Cover Reveal: The Captured Spy

Oh, dear readers, next month my third book in the Immortal Spy series drops and I'm so tickled to share with you the cover done by the amazing team at Gene Mollica Studios:

THE CAPTURED SPY 

Ten years ago, Bix and her team of Dark Ops agents had a mission to rescue one of their own. The mission went pear-shaped; her team died, she was exiled, and the package was never retrieved. But the Fates won’t be denied. The mission’s a go once again, and this time, the survival of the Mid Worlds hangs in the balance. 

Pre-Order the eBook:

  Amazon Kindle | iBooks | B&N Nook | Kobo

Paperback & Ebook Release on July 24

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Now that I've shared that bit of fun, let's chat about this week's topic: What do I do to improve as a career author? Easy. Never stop learning.

From story structure to sales, I have lots of things I want and need to learn. To level-up, I read outside my established favorites and I take classes. "Good" books (and by that, I mean my purely subjective rating of books that did something that resonated with me) I'll read twice, once for the story and once for how the author did that "thing" that stayed with me after I closed the book. That "thing" could be as broad as how the author made me like a character I shouldn't have liked, or as specific as the way they painted a verbal picture of a setting.

When it comes to classes, I prefer online classes for the sake of convenience and cost. Yes, there are a few IRL camps/cons/retreats that look hella useful that I have on my educational wishlist. The ideal sitch is to take a class a quarter and use the time in between to apply the lessons. I'm in for one craft class and two business classes this year. Still searching for that 4th class. When I say "class" I'm not referring to the local uni; I mean "hey, there's a recognized expert in the field and they offer to share best practices for a nominal fee." I know the theories on both sides of the business and craft, so my focus is on courses that teach practical applications.

If you have any classes to recommend, dear reader, let me know!

Bonus Article: The Wisest Person At The Party

Because we are nearing the heart of convention season, an oldie but a goodie. A reminder:

The Wisest Person At The Party

I’m going to go over one of my favorite subjects yet again. Oh, we’ve visited here before, you and I, assuming of course that you bother to read what I write here. Still, some places need to be seen more than once, don’t they? Some subjects seem to need a fresh viewing from time to time.

Not all that long ago a few of my peers were talking about one of the big boys. Mostly what they had to say was pleasant enough. A few people seemed puzzled by the gent’s actions, but not shocked. The person in question had turned them down for blurbs.

Yes, you in the back with your hand held high? “What’s a blurb?” A blurb is that little sentence or two that writers ask their peers and those they admire or envy to give to them regarding their latest books. Just what their value is seems to be a very serious question to a lot of people, but the basic notion is that these little quotes could potentially help sell books. As a point of fact I’m exceedingly fond of selling books, so I recommend that if you can get blurbs, you do so.

Now, I’d like to put this into perspective if I may. If we work under the assumption that the level of popularity and sales attained is a quantifiable issue, and we then work under the belief that this issue can be studied and used to our advantage, then it’s safe to assume that someone like Stephen King, Dean Koontz or J.K. Rowling are likely to get substantially more requests for blurbs than someone like yours truly. Why? Because they are household names. True, not every person on the planet knows who they are, but millions do and that says something substantial. Thousands might know who the hell I am, which means that using the earlier assumptions, the aforementioned authors probably get (to keep with my so far scintillating numerical analogy) butt loads more requests for blurbs than I do. I get enough that I have to regretfully turn down far more than I can accept. It’s become a necessity. I have to write, you see, and I have a day job, and a family and, well, a life. I cant spend all of my time reading, much as I might want to, and I insist on actually READING anything I might be asked to blurb. Damned rude of me, I know, but there it is.  My point here being that the folks who do the asking of some of the bigger names run the same risk of getting a “So sorry, no time right now.” as anyone else.

But I digress (maybe). We were talking about politics.

Oh, now I remember.

I made a comment amidst the very small and private group. I pointed out that I was fairly certain the author they were discussing pretty much didn’t like me. A few others clarified who they knew that this author likes and doesn’t like.

And here we go. According to most sources, there is only one other writer that this particular writer actively dislikes. Examples were given. I nodded and listened.

Now, I bet a few of you are annoyed with me because I haven’t mentioned a single name regarding this conversation. In fact the only names I’ve mentioned at all were three that I used to show the difference in magnitudes between my success and that of authors who have become “name brands.”

Guess what? That’s the best you’re going to get out of me.

Why?

Politics.

I don’t like them. I never have. They merely make things murkier than they need to be. I may not like an author. An author may not like me. It doesn’t matter. We don’t have to collaborate on a novel any time soon and even if we did, I think the professionals would set aside egos and differences long enough to get the job done.

See? There I go again, pointing out that this is my job. My career. Like that should make any difference at all.

It does, of course. I’m in it, as the saying goes, to win it. Yes, I love writing. Yes, I would still write if I never sold another piece. I will, however, do my damnedest to sell every piece that I write, or barring that, I’ll figure out why I couldn’t sell it. Just like other professional writers do. Just like comic artists and actors and even the occasional poet does. It’s called professionalism.

There are probably a lot of people who can say things about my writing that are negative. Hell, a lot of them already have and unless a miracle occurs, a good number more will in the future. There are a lot of folks who could probably debate my personal grooming habits and whether or not my deodorant fails in the height of the summer should they be bored enough.

Most of the time, however, what they can’t legitimately accuse me of is saying anything nasty about my peers. (Hey, I’m not a saint. I’ve slipped up a few times).

Why? Because I’m a nice guy? Well, I am, but that isn’t the point. The point is I keep my mouth shut. If I have a problem with someone, I take it up with that person alone and in private. I don’t post it on a bulletin board, nor do I email a few thousand of my closest friends and then wonder how it is that someone mysteriously heard words I would have never said in front of them.

It doesn’t take much for a simple comment to get blown way the hell out of proportion. No, I’m not pointing fingers here, I’m just reflecting on something my mother once told me. Something I’ve tried to keep close to my heart ever since I got old enough to understand politics.

She said “The wisest person at a party is the one who keeps his opinions to himself.”

Think back on the last four cases of serious drama at work or amongst your peers and see if you can disagree with that.

It’s called professionalism.

How do I know that the big name author doesn’t much like me?

He made it clear on a phone message that I wasn’t supposed to hear.

I heard it.

I deleted it.

The person who was supposed to hear it never heard it, by the way. That person would have been embarrassed and put into an awkward situation.

No harm. No foul. No arguments.

Just that simple.

I know that certain friends of mine do not like others. I know that certain editors I deal with don’t much like certain writers and vice versa. It doesn’t matter. I know it. That knowledge does not change my dealings with the individuals in question. When I am around that big name who could take or leave me, I give no indication that I overheard something I was never meant to hear, because it’s no one’s business but my own and I intend to keep it that way. There’s no reason to make two peers of mine feel the least bit awkward over a tidbit I was never meant to hear. It serves no agenda that is worthwhile and it most certainly wouldn’t get me a blurb from said author. Okay, neither does NOT spreading that news around but that isn’t the point, now is it?

Politics suck. They don’t help your career and if they do, you’d do well to remember that political climates change all the time.

Just something to consider before you open your mouth at a convention, or make a post on a bulletin board, or say something to a casual acquaintance at a book signing.

How to Level Up as a Writer

First, listen, as always, to Jeffe, who is wise. her article is spot on.

Second, this is really easy for me, guys. Because I say it all the time. Sit your bitt in the chair and write.

That's it. Write. Write every day. Read every day. read a lot and read from many, many genres. Heck throw some nonfiction in there while you're at it.

Let's look at this as a craft, shall we?

We'll go with wood carving. Look at first a wood carver might successfully make a bass relief that does't suck. Maybe the carver started out whittling sticks and a few of them had cool designs. But after a few months or years of doing the job every day, the carver takes it to the next level and starts actually doing sculptures carved from wood. Those first dozen suck. The technique isn't there and the carver is glad to have stashed away some supplies and cash from the last few successful years.

Still, live and learn. Practice and research and carve, carve, carve. Try number seven doesn't suck as badly and it sells. Try number eight had some new innovations, new design goals. The level and depth of the work gets better and better with each attempt.

It's the same with writing. I don't even know that you have to strive for it, you just evolve. My first novel was 170,000 words in length. It was a very convoluted tale and try as I might I couldn't cut it down in length. I managed to sell it anyway, and I'm very proud of UNDER THE OVERTREE.  Mind you, I want to cringe every time I look at it. Not because the story is bad. it isn't. There are some truly fine sentences in that book and i enjoy the overall efforts. I cringe because if I were to write it today my methods would be very different and it would probably be thirty thousand words shorter.

I'm simply not the same writer I was back then. For one thing I'm not s fast. For another, my manuscripts are much tighter and require less editing. I evolved. I didn't plan it, it just happened. because I write every day and I read every day. When I read I am studying the hell out of what I read, whether I mean to or not. Thomas Monteleone, a very fine writer in his own right, put it to me best, I think. He said "When you're just a reader, you can enjoy a book for the story it tells. but when you're a writer, you do more than that You find a sentence tat resonates, or a turn of phrase that catches your attention and you suddenly become a mechanic. You have to pop the hood on that baby and see what make's it purr."  I think he was spot on with that he often is.

So that's it for me. Write. Read. Repeat. Every single day. That's what this is about. If you cant do it every day, okay, but aim for that goal anyway.

Want to Improve as a Writer? Step One.

This is Lake Sakakawea, up in North Dakota. We just got back from a super long road trip to there from New Mexico to spend some time camping, boating and fishing with family.

This week at the SFF Seven we're asking: How do you level up as a writer?

It's a great question and I look forward to reading everyone else's answers - but I'd like to address something else first. This question makes the basic assumption that all writers want to "level up" - or improve. And improving can mean a lot of things to different people.

I suspect the person posing the topic is asking about becoming a better writer. How do we hone our craft and stretch ourselves as creators. I also suspect that many writers, if you ask them how they'd like to improve, are going to talk sales figures - dollars or numbers. Maybe they'll mention targeting their audience better, or switching up covers for better sales, maybe creating a new series and back-burnering an old one.

But the focus of "leveling-up" is often - distressingly so, to my mind - on selling more books for more money.

This is on my mind because I recently read a book by an Indie author that had me wanting to take the writer by the throat. I'll caveat this by saying I'm super pro-Indie. I self-publish this fantasy romance series, this contemporary romance series,  this contemporary romance stand-alone, and I'm continuing this fantasy romance series on my own. I'm also on the SFWA Self-Publishing Committee and serve as the liaison to the Board of Directors. I'd say I'm tremendously committed to self-publishing as it allows me to be a full-time writer (which I could not be doing solely on my trad income), and I think it's a great option for all writers.

That said... it really annoys me when craft is sacrificed for financial gain. In this case, I was reading the book - and I really like it! The magic system is cool, the characters compelling, the quest and conflict poignant, the love affair tense and full of hope and anguish. I've been looking forward to recommending it. But the prose keeps slowing me down. I finally started paying attention to what the hell felt so clunky and I realized: the author almost never uses contractions.

This was an Aha! moment for me because I've seen Indie authors telling each other this "trick." If they don't use contractions, it inflates word count and thus page count, making the book a longer read in Kindle Unlimited, which pays by pages read. And, yes, this book is in KU. I don't KNOW that this is what the author did, but I'm pretty certain. There's no good reason to have "could not have," etc., and never contract it. It's crazy.

Now, I know most readers won't notice this. Or, rather, they won't notice it consciously. The book has done reasonably well, but some of the negative reviews refer to it being choppy and repetitive. A LOT of that perception comes from not using contractions. There are some other issues, too, but I think as the writer grows, those will smooth out - but this not using contractions?

PEOPLE! DON'T DO THIS!

Seriously, if you're artificially inflating word and page count, then your attention is in the wrong place. There's a reason we have contractions and that's to make the words and story flow. Yes, yes - some writers have characters like androids who don't use contractions and that's a deliberate choice to reflect a lack of humanity. Even then it's a challenge to keep them from sounding, well, ROBOTIC. Also note: lack of humanity. The author I'm talking about used contractions in dialogue, which is critical, but the rest of the prose needs to sound like not-a-computer, too.

All of this comes around to Step One in Improving as a Writer: CARE ABOUT THE WRITING.

Don't make choices that elevate being paid by page over what makes the story good. It might work for one book, maybe even a few, but readers *will* notice. Tell a good story, yes - which this author did! - but tell it well. This whole idea of doing what you love and the money will follow? That idea presumes that when you LOVE doing something, you'll do it to your utmost. If you love the money more, the writing will show it.

Want to level up? First step is to care about being the best writer you can be.

Not Painted Into the Corner

Not the Author! DepositPhoto

Our topic this week is painting yourself into a corner, writingwise.

The best example of this I’ve ever seen is the opening sequence of the movie  “Jewel of the Nile”, where romance author Joan Wilder is writing the most fantastic pirate scene and it keeps building and building upon itself, more complications and worse problems for the plucky heroine and then…she’s trapped alone with a ship full of evil pirates and NO escape.

“I don’t know what the pirates do any more,” she says basically, in despair.

I have never, to the best of my recollection, painted myself into a corner in a book.

I sit down, I write the book over the course of a few weeks (now that I’m fulltime), I don’t have Michael Douglas in his prime to distract me, as ‘Joan Wilder’ did…I start out knowing the beginning, the ending, and a few key scenes along the way. I don’t end up in box canyons like the bad guys in old movie Westerns and I don’t have to rely on suspension of disbelief, as people had to do sometimes with the old movie serials, like Flash Gordon, as embodied by Buster Crabbe. One week the serial would end with him facing certain death or Dale Arden facing certain death and there’s no way Flash can reach her in time…and the next week’s episode starts off with her safe in his arms and no explanation given because of course, he’s FLASH. What? Eat your popcorn and don’t ask questions.

Yup, doesn’t happen to me when I write.  Somehow my faithful Muse and I avoid those issues. We might have other issues perhaps but not that one.

So I had exciting news last week. I was really honored and excited to receive a phone call telling me that Lady of the Nile, my 7th paranormal romance set in ancient Egypt, had been selected as a Finalist in the Romance Writers of America Fantasy Futuristic & Paranormal Chapter’s PRISM Award!

That’s exciting stuff to a writer in the FF&P romance genres…see the full list of Finalists in all categories here. Congratulations to everyone whose book Finalled! Winners will be announced at the national conference in July.

I write my ancient Egyptian tales as a labor of love – not that I don’t love my scifi romance books because I DO and those are my main focus and genre – but the reader audience for ancient world romance tends to be smaller, without much crossover between the SFR genre and this one. 

Here’s the story:

Tuya, a high ranking lady-in-waiting at Pharaoh’s court, lives a life of luxury, pageantry and boredom. Khian, a brave and honorable officer from the provinces temporarily re-assigned to Thebes, catches her eye at a gold of valor ceremony. As the pair are thrown together by circumstances, she finds herself unaccountably attracted to this man so unlike the haughty nobles she’s used to. But a life with Khian would mean leaving the court and giving up all that she’s worked so hard to attain. As she goes about her duties, Tuya struggles with her heart’s desires.

When Tuya is lured into a dangerous part of Thebes by her disgraced half-brother and kidnapped by unknown enemies of Egypt, Khian becomes her only hope. Pharaoh assigns him to bring the lady home. 

Aided by the gods, Khian races into the desert on the trail of the elusive kidnappers, hoping to find Tuya before it’s too late. Neither of them has any idea of the dark forces arrayed against them, nor the obstacles to be faced. An ancient evil from the long gone past wants to claim Tuya for its own purposes and won’t relinquish her easily. 

Can Khian find her in time? Will he and his uncanny allies be able to prevent her death? And if the couple escapes and reaches safety, what of their fledgling romance?

Buy Links:

Amazon     iBooks     Kobo     B&N

Breaking Through Being Stuck

Tis the season for daily thunderhead formation. Tis the season to get weather alerts on your cellphone saying, 'Lightning strike reported within 1 mile of your location' which is code for GET INSIDE STUPID.

Wish I could use this as a metaphor to segue into today's topic but that would imply a level of caffeination I have yet to achieve. But I can admit that this was my topic suggestion, because you know me. Always on the look out for new and better power tools to help me finish books. A year ago, I'd have told you I don't often get stuck on a book - not for long. Like Jeffe, I'd keep chipping away at my blocks, little pieces at a time. I didn't believe it was possible to write oneself into a corner.

I see you've noticed the past tense. Yeah, I honestly thought I'd done it this time. I'm six months past deadline. My outtakes file is twice the size of the manuscript. (But I'm closing in on The End. Again.) I've discovered a bunch of stuff in the process of working through my stuckness on this project.

1. It IS possible to write myself into a corner - BUT. That corner is a construct of my mind and when I'm staring at those walls closing in on me, the best way out is through those walls. That means questioning everything. Do I need this plot line? How about that one? Wait. How did this story thread get in here and what purpose does it serve? Zen tidbit for the day: Most of the prisons we find ourselves in are of our own making.
2. When you take a wrong turn at Albuquerque, you can go back and take that left turn. Or you can give up control of the story and see where it goes. I did that. When my alpha readers sent my first rough draft back to me with 'Whoa. Wrong turn!' I don't think they'd expected me to use that as an opportunity to back it all the way up and question everything. But I did. Because I need this story to be right. Fun? No. Necessary, nevertheless. 
3. Take a stab at plotting. I never, ever, ever want a repeat performance of trying to write this book. Never. Will plotting solve my problems? Dunno, but I do mean to find out. Gods know it can't make the process worse. (Which is not a challenge to the Universe, I swear.)

Being stuck requires an act of violence to break free. Please note that violence is to be visited up the manuscript - not upon oneself or anyone or anything else. I had to murder a lot of darlings to get at the core story. When I'd offed enough of them, I could see my way forward again. 

I say all of this as if I know what I'm doing. As if I'm not wracked by doubts and every 'yer doing it wrong' voice to ever have sullied this planet. Pro tip: The louder that nonsense is, the closer you are to doing the right thing by a story. Unless your alpha readers tell you otherwise. But only they get to judge. Not you. And certainly not those crappy voices. 

Staying Out of those Painted Corners

If you've been paying attention to me and my various babbling on writing, you know I'm a big fan of the outline.  I try to avoid the whole "paint myself in a corner" problem by sorting out the big path of the plot beforehand.  If I know the line of things from A to B to C and so on, I'm less likely to get lost in the weeds in the first place.  Now, that doesn't mean that sometimes things don't work, or I write a bit in one direction and go, "Wait, I need to go back and thread something else in here to be the way out."  
But I know how the whole story hangs together, and that's because I have the outline.  (And the outline of the larger arcs, etc.)  And the outline tends not to have plot cul-de-sacs or corners I paint myself into because it's got a solid structure.
I've talked about the twelve-part outline structure before, and it's the basic scaffolding I use to craft an outline.  Here it is:

1. Establishment: Show character(s) and initial situation. Here’s where you set up not only who your main character(s) is, but what the rules of the road are.  What is “normal” for your story?  If there is magic, for example, you need to let the reader know here.  Especially in a genre story, you need to make it clear what’s going on.
2. Incitement: Incident or new information spurs protagonist. This may be interwoven with Establishment, or exist on its own, but the important this is that the something changes to throw us out of the Established “normal” and gets the protagonist acting. 
3. Challenge: Minor antagonists come into play. You can’t throw the big guns at your protagonist yet.  Either your protagonist isn’t aware of the Big Bad yet, or doesn’t understand the scope of what is happening, or just plain isn’t ready for the big picture yet.
4. Altercation:  Conflict with minor antagonists.  Give your protagonist a hard-won victory, even if it’s minor or only symbolic.  This lets you show your protagonist as having the competence and drive to deserve being at the center of the story. 
5. Payback:  Minor antagonists report back to major, allowing a strike back.  That hard-won victory may have felt good, but it isn’t without consequences.  Perhaps it means that your Big Bad just re-evaluated your protagonist, and has elevated the threat level from Nuisance to Problem.
6. Regrouping: Protagonist reacts to the payback, possibly in an ineffective way; thinks confrontation is over, relaxes.  Here is where your protagonist has another victory, but not the victory they think they’ve had.  This is where they make a mistake, be it underestimating the antagonist, or just sloppy pride.  That deep character flaw you’ve woven into them is set up to bite them back.
7. Collapse: Protagonist loses stability and safety of base situation.  Everything falls apart.  Whatever your protagonist thought they could count on crumbles under their feet.   
8. Retreat: Protagonist must leave base situation to escape threat from main antagonist. Deal them that serious blow.  Force their hand.
9. Recovery: Protagonist establishes a new situation, enough to be stable and safe. You need to give them a chance to lick their wounds, figure out where they stand, and if they can accept that.
10. Investment: Personal reason forces protagonist back into fray with main antagonist—they won’t choose to walk away.  This is where you make your heroes.  At this stage, a lesser protagonist would cut their losses, admit defeat.  Your protagonist can’t do that.  It’s time to see this to the end.
11. Confrontation: Goes after main antagonist, partly to reclaim investment. Now you’re at the climax. 
12. Resolution: Defeat of main antagonist, which can create a new base situation or re-establish stability of original one.

If this is a useful tool for you, by all means, use it.  I developed it because I needed it in my toolbox, and it's been a very helpful thing for me.  If it helps you as well, all the better.

Getting unstuck when the muse lets you down

In the massive multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic, if you maneuver your character between boulders or buildings or something and get stuck, you can type in /stuck, and the game will magically transport you to a space where you can move your character freely again.

Writing? Sadly lacks that feature.

This week, our SFFseven topic is the one thing that helps us get unstuck in a story, but I'm going to adjust that topic a little. (Forgive me.) See, once I get going in a story, with a deadline in my pocket and a character arc in my head, I rarely get stuck. That point in the adventure is the sweet spot, the roller coaster at full speed. It's the between-story living that sticks me really hard. I'm talking about especially that stickiest of things: the will to write. Some folks call this the muse.

I've said I write because I can't not. Because I am a thing that writes. Because it's what I love to do. But, true confession: sometimes I'm not, and I don't. Sometimes I get stuck. Here are some things that have helped me, to varying degrees:

• Find the thing you love that isn't writing and do the crap out of it. Dance. Cook. Play games. Walk the dog. Reupholster your dining room chairs. 
• Read something other than the genre you write. When I read excellent books in my own subgenre, I inevitably get the "I can't do it this as well so why even try" blues. But if I read excellent books in another genre, like thriller or horror or literary meandering, I get energized and thoughts like, "This would be really cool if it also had robots. And kissing. Hey! I can make that happen!" And then ideas--and more importantly, enthusiasm--pour in.
• Develop go-to unsticking resources. A very wise and talented writer, Skyler White, has developed a game for getting unstuck. It involves identifying the sticky thing, turning it into a goal-positive, and coming up with ways you would be able to tell if it was getting less sticky. The preliminary documentation for this process is on her Facebook page, The Narrow Shed. I recommend it. A lot.
• Write fanfiction. I'm not even kidding. If you disdain the hobby, consider getting over that, because fic is the single best way to practice your art without the weight of "oh crap, I have to get this manuscript done and shop it and sell it and promote it and build a career with it." In fic you have no pressure. You can just make words. It is incredibly liberating.
• Find a friend who you trust, and who can handle this, and whine. Let that person whine back when they get stuck. Writing can be incredibly lonely, and most of us get low from time to time. But, quick protip: that trusted friend is not social media. Don't whine on social media. :)
• Be kind to you. You are worthy beyond the manuscript. Daily word count, reviews, sales, social media followers--these are not reflections on who you are as a person or, in many cases, as a writer. The pit of stuckness is easy enough to fall down without letting those outside things give you a push.

Hugs, you guys. We can get through all the stuck.  

Release Day: Prisoner of the Crown by @JeffeKennedy

It's a party here at the SFF Seven Authors' Blog as we celebrate the release of Jeffe's new book kickstarting her Chronicles of Dasnaria High Fantasy series!

**It is NOT a Romance.**

I don't tell you that to discourage you, dear reader. Far from it. I tell you so you are prepared for the type of heart-pounding adventure on which the Chronicles of Darnaria will take you. Afterall, Jeffe is an award-winning Fantasy Romance author; hell, she's won the top prize in Romancelandia for her work, a RITA Award. It's fair to assume her fans, many of whom are our blog readers, would think this new series is all HEA and smexytimes.

That is not this book.

When it comes to rich worldbuilding, nail-biting plot twists, and a heroine discovering her own value and power, well now, this IS that kind of book.

__________

PRISONER OF THE CROWN

She was raised to be beautiful, nothing more. And then the rules changed…

In icy Dasnaria, rival realm to the Twelve Kingdoms, a woman’s role is to give pleasure, produce heirs, and question nothing. But a plot to overthrow the emperor depends on the fate of his eldest daughter. And the treachery at its heart will change more than one carefully limited life…

THE GILDED CAGE

Princess Jenna has been raised in supreme luxury—and ignorance. Within the sweet-scented, golden confines of the palace seraglio, she’s never seen the sun, or a man, or even learned her numbers. But she’s been schooled enough in the paths to a woman’s power. When her betrothal is announced, she’s ready to begin the machinations that her mother promises will take Jenna from ornament to queen.

But the man named as Jenna’s husband is no innocent to be cozened or prince to charm. He’s a monster in human form, and the horrors of life under his thumb are clear within moments of her wedding vows. If Jenna is to live, she must somehow break free—and for one born to a soft prison, the way to cold, hard freedom will be a dangerous path indeed…

Read an excerpt here.

BUY IT NOW:   Amazon  |  B&N  |  iBooks |  Kobo

How not to paint yourself into a corner.

So what is the single most important thing I do to avoid getting stuck in a story? That's our subject this week. I don't know that there's only one thing.

Here's my challenge: I'm a pantser. I know where my story is going to go. I have a beginning and an ending and a few points in the middle. I like to compare my plot points to stepping stones across a stream. I WILL get where I'm going, though sometimes it takes a while.

Most of the time it's not an issue.

SO let's go over a few options and then I'll decide which one I like best.

First: Not too many projects at once. Listen, as far as I'm concerned that's a death blow to many a writer's career. That sounds awfully ominous, but only because it is. You want to work on three projects? Cool. But know how to work on them. I outline one (mentally, but sometimes I make notes), I write one (First draft, free form) and I edit another. On rare occasions, if I MUST, I'll add a fourth. I try very hard not to, because then everything slows down.

Spread yourself too thin, and nothing gets accomplished. Writing is a business. that means I'm already losing some of my writing time to handling the business aspects. currently I'm dealing with the reissue of my short story collection SLICES, which has only ever been out as a limited edition of 275 copies. Now I want to release it into the general populace as it were.But I'm doing it with a new cover, and discussing with the original artist, Alan M. Clark, whether or not I can use the interior pieces he did for the limited edition and how much that might cost me while also dealing with a different artist for the new cover, and whether or not he will be handling the layout for that cover. Dan Brereton is awesome and can doit all, but he also has time constraints as virtually all artists and writers do.

Im editing a short story, writing a rough draft of a novel, reading 700 short stories to choose from for an anthology, slowly and methodically laying out another short story collection and trying to finish three novels that are ALMOST DONE and have been for a few years now. Oh, and any time now I'll get the edits back on my last novel in the TIDES OF WAR and that will automatically take priority. Also, I'm finishing a collaborative novella with a friend of mine that is due in three weeks. the short story I am finishing up? That's due in five days.

I'm close to working on too much at one time.

Yes, I still have that day job, because I do so love insurance and a 401 K retirement plan. I may never retire, but you never know.

Second: I love remembering that this is the computer age. Know what that meansWhen I screw up a story I can save it under a new file, delete the last scene that went horribly wrong and try again without having to type the entire thing all over again! That's saved me a lot of nightmares, believe me.

Third: Prioritize! What is due first? Which of these are written on spec and which ones have a home already? Which ones are helping me pay the bills in the coming months. I already work on too may projects, but I need to make sure I get them done, regardless of amy risks of getting stuck.

Fourth: Shut off the internet, the radio and the television and FOCUS. Seriously. I think that one is my favorite. Getting distracted is far too easy. Writing without those distractions makes a big difference.


Fifth: Now and then, just for giggles, catch up on yoru sleep. You'd be amazed how useful that one is.

The Single Most Helpful Thing I Do When Stuck

Tuesday sees the release of PRISONER OF THE CROWN! There will be print (POD) versions available, too, but they won't appear on the retail sites until release day, Tuesday, June 12, 2018.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: What's the single most helpful thing you do to keep from being stuck in a story? Or how not to paint yourself into a corner.

I don't think I've ever painted myself into a corner in a story. The closest I've come is when I'm writing books in the same world and with overlapping characters and timelines - occasionally I've had to do some major problem-solving to get events to match up correctly.

Otherwise... any time I've felt like I'm hitting a wall, that indicates to me that I'm coming up on a story breakthrough. The bigger the breakthrough, the more resistance I'll feel. I slow down. Getting words down can feel like pulling teeth. Sometimes I get very little done for a day or two. (Or more - that's the WORST.)

You know what I do then?

I keep writing.

That's the thing that works for me. And it works every time.

I'm a write-for-discovery writer, so if I just keep writing, I'll find my way through. I can't preplot to save my life. Ask me to outline on my own and I just sit there with a blank brain. Sometimes I can talk stuff through with other people. My agent, Sarah Younger, is actually pretty amazing at this.

(By the way, Sarah has started a podcast: So You Wanna Write a Romance and it's chock full of useful information. Check it out!)

But if I keep writing, the story will eventually reveal itself. Like a gift from the universe.

Compartmentalizing Is My Secret Super Power

As I understand it, this week’s topic is how we keep the creative writing activity walled off from the mundane but pressing concerns of life such as the bills, politics, climate change, the funny sound in the car’s transmission, etc. (Actually the title of the prompt is “How much space do you give emotional nonwriting labor? Which doesn’t make much sense to me.)

So, pressing forward without much internal clarity on the actual topic here…I’m very VERY good at compartmentalizing. Not sure if I’ve always been this way or if I acquired the skill in my first days on the job at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a newly minted Buyer. The requisitions (in twelve colorful carbon copies) literally came pouring into my inbox all day long. I had to make calls to obtain quotes, return calls from vendors and impatient end users, had to write documentation for files, field calls from the reviewers (“Why didn’t the Buy American Act apply here? Where’s the Service Contract Act clause?” etc.). I had to walk over to Receiving and search for lost crates the vendor insisted had been accepted on the premises. There were meetings and presentations.  Oh and if the purchase order needed correcting? You had to use the correct color of ‘Wite Out” on each of those twelve rainbow-hued carbons. I had an army of ‘Wite Out” bottles on my desk.

Yup, busy.

And the frustrating thing was, you could never finish anything in one phone call or with one action because there were so many players involved. I like to pick a thing up, take care of it and move on, never looking back. Not possible with a lot of purchase orders in those days.

In order to survive, I got very good at breaking tasks down into component parts, doing what could be done at the given moment, setting it aside and moving to the next thing. I would not think about Stanley Scientist’s seriously overdue order of twelve crystals from Sweden until I got the next phone call on it or notice it had been delivered (but six were cracked and now we had to do a return…) I can click on and off on with regard to a topic or task.

NOT the evil alien scientist

When it comes to the writing, I sit down to write and I’m in the flow. The farthest thing from my mind will be the bills or the car or any other problem or issue other than the evil alien scientists menacing my heroine at the moment. If I were to allow the ‘emotional nonwriting labor’ to intrude, I wouldn’t BE writing because I wouldn’t be in the thick of the action on the alien planet. Flow interrupted. Muse departs for the day in a huff.

Sorry I have no useful tips or insights to offer here, since my compartmentalizing is just how I am, with a To Do list thrown into the mix. If you google the topic of learning to compartmentalize, lots of helpful blog posts and articles pop up. Apparently it can be a reaction to stress, among other things. Yup, that Buyer 1 job was stressful all right! But worth it to (a) pay the bills and (b) contribute to the scientific exploration of the universe. I loved being part of NASA/JPL and I’m really proud of my mission stickers, badges and pins. I was there and I played my business-oriented role in some very cool stuff.

Closing the blog post writing compartment now, time to move on to the next thing!

Note: Images other than cover art from DepositPhoto

Out of the Clear Blue Sky

I guess I'm demonstrating how life intrudes upon creative spaces. Because we're going to talk about yet another suicide by a creative icon who, a bunch of people close to her say showed no signs at all that she was in danger. Let's also have a look at the headline that popped up on today's news feed: Suicide rates in the US have increased by 25% since 1999.  That increase is overwhelmingly among people with no known mental illness. Add into this the fact that high creativity types also tend to higher incidences of mood disorders than the population at large, and you have me on my mental well-being soapbox. C'mon up and join me.

Adulting is hard. For some people in these not-so-United States, adulting is getting harder and harder by the day. And if you've never been diagnosed with a mood disorder or mental illness of any kind, knowing you're in danger can be incredibly difficult.

Not wanting to be alive doesn't lend itself to objectivity. It feels as if it came out of the clear blue sky. It can be an awful, shaky, out of control, desperate place to be. Or it can be the ice cold, rational-feeling logic and certainty that this will never end. You will never be normal. That your life, if you keep at it, will be nothing but a long march of sitting by watching everyone else succeed and smile and live while you personify failure and uselessness.

It's a lie. This is broken biology. And it's lying to you. So if you've ever wondered about your mental/emotional well-being, there are a few measures and questions you can track for yourself.

1. Did I feel this way yesterday? If no, when did it start? Did anything happen before it began? Can I trace back to when I started feeling like I might be better off dead? When was that? Did anything happen? (There need not be a reason - but the mental exercise is useful.)
2. How bad is this? Give it a number between 1 and 10. Or use Hyperbole and a Half's scale. But this is important. If you're edging past 7, or if you're sitting at 1 all the time, it's time to call someone. Your MD. One of the Suicide prevention hotlines. The important thing on this one is to do this assessment daily and WRITE IT DOWN. You want to watch your trends. If you're in a bad spell, do an hourly check in - keep a light hand. There's no pressure. Just checking in. Write it down. Walk away. Drink water. Come back an hour later for another check in. Change? Okay. No change? Okay. Walk away. Drink water. Breathe.
3. What success did I have today? Even if it's just 'got out of bed' it's enough.  'Drank water' it's enough.
4. Am I creating? Simple yes/no. This is another trend to track. One of the most telling questions in the mood disorder survey is "Are you no longer participating in activities you once enjoyed?" When someone asks you that question while you aren't convinced you want to be alive, you can't recall ever enjoying anything, so the answer is generally a shrug and "No, that part's okay, I guess." Tracking doesn't lie and it won't let you lie to yourself if you can flip back through your days and see the avalanche of 'no' on this creative question.

The problem with mood disorders and suicidal ideation is that this stuff creeps up on you. A single fire ant stings, but it can't take you down. It's only after the little bastards have crawled up your leg unnoticed and start stinging en mass that you realize you're in serious danger. So it's important to measure. To check in. "Can I survive the fire ants, today? Are they sneaking up on me and getting slowly worse? Or are they steadily bad and I've just gotten numb to them?" Either way. If you're having more bad days than actively good days, it's time to make a call or a text to the number linked above. Or to talk to your doctor as a start.

The world needs you and what you have to create more than ever. And if like me, you're staring at your once beloved project, struggling, wondering why you just can't - check those fire ants, my friend. You're being stung. You don't have to be the one to brush them away on your own. It is safe to ask for help. You'll find it's a great relief to ask for help even before anyone even rises to your aid.

Saving the Mental Energy for the Work

Everyday, my social media feeds are kind of an assault.

Like, the world is a trash fire and there are tweets and links and stories pretty much every hour on the hour (and every minute in between) reminding you that things are horrible and people are garbage.  This is both for the world at large, and in the microcosm of the SFF Community.

(Not everyone, and I do try to make a point of reminding us all of that.)

A lot of times, you pretty much have to make a choice: do you watch the trash fire, or do you do the work?  Which wolf do you feed?

(And that's not even getting into the creative-energy-drain that is other parts of life, family, finances, work, household, etc., etc.)

So how do I keep my head clear so I can work?  Honestly, a lot of willful ignorance.  A lot of deciding NOT to pay attention to the trashfire.  Admittedly, a lot of that comes down to privilege: the worst of the trashfire things are NOT attacks on me or my daily life.  I'm able to ignore it in ways others don't have the luxury to.  And I need to so I can get my work done.

There's enough horrible in the world as it is, people.  Be excellent to each other.

Zero advice from a multitasking failure

I am a crap multitasker. Seriously, I can’t even answer more than one question at a time. When I was in college, I had to make lists and calendars and check them every 5.2 seconds, and set alarms and Sharpie schedules on my skin, and even then I was a human wad of panic for four years, certain I was going to forget something important or let somebody down.

When my kids were little, I breathed in a volcanic-seized anxiety cloud and held it in my body for about ten years, and everything else in the universe went on hold so I could do just that one job right.

I have to be honest here: I have no advice on how to balance time and commitments, how to keep a consistent writing schedule despite the maelstrom of life. I have never done it successfully.

When you have a day job, you go and do the job, then you come home and—unless you are crazy and bring work home, like I used to do—you have a whole evening to be parent or partner or fan or hobbyist or, basically, yourself. Geography manages the priority of tasks: if you’re at the office, you do the work. If you’re at home, you do the other work.

But writing isn’t like that. I don’t have an office. I don’t even have a chair that other people feel uncomfortable invading when it suits them. I can’t say, hey, here’s the cubicle so I must work. Instead I’m driving down the MoPac Expressway and character dialogue pops into my mind, and I have to pull over and scribble notes and then deal with being late to music class or the dentist. Or I get the most brilliant workaround for a plot snaggle, but it’s 3pm and I have to go fetch the children from school and by the time I get to a place where I can write down that brilliant thought, it’s gone. Lost.

Or I have a deadline, so I put the kids to bed then lock myself in the guest room and write until I literally fall asleep on the smooth, warm keyboard. Only to have my alarm go off an hour later and, as Deadpool would say, it’s time to make the chimichangas.

So yeah, I’ll write this morning… but only after I’m done typing out this blog post.

And putting the laundry into the dryer.

And setting up needed appointments with orthodontists, scanning and emailing forms to day camp coordinators, replying to emails that probably arrived yesterday.

Answering phone calls from family members who are extroverts and need to talk things out, and I love them so it’s OKAY.

Feeding the pets. Taking a shower. Deliberately ignoring the news because I just can't with that.

And quite possibly, by the time I've completed all the musts, it won’t be morning any longer.

I’m sorry I don’t have good advice on carving out write-space in your life, but the thing is, every writer deals with the stuff I deal with, and you make it work. You make the time. You keep all these balls in the air with grace and a grin like precision Cirque jugglers.

And I admire the hell out of y'all.

KAK's 5 Ways To Be a Hardass Creative in a Needy World

The mind is a palace filled with many rooms where you store things of importance...

...and forget where you put them.

/jk 

Sort of. 

But seriously, this week's topic is how to preserve the mental space for creativity while the real world insists on invading.

Here are my 5 Ways To Be a Hardass Creative in a Needy World:

1. Adopt the lifestyle of a recluse; failing that, claim a "me space" that is off limits to others
2. Live by a fairly strict schedule that incorporates time for dealing with practical affairs
3. Build wiggle room into your creative schedule, always
4. Deal with unexpected issues swiftly, don't avoid and hope they'll self-resolve 
5. Respect your self-worth, don't allow others to bypass your boundaries--those boundaries include physical, emotional, financial, artistic, and time.

Separating the writing from the rest

So the basic premise for this week's topic is how do you separate the writing from the rest of your world. How much time goes to the writing versus everything else?

What do I mean?

I mean, if you're in a relationship, when do you stop writing and take care of the relationship? When you've got other things to do, when do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the muse?

For me thats easy. I've been at this for over twenty-five years, and at the end of the day, with very few exceptions, I write every day. I may wait until I'm done with the day job (often) I may have to do a few things on the Honey-Do list (also often) and I might want to take a break and see a movie or hang out with my friends (also often) but at the end of the day, I have to get my writing done, It's my career. It's not a hobby that occasionally pays bills, though it has been that very thing, it's not a part time job to covered my insurance ( that's the day job as Starbucks), it's my career. that means I pay my dues same as anyone going to their day job does. Want a roof over your head? Better get writing. Want dinner every day of the week? Sit your butt down and hit the keyboard.

Sometimes, if I need to make my deadlines and I want to see friends, etc, I sacrifice sleep. not the first time, and I promise it won't be the last. If something has to give, I can promise it won't be my writing.

Some writers, a lot of writers, manage most of the actual act of writing in maybe 2 hours a day. the rest of their writing time is spent handling business. there are calls to make, networking to do, agents and editors to chat with. There's another manuscript to edit/ there's that outline for the novel you already write but never actually did a proper proposal for. There're a dozen different aspects tot he writing gig that HAVE to be handled, regardless of whether or not they get in the way of the actual writing process. They don't wait.


Currently I am between contracted novels.  What does that mean? It mens I just secured the cover for my next reprint coming out from Haverhill House Publications in July. It means I've got a short story to write by the 15th, a novella to finish wring with my coauthor Charles Rutledge (he's waiting on me), I have a a novel proposal and sample chapters I'm working on. I have three seperate novels that I would like to finish in the next month or two. All three are MOSTLY finished  but that isn't completely finished no matter how hard I might wish. They were all stopped at different points for different reasons but I want to finish them soon. I'm still reading through the seven hundred stories received for the Twisted Book of Shadows Anthology. There's another anthology that I need to get to work on soon.  Convention season is coming up, and I have to prepare for that. There are more novels I need to plan and at least two novellas I need to finish, preferably before October, and any day now I'll be getting back the editor's notes on the last book in the TIDES OF WAR series.  every week I stop what I'm doing and try to knock out an article for SFF7 and oh, yeah, whenever possible I do a Three Guys With Beards Podcast with Jonathan Maberry and Christopher Golden.

And, of course, I have a lovely girlfriend I like to spend time with every day, because I'm sort of addicted to her.

Life is always going to get in the way. The job is the job and my career is my career. I want to make a living. I want to have a few luxuries like a roof over my head, food in my belly, gas for the car. Now and then I have to say no to a movie, or getting together for dinner with the gang. It's not even a question.

This is my career. This, right here, the writing. If my friends don't want to hear it, well, I don't always like when they go to their 9-5 jobs either but fecal matter happens. There are a few people I used to be closer with. They decided my writing was a nuisance. I decided they could feel anyway they wanted to as long as they didn't get in the way of my writing.

If I was standing between them and their house payment, or feeding their families or tending to the necessities of their chosen careers, I would expect the same treatment in return.

Does that sound mercenary?

Well, here's another one for you: I do what I love for a living. I do what I have to to pay my bills. Unless someone is coming along and offering to cover my expenses for me, that will never change. I love what I do and if I have to I'll fight to protect it.

There ya go. That's my answer.

Protecting the Writing: a Quick How-To

I'm hard at work writing THE ORCHID THRONE, the first in my new trilogy for St. Martins Press. So, naturally, I had to impulse-buy this gorgeous orchid from Trader Joe's. It's my new desk ornament, following the USB-plug in Christmas tree, cherry blossom tree, and foaming cauldron. This one notably does NOT require electricity, which seems appropriate for the world I'm writing. However, it does require attention to be kept alive. So far my record with orchids is pretty abysmal. (Don't tell this gal!) We shall see. Any tips for keeping orchids alive in a desert climate?

Last week I traveled to Phoenix to give a presentation to the Desert Rose Romance Writers. This one was "A Taoist’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Writing Business." I talked a whole lot about how the relentless push to get rich can make us crazy, and how to find a peaceful place of sane creativity in the midst of that. But, during the great discussion at the end, one gal asked if I had advice about family who don't believe in your career, who actively interfere or dis what you're doing, or who won't approved of your eventual story.

This is, of course, not an easy question to answer, though several gals in the room had advice for her, too. It's also our topic at the SFF Seven this week: How much space do you give non-writing emotional labor - or how do you save mental space for the work with a head full of mortgage and other people's expectations? I'd call this a coincidence, but I'm a Taoist I know it's not.

Everybody struggles with this. It's an issue that affects everyone, not just writers, and not just creatives. Unless we're hermits, life is a balancing act of what we do to please ourselves and what we do to please others. At one end of the extreme, we have the sociopath (or hermit) who cares nothing for other people's needs or is completely isolated from them. At the other end is the doormat, that abject individual who lives as a metaphorical slave to the needs of others, to the point that they have nothing of their own.

The answer - as with all things of the Tao, since I'm already coming at it from that angle - is finding the middle way.

This is easier said than done. Like so many aspects of finding the middle way, it takes constant re-evaluation and adjustment - and honest self-examination. What we can depend on is that things will always change. Sometimes people in our lives honestly need us more than other times. There are illnesses and emergencies - emotional and physical - and times of crisis.

The trick is to differentiate the real crises from the over-dramatized kind. Because we all know those people, right? The ones who have daily crises, if not more often, and for whom EVERYTHING is a MAJOR HUGE DEAL SO YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO ME RIGHT NOW.

And I'm not just talking about cats!

So, how do we deal with this? By drawing boundaries and sticking to them. Make your writing sacred and build a fence around it. And a big stone wall. Maybe add a lava moat, too. Post the rules for entry clearly. If someone fakes their way in, then they get stiffer rules and penalties going forward until they prove they can be trusted again. Treat it like a game if you have to, but erect that fortress and defend it vigorously!

This goes for your own worries, too. Give those distracting thoughts names and identities and make them obey the rules, too. They don't get to come into the fortress. Everything and everyone gets their time and place.

Under heaven some things lead, some follow, 
some blow hot, some cold, 
some are strong, some weak, some are fulfilled, some fail.

So the wise soul keeps away
from the extremes, excess, extravagance.

Chapter 29, Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

That's how you do it: draw the boundaries and know that you'll have to defend them. And also know to keep from the extremes. Find the middle way.

Ideas Are Butterflies

For me, ideas are like butterflies – everywhere and of the moment, so if one flutters by that I like, I write myself a note with enough detail to jog my memory later. I can’t tell you how many ideas have escaped me because they were so cool I was sure I’d remember them…and then I didn’t. Only the fact that there’d been an idea…which is beyond frustrating. So write them DOWN is my advice!

Now some story ideas are HUGE and I won’t forget them, like writing a scifi novel based on the Titanic sinking, but set in the far future. That one I mulled for a long time before I actually wrote Wreck of the Nebula Dream and I had no trouble keeping it in the forefront of my mind. Titanic was a fascination of mine since I was a little girl (family lore, which I now actually doubt, was that we had a distant relative in Second Class who survived) and so it was no great surprise that I eventually wrote my own version of the shipwreck story.

But most of the little sparks or seeds that could turn into a story, or an interesting wrinkle in a story come to me while I’m reading magazines, either online or in real life, or looking at fashion magazines (some photo shoots are really edgy) or just going about the duties of daily life. I have a huge file of notes and articles torn out (or printed out) but you know what I’ve found? I almost never actually go back in and look at that file. When an idea inspires me, it’s usually a new idea and it’s so shiny or so enticing I just have to get right on it and develop a story around it. If an idea stays in my backlog for too long, it gets eclipsed by the newer stuff.

Actually Business Week has been a good source of ideas for me. For example, my Star Cruise: Songbird story was inspired by an article I read in BW about rock stars doing theme cruises for their fans. And the fact that one of my characters who appears in several scifi romance novels is connected to the Sectors spice merchant guild through her family connections started with a BW article on the real-life exotic spice trade.

To give another example, Mission to Mahjundar was inspired by a perfume ad and a calendar photo. I don’t own the rights to either photo so I can’t share them here (although I still have my somewhat tattered copies) but the backstory is as follows: One day I saw a photo of a windswept, abandoned temple, standing alone on a plateau, somewhere in the Middle East. The image remained with me and I pondered – as one does – what adventure would bring people to this remote location and what would happen to them there. What would they be seeking? Would they find whatever they needed? This became the inspiration for the temple of the Mahjundan Ten Gods, where Shalira must go on her wedding journey, to seek a key to her mother’s long-closed tomb. It also established in my mind that the planet Mahjundar was going to be loosely based on Middle Eastern themes. I’m not sure how much the completed novel carries that intent out since after all, the planet is not-Earth, but there was influence as I pictured the daily life Shalira might lead.

But the key thing that put all the other elements together in my mind and set off the plot came when I happened across a perfume ad in a magazine. The illustration was very dark in tone, with a woman in a purple-and-gold hooded cloak holding a beautiful crystal bottle that glowed golden. The light from the bottle illuminated her face. And I thought, that’s it! That’s Shalira inside the tomb. Then I needed to know who  would be there with her…and of course my Sectors Special Forces soldier, Mike Varone, told me he would be!

Ideas for the details of the book itself may also come from the same sources but once I have the big concept locked in, I'm more likely to be sitting at my dining room table, brainstorming with myself and saying, well if there's going to be an epidemic on an interstellar cruise liner, what kind of disease can it be? And off I go to research ebola and norovirus and a few other exotic things I can't mention or else I'll give part of the Star Cruise: Outbreak plot away.

So there you have it but this is only a partial discussion of where my ideas come from, because they literally come from everywhere, all the time. Only a few make it to the stage where I’m actively working to incorporate them into a novel. So many ideas in that flock of butterflies and so little time!

Story Ideas Versus Contest Entries

Tis the season for conferences and their contests again. Thus it is also the season for volunteering to judge for a few of those contests. This plugs neatly into this week's topic.

I will observe, as Marshall did - ideas are not the problem. At least not often. There IS a contest entry this year that is deeply, deeply problematic but none of the judges are sure whether it's an idea problem or an execution problem. The take away is that if this entry is meant as satire, the writer didn't have the chops to pull it off. But outside of that, none of us has yet run across an entry over years of this contest that has resembled any other entry we'd ever read. It doesn't matter how simple an idea is. What matters is the idea twisted through an author's unique perspective. That makes the story.

Where contest entries seem to run into problems is exactly where KAK pointed. Execution. You'd think you could come up with an idea for a book and then faithfully follow it from beginning to end. You'd think. Take a poll among authors. Find out how many of us end up losing sight of the ball and wandering in the weeds trying to recall what it was we were supposed to be looking for in the first place. The critique for most contest entries tends to be about lack of narrative drive - the author losing the through line and/or not giving the protagonist enough drive. The protagonist has to want something and want it badly enough to sustain 75-100k words. It's easy to say, tough to do.

I suspect this is why writing courses will never go out of business. It's easy to be convinced you need narrative drive. It's totally another to figure out how to execute that, assimilate the information, and then turn it into execution so effortless that it becomes a natural part of your voice. I get to say this because it's still a -- let's say -- development opportunity for me.

My as yet imperfect strategy for narrative drive is to ask character questions:
1. What does the protag want?
2. What does the protag need? (This may not be known to the protag - it often isn't at the beginning of a book.)

If I can answer those questions, I figure I might be on the right track. To somewhere.

It's not where you get your ideas, it's how you fuel your tank

"Where do you get your ideas?" is the question put to authors a lot, and it's fundamentally the wrong question.

The ideas are always out there.  They are almost irrelevant.  If you're looking for them, if you're thinking creatively of how to integrate them to each other, you'll find them.  What matters is how you turn that idea in to a story.

And that goes into how you're keeping your tank full.

By which I mean, as a writer, you should always be taking in input while you're making output.  That doesn't necessarily mean Read All The Books--- but you should be reading, of course-- but any other thing that can fuel your imagination: movies, television, music, art, anything.  That's what's going to give you the little bits that weave together to become new ideas. 

And you need that.  You can't keep driving on an empty tank.  It never works.

Don't be distracted by the shiny! It isn't story.

Regarding ideas and where to get 'em... Did you read KAK's post yesterday? What she said. I'll just add a tiny bit to it.

I get ideas from science news feeds and web sites, the brain-crunchy books of pop-science geniuses like Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk's Twitter feed (which is crazysauce, have you seen that thing?!), re-watches of TV shows that stoke my fangirl imagination (Farscape, Firefly, X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Deep Space Nine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, etc.), documentaries, vacation photos and journals, those people in the Starbucks who look tense and clearly have some drama going on, and, when all else fails, the disco black hole of YouTube.

The problem with ideas is that they aren't a story. Yeah, I know there's such a thing as an "idea story" ("What if we were all living in the dream of some dude name Jack?"), but the format has never worked for me. Maybe my ideas just aren't juicy enough to drive a whole story, I dunno.

For me, ideas are gems, scattered out on the bedspread. I pick up a science article here, a TV character's gesture there, and a dead language there, and I slip all those jewels into a velvet bag, give it a little shake, and start drawing them out, hopefully in an arrangement that appropiately bedazzles my story.

And I mean story in the Lisa Cron sense: "A story is about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses."

So, as sparkly and beautiful as all those ideas are, honestly, they're just vehicles for telling a story. They aren't the story themselves.

Which is good news, right? I mean, you can get ideas from anywhere, and they don't even need to be good ideas. The trick is use all those shiny idea gems to to tell a story that means something to you.