but showed up only for the awards ceremony rather than the associated conference, wearing scruffy jeans and called the honor "neat." My note says "Always remember to honor the honors you're given. Even if they seem small to you, they might be lofty goals for someone else."

When I finally received that same fellowship in 2006, I made sure to honor it.

But let's take a look at that. Six years between the disappointment of not winning -  yet again - and when I finally did. Ten years since I first applied for it.

I could cite a lot of Great Cautionary Tales, but with NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month) on the horizon, I'm going to pick this one: Don't Give Up.

Or, put positively, Keep Going!

I'm thinking back to those days of my crit group, the starry eyed aspiring writers who all applied for that fellowship. There were twelve of us, more than half who went on to publish in some fashion (from literary magazines to novels), a third of whom won that selfsame fellowship and a quarter of whom are now dead. None of them were old women, either.

But one of them, who I'll call Diana, lingers on in my mind. She was older than me then, but I'm thinking she must have been about the age I am now. A professor's wife who'd spent most of her life raising a family, she wrote these incredible stories about the passive/aggressive rage in women who gave up their ambitions. Her stories were deftly told, lyrical, and explosive. When I read Meg Wolitzer's The Wife, I thought immediately of Diana. Of all of us, I thought she was the most talented writer.

I still do.

And she never published anything, that I know of. No, she's not one who died, that I know of.

She moved away when her husband retired and we fell out of touch. She has a common enough name that Googling her would be very nearly futile. Oddly resonant, that.

The reason she never published was not because of the gatekeepers, because she was rejected too many times, because she didn't want to learn to self-publish (which back then was highly suspect anyway). She didn't publish because she never submitted anything to anyone. We were the only people who read her work. When we encouraged her to send in a story, she'd demur and say it wasn't ready. Once she confided in me that she couldn't bear for it to be scrutinized and rejected, that it was enough for her to write it.

I tried to respect that, but I think of her from time to time with a sense of great regret. When last I heard from her, she said that, with her husband retired, she'd given up spending time and energy on writing.

She gave up.

I know a lot of writers who have. It's a difficult business, fraught with challenges and opportunities to throw in the towel. It's frighteningly easy to let a small break become a hiatus that becomes a sabbatical that - years later - turns out to be quitting. It doesn't get easier, either. Many writers give up after having multiple books published by Big 5 publishers.

I'm asking you not to be one of them. Because the writers I know who are successful are the ones who kept going no matter what. Not the most talented. Not even the most prolific. Just who kept going.

This is the great lesson of NaNoWriMo, as far as I'm concerned. Writing 50K in the 30 days of November teaches you to build a writing habit, yes - but it also teaches you to keep going. To "win" - to reach the goal - requires that you don't let anything get in the way of completing those words.

It's the most necessary skill for being a writer.

So I'm urging you all: KEEP GOING. If you want to write, WRITE. Let nothing get in the way. Never surrender.

KEEP GOING.

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A Narrow Escape 

With her secrets uncovered and her power-mad brother bent on her execution, Princess Oria has no sanctuary left. Her bid to make herself and her new barbarian husband rulers of walled Bára has failed. She and Lonen have no choice but to flee through the leagues of brutal desert between her home and his—certain death for a sorceress, and only a bit slower than the blade.

A Race Against Time 

At the mercy of a husband barely more than a stranger, Oria must war with her fears and her desires. Wild desert magic buffets her; her husband’s touch allures and burns. Lonen is pushed to the brink, sure he’s doomed his proud bride and all too aware of the restless, ruthless pursuit that follows…

A Danger Beyond Death… 

Can Oria trust a savage warrior, now that her strength has vanished? Can Lonen choose her against the future of his people? Alone together in the wastes, Lonen and Oria must forge a bond based on more than lust and power, or neither will survive the test…

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Cover Reveal and Teaser!

Guess what???

We have a cover for The Tides of Bára!!

It's so incredibly beautiful, I literally gasped out loud when I saw it. The incredibly talented Louisa Gallie knocked this one out of the park.

Want to see it?

Yeah, you know you do....

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TA DAH!!!!

!!!!!

And, since I was supposed to write Autumn Equinox flash fiction today, and you all know how I feel about flash fiction....

Here's a snippet from the recently (like, last week) completed draft. Chuffta, Oria's small dragon Familiar, has turned out to be a bit of a firebug...


*****

Closer by, Chuffta worked intently to drag what looked like a tree limb to a blazing bonfire. He had his wings spread and managed it by half-flying, half-hopping on one leg, and wrestling the thing with mouth, tail and the free foot.

“What are you doing?” she asked aloud, for Lonen’s benefit, though the words scraped her raw throat.

“I’m feeding the fire,” he chirped happily. “Keeping you warm!”

Lonen groaned. “Hey, man. Enough with the fire. You’ll roast us.”

“No?” Chuffta paused, releasing the limb with foot and mouth, but keeping his tail wrapped around it. He sounded terribly disappointed. He cocked his head at the fire. “Maybe just one more?”

“No more, please, Chuffta.” She rubbed at her gritty, sensitive eyes, though it only made them water more. She certainly wasn’t weeping. She blinked them open to find Lonen grinning and grimacing at once. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” she said, ducking her face so he wouldn’t see.

“I like fire! It’s hot.”

“His first time with fire?” Lonen suggested. “Other than your purple magic kind.”

“Could be.” She must have sounded dubious, because he shrugged.

“Some people are like that, obsessed with fire. Why not a derkesthai?”

“I’ve never played with fire before,” Chuffta confirmed. “It’s not like breath-flame, that runs out. As long as I keep putting wood, in there, it goes and goes.”

“You can build another one when we sleep tonight, how’s that?” she suggested. Chuffta grumbled, but agreed. He stayed by his fire, though, tail lovingly wrapped around the limb he’d wanted to add. 

*****

This will be out October 29, and the books in the series can be found here on Amazon, or here on my website. The preorder links will be up soon!

Crafting the Cover

A timely topic for me this week as we just released book two in my Sorcerous Moons series, ORIA'S GAMBIT, which was a bit later going up than originally planned because we were tweaking the cover.

Okay - because I asked for a huge change after I saw the final cover. Here's the story.

See, I'm still new at designing my own covers. With my traditionally published books, like The Twelve Kingdoms and The Uncharted Realms, the covers are presented to me as a fait accompli. I get a little input at the beginning, but that's it. Because I'm publishing the Sorcerous Moons books on my own, I work with my cover artist, the amazingly talented and infinitely patient Louisa Gallie to come up with just the right cover.

We started with me sending Louisa the draft of the book. She read it (one of the perks for her, she claims) and sent me some initial sketch ideas.

I liked all of them, but none felt exactly right. This is the hard part for me. I have a really hard time envisioning what I think it should look like and communicating that.I kept coming back to look at them over several days and ended up saying:

I think none of these really sing to me, though I totally see what you’re going for. I like the action of #1, though not the exact pose. LOVE Chuffta flying and flaming and I like that background. I also like the background of #2. What about this? What about a pose similar to #2, but in her rooftop garden, with them at kind of a tense standoff and Chuffta flying and flaming above? And maybe she should be in her mask? It doesn’t have to be a scene directly out of the story. Though another thought could be something from the testing scene at the end. I’m just throwing stuff out here....

Louisa replied:

So, something like the pose of 2 but with the tilted, actiony angle of 1, Chuffta, and the background from 3? Trying to get the image straight in my head.
I can put her in her mask, it would work for a tenser scene if we can't see her expression. They're described as smooth and featureless but I seem to remember cheekbones mentioned. So would her mask be shaped with the contours of a face (cheekbones , nose, browbone) but without eyes or lips?

We went back and forth a bit and she worked on it from there and next sent me these sketches:

I still wasn't totally on board, though I wasn't sure why. I was finding that I couldn't get closer to knowing what I wanted by seeing what I *didn't* want. Louisa sent me a new sketch with this caveat:

My clients are never supposed to see this stage of a sketch, but as we're exploring...

I could turn him like this? I did increase the tilted view simply because two people standing side by side, facing the same way, can get boring quite quickly, and it adds some drama. I think maybe I'd want to angle him more behind her just to add some more depth and so they still look far apart (although technically it creates less distance between them on the canvas, which helps with a vertical aspect ratio.

Hear that crazy artist talk? I was all, sure, what you said. Though I pointed out that he should probably be holding the axe in his right hand.

Turns out that's easy to flip! She sent me three more sketches, along with this explanation:

Ok, I've sketched the amended poses out properly, and there's a flipped version so the axe is in Lonen's right hand. I think it maybe looks a bit better the original way, but it's really not much difference either way. So your call!
The only small difference between the two versions here is whether their hands have actual canvas space between them. They're not actually touching in either but if they're just barely not-touching, then technically their hands should overlap because of where Lonen is standing. It does also let me bring them closer together and make the figures a little....but looking at them now, there's no real huge difference. It's a tiny detail and I'd be ok with either.

I was liking it and we went with the flipped version. She sent the next sketch to let me know she was making progress and would be refining details.

I gave her a few thoughts and she sent the almost finals.

At this point I discovered I'd missed something along the way. Enough time had lapsed that I'd forgotten I'd asked for her to wear the mask! I'd been thinking her face just wasn't done and now... well, the mask looked creepy. Also I remembered that Lonen has a scar on his face! I said:

So, what I said about the scar: They locked eyes and wills. His, densely fringed with black lashes, were a dark gray, like the granite their sister-city to the north, Arvda, sent in trade. Surprisingly lovely, they would have made him look feminine but for the angry line of a recent scar that dragged from his forehead, skipped his eye, and continued down his cheek. Nearly missed losing that eye to whatever had sliced at him, something thin and sharp by the look of it.
 Lonen lay on his back, face relaxed so the scar that cut from his forehead, over one eye and down his cheek didn’t pull to the side as it did when he was awake. More scars criss-crossed his chest and concave belly—funny that her sgath didn’t show them.

As for the rest – looking good! Love how the title/fonts look.

Her left, upraised hand looks funky with the way her fingers are spread – can we bring them together?

Also, I think the mask needs to be smoothed. I’d forgotten that we’d talked about her wearing the mask and I was all wtf is wrong with her face?? Lol. So *I* didn’t see that it was a mask, so I think we need to make it more mask-y. A blank oval might work better to make this more obvious?

Can we add a moon to the sky? Either is fine. Maybe too hard with the text and Chuffta, too.
 And it there’s any way to make her hair look more copper (maybe there isn’t) that would be great.

At least she didn't kill me. That was still to come. She said:  

Ok. I really tried with the mask but a plain blank mask, or even one with eyes and no other features, looked totally bizzare. At a normal distance it looked like she had no face at all (like we'd forgotten to add it) and even when zoomed it it just looked weird and at best, sci-fi.  So, I did my best to smooth out the features and make it more metallic so it looks more mask like. What do you think?
Moon did conflict with the text and Chuffta so it's partially behind a cloud, but still there!
I adjusted her hand and gave her hair more coppery metallic tones.
 Unless theres' anything really critical (or really really tiny) this is all the time I have more changes, as I'm on a train after work tomorrow. I'll have a little time at lunch or first thing before work if there's anything very quick.
I'll upload the high res files now, crossing my fingers they're ok, and send you the links! 

And here's that cover: 

And... people - Louisa did an amazing job! But I *hated* the mask. I showed it to a few people and they all used variations of the word "offputting." We were at the drop-dead mark for getting the book released on time, Louisa had killed herself to get this finished by the deadline and was going away for the weekend. 

This wasn't tiny.

But I also didn't want to put it out there with an offputting cover. 

I emailed Louisa with the bad news and she exercised that infinite patience. Five days later, Oria had a face. 

I'm really pleased!

And now we're starting on the cover for book three, THE TIDES OF BÁRA. I'm sure Louisa is breathing a big sigh of relief, as I just approved the very first sketch.

About the Book

A Play For Power

Princess Oria has one chance to keep her word and stop her brother’s reign of terror: She must become queen. All she has to do is marry first. And marry Lonen, the barbarian king who defeated her city bare weeks ago, who can never join her in a marriage of minds, who can never even touch her—no matter how badly she wants him to.

A Fragile Bond

To rule is to suffer, but Lonen never thought his marriage would become a torment. Still, he’s a resourceful man. He can play the brute conqueror for Oria’s faceless officials and bide his time with his wife. And as he coaxes secrets from Oria, he may yet change their fate…

An Impossible Demand

With deception layering on deception, Lonen and Oria must claim the throne and brazen out the doubters. Failure means death— for them and their people.

But success might mean an alliance powerful beyond imagining…

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