Why You Aren't Writing That Novel

OK, time for some hard truths.  You haven't finished writing That Novel.  You've been talking about it for years, and you can visualize all the elements of it so easily.  You know it, back and forth, inside and out.  It's there, waiting.

But you haven't written it.

Why is that?

I could tell you it's about discipline-- and it is, no doubt.  It takes discipline, it takes putting your ass in the chair (or feet at the standing desk), and just plain doing the work.  It takes not going to that party, not binging that series, not spending yet another night refreshing Facebook every twenty minutes.  It takes just digging in and getting it done.

But most of you don't want to do that.
Here's the ugly truth, dear reader, and look deep inside yourself and ask yourself if this is why you haven't written That Novel.

You don't want to write a novel.  You want to have written it.

I get that.  I get wanting the glory of having it in your hands, being able to say, "Oh, I wrote a novel", but not having to do to the unsexy, daily-grind part.  I'm in the process of drafting my tenth novel (thirteenth if you count the ones that are sitting fallow on  hard drive), and I always wish there was a way to fast-forward this phase of it.  At this point, I know what I'm doing in terms of writing a novel, but it's still hard, grinding, go-down-to-the-word-mines work. 

And you're never going to write That Novel until you come to terms with that part of it, and get down to doing it. 

So what are you waiting for?

YUNOWRITE?

Why don't people who claim to want to write a book...write that book? Mostly, I think it's about unreasonable expectations of what "being an author" is and what writing a novel entails. I'm not going to get into the selling of the novel because that's a leg of the journey beyond this week's blogging prompt.

Unless you live with an author, your exposure to what it means to Write A Book has probably been through the fictitious portrayals of an author's life in TV and movies. It's a fun and flexible occupation for a character to have, but like most occupations portrayed on TV, the actual act of doing the job isn't anywhere close to reality. Rick Castle, Jessica Fletcher, Rory Gilmore, they spend five seconds on screen every fifth episode "writing." Sure, there's a reason for that. Watching an author do their job would be some dry, dry, dry TV. Type, type, type, swear, talk to themselves under their breaths, get up, pace, get something from the fridge, write some more, get up, get coffee, erase everything they'd written, let the dog out, scan social media, make a snack...you get the idea.

Folks who "want to write a book but..." rarely stop to think about a novel being the longest term paper they've ever written. If they did, they'd find a local author, hand them a bottle of whiskey, and walk away...after buying two copies of every book ever written by that author, naturally. 🤣

It's not surgery!

"Why haven't you written that novel in you"

That's the subject for this week, to paraphrase.

Well, the easiest answer is normally close to right. I have several, but let's go down the list shall we?

First: "I just don;t have the time."

Sure you do, precious. You make the time. That excuse will never work for me. I have had  a full time job through all but seven months of my time as a full time writer. Those seven months were interspersed through the last twenty-five years, and included three months off to recover from serious knee surgery and various stints when I was looking for a job.

It wasn't that I had the time. it was that I made the time. More than once I declined an opportunity to join friends at one gathering or another, because I had to do my daily quotient of writing. Why? Because that's how you get the writing done, You MAKE the time.

So that excuse does not fly with me.

Second: "I don't know where to start."

With ass in chair. Writing is like any other craft. it takes time and practice. You sit, you write, you work out the details of that process for yourself, like every other writer throughout history though I'll grant you that some have had help along the way and some have not.

I don't care if you work the details out in a notebook (Tried, failed. My handwriting was waaaaay too sloppy), if you plot every scene meticulously and make a stack of index cards regarding each character while you hire someone to do sketches of their facial expressions or if you wing it. The story is only told if you put in the effort.

Let's be honest here: if you are expecting an easy ride of this, you're going to be disappointed. Writing a novel is work. From the outlining to the first draft to the second, third, and fourth edits. It's work. That's why not everyone ids doing it I have known a great number of people who decided that they would write a novel and then called it quits after the first few weeks because surprise, like with any work, there is effort involved.

That said, I have a lot of fun writing. I don't imagine that will ever change. I enjoy my work, even when the work is hard and requires extra effort.

Third: "Oh, I guess everyone has a novel in them."

Yeah. not mentioning names here, but a friend of mine who is a successful comic artist (far more successful than I ever was in my efforts to become a comic artist), and whom I'd worked with as a writer on a few projects that never quite came to fruition, looked at me when I told him I was going to try my luck at novels and said, "I'm pretty sure everyone has a novel idea in them." The way he said it, i knew he was dismissing my attempts. I resisted the urge to tell him where he could shove his words. Instead I just got a bit more serious about getting the first work done. My bibliography speaks for itself.

Fourth: "It's all been done before."

Bite me. You can tell me that there are only ten basic plots (or twelve, or eighteen or thirty-seven, it depends on who you are talking to or reading) and I will continue to sit in my chair and make up stories and I will do my very, very best to be paid for them.

it is not the story, but how it is told that changes. Thee may only be X number of plots, but the way that the tales are created and offered is as different as the shape of a snowflake from the next.

Fifth: "I don't want to write fiction. I want to write literature."

Stephen King has a great quote that he heard from a man on the street once I';s been a whole but as I recall the story he was watching TV and they asked several people at a museum opening what they thought of the art and whether or not the works at the particular establishment qualified as art. One of the locals. a man who was very likely a farmer and was dressed for the part looked at the interviewer and said (and I am paraphrasing here) "I don't know if it's art, but I know what I like."

That's exactly how I feel about literature.

Want to create art instead of a house of toothpicks? Find the right tools in your mind and get to it. I know a few folks who created literature from the very start. I know others who will never manage to create literature in that sense and are fine with it. Me? I write stories and consider literature to be a happy coincidence. I'm having a lot of fun. I have no intention of carving away at the words that I write until I have removed any phrase that fails to pass the literature litmus test, assuming such a test exists. I write stories that I enjoy writing. If I occasionally bleed on the page, that's just a side effec of the process for me.

The point is, there are any number of excuses that can be found and used. There are infinite reasons not to write, The number one reasons are, as near as I can tell, fear of rejection and a serious desire to not have to put the work into it. If you want it, if you NEED to write like you need to breathe, then you'll get it done. And if you are finding a dozen or so excuses why you can't, then you obviously don't want it badly enough.

Does that sound harsh? Sorry, but sometimes you need to be a little harsh.

If you want it, sometimes you have

to work for it.

Why You Haven't Written the Novel That's in You

Another photo of the lunar eclipse as the full moon set over Santa Fe.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is "Why do you think people DON'T write?"

It's a different take on a familiar topic. Because all writers hear - and, I confess, dread - the standard line from people: "I've always thought I had a novel in me, if I had the time to write."

Or some variation on this. Almost every person who says they want to write a novel and hasn't blames not having the time to do it. Which makes the person who HAS written novels want to throttle the person speaking. Maybe very gently - just a light squeeze to the larynx to stop those hated words.

Because here's the deal: WE ALL HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME.

Right? 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year.

No, no - don't start explaining or making excuses or mentally going over your incredibly tight schedule. I'm sure your days are packed. I don't doubt that you don't have an empty three or four hours - or whatever it is you think you need - to write in. None of us have that. Nobody I've ever known has had HOURS to kill every day, with absolutely nothing to fill them, so they might as well write a book.

Except maybe people in prison? I dunno - seems like they're kept pretty busy, too.

People don't like being idle. We're not built for it. If we don't have work to do, we like to be entertained. If we do a lot of work, as many people do, then we need to be able to relax in between. We need to sleep, to eat, to take care of children and the elderly and the infirm. We have homes to maintain, pets to nurture, volunteer obligations that are important to us.

I'm going to let you in on a secret that isn't much of a secret: occupations are like gas - they expand to fit the available time.

This means that, your allotted 24 hours a day will always be filled. If you have empty hours for some miraculous reason? They'll get filled. Nature abhors a vacuum, yes? Empty time sucks other things into it.

So, the reason these people haven't written their novels - or short stories, or poems, or essay, or what have you - is NEVER because they don't have the time. It's because they chose to do something else with that time.

Now, I'm not going to pretend making time to write is easy. It's not. In fact, I suspect making time to write is harder than making time to do most anything else. That's because it's solitary, it's producing and contributing nothing to the world apparently (maybe for a long time), and it looks to other people like you're not doing anything at all. Except maybe taking away from the stuff they approve of you doing - like stuff that benefits them.

Decide to start an exercise regime? Look at all the people at the gym doing the same thing! You come home sweaty? You lose weight and get stronger. All awesome observable stuff.

Take up gourmet cooking? People are so happy with you! Yummy food for all!

Get a second job? Wow, you're not around as much, but yay for more money! And the people at the job are happy you're doing stuff they need you to do badly enough that they'll PAY you to do it.

Start writing a novel? None of these things. You take time away from other stuff, nothing happens for a long time, and - because writing is difficult, mentally and emotionally draining - you probably won't even seem happy about it.

When most of us start writing, the time we make - that is, steal from another part of our life - is usually from something that was fun and relaxing. It's hard to cut out the things we need to do to live, like cooking food and making money. So we steal from reading time, or movie-watching time, or gaming time. Then not only are you trying to learn a New Thing, which is tedious and draining, you've also lost the things that made you happy.

It's really hard to get through this phase. Especially if the people who love you are saying, "Not only do I see you less, but you also seem miserable. Are you sure you want to do this?"

Yes. Yes, you really do.

Writing might be the most delayed-gratification project I've ever engaged in. But the rewards are worth it. IF you stick through all the garbage and difficulty. And that means well past the publication of your first book, or even the first ten.

I can vouch that making a living as a writer is even BETTER than I imagined it would be.

So: MAKE THE TIME TO WRITE.

Beg, borrow, and steal the time! Don't wait for the day that never comes, when time to write magically falls from the sky.

TAKE THE TIME AND SQUEEZE EVERY DROP FROM IT.

I believe in you.

Not Into Unreliable Narrators

DepositPhoto

I have only one thing to say about this week's topic - I don't have any time or patience for unreliable narrators, not in books, movies or real life. Nothing will send me running faster... Okayyy then, that's kind of a short post.

What can I add to this?

 Here's the only sort of unreliable narrator I've ever written to my knowledge and it's because she was about 100 years old, in ancient Egypt and her grasp on everything is pretty tenuous at this advanced age. The man asking her questions is a 200 year old ghost (or "akh"), sent back to life by the goddess of second chances to solve his own murder. I guess he was a bit of an unreliable narrator for most of the novel, come to think of it, but not to the reader, only to his fellow Egyptians. But he tried very hard not to outright lie! Edited a bit from the published version, which is one of my older ancient world paranormal romances.

To not be promo-y, I won't even add the buy links!

The excerpt:  He’d asked the cook, oh so casually, who was the oldest servant remaining on the estate, working his question in among other topics. She’d directed him to a woman named Benerib. “You’ll get little sense from her. Dreams in the sun, she does, and waits for her ka to be ready for the Afterlife. She must be more than one hundred years old.” Wiping her hands on her apron, Khensa went to a shelf at the rear of the kitchen, beckoning him to follow. She selected a clay jar, removing the stopper, and taking a deep sniff of the contents. Then she took a small bowl and ladled a generous serving of honeyed figs from the jar. “Here, my special recipe. Benerib loves these, greedy as a child she is. I don’t know what you want of her, but with these as your greeting, you’re more likely to get her to talk. Don’t expect much sense.”

Taking the treat with a murmured word of thanks, he left the house in search of the old woman. Asking people he met in the yard, he was directed to where the elder sat in the shade of a willow tree, a cat purring on her lap. Clearing his throat to get her attention, he bowed. “Old mother, I’m told you’ve been in service in this house for a hundred years.”

She laughed, peering at him from rheumy eyes. “Not quite that long, but yes, I’ve been a body servant to all the women of the family, including young Neity. I started running errands at the age of five, holding combs and wigs and pins and ironing linen, and I don’t know what all else over the years. Until I got too old and bent. My hands don’t work well anymore.” She showed him her gnarled fingers. “Do I know you? Are you a noble of the house, home after the war?”

Wondering which war she was thinking of, in her age-addled mind, he seated himself next to her. “No, I’m Periseneb, a guest, only here to help Lady Neithamun until the tax collection day. I’ve brought you something.”

Shooing the cat off her lap, she accepted his offering and popped one of the figs into her mouth. Eyes closed in contentment, she said, “Many years since I had a suitor bring me treats.” She giggled like a girl. "Oh yes, I had many men chasing my skirts, let me tell you.” Benerib swayed in her chair and began enumerating the swains of her youth.

Remembering the cook’s warning about getting anything sensible from such an elderly person, Periseneb felt the akh’s power pushing at him, feeding on his barely suppressed frustration. Benerib was his only chance to learn things about the family history which would never appear in the dusty scribes’ records. “Have another fig?” When she reached for the treat, he clasped his hand around her wrist and let a small amount of the pent up anger leach from him where their skin touched.

Benerib gasped, clutching at her chest, and slumped against the back of the chair. The cat, which had been purring as it twined around her ankles, hissed and spat at Periseneb before scurrying away. Dismayed at the effect he’d wrought, he prayed he hadn’t killed her. One so old didn’t deserve to die at the hands of an akh.

A moment later, opening one rheumy eye, she peered at him flirtatiously. “What is it you want to ask?”

With a huge sigh of relief, he offered her the figs, taking great care not to touch her again in his unsettled emotional state. “I’m curious about the family that owns Heron Marsh. Not this generation or even the generation before. Older times. Have you any tales of a great great aunt? Sitre by name?”

Both of Benerib’s eyes popped open and she slapped her knee as she sat up. “Oh, that one! She was a handful right enough, sir. Not at all like our Neity. Oh no, Sitre was mean, through and through. My mother used to tell me tales about her.”

He was surprised by the harsh characterization of the woman he’d known. Searching for a kinder description, he asked, “Headstrong perhaps?” Certainly many had labelled her thus in his time, with a degree of understatement. No one told Sitre what to do or denied any impulse she took into her head. Spoiled from birth by indulgent parents is what the servants in his time had said.

The elderly woman he was questioning cackled. “As a child, my mother was one of Lady Sitre’s attendants. Mind you, only for the last few years of the harridan’s life. The noblewoman must have been nigh onto the age I am now. Nothing ever pleased her. Threw her mirror at my mother, she did, or was it a cosmetics box? Maybe both! Mother said she didn’t move fast enough to please the high and mighty lady. None of the maids did. Bitter, nasty woman, according to my mother.” Falling silent, Benerib plucked another fig from the bowl and chewed noisily with her few remaining teeth. “Afraid to die, Sitre was. Tried all sorts of nostrums and spells to live forever. Most superstitious woman anyone ever met. Might even have dabbled in black magic in her last years, or so it was whispered. She never spoke of her fears, at least not in my mother’s hearing, but plainly the lady was terrified of what awaited her at the Judging of her heart.”

Discomfited by this description of the apparent harridan Sitre had evolved into before her death, Periseneb waited. This third-hand account was the closest he was going to come to anyone who’d met the woman he’d once hoped to marry. As he handed the old woman the water skin, he prayed silently that Benerib had more to share.

She took a long drink and wiped her lips. “Where was I?”

Hoping she hadn’t retreated into senile dreams again, he gave her a prompt. “You were telling me how your mother was a servant to Lady Sitre—”

“Oh, yes, after she was widowed. She’d married Lord Haqaptah. Well, the one in that day, not the one plaguing us.”

Periseneb’s heart thumped hard in his chest and he rocked on his heels. “She—she married Haqaptah?” Well, what had he expected? He never showed up to claim her, so of course she’d married someone else.

“Aye.” Lips working as she chewed, Benerib calculated and made some tallies on her fingers. “Sitre was the great great grandaunt of the current Haqaptah. She never got over her bitterness at not inheriting this estate either, let me tell you. My mother talked of it often. Cursed, the servants used to whisper, all Sitre’s schemes and efforts going for naught. Any more figs?”

A shiver ran down his spine at her words, surprising him. Curses shouldn’t concern him—he was a ghost himself, after all. Rolling his shoulders to dispel whatever momentary twinge the idea of a curse had given him, he held the bowl closer to her. “As many as you want, old one.”

“You must have flirted with the cook,” Benerib said, tilting her head to see him more closely. “She never gives anyone so many of her special figs.”

“The cook and I have come to an understanding,” he answered. “Why didn’t Sitre or her sons inherit Heron Marsh?”

The elderly woman leaned close, as if to prevent anyone else who might be interested in centuries’ old gossip from overhearing....

I'm Nuts Enough, I Do Not Need an Unreliable Narrator's Help

Yesterday was my father's birthday. January 31st. He wanted to have dinner at a tiki bar. So we found something that was on the water. As luck would have it, we were in perfect position for the sunset over Tampa Bay.

I imagine the person pointing is telling stories - fish stories, maybe. Or tales about what lies in the direction they're pointing. Which leads us to unreliable narrators. I had been going to say I don't know much about unreliable narrators, but in fact, I now more than I want. It's just not from fiction.

I think the important thing to keep in mind about unreliable narrators is that they are giving you the truth as they see it. It's a truth they utterly believe, that they are invested in. Chances are, that even if you catch them out in what you'd swear was a dead on lie, they'll deny it to their graves. I admit this is not my favorite story trope. Maybe in part because I am not entirely certain I could pull it off as a writer. Or maybe because I knew one. For real. And I tried to be her friend. It went well. For a little while.

Let's call her Joan. There's no way to put too fine a point on it. She lied. All the time. Funny thing, there was zero malice behind it. It was 100% telling you what you wanted to hear - things like, 'I'm coming to your house to pick up the Very Important Thing you wanted me to pick up!' Then I'd get a text - 'hey traffic is terrible.' Then another text. 'Accident on freeway.' That's about the point I worked out she wasn't on the road at all. Hadn't, in fact, even left her house. Called out on it, the next lie was that she was desperately ill and had to undergo radical treatment that oddly, never had any physical impact. The final straw came when she lied to someone else to the point of attempting to impersonate someone in authority in email.

We'd gone from saying what she believed her friends wanted to hear to actual criminal activity in that last case. And yet. When confronted, she denied that any of it was a lie. Honestly, looking back, I think she believed that no one would or could like her for her. They'd only like her for what they believed she could do for them. So she'd constructed fiction after fiction and then convinced herself they were fact. But that's me. Attempting to rationalize something that may not be at all rational.

So maybe you'll understand when I say I've sort of had my fill of unreliable narrators in real life.  I don't deal with Joan anymore, but there are a few other people with tenuous grips on consensual reality that I can't avoid. And can't safely describe here. It means that since I have to live unreliable narration, I really do not want it anywhere near my entertainment.

Real life doesn't have to make sense. It's a relief to me when my fiction does make at least a little bit of sense. Am I weird here? If you like an unreliable narrator in a book, do you have people in your life who actually DO that? I'm wondering if my distaste is colored by my exposure or if everyone has had similar experiences in life and me not liking an unreliable narrator in fiction is just me.

Grand Announcements for Maradaine

I've been hinting for quite some time about big news, and finally I'm ready to tell you about it. 
First, the slightly sad news: the third Maradaine Constabulary novel, A Parliament of Bodies, will not be released until Spring 2019.  I know many of you have been anxious for the next installment with Satrine and Minox, and it is going to come out, just a few months later.  This is entirely due to production schedule and release strategy-- because we've got something else planned for release in the fall of 2018.  And so much more.

What is going on?  Well, I've signed a contract for FOUR new books!


First off, coming out on October 3rd, 2018, we have THE WAY OF THE SHIELD, the first novel of the fourth Maradaine-set series, called The Maradaine Elite.  What is THE WAY OF THE SHIELD, and The Maradaine Elite?  Glad you asked!

The first novel in the Maradaine Elite series blends fast-paced high fantasy and political intrigue.

Dayne Heldrin always dreamed of being a member of the Tarian Order. In centuries past, the Elite Orders of Druthal were warriors that stood for order, justice, and the common people. But now, with constables, King’s Marshals, and a standing army, there is little need for such organizations, and the Tarian Order is one of the last remnants of this ancient legacy. Nevertheless, Dayne trained his body and mind, learned the arts of defense and fighting, to become a candidate for the Tarian Order.

When a failed rescue puts Dayne at fault for injuring the child of a powerful family, his future with the Tarians is in jeopardy. The Parliament controls the purse strings for the Order, and Dayne has angered the wrong members of Parliament. He returns to the capital city of Maradaine in shame, ready to be cast out of the Order when the period of his candidacy ends.

Dayne finds Maradaine in turmoil, as revolutions and dark conspiracies brew around him, threatening members of Parliament and common people alike. Dayne is drawn into the uproar, desperate not to have one more death or injury on his conscience, but the Order wants him to stay out of the situation. The city threatens to tear itself apart, and Dayne must decide between his own future and his vow to always stand between the helpless and harm.

And, yes, you already can pre-order it.  THE WAY OF THE SHIELD is up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and all other places you can think of to go for books.

Launching this fourth series puts the final piece in place, introducing you to Dayne and his world.  And it was important we did that before releasing A PARLIAMENT OF BODIES, as you can see...

The city of Maradaine is vexed by the Gearbox Murders: a series of gruesome deaths orchestrated by a twisted mechanical genius. With no motive and no pattern, Inspectors Satrine Rainey and Minox Welling— the retired spy and untrained mage— are at a loss to find a meaningful lead in the case. Until the killer makes his most audacious exhibit yet: over a dozen victims in a clockwork deathtrap on the floor of the Druth Parliament. 

 

The crime scene is a madhouse, and political forces conspire to grind their investigation to a halt.  The King’s Marshals claim jurisdiction of the case, corruption in the Constabulary thwart their efforts, and a special Inquest threatens to end Minox’s career completely.  Their only ally is Dayne Heldrin, a provisional member of the Tarian Order, elite warriors trained in the arts of protection.  But Dayne’s connection to the Gearbox Murders casts suspicion on his motives, as he might be obsessed with a phantom figure he believes is responsible.  

 

While Satrine and Minox struggle to stop the Gearbox from claiming even more victims, the grinding gears of injustice might keep them from ever solving these murders, and threaten to dismantle their partnership forever.

Next up, scheduled for late in 2019, we'll get the second Maradaine Elite novel, THE SHIELD OF THE PEOPLE, where Dayne and his compatriots get embroiled in a plot of dissident groups threatening to disrupt Parliamentary elections and throw Maradaine into chaos. 
"But, Marshall!" I hear you say.  "That's a lot of focus on the new character, and while we get Satrine and Minox, what about the Thorn?  What about the Rynax brothers?  Have you forgotten about them?"  And the answer is, of course I haven't.

That's why the next book will be the third Streets of Maradaine novel, THE FENMERE JOB.  Asti & Verci's fiery quest for vengeance, and their efforts to bring peace and justice to the streets in North Seleth, will put them and their crew in the line of fire of The Thorn. 

Finally, we'll have THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY, the third Maradaine Elite novel, Dayne digs deeper into the underworld conspiracies that swirl throughout Maradaine, an investigation that will bring him together with the Thorn, Inspectors Rainey and Welling, and the Rynax Brothers— a thrilling fantasy adventure to conclude the first phase of the epic Maradaine sequence.

So here's how it'll all look, and the shape of my life for the next two years:

And then?  Well, then it'll be on to Phase II.  But that can wait for now.

Release Day: The Burned Spy by @KAKrantz

Tooting my own horn today as I release the first book in my new Immortal Spy Urban Fantasy Series.

THE BURNED SPY
Gods. Always ready to screw you.

When Bix the Gatekeeper is summoned from exile a hundred and seventy years early by the goddess of the Norse Under World, the former Dark Ops agent knows there’s a catch. On the surface, the terms of the deal are simple. Someone attacked the pantheon’s ambassador to the Mid Worlds and left the ambassador in a coma. In exchange for early parole, Bix must identify the perpetrator and drag their soul to Hel.

It’d be a sweet contract, if not for the details. The ambassador is Bix’s ex-girlfriend, the lead suspect is the key witness from Bix’s trial, and the organization leading the official investigation is the same intelligence guild that disavowed Bix when a covert op went pear-shaped. Undeterred, Bix returns to her old stomping grounds where clues in the smoldering woods of Centralia, Pennsylvania, lead to the waterfront of Washington, DC, and Worlds beyond.

Once valued for her skills creating passageways as small as a capillary or as large as a continent, Bix’s success now depends on the relationships she was forced to abandon. As she squares off against friends who betrayed her and enemies keen to destroy her, Bix follows a trail of secrets, torture, and treason that leads to the very superpowers who banished her. With her freedom on the line and revenge within reach, this highly-trained operative will take on Fates, dragons, angels, and gods to get exactly what she wants.

Hel hath no fury like a burned spy.

Buy It Now in eBook & Paperback: Amazon | iBooks | Kobo | B&N