Uncategorized – Page 2 – Then They Kissed

The Great ReWrite

As promised, let’s talk about the book, huh?

So when I wrote the first book, the one I am now querying, I hadn’t really planned anything for it. I had an idea, I wrote it, and that was that.

Except that there were just a few too many loose threads for me, you know? I had introduced several things that didn’t get satisfying resolutions, and I wanted to follow up on them.

So instead of writing a direct sequel, I took a side character who was in one chapter, and I wrote her story. Also a romance, but it introduced a lot more about the world, the magic, the hows of things, not just the whats. And when I got to the epilogue, I wrote in a hook that leads to the same place as the epilogue in the first book.

But I wasn’t ready to write that story yet, I needed to fill in some gaps, which meant a third book, to connect the dots from “I need a favor.” to “How do you feel about regicide?” so I snagged another minor character from book one, and wrote book three. Also a romance. It fleshed out the overarching conflict, the thing in the background of the first two books that was the root cause of the things that were happening.

These books are all a continuous story, but it’s happening in different places, and follows different characters. Book four brings them all together in one place.

Now, I wanted book four to be a romance, too, which meant centering one relationship. And I happily wrote the first 48k words, having a grand old time, and then I came to a chapter that was POV one of the main characters and I just wilted, because I had decentered that relationship from about chapter 3 onward.

Writing the characters from the previous books was like wearing comfy shoes and the new shoes are nice, and I love them, but man, once those boots are properly broken in, it sure is hard to justify wearing anything else, you know?

So I wasn’t writing a romance anymore, and I wanted to be.

And that meant that I had to go back from the beginning, and look at every chapter and see if I could rewrite it from the perspective of one of the mains. The main doc gained 4k words. My scraps doc now sits at 12k.

It sucked. There’s a lot in the scraps doc that I’m very proud of. Some of it has made its way back into the main doc in one form or another, but most of it is tucked away like a backstory. And that’s fine. The main conflict is between these two idiots, so what the rest of the cast is doing in the background can be implied, for the most part. I’ve kept POV chapters from the mains of the previous books where either 1) the events were too plot-crucial to leave out and neither of the mains were present, or 2) the POV character’s perspective is adding to the interpersonal conflict between the mains.

Of course, I’ve complicated this by needing to resolve the dangling conflict between each of the first three couples, and I’d really like it to end up shorter than 100k. There are other things I can do in this world, but this story needs to be done.

Mostly because I’m super duper over it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love all of my babies, and I want them to be happy (and they will be! Looking at YOU, S&S!), but I’ve got a gaslamp fantasy slow-burn romance about justice and revenge lurking just around the corner and I want to get to it.

A recent writing

Katie smiled almost fondly at the memory. “It was scary shit. You know, you can’t put an IV in shifters unless you also dose us with silver or aconite, and those aren’t long term solutions because of the toxicity, which meant that we were dosing her on the half hour to keep things level, and even then, the first few times she woke up already on fire.”

Next time, I’ll tell you about my attempts to make friends with the local corvid population.

Do good, friends.

Now I Own a Piano

When I was a kid, there was this standup piano that came with the house. We never figured out how the original owner of the piano had gotten it inside; it was wider in every dimension than any of the doors, because this house was built before codes and standards were a thing. Someone had slapped one streaky coat of robin’s egg blue paint on the whole things, and it had never been tuned.

I loved it.

Both of my parents are musicians, but not cool instruments, not instruments that you can play at parties. Well, I suppose that you could play a clarinet at a party, but for that to be a positive experience for the other people involved, it would have to be a specific sort of party.

So naturally, at the extremely grown up and two-digit age of ten, I was going to master this instrument, leave my nerdy-ass flute behind, and this, I was sure, would make me popular.

I bet you can see where this is going. You’re very perceptive, I’ve always admired that about you.

I learned to play “When You Wish Upon a Star,” but not the whole thing, just the melody. Real ones will know this from Disney’s Pinocchio. Everyone else will know it from the Disney studio card that plays at the start of their movies. You know, the zoom-out of Cinderella’s castle?

Anyway, that was the crowning achievement of the six months of piano lessons that I had somehow conned my way into getting for free*.

But then I just… stopped playing.

Now that I’m an adult who falls into the formerly gifted kid, pleasure to have in class, undiagnosed but we’re pretty sure, very large bucket of millennials, I know that I was autistic and not handling that very well. Still am autistic, but I handle it much better now. The extra twenty-five years of practice helps a lot.

For the last three years, since my partner and I have owned a house, I’ve been idly looking for a piano, to rekindle my childhood dreams of playing a cool instrument. Turns out, Craigslist is chock-full of people** who are willing to give you their pianos if you move them. However, said people are not typically willing to let you come by and see/push keys on their piano before you arrange movers. And moving a piano is serious business.

However, I am patient*** so I figured that it’s a numbers game and eventually, I would come across someone who wouldn’t give me a lemon.

And then I was at the end-of-season bell choir party, and the choir director, a former co-worker of mine before she had the audacity to retire, and personal friend, mentioned that since she had retired she was getting rid of a lot of stuff that she didn’t use, and this included her grandmother’s spinet.

So naturally, I asked how much she wanted for it, and she said, “Oh, you play?” and I was honest with her because I’m pretty sure that lying to women with silver hair leads to a curse on your entire bloodline, and frankly, we’ve got enough going on and don’t need that.

She said it was mine, if I could move it, because what she really wanted was for it to go to someone who would appreciate it.

If you are not familiar with pianos, spinets are the smallest of the analog pianos, topping out at around 400 pounds. Compact enough to fit in the bed of a full-size pickup truck, but still daunting.

But with some help from two strapping men who I bribed with lunch**** we got it moved in exactly the break between cloudbursts.

So now I own a piano. I ordered the Red Book, which looks different from the red book I learned to play the flute with, but which seems to be fairly well respected in the world of Amazon review. I also reached out to a friend of mine, who plays an astonishing array of instruments, for self-study materials. We’ll have to see how this goes. But since I told my friend that I wanted to learn, and lying to silver-haired women gets you cursed… well, I don’t have much of a choice, now do I?

A recent writing:

“This is what your life should have been like. You are an asset wherever you go. Remember that.”

Next time I’ll tell you about what I’m writing and why the current draft has been at 52k for a week.

Do good, friends.

*Out of pity. You can do things like that in small towns where everyone knows your mom works two jobs.

**Probably people with the same aspirational relationship with the instrument that I have. I am aware that this bodes poorly for my future. The potential future where I can play a piano at parties is far more interesting to me in this moment.

***This is a lie.

****Which they turned down, so these guys really just helped me move a piano for free. Having friends is underrated.

Welcome!

Suppose you’re the sort of person who started writing romance novels because you turn to art whenever your life is unhappy or otherwise upset. Suppose you got fired eight months ago and found yourself with considerably more time to write. Suppose you finished your first book six months ago and started querying it. Suppose that querying is a slow, demoralizing process with contradictory rules, unclear expectations, and inconsistent feedback. Suppose you finish two more books while you are waiting and are working on the fourth of the quartet. Suppose that you are still waiting.

Further suppose that you joined a writing server that was randomly suggested on Reddit. Suppose that you met your best writing friend (who has the shockingly poor taste to live across an ocean from you, stunning siren that she is), and with her support, started a writing Instagram. Suppose that you are autistic, and never developed an organic understanding of social media, and yearn for the old school days of posting blocks of text into the void instead.

That was a lot of work, supposing all that. I’m proud of you.

Anyway, here we are, with an honest to goodness blog, here in the big year of [current year]. Welcome.

I am the sort of chaotic millennial who has tried literally every form of scheduling ever developed (do not @ me, bujo people. I’ve tried. Yes I’ve tried the Ryder Carroll method), so I cannot promise you a consistent posting schedule. Nor can I promise you consistent content. The presence or absence of any aesthetic on my part will be up for debate. Not by me, but please, feel free.

I can promise you connection. I can promise you honesty. And I can promise you updates. I hope that’s enough.

You wanna end with something I wrote recently? Too bad, my blog, my rules.

“You will not apologize to anyone for not knowing something you haven’t been taught.”

Next time I’ll tell you about my new piano.

Do good, friends.