Dear Mom, Please don't read my books...yet.

Mom (upon learning that I’ve co-written a story that an actual publisher wants to actually publish): Can I read it?

Me: Er, I don’t think you’d like it.

Mom: It’s a romance. I like romances.

Me (silently: Oh, you sweet summer child) and aloud:  Actually, it’s more of a… scene. With three people. Who chat a bit in the parlor and then head upstairs to, uh, not chat. For twelve thousand words. Of nakedly not chatting.

Mom: Oh. Maybe the next one, then.

Hubs: Okay, so I’ve finished reading [the manuscript that eventually became Perfect Gravity – my second full-length novel].

Me: Uh oh, the ending fizzled, dinnit? It needs more guns blazing and cat hissing.

Hubs: No, that’s not what I was going to say at all.

Me: Wait, you and your fancy film degree and years making computer games weren’t going to give me constructive criticism that will definitely make me a better writer after I get over the initial navel-gazingly depressing realization that I’m not quite there yet?

Hubs: No. This one is good. Consider me a fan.

Me, having just received the biggest compliment of my life, sobs and kisses the shit out of that man.

My eldest child grabs a copy of my first-ever published-in-paper book.

Her: This is so cool, Mom. Can I read it?

Me (after slight hesitation for she is yet a Jedi youngling): Er, sure. Just, if you get to something confusing or weird, let’s talk about it, okay?

She cracks open the book and digs in. A couple of minutes later, she closes the book and sets it back in the box.

Her: I’m not allowed to read this book.

Me: Nonsense, I just told you—

Her (interrupting): Three. You have three swears on the first page, and two are the F-bomb. Mom, I’m not allowing myself to read it. And you need to watch your language.

So, to date three of the most important people in my universe have attempted to read my books. One actually made it all the way through. Hey, one of three ain’t… okay it’s a crappy percentage.

But someday I’ll write something without swears or sex.

(Stop laughing, you. I totally will.)

Cursed By Blood (to Read My Books)

Does my family read my books?

~slaps knee~

Dear readers, my father has been checking my homework since I started having homework. The greatest invention of my childhood was erasable ink. Who cared that erasing turned the entire page Smurf blue? I didn't have to re-write the whole tham ding just to correct a half dozen mistakes. Fast forward a few decades and yes, yes my father is still checking my homework. Only now he's the proofreader armed with Track Changes.

And if you think I can have one parent proofread and not the other, then well, pfft, tschtt, pfft. My mother is the avid fantasy reader. There is no bottom lip quiver quite like southern Mama's lip quiver when I send the digital version instead of the print version because--don't you know--it is so much easier for her to read and comment in print. That technology stuff is just too mean to her.

My sister was my CP for my romance books 'cause, as my very wise father once said, "There are some things daddies don't want to know." Since then, I've stopped writing romance, and my sister had my beloved niblings. Her schedule went from hectic to when-do-you-have-time-to-pee, so I don't ask for time she doesn't have to give. She's miffed that she's been removed from my process. It's ire I'll endure for the sake of her relative sanity. Once her children age out of the "Mommy-Mommy-Mommy" years into the "Ugh-Mom" stage, then I won't feel guilty about asking for her time. Until then, No Books For Her. Though, she not only buys them after they go on sale, she gives them as gifts, passes out promo cards, and is edging out my mom as my lead marketer. Her husband is also in on the Sell All The Books program.

Yes, dear reader, yes, it is awesome to be so well loved and supported by family. I am beyond blessed and incredibly grateful.

Does my family read my books?

Some of them do.

A few.

My family is...complicated.

My sister, who was the webmistress for my page for a long time, read all of my books. She still does, but I have to remember to send them to her

My other sisters? Well, I've given both of them copies. They keep promising to read.

My oldest brother? Yes.

My second oldest brother? We don't speak any more. My choice. So, no.

My parents are both deceased. My mother had a full collection of my books and told me she was proud of me, but never read them. She didn't like scary stuff. She read one short story of mine and it brought tears to her eyes and she loved it, but there was a ghost at the end and that rather annoyed her.

Two of my nephews do.

The others might. I don't honestly know.

To be fair, one of my sisters has been known to write erotica and I can't bring myself to read it. not my cup of tea.

The thing is, there's never an obligation. If they read it and enjoy it, I am delighted. If they choose not to read it, that's okay, too.  I used to give copies of all of my books to every family member. One of my siblings asked that i give copies of my books to a good friend. I suggested handing over the copies I'd already given to that sibling, especially since the books n question were limited editions that ran between forty-five and several hundred dollars in the secondary market. I am nowhere near that generous. I'd have to get a third job to pay the rent. Then I realized that most weren't reading the books and brought that practice to a screeching halt. Im good with offering copies to relatives that will READ them, but listen even if they were comp copies (and only some of them were.) you only get so many of those, and they can be put to better use than just gathering dust on a relative's shelf.

These days, I'm more likely to send a mobi file.

If they want to read the book that is.

Two of my limited edition covers. The top one, Bloodstained Oz, was selling for 7-800 dollars in the secondary market before we decided to put out an ebook format. That was for the numbered edition. The lettered edition (of which there are only 27) was selling fro closer to $3,000.00, The mind boggles.

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.