Does Your Family Read Your Books?

We have high winds today and Jackson is feeling the fever - here he is trying to climb the portal post. Spoiler alert: that's as high as he got.

Our topic this week is whether our spouses or close family read our books. I always find it interesting how widely this answer varies among writers - from those who cowrite with spouses, or rely upon them or close family to critique, to those whose families don't even know they write.

Seriously - I have a friend who was a journalist and wrote - and shopped - his first novel in secret, even from his wife and kids, because he didn't want them to know about it if he failed. Which... I can understand. It's an excruciating phase, the one where writers labor for years to hone their craft, often over multiple novels or hundreds of stories, with nothing to demonstrate to the greater world for the effort. A lot of writers give up in this phase, or self-publish in order to have "something" to show for all that work. There are few questions more invidious than "Oh, you're *still* writing that book?"

At the other end are the couples where both are writers and exchange work, or who collaborate together. I think collaborating with a spouse would be trying, although the team writing as Ilona Andrews does it brilliantly. I'm still amused by Ilona's explanation that they don't really fight over the storylines, but one of them might "angrily load the dishwasher."

As for me, my husband David does not read what I write, pretty much ever. Sometimes he hears pieces of stories at readings. But, overall, he doesn't read fiction. I'm okay with this. I think our close families can exert strong influence on us, and not always in the way that encourages to grow.

I taught Tai Chi for a lot of years, including an introductory class in continuing education, and it was always a bad sign when spouses took the class together. Or parent and child. Or sisters. (I don't recall ever having brothers take a class together.) Inevitably, they would start telling the other how to do it. Usually it was framed as being "helpful," but it rarely was. It got so that in partner exercises we'd make it a rule that they couldn't work with someone they knew. This was entirely to pry apart the people who knew each other far too well - and got in each other's way.

So, I don't mind that David doesn't read my work. It gives me a certain freedom to have that headspace to myself. My mom reads my books, but only after they're published. Some other members of my family read them, but largely most of them don't. I'm okay with that, too. Everyone should read what they want to!

Planning Is Ants vs Grasshoppers For Me

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Do you remember the childhood fable about the grasshopper, who played all summer and didn’t think much beyond the next sip of dew or bite of berry? Versus the ants who diligently and constantly labored 24/7 to build stockpiles? And then in the winter guess who kicks back in a cozy burrow with lots to eat, versus who is outside shivering and scratching in the snow? (Where do grasshoppers go in the winter anyway?)

Well, the family joke around my house was that my late husband was the Ant, because he was a very long term thinker and we definitely followed the very wise plan he came up with, as far as his military service, our college, our careers, buying the first car, the first house, having the first baby, etc. This freed me to be myself – I think of myself as more of a cheery butterfly than a Grasshopper actually. I am NOT, in any circumstance, a planner or long term thinker.

When he died in an accident, I had to step up and do my best for the family. I managed to be what I truly am NOT, which is to say someone who plans. If I tell you 2018 is the only calendar in my house or that I access on my computer, you get the picture, right? (And I typically stay in the current month, other than to notate dental appointments.)

Now in the old day job at NASA/JPL, I was involved with schedules and planning for various interplanetary missions. Those suckers are HUGE. Thousands of steps. Millions maybe on the big flagship missions. The planet or planets you’re trying to hit will only be in the spot you need for a certain window of time so you have to start literally years beforehand and know every single thing, including contingencies for the unforeseen, that has to happen.  I didn’t develop such schedules but I have the utmost respect for those who can and do. I sat in probably hundreds of meetings where the discussion centered around the schedules and status. I had to give reports and take action items on my portions of those schedules.

The main thing I retained is the concept of the critical path, which is basically the sequence of tasks that will take the longest to complete to deliver the project. The critical path may change from time to time, based on other circumstances, but there always is going to be one. You can’t let yourself get distracted from keeping your eye on that path if you want to succeed.

Okay, so moving to the topic today, which deals with how you plan as an author, or how you plan future books while keeping up with current deadlines…do you hear me laughing? That is so not me! My critical path as an author is to write the books. Period. Full stop. Since I self-publish, any deadlines are my own and tend to be quite vague. “I’ll get this book out in April.” “I’d like to write four or five books this year.”

I had a taste of mixing self-pub and more traditional publishing back in my Carina Press days, and I have to say – lovely as they were to work with – I didn’t care for the experience. The idea of having a perfectly good book ready to publish that can’t be published for another six months or a year or whatever because it has to fit a publisher’s overall schedule gives me the most visceral reaction of NOOOOOO! I could never work as far in advance as Jeffe does, which she talked about in her post earlier this week. I admire what she does, but it’s not Butterfly Me.

I have lots of “tiny deadlines” but those are for my blog posts (“OMG is it Saturday again already???” Time for SFF7!) and other activities of that type. I do have a yearly schedule to work through with my friend Pauline B. Jones on our annual Pets In Space scifi romance anthologies (award winning and USA Today Best Selling, I might immodestly add).

And we've discussed many times in this space how I am superstitious about my writing process and my Muse and can't even do an outline or I won't write the book, much less know that I'm writing such-and-such a book in 2019 to publish in 2020!

So there you have it and now it’s time for me to flit off again. Have a great weekend!.

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What Not to Ask Me

So you know how you make some random blanket statement that your life is an open book and you have nothing to hide? And then, inevitably, out of nowhere, someone tosses out a question that makes you recoil while certain nether regions pucker?

Yeah. Who'd have thought something so innocent as 'how do you plan' would be my hill to die upon?

To make a long story short: Not answering the planning question.

Oh.

You're still here. Uhm. Okay. I, uh, look. How about why I don't like chatting about plans? It's superstition. I like to keep my plans, like my poker cards, close to my vest. Not that I play poker well. It's just that in any creative endeavor, I feel like the energy of beginning is fragile and easily dissipated. So I don't talk about my plans (for fiction or drawings or paintings or photography) with anyone. Not even crit partners. Once projects are well underway, they seem to withstand being discussed and dissected. At the point that I have the legs assembled and the brain and heart of a story plugged in, the skeleton can handle all kinds of challenges being tossed at it. Until then, I'm super susceptible to being utterly derailed by someone saying, "this bit here doesn't make sense." Stupid but true.

Do I wish my brain worked differently around this? You betcha. Instead, I have to be the weird little muppet in a Jim Henson skit who gasps and vanishes into her hole, pulling a rock in after her. Here. Have a cat.

How I Plan The Future

So, this should surprise no one, but I plan out a LOT for the future.  That involves tracking the projects I have active, where they are in the production process, what needs to be done next in each of them, as well as projects that are on the backburner or planned for the future, either definitively planned (i.e., under contract), or prospective plans. 

To give you an idea, here's a filtered-and-redacted glimpse at my Productivity Worksheet:

And that's minus the things that have a Status of "Pending" or "Planned".  (Plus I blurred some stuff that's "secret" because I don't like to talk about things that aren't either done or contracted, if not both.  But I'll let you stew on my project codes.)

So, my time management takes into account the big things I need to do next.  Namely, draft Shield of the People and get geared up to write The Fenmere Job and The People of the City over the next eighteen months, all while taking into account my own workflow and reasonable expectations.  For example, I know I'm not the kind of writer who can pull off 100K in three weeks in an explosive flurry of words, so, yeah, don't schedule that as The Plan.  I prefer the steady pace of regular progress to the deadline.  And for that, I'm on track and in good shape with everything coming up. 

Plus some other stuff.  As you can see.  And there's a lot you can't see, because it's far future or just a bit too vague.  But even the vague stuff I track, just in case.  (Plus if I put work into the vague stuff, I like to track that THAT is what I worked on.)

And speaking of work: back to it.

Herding cats or time management, same diff

An actual conversation between my editor and me, circa early 2016.

Her, in a soft, reasonable voice: So, here’s how it will play out. I have the manuscript for book 1—yay—so we will get working on that. You’ll get revisions around March. You’ve said you’ll have book 2 to me in June…?

Me, lying like mad as I had NO idea what I was doing: Is June fast enough? Because I’m sure I can write it faster, if necessary.

Her, patiently: Ah, no. June’s fine. And mid-December for the third manuscript, you said? And of course you’ll have other stuff come along in the midst.

Me, as dork: Other… stuff? 

Her: Oh you know, revisions, line edits, copy edits, publicity paperwork, page proofs, galleys, cover art packets. Just the usual.

Me: ?!

Her, in this super kind voice, because I’m sure I wasn’t the first noob writer she’d ever had to talk off a ledge: We sometimes call it herding cats.

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly how it went, word-for-word, but the gist is accurate. I'd talked to a few veteran writers, and they'd all advised that it takes about six months to write a decent manuscript for a full-length (90k-word) book. So I'd gone into that conversation with all their collective assurance at my back.

And came out panicking.

I distinctly recall that phrase—herding cats. And the part about her being amazingly patient with me. And the part about me pretty much freaking out. I mean, not just during that call. I was freaking out essentially all of 2016.

In the end, we hit all the deadlines, more or less (see below regarding Christmas), and lo! Books occurred!

So… I sort of know how to schedule my time so I can write 2.5 books a year? Except I really don’t. That whole year was a blur. When the family went on vacation, they snorkeled and sight-saw, and I stayed in a hotel, writing. When we had Thanksgiving, I came out and ate bird meat, then went back to my room to write. At Christmas (because that mid-December deadline slid out to January) I ventured forth to exchange presents, and then locked myself in the guest room, writing like a crazy person.

At any rate, we all survived, but I have no idea how it happened. Neither do I have even a sniff of wisdom on this topic.

It was herding cats.

Which the MythBusters proved is impossible.

So the two books that came out and have my name on the covers? Are basically miracles.

Which is not to say I will not again attempt the impossible. Because crazy-making as it is? Creating books is also a gorgeous thrill ride of miracle-making cat-herding fun.

Cover Reveal and Lessons Learned from Writing a Series on a Schedule

We clearly have a theme going this week of cover reveals with James and Jeffe, so  I'm happy to continue it with the cover for the second book in my Immortal Spy Urban Fantasy Series. The amazing team at Gene Mollica Studios did the cover.

THE PLAGUED SPY
The Immortal Spy: Book 2

It’s all fun and games until someone breaks out the needles.

It was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission. Go in, grab the bespelled package of evidence against some very corrupt superpowers, and get out. The mission turns sideways when a vengeful spy Bix blackballed during her time in Dark Ops crashes the job and injects Bix’s teammates with an unknown toxin. Succumbing to a horrific mutation, the dying spook whispers the Mayday protocol for a compromised covert operation involving a biological weapon.

With her friends infected and sequestered in quarantine, a mole inside the spy guild exposing its undercover agents, and the brightest minds in the Mid Worlds unable to identify the biologic, Bix picks up the mission to find the creators and the cure. She’ll square off against Fates, dragons, angels, and even the god of plagues to save her friends; yet the greatest threat might well be the darkness growing within Bix and the evil on which it feeds.

Beware the plagued spy, for wrath and ruin are sure to follow…

The book drops on April 24, in print and eBook.

Pre-Order the eBook:

Amazon Kindle  |  iBooks  |  B&N Nook  |  Kobo

Now, as for this week's topic of scheduling the writing and the business, I'm going to take a moment to laugh hysterically then sob a little. I am a girl who must plan All The Things. For those of you who've followed this blog for a while, you know I'm a slow writer. I'm still one of those writers who can't accurately estimate how long it'll take me to write a book. I took a year of publishing nothing to write the first three books in this series so I could drop them at regular intervals while I wrote the remaining four books. The plan is to release quarterly. I'll be able to do that with the first four...but there might be a six-month gap between four and five. Then hopefully back to quarterly for six and seven.

What happened to my beautiful plan?

In a nutshell, I learned more about me as a writer and a publisher trying to hold myself to a schedule. From a personal-development angle, I hadn't done that before. In my high-fantasy series, the books take as long to write as they take. That's what my creative process demands. However, I wanted to grow as a career author, so I committed to writing and publishing a series on a tight schedule.
A third of the way into this business experiment,  I've learned that some books will be easy to write. Some books won't require heavy dev edits. Some books will flip the bird and be the most recalcitrant little bastards. I am blessed in that my editors, artists, and formatters are top-notch and make their dates without issue. When there's lag, it's all me. I need to keep building my skills both on the page and off (pretty sure that'll always be the case).

So far, my biggest takeaway is that I can write two books a year, reasonably. Three is pushing it. Four is unrealistic for me. (I know, I know, many of my fellow SFF Seven bloggers are power writers, and that is awesome. Enviable in many ways. Hat tips to them!) Also, during the winter holidays, I should expect no creative progress and schedule no deliverables to or from. Yes, businesses still function and other contributors to my end products absolutely make their dates. It is my life that does not allow for much more than analytical work. That's good to know. I can adjust my schedules and expectations accordingly...once I finish this series.

The Artful Juggle: Planning Future Books While Keeping up with Current Deadlines

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven - the challenge of maintaining a writing schedule and trying to prepare for future business - is an apropos one for me right now.

Because, boy howdy, have I been wrestling this particular challenge lately.

I'm what we're calling a "hybrid" author these days, which means I publish both traditionally - with a publishing house - and I self-publish. I make my living this way and my income is roughly split between the two. In 2016 my income was 62% from self-publishing and 38% from traditional publishers. In 2017 it was 43%/57%. Pretty even at this point.

Obviously it's important to me to balance both sides of my writing career.

On the traditional side, that means meeting my deadlines. And not just the ones for drafting, though those are the big ones. Those are also the ones I know about from the time I see the contract. There are other deadlines - sometimes quite abrupt - for completing content revisions, line edits, copy edits and proofing. Sometimes those come in with a "We need it by the end of next week." That kind of thing can really impact the rest of my schedule, so I try to pad a bit, to allow for those things.

The traditional side also impacts my self-publishing schedule because many traditional contracts now include exclusionary clauses where I can't publish a novel in the same genre within a certain window on either side of a traditional book release.

On the self-publishing side, I have reader expectations to take into account. Because I don't have a legal contract with my readers - although I do take the author/reader contract very seriously - the self-publishing schedule tends to give way to the traditional schedule. Also, because I can't control the traditional publishing release schedule, I have to fit books in the same world into that timeline.

For example, people keep asking me if/when I'm going to finish the Sorcerous Moons series. That one has gotten seriously derailed. The main reason it has is because something had to give and that series isn't connected to anything else. But I WILL finish it! I'm planning to have books 5 and 6 out this fall, in quick succession. I had to keep up with the books in The Uncharted Realms series, to sync with the upcoming Chronicles of Dasnaria books.

(That's part of why I included the newly revealed cover of THE ARROWS OF THE HEART here. The cover is all ready, but the book is not. I ended up having to push it back some, to meet a traditional publishing deadline, alas. That's another part of the juggling act, getting all the pieces to come together at the same time, more or less.)

BUT, the trickiest part of this whole juggling act is the precise point of this week's topic: preparing for future business.

Because traditional publishing has such long lead times, I have to plan now for books that will come out two to three years from now. Another example: I began writing THE ORCHID THRONE last March. (March 15, 2017, to be exact.) By June 15, I'd written and polished just over a hundred pages of the book, plus proposal, working with Agent Sarah all that time to position the book in the market. By July we'd sold the book to St. Martins Press.

All that time, I was also writing on other projects. There's a lot of stopping and starting while working up a new series, waiting while Sarah read it, fitting it in around other deadlines, etc. Once we sold it, I could set it aside, because the completed book isn't due until July 15, 2018. A WHOLE YEAR after we sold it. And it won't come out until August of 2019, with Books 2 and 3 in 2020 and 2021.

All of this means that, to maintain the traditional publishing side of my career, I have to start thinking NOW about books and series I can sell that will start coming out in 2020 or so.

Talk about planning!

So, that's been my other thing - I've been working on a very exciting collaboration. A new series - new genre, even - and we're close to going on submission with it. It's a slower process, working with someone else, learning to write as part of a team, and also stretching me in good ways. That means, too, that it's taken creative energy away from my other writing projects, so that's part of the challenge.

And all good, too. Challenges make us grow, yes?

Predator: Hunters and Hunted

So this is happening. 

I just finished the first draft of THE PREDATOR: HUNTERS AND HUNTED.

I am horrifically late in this, because I ruined my shoulder in a fall a couple of months ago and despite my every effort to ignore the pain, it slowed me down a LOT.  If the book is late, that's entirely my fault. I am delighted with the end result, I think it's a riot, but the getting there had been a bear. 

You can learn more right HERE.