Mistakes of the First Novel

I'm a bit crunched for time this week, and the SFF Seven topic is about mistakes in that first novel.  And frankly, I'm always learning with every novel I write.  And back when Thorn of Dentonhill was coming out, I owned up to one of its more glaring flaws-- I mistake I wouldn't make if I were writing it now.  As it's still appropriate, I'll put it all out here:
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So, I've been holding off writing this post for a while, but with this article recently making the rounds, it's probably high time I talked about this.

I don't know much about this movie (The Art of the Steal), beyond what's shown here on the poster, but the poster is very telling.  We've got eight characters: seven male and one female.  So, a bunch of guys of all different types and The Girl.  In other words, we've got The Smurfette Principle in full effect.  Furthermore, while Katheryn Winnick isn't being overtly sexualized in this image, it still stands out that she's wearing shorts while everyone else gets pants.

(2018 addendum: I've now seen The Art of the Steal, and it's a fun enough movie, but it is VERY much a Smurfette Principle movie.)

Images like this one are pretty common, not only for movies, but for stories in general, especially of the action/genre/sf/fantasy types.  Here's another example. Another. Another. Another. YET ANOTHER.  I didn't even have to remotely try hard to gather those. It's so typical, such a pervasive paradigm, that movies, books and TV shows can have little-to-no female presence, and it doesn't stand out as strange.  I mean, who's the most significant female character in Hunt for Red October?  It's Jack's wife, who only appears for a couple lines in the very beginning.  How about Saving Private Ryan?  I'd argue it's Mrs. Ryan, who doesn't even have lines, but is talked about as someone who deserves to have at least one son come home.

I could go on about this sort of thing, but there's one big problem: Thorn of Dentonhill falls into the same trap.  An image not entirely unlike the Art of the Steal poster could be used to show the main cast of Thorn.

I didn't mean to do that, which is exactly part of the problem.  While writing it, it didn't seem strange that there was only one significant female character.  Now, I could make excuses or arguments that the world we're looking into with Thorn is made of spaces where men intentionally isolate themselves in some way-- the all-male dorms of the University of Maradaine, for example-- but that would be pure rationalization.

The real reason is I wasn't fully aware.

Now, this doesn't mean that Thorn is, in and of itself, a problem. Frankly, I think it's a great book, and the early reviews have been very strong.  But it is part of this problematic trend, and I need to be aware of that as I move forward in my writing career.

I felt compelled to be up front about this.  If this means that Thorn is a problematic read for you, I respect that.

All I can say beyond that is I believe I've done better with each book that's following.

Oh no she didn't! (Except I so did.)

Ermaghad, the topic this week is gaffes we’ve made in books, published and pre. I…don’t even know where to start. I am a serial word abuser. (If you ever meet my copy editor, please buy her a drink and promise to never spontaneously make up verbs.) So how about a game of Six Truths and a Lie? In honor of our SFF Seven blog title, here are seven super-embarrassing word crimes I have committed:

1. The fanfiction from second grade where Luke and Leia went out on a date. (Qualification: RotJ wasn’t out yet, so the incest was as yet unconfirmed. Also, I wasn’t super clear what a date was but had some hazy thought that it had something to do with eating pasta together, like Lady and the Tramp.) 
2. The one-act play I wrote in high school, which I intended to be this tense, tragic relationship drama, but the actors got ahold of it and played it as a straight-up comedy and I never told anyone it wasn't meant to be funny. At all. 
3. The tech document I wrote about a public health web site but forgot the L in "public." 
4. The thing with a scuba suit that was so gross my critique partner wrote “eeewww” in the margin. 
5. Same book, I wrote a prologue. 
6. Still same book, I wrote not one, not two, but three flashback scenes. 
7. That fanfiction tale of old Gondor interpreted through a series of limericks. 

Aaaaand of those is a lie.

Writing Gaffes: Why THAT Book Stays Under The Bed

Worst gaffes in my first non-published book?

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Year: 2009
Gaff: 5 POVs, delayed meet-cute

Unlike epic fantasy where a half-dozen Points Of View isn't uncommon, I was not writing epic fantasy. I was writing a romance about wolf shifters in the Carpathians. Romance readers have certain expectations, like spending 99% of the book in the heads of one or the other romantic leads. That last 1% is reserved for the villains of Romantic Suspense. I, however, thought that sidekicks and the villain needed their own scenes too. At least a third of the story was told from their perspectives. To make matters worse, my primary couple didn't meet until chapter five, or maybe it was chapter eight. Oh, and it came in at a slim 110k words for a genre that was looking for 75k.

Golly gee, I wonder why I never got a request for a full for that one.

~facepalm~ 

~kicks the Tome That Never Should've Been under the bed~

Looking back: My first Book's worst mistakes.

So back in the day, I was writing a comic book proposal a day and had been going strong for over a month when I finally decided I'd had enough.

I had an image stuck in my head and could not get it to leave me alone, so I finally broke down and wrote that scene. Then I wrote the next and the third. About three months later I had the first draft of my novel UNDER THE OVERTREE.

I was pleased. i was delighted! I ad around 180,000 words on a computer file and it felt effortless!

Of course, back then I barely understood the concept of editing....

I edited the hell out of that manuscript, I fixed a nearly endless run of run on sentences. I corrected tense shifts that were positively epic.  I studied the structure of the book a few dozen times and realized that I had created a massive house of cards. One scene goes and the whole thing falls apart.

And then when I was done I set it aside for a few weeks and did it again.

And again.

And again.

I have never edited a book as heavily as I edited UNDER THE OVERTREE. I believe there were seven or so drafts before I could look at it without actively cringing.

These days I edit as I go. It's slower, but it keeps me sane. 

there have been three editions of the book. There was the initial version from Meisha Merlin, the mass market edition from Leisure books, and finally the limited edition from Bloodletting Press. Likely there will be a new edition soon.

I have not made significant changes on the latter editions. part of me wants to, because, frankly thee are things I'd like to change. My writing style has evolved over time and some of those early phrases hurt my head. I won't. I will resist the temptation, because all of those warts and scales? They're proof that I HAVE evolved as a writer. And if I made the changes, it would no longer be the same novel.

I'm proud of that story despite the things I might want to change.


But, wow, I seriously never thought the edits would end....

Screwing Up in that First Book

I'm always terribly amused by these signs. Apparently in flat, desert landscapes like we have in New Mexico, one must beware of sudden lakes.

A big mistake, to be cruising along and not realize the road ends in a cliff dive into water.

That segues pretty naturally into this week's topic at the SFF Seven: "Looking Back: Your first book's (published or not) most cringe-worthy gaffe."

The gaffe I *still* cringe over in one of my very early books is actually an inadvertent typo that made it into the published book. This was a traditionally published book, too, an erotic romance I did with Carina Press, that went through multiple layers of editing, copy-editing and proofreading. This is on top of the fact that I turn in pretty clean copy overall. Usually mistakes stand out to me like they're in red font. I even went back to my original draft to see if I really did that, convinced that someone along the way had introduced the error.

Nope. All my fault.

And nobody caught it.

EXCEPT THE VERY FIRST PERSON TO REVIEW THE FREAKING THING.

*sigh*

That's why my book, SAPPHIRE, from 2011 has this line in it:

"She was like a baby heroine addict..."

Heroine versus heroin. Alas.

Does My Family read My Books? What Do you Think?

Not my family but they sure look like happy Readers! From DepositPhoto

My immediate family is extremely supportive of my writing, probably because I’ve literally been writing since any of them have known me. I first became published in January 2012 but that’s just one milestone on my lifelong need to tell my stories, starting at age 7.

My late husband and I met in the tenth grade. It was common knowledge among our friends that I wrote science fiction and he was always my biggest booster and champion. After we were married, he’d do whatever it took to carve out time for me to write in the evenings and on weekends (I had that demanding day job at NASA/JPL) although sadly when he died, I kind of put away the novel I was working on for a very long time and concentrated all my energy on being the single working mother of two very young children. He always read whatever I wrote and was maybe the only person I ever let read something while I was still writing it. As a general rule, I never let people read my works in progress. Ever.

My daughters read my books when the first draft is complete. They’ve just always known that “Mom writes” so it’s an accepted fact of our lives.

I’ll never forget the first time I gave them one of my novels to read, hot off the printer in the living room and years before I was published, and I’ll never forget how astounded they were that their mother had actually written all this. They were teenagers and sat up pretty much all night reading the book and really enjoyed it, which was so gratifying to me. My genres aren’t their preferred favorites but as I mentioned above, they read everything I write.

My brother is my extremely devoted fan and reads each book the moment they go up on Amazon after editing and formatting. He gives me a detailed review and critique which is only for my eyes and which I value so much since we grew up together in a house where my Dad loved science fiction and passed that joy of reading the genre onto us both.

My parents both passed away many years ago.

As far as my extended family, I believe they’re proud to have a published author in the family (because they’ve told me that numerous times and I have no reason to doubt them LOL) but no one is a particular fan of my genres. My closest cousin on my mother’s side sort of dutifully reads each new book and then gives them to the local library, which works for me! 

I once sent an assortment of the paperback books, both scifi and ancient Egyptian, to my godparents who are still alive, with an invitation to pass them along to any of my huge family of cousins on my Dad’s side who might be interested. The eventual, tactful response was that everyone had sampled at least one of the free books and congratulations again on being published but gee, no one here is a romance reader really.

And that’s perfectly fine.

People like the genres of books they like and at least everyone in that part of the family was open to sampling mine. (I think my aunt did say something about the story she sampled being a bit steamy for her, which is mildly hilarious because I write pretty middle of the road sex scenes but hey, she’s known me since I was a baby.)

I don’t write my books for my relatives, or my friends. I write the stories for me, to tell you the truth. Then I’m happy to put them out there in the world on the ebook platforms and thrilled that the books have found an audience of readers who do enjoy romance, science fiction and trips to ancient Egypt.

Here are just a few of my 20+ published titles, ranging from the first, Priestess of the Nile, to the most recent, Mateer, and a little bit of everything in between.

Who Reads Me

Happy Friday the 13th! Practice safe superstitions out there, people!

I am developing a new appreciation for sunrises since we moved. Maybe because I'm no longer stuck out on the western edge of the continent where sunrises were hidden by Crown Hill and I had unimpeded water and skies for sunsets. There is chatter now about moving us back to a water-based existence. I'll be interested in seeing what I get in the way of sky watching while on the water here.

This was Thursday morning. Not bad. Unless the red sky at morning sailor take warning screed is true. If it is, I'm screwed.

We're talking about family reading our books. The answer is yes. AFTER they are books. I know I sound like a broken record (also hush up with your 'what's a record' nonsense and then get off my lawn.) I'm super protective of work until it is fully formed. I hate critiques of something that's still gestating.

Let me be perfectly honest here - I have Second Guessing EVERY Damn Thing I Do disease. I don't watch the news because I don't need any help being depressed, I can do that myself, thanks. Very much like that, I can paralyze my writing process with 'Am I Doing This Right' questions without having external voices reinforcing those doubts. So I've learned to say no to all but a very few people (other authors) who I can trust to give me the straight scoop on how a piece of work is or isn't progressing.

And look. We all know that geeks are great, right? I mean I married one and he's a good guy. But he is, at heart, a programmer. This means that B must follow A and you do NOT take detours from B straight down the rabbit hole to Q. Thus, while I love him, I do not discuss my work with him until it's been turned over to the editor. And for all the gods, I do NOT TALK IDEAS WITH HIM. Never ever ever. I *think* it's Margie Lawson who tells the story about talking to her husband about story ideas and the angrier he gets, the more on track she knows she is. This is my life. You cannot talk to COBAL programmer about illogical and fluid story concepts. It's been hard experience for both us, because you know he'd ask what I was working on just to - you know - care about what I do.

We had to give it up. I think he's secretly pleased. But yes. He reads the books when they're published. Funny thing. He doesn't have a problem with them, then. My parents and my in-laws read the books. A bunch of my extended family read the first one, but I do not know whether any of them have read any further. I think they were mainly interested in making sure I actually had gone off and gotten published.

The only comment came from my mother. "Your main character sure does swear a lot."

I haven't had the heart to mention that I do, too. Leave the woman her illusions, right? ;)

But Does Your Wife Read Them?

So, when I met her, my wife was not a fantasy fan.  She literally did not know the conventions of the genre.  So often times, especially early on in my writing process, she couldn't make heads or tails of what I was doing.  What is this about?  Where is this city supposed to be?  Why do you have centuries of fake history?  Why don't you write something like One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Actually, as strange as that last one was, magical realism did prove to be the gateway toward some common ground.  She understood the rules of that genre, and through that I could show her how fantasy worked.

OK, there was also Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings as huge worldwide phenomenons.  That helped, too.

That isn't to say she doesn't read my work.  She definitely does.  But let's be real: she mostly does because it's mine.  She isn't seeking out the rest of the genre.

That said, she's more of a fan of short stories, and Jump the Black is probably her favorite.  She does nudge me, gently, to create a novel-length version of that story.

I think it's there.  I haven't found it all yet, but the novel length version exists.  It'll come.  I've got time.  And I've got someone to read it when it's done.