Editing Experiment

You know me, I’m a mad scientist when I’m not writing, doing experiments every day.  But this time around I’m trying an experiment with revisions on A Paranormal Bromance, which you might remember was my NaNoWriMo novel last year.  Or maybe not, since it was NaNo, and who has time to write then?

As I wrote aPB, I knew I was going to have to rewrite at least one of my main character’s voices, possibly both.  I also noted a ton of structural problems, some because I’ve had the same problems in the past.  And then I knew there were things I wanted to add throughout the novel and characters that needed to change.  Knowing that the way I usually edit might not be effective for these edits, I decided to try something new.

For aPB, I’m rewriting the book from scratch in a notebook.  I have the original on the Kindle, and I’ll admit to referring to it a lot, but by writing out even the sentences, paragraphs, and scenes I want to keep intact, I still force myself to look at each sentence, paragraph, and scene and think about it, the way that I sometimes don’t while writing the first draft because I might be in the zone, or even just plodding along to get words down (because, let’s face it, it was NaNo).  It’s also easier to cut something and fix that cut when writing it anew, as opposed to trying to squeeze transition or info into lines that are already there on the screen.  For me, it’s just a mindset thing.  If I’m already rewriting it, it’s easier to change or add to it, at least in my brain.

I haven’t gotten to a part where I have to add more than a line or a feeling or descriptive details, so I don’t know how well this experiment will work there, but I’m excited to find out.

At the very least, this helps me change the voice and to create stronger sentences and paragraphs, so no matter what, I see it as a great exercise.

According to my Kindle, I am currently 13% done, but that’s a bogus number, because it will depend on what I add or subtract.  I’m also debating a plot/characterization point, and I’m sort of at a standstill until I decide it, but I don’t think that will last long.  Worst case scenario, I’ll flip a coin

Anyway, I’m excited to see where this new experiment leads me.  It feels productive right now, but we’ll see how I feel at 30% or 50% or 80% when the end looks so close, but so far.

What revision techniques do you use? Do you rewrite or revise within the same document you wrote the novel in?

Lots of love,Sage

Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst

I picked up Vessel in the store because the cover caught my eye.  Not only is it very attractive, but, amazingly, it is not whitewashed.  I checked out the first chapter, and bought it that day.

Liyana has trained her entire life to be the vessel of a goddess. She will dance and summon her tribe’s deity, who will inhabit Liyana’s body and use magic to bring rain to the desert. But when the dance ends, Liyana is still there. Her tribe is furious–and sure that it is Liyana’s fault. Abandoned by her tribe, Liyana expects to die in the desert. Until a boy walks out of the dust in search of her.

Korbyn is a god inside his vessel, and a trickster god at that. He tells Liyana that five other gods are missing, and they set off across the desert in search of the other vessels. The desert tribes cannot survive without the magic of their gods. But the journey is dangerous, even with a god’s help. And not everyone is willing to believe the trickster god’s tale.

The closer she grows to Korbyn, the less Liyana wants to disappear to make way for her goddess. But she has no choice–she must die for her tribe to live. Unless a trickster god can help her to trick fate–or a human girl can muster some magic of her own.

Vessel is an overall solid YA fantasy book with a gorgeous cover and an interesting premise. I was immediately drawn in by the first chapters, where Liyana prepares to sacrifice herself for her clan in a ceremony that will kill her so that a goddess can take over her body and save her clan from drought. Her relationship with her clan and the sorrows and joys they had over the ceremony were richly drawn in my opinion.

When the goddess does not come, she is cast aside by her tribe due to their belief that the goddess did not find her worthy and that a new vessel will please her enough to save them. Shortly after she is left behind and faces the dangers of the desert alone, she is found by a god-in-a-vessel, Korbyn, the trickster god.

I’m not sure I ever bought Korbyn as the trickster god. Or maybe current perceptions of how trickster gods should act and talk in fiction have influenced my assumptions about such a character. At times it felt like Korbyn was only the trickster god because it made it harder to convince others that he was telling the truth and because his stories could be more interesting that way. I can only think of one time when he “tricked” anyone, and, really, it was no more deceptive than anyone infiltrating an enemy camp would have thought of. More often than not, he seemed to play the “wise, old mentor/guide” role we often see in fantasy

The world-building in the book was pretty impressive, in my opinion. I felt like a lot of time was spent on building the world and the clans’ relationships, their relationship (or lack thereof) with the empire beyond the desert, and especially the myths. I also like how sometimes the myths were completely true, then other times the myths were simply stories. The only time I felt really confused by the world-building/myths/actions of the gods was in the climax. I had a hard time figuring out what was going on, what rules they were following, how they were affecting anything, etc.

Another point of note is how the different clans reacted differently to their gods not coming. One drowned their sorrows in liquor, one killed their vessel in revenge, one seemed more reverent with the vessel singing about it, one met any intruders with suspicion and lied about what had happened. Of course, Liyana’s tribe’s answer was to move on and try again.

On the other hand, meeting each of these tribes seemed to slow down the pacing of the novel. It was pretty standard fantasy fare. We visit each tribe and find out how they’re different from the others: how their setting is different, how their culture is different, how they react to strangers and other vessels and other gods (and so we end up with some stereotypical fantasy characters: the warrior, the princess, the rebel; plus a hero, Liyana, and a wizard, Korbyn). In between, Korbyn uses magic to help them survive the desert, then gets weary, and he and Liyana joke around and fall for each other.

The second half focuses more on the “enemy” of the Empire. We’ve already met the Emperor, a teen who is on a quest to save his people. We understand his motives pretty well, and while it is easy to see how he and Liyana could develop feelings for each other, the relationship that develops between them is so fast and so shallow, that, even expecting it (and kind of hoping for it), I had a hard time believing it when it happened.

There’s a lot of good conflict behind whether it’s right to sacrifice one person for the good of the rest, and whether the gods are righteous in taking a vessel or selfish. Liyana, who was ready to die for her clan in the beginning, fights very hard to live throughout the rest of the book. You can see that she does believe that it is right for her goddess to sacrifice her, but that it’s harder to maintain that belief once the moment she’s always prepared herself for passes by and she has to do it again. Or when there appears to be a loophole (but not a plothole, I promise) in how vessels work.

But even with a few pacing problems, I enjoyed the book overall, and think it would make a great addition to YA fantasy lovers’ bookshelves.

Recommended for fans of: traditional fantasy tropes in a unique setting, great mythology and world-building, desert settings, covers that are not whitewashed!, “villains” with understandable motives.

Rating: Four hearts

Review: The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna

Today I will be reviewing THE LOST GIRL.  This is a book that I got in a fit of excitement on a day when like 10 other YA books I wanted to read also came out, so it got shuffled to the side.  Then I packed it for reading over Christmas vacation, and started it Christmas Eve, but only got one chapter in before Christmas came, and I got a ton of new books.  Looking at all those shiny new books, I didn’t want to read this one anymore, so I started one of the new ones.  Well, despite that, this is the one that grabbed me.

Eva’s life is not her own. She is a creation, an abomination—an echo. Made by the Weavers as a copy of someone else, she is expected to replace a girl named Amarra, her “other”, if she ever died. Eva studies what Amarra does, what she eats, what it’s like to kiss her boyfriend, Ray. So when Amarra is killed in a car crash, Eva should be ready.

But fifteen years of studying never prepared her for this.

Now she must abandon everything she’s ever known—the guardians who raised her, the boy she’s forbidden to love—to move to India and convince the world that Amarra is still alive.

What Eva finds is a grief-stricken family; parents unsure how to handle this echo they thought they wanted; and Ray, who knew every detail, every contour of Amarra. And when Eva is unexpectedly dealt a fatal blow that will change her existence forever, she is forced to choose: Stay and live out her years as a copy or leave and risk it all for the freedom to be an original. To be Eva.

From debut novelist Sangu Mandanna comes the dazzling story of a girl who was always told what she had to be—until she found the strength to decide for herself.

Rare is a book that I read and have no complaints about. Even books I love, I tend to find fault with, but, despite the reluctant beginning, I fell hard for The Lost Girl.

The plot is fascinating. Back-ups, or echoes, of people are created to replace those who have died. These Echoes have to pretend to be the person they’ve replaced. They receive journals and sometimes letters from the person they’re replacing, and sometimes they can even see what the “others” see. There are those that control the echoes–the Weavers–and hunters who would see them destroyed.

This is the story of Amarra, who chooses to rename herself Eva to distinguish herself from her other. She wants to live her own life. In fact, she’s not much like Amarra at all, but when Amarra dies, Eva has to assume her life and pretend to be her.

The book deals with deep subjects, how far people will go to bring back those they loved and have lost, and how far they should respect the deceased’s wishes if it hurts another. While Amarra is called the “other,” it is Eva who is treated as “other” by some who find out she’s not Amarra. Others treat her as just another person. And still others are torn between seeing her as an abomination or as a person. Eva is torn between wanting her own life and fulfilling the one she was created for. At first she does so only because she could be killed if people don’t believe the soul in her body is Amarra’s, but she’s also hope to Amarra’s mom and friends, so proving that she’s not Amarra would mean killing that hope.

The writing is of great quality, and the characters are well-drawn. Even when people were making bad choices, I didn’t question their logic or motives–rare for me. I never got bored with the pacing, and was pleasantly surprised by several routes the plot took.

Occasionally the book dipped close to a love triangle, and, don’t get me wrong, I love well-done love triangles, but this book didn’t need one, so I was happy to see that most of the time there was no question about who Eva loved, only the occasional question about who she was supposed to love.

Most amazingly in this world of YA fantasy, the book had a clear ending. There are strings left loose for a sequel if there is one, and the romance isn’t definitively tied up, but I like that openness, actually.

Overall, I was highly impressed with this book. One of the most satisfying YA reads I’ve had lately.

Recommended for fans of: well-written YA contemp fantasy, stories of loss and hope, stories about identity, India, England, standalones, strong characters, strong world-building.

Rated: 5 blue hearts

Lots of love,
Sage

Contest Announcement: 50 Signed YA books

Fifty books!  Fifty!
You probably didn’t expect to see me post about 50 anything here unless it was 50-thousand words, but here I am to share Beth Revis’s amazing contest.  She has collected signed YA books from all sorts of events, and now she’s giving them away.  Here’s the picture/link for it.  Hopefully it works:

This means that I’ll be writing another blog post soon about why I love YA.  It’s a tough question to answer beyond, “I just do,” and my brain is set on a paranormal bromance right now, so I’ll have to do it another day in November.

NaNo word count is currently 34,153.

Lots of love,
Sage

Trick-or-Treat Love Sucks Giveaway

It’s nearly Halloween. And that means it’s time for some demons and some treats.  Love Sucks is full of demons.  Okay, so some of them only have one little demon gene, but it’s enough for this giveaway.  And I think an excellent treat would be to give away some copies of Love Sucks, don’t you?

  Here’s a quick blurb for you:

Mailee is about to answer the age-old question: “How much love would a love sucker suck if a love sucker fell in love?”

Mailee’s greatest wish is to be an ordinary teenage girl, but thanks to one stupid demon gene she consumes love from any human she touches.  The only person she can touch is her best friend Eric, a hot lust-drainer.  Except for slight hand-brushes to keep from starving, she avoids humans.

Until she meets Logan, a diabetic and the first human who could understand Mailee’s diet angst.  She grows closer to him, but each touch risks his love for her.  If she wants a normal relationship, she’ll have to become human. But the only way requires her to free and be infected by demons representing the Seven Deadly Sins. Sloth? Pride? No problem.  But when wrath-infected Mailee punches the cheerleader who’s making eyes at Eric, she realizes getting through the sins might cost too much.

Like Eric. Because if she turns human, he’ll be the only one she can’t touch.

So if you want this shiny book, just follow the instructions below, and you’ll be entered into the contest.  I’m giving away three copies of the book, one for every week left until NaNo (because I’m weird like that).  Love Sucks is an e-book, and I can deliver it in PDF, Mobi, PRC, and ePUB.  PDF, for those of you without e-readers, looks very nice, by the way.  I believe it’s the only way to get the pretty hearts around the first letter of each chapter.

Edit to add: Okay, because I’m an idiot, I forgot to mention the rest of the prize (and the real reason for three books).  I have 3 flashy, blinky heart necklaces leftover from my release party and lots of shiny bookmarks.  So each winner can also get a necklace and a Love Sucks bookmark.  I realize the irony of having a bookmark for an e-book, but they really are nice bookmarks.  When I announce the winners, I’ll get your information to mail those to you (you can opt out of that if flashy, blinky heart necklaces aren’t your thing).  The e-book, of course, I can just e-mail.

Here’s how you can get entries for the contest.

1 pt – Just for a comment telling me your favorite YA or MG Halloween read.

2 pts – Tweeting about the contest. Be sure to share a link to your tweet here so I can give you your points.

2 pts -  Share a link to this contest on Facebook.  Again, please share a link so I can see.

3 pts – Mention this contest on your blog.  Then link to it here, and maybe others will follow the link back to you and check out your blog too

If you do the 1-pt blog comment only, be sure to include some sort of information so I can contact you if you win.  There are 7 sins, so if you tweet about the contest on 7 different days, you can get 2 points for each (for a total of 14 points), as long as you link them here.

The contest ends at 11:59 EST on October 30, and I’ll post and contact the winners on Halloween.

Have fun!

Lots of love,

Sage

Love Sucks Cover!

I’m very excited to announce the cover for Love Sucks!

Also, I’m four weeks out from my release date.  So my life is pretty full of nervous excitement these days.  I’m trying to fill it with massive bouts of writing.  But… I think I might end Taylor-Made tomorrow…  What will I do then?  (Potential answers: Edit?  Write a sequel?  Write a sequel to H/V?  Write a sequel to LS? (my editor suggested one) Watch Buffy for the billionth time?)

But for now, the cover!

Expect to see this cover basically everywhere I am online

So, what do you think?

Lots of love,

Sage

Winner of the Greed Giveaway

Hey, you guys.  Hope you had a great Valentine’s Day with lots of romance, or at least a lot of chocolate (it has no calories on V-day, didn’t you know?)

There were so many great entries.  I downloaded a lot of them just because I really liked them, and some I already had.  Thank you for all the suggestions, everyone.

But there was one song that was absolutely perfect for the scene.  She’ll be glad she came in with that one last entry.  I know I am

The winner of the Greedy Song Giveaway is:

Megan Verhegghe

for Shania Twain’s “Ka-ching”

Uncontrolled spending when the spender doesn’t have money fits the Greed scene in Love Sucks to a T.  Thanks, Megan.  And thanks to everyone who contributed songs.  I had a lot of fun listening to them.

Megan, I’ll send you an e-mail with a list of the remaining books from my Bye-bye Borders Extravaganza, and you can choose the 10 you want.  Plus, I’ll send you When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen as soon as it’s out on the 28th.

Thanks, everyone!

Lots of love,

Sage

Teaser Tuesday – YAified AFTRLYF 1

Okay, so I’m going to pretend like I’m not obsessed with the iPod Touch I just bought myself (sadly because my beautiful iPod is dying) and do a teaser while it syncs.

I’ve been working on making AFTRLYF YA.  The biggest challenge in that is lowering Sam’s apparent age.  He started at “sixteen” and now he’s going to “thirteenish.”  Tia started at “twenty-six” and now is going for “eighteen.”  These are quote-unquote ages because Tia’s really 2000-and-change and Sam’s really about 200.  I’d love to make Sam younger, but I can’t justify to myself his older girlfriend younger than “13.”

This is the introduction to Samael, one of my favorite characters.  Context, Tia couldn’t get to her “clients” in time to pick them up at the time of their death, so she called her brother.

A young, blond kid leaned against a blue Ford Mustang and waved at me as I approached.  A teenaged Filipino girl and an old Caucasian woman waited with him.  “Thanks, Sam.  I owe you one.”

“No problem.  It’s a nice change from animals.”  One of the younger A.D.s in the field, Sam had the vet route.  San Diego’s animals that died in veterinary offices came into his care.  How lucky I would be to only have to frequent hospitals to collect my spirits.  Half of them died at home.  That was where being invisible and incorporeal came in handy.  If they couldn’t see you, nobody could object to you touching them, and, if you could walk through walls, they couldn’t keep you out.  But until I got off probation, I’d have to make do with my charms.

“Do you need any more help?” Sam asked.

“No, I have an hour before my last charge, and tomorrow’s looking much lighter in comparison.”  I patted him on the head, noticing his golden locks were a little shorter and more even than the last time I had seen him.  “How’d you get your hair cut?”

He grinned at me.  “You noticed.  Helen decided I needed a trim so she took some scissors to it.  I said it was silly, but she insisted.  Do you like it?”

“It’s just weird.”  Off his crestfallen expression, I added, “But good.  Anyway, thanks for your help.  Remind me to buy you an ice cream.”

He made a face.  “Please, I’m, like, two centuries old.  I’d much rather you put in a good word for me with Dad.  Could you?”

“If you think it’ll help.  I don’t exactly have his ear these days.”

“More so than me.  Come on.  Maybe he’ll promote me to humans.  These girls were pretty nice.”  The younger of my clients beamed, and I couldn’t help but suspect Sam of flirting with her, despite the fact that he looked like he had just barely hit his teens.  What would Helen think if she knew what her boyfriend wanted out of a transfer?

I sighed and gave in.  What could I do?  I owed Sam for saving my butt tonight.  “Don’t blame me if nothing comes of it.”

“Thanks, sis.”  He grinned as he turned the corner of a car.  “You better get going before the crowd’s around to see you teleport.”  And then he was gone.

Now that he had mentioned it, I noticed the trickle of people leaving The Q.  Chargers fans clad in blue and gold exited the stadium en masse, and Sam was right–if I wanted to teleport with the clients, I’d better make sure nobody was around to see it.  Spotting a Hummer 3, I ushered my charges towards it, hoping to use its girth to hide our disappearance.

So how am I doing?

Currently on old iPod: Cab by Train

Currently on new iPod: Sync in Progress

Lots of love,

Sage

Teaser Tuesday – More from the AFTRLYF

So this week, I figured out how to YA-ify AFTRLYF.  Yay.  This has been something that’s been bugging me for a while.  People tell me it sounds YA, that it’s paced YA, that Tia sounds YA, that my queries sound YA, but I had put Tia mentally at 26 and her brother at 16.  I’m still a little worried that Tia is out of “school” and both she and Sam are focused on their jobs, but even in the New Adult contest, where I focused on her job (and of course the angel murder), I was told it sounded too YA.  But anyway, I figured out what to do with their ages, so I’m going to be working on that for a while.  I’m still working on Taylor-Made, it’s just going slowly.

First scene from AFTRLYF:

As the cold steel of the knife slipped between my ribs, I had only one thought.  Oh, gods, this is going to create so much paperwork.

The knife’s owner stared with wide, frightened eyes.  No doubt he hadn’t actually planned on using the knife in his mugging attempt, but I had been in too much of a hurry to find my own victim to pay attention to which way his weapon was pointing.

Note to self:  Pushing past your mugger proves to be fatal.  Next time be more careful.

“Relax, kid.”  With one tug on the wooden handle, I pried the blade from my gut and dropped it to the ground.  A carving knife.  Obviously, there hadn’t been much foresight on this mugging attempt.  “Don’t have a heart attack.  You haven’t killed anyone tonight.”

The scrawny teen stared at the wound–even in the dim light of this downtown San Diego alley, we could both see the lack of blood–then at the knife on the ground.  He hugged his quivering body and clutched his arm.  “Wha–”

I ignored him, sifting through my options.  I could let him go.  Even if he told someone, who would believe him?  But if he told the wrong someone, there’d be Hell to pay.

Then again, if I reported him to the Waiting Room for memory modification, I’d have that paperwork and another mark on my record.  While erasing his memory was clearly the right choice, plenty of my colleagues would sidestep the rules for such a minor blunder.  It was more than jealousy that led me to suspect some of those perfect records were obtained by ignoring the cases that could blemish them.  Since he was the only one around, what harm could there be in letting him go?  What was he going to say?  “I’d like to report this non-murder I committed a block away from Broad.”

Not until I looked back at him did I realize I had another option.  The punk’s shivering had become more pronounced, and he had fittingly turned as white as a ghost.  But the glowing, black symbol that had appeared on his forehead caught my attention more than his body language.  The sun cross, a cross inscribed in a circle.  Like the passing of the seasons the symbol represents in the human world, it informed me that this human was due to pass.  It’s The Symbol–or my symbol, I wasn’t sure what others saw–of Death.

“W-w-what are you?” he finally managed.

I removed one of my black gloves and touched him on the shoulder, making sure my finger glanced his bare skin through the hole in his sweatshirt.  “Don’t worry.  Everything’s going to be fine.”

His body fell to the ground, but his spirit stayed behind.  “I told you to relax,” I said.  Pulling out my cell phone, I dialed 911, and put on my best frantic voice.  “Hello?  There’s this guy in an alley off of Broad Street.  I think he had a heart attack or something.  Could you send an ambulance?”

The operator told me to stay on the line, but I hung up anyway.  It wasn’t as if they could trace my call.  You know those fake 555 numbers they use in movies?  My cell phone actually used one.

“What did you do to me?” the guy asked, staring at his body.

“Nothing.  Your time was up.  Let’s get going.  I have a busy night.”

“But who are you?  What are you?”

“I’m an Angel of Death.”  I took his hand so I could teleport us to the celestial plane.  “You can call me Tia.”

In music news, I have recreated all the playlists on my netbook from my iPod that aren’t somewhere online (my novel playlists are online).  This means if my iPod battery dies, like it’s threatening to, I won’t lose those.

Yesterday I didn’t hear very many songs, but all of them were good.  “Bad Before Good” by Day One, “Bad Boys” by Gloria Estefan, “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter (which I was kinda having, so it fit), “Bad Horse Chorus” and “Bad Horse Chorus (Reprise)” from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, “Bad, Bad Boba Fett” by The Great Luke Ski, “Badaboom” from The Fifth Element, and this next one:

Currently on iPod: “Ball of Confusion” from Sister Act 2

(What’s weird is all of those except “Bad Boys” is somehow tv or movie related for me, and as ”Bad Boys” played, I thought, ”This could be a Trouble song.”) 

Lots of love,

Sage

Interview on Kirsten Rice’s Blog

So I was interviewed by Kirsten Rice, who’s been interviewing important(?) people from Absolute Write.  You can find it here: http://kirstenjoyrice.blogspot.com/2010/03/aw-interview-sage.html

Or read below.

In other news, I have a brand new WIP.  I know I’ve had like 20 of those lately, but I’m pretty sure this one is sticking.  I’ve written about 600 words of it.  It is not the one mentioned in the interview, lol.

AW Identity:
- Screen Name: Sage
- Post Count: Not quite 40K
- Favorite Forum: YA, though I’m having lots of fun in the Bewares and Background Checks forum
- What’s the best lesson AW has taught you? I have to admit, I was one of those new YA authors who thought that YA had to be fairly innocent.  In the 3 years since the YA forum really took off, I’ve obviously learned differently, but since I massively fail at being edgy, it doesn’t actually matter that much to me

About:
- In real life, you are… very stressed, lol.
- Book title(s): I have no published books, but I will be happy to give you the titles of my finished (query-ready) mss.  AFTRLYF, HEVN SNT, DownLoad, Love Sucks, Trouble is a Friend of Mine, and Fireflies. 
- Genre: Urban fantasy (A and HS), YA SF (DL), YA contemp. fantasy (LS, TiaFoM), and literary MG (Ff)
- Blog: http://sagelikethespice.wordpress.com/

Describe your current WIP in 50 words or less: Haha, this is harder than you’d think because I have several possible projects, and I haven’t chosen one.  I will give you the one I’m most likely to pursue.

Boy/Girl: Cameron is sometimes a guy, sometimes a girl, depending on who he…or she is with. Things should be easier after enrolling in an all-boys school, except that her roommate is convinced Cam is a girl and falls for her. Meanwhile, the school’s “prince” falls for, well, him.

You write some YA: what draws you to the genre?  This is an excellent question.  I think part of it is that I was reading YA early on, and then continued through high school, and in college I didn’t really have time for pleasure reading.  So when I thought about reading for fun after high school, I still usually thought about my experiences with YA, even though now YA is so far from the Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club books of that time.  Also, I always kind of wanted the kind of high school experience that we got to see in YA books and shows when I was younger, and I never got it, so there’s always been an element of vicarious living that way.  There’s just something very natural to me about writing a character at the age of 16.  I usually start my MCs there and then adjust their age according to what I really need it to be.  Finally…, my favorite show of all time is Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, so you can see how I might end up with YA contemp fantasy.

What’s the most important way your writing has changed from your first novel to your latest?  Well, what’s interesting is that my last novel was so different from anything else I had written.  But, okay when I wrote my first novel, I was convinced that a) fantasy readers expected to see quests and portals and magic and languages and weird races, b) I couldn’t possibly limit myself to one POV, in fact, I should do many many POVs, and c) I needed to show every bit of history that led to my MCs becoming who they were by the beginning of the actual story. Furthermore, it was 113K long… after cutting it significantly before and after finishing the first draft.  (Now, I’m considering revamping that novel, and taking out some of the “necessary epic fantasy” stuff, limiting to one POV, cutting even more, and giving one of the MCs a medical problem that explains part of the characterization I already gave him).  The next novel had many of the same problems.  I found AW just before writing the second novel (which was a NaNoWriMo novel), and my writing began to mature from there.  When I got to AFTRLYF, which was set in the “real world,” I made myself stick to one POV, gave her a snarky voice, and really set it up as a mystery (which was an element that failed in both my early novels).  The first-person, female POV with attitude really worked for me, voice-wise, and I got a little stuck in it for a few books (even in DownLoad, where I had 2 third-person POVs, one of them was a pissed-off girl).  Part of the reason I wrote Fireflies, which was the first book where I tried to focus on language as much as plot and characterization, was to experiment with a different voice.  Fiona’s voice is still first-person, but it is rambly and soft and younger (IMO).  And I absolutely love it.  One of my favorite things about Fiona’s voice, and this happened almost naturally, is that she’ll go off on a tangent, and then by the time it’s done I’ll realize it’s done one of two things–either it went around and came back to the beginning of the tangent, getting me back on course for the narrative, or it turned out that she was secretly talking about one of the themes of the book, metaphorically.  One example of this is she’s talking about the doors of the inn and how none of them fit their doorframes correctly.  It comes about because she’s feeling her way down the hall and doesn’t want to bang the door against its frame as she presses on it, but what it relates back to is how her brother has a traumatic brain injury and his brain swelled up against the skull and doesn’t fit properly.  And I didn’t make that connection until I got to the end of the scene.

You’re in the middle of the querying process: how’s it going so far?  I don’t want to sound as impatient as I really am.   I actually have three novels that have fulls and partials out there with agents, and I’ve only been querying the last one for a month and a half.  I know this is a miniscule amount of time in the publishing world, but considering that I have fulls that have been out for 8 months, I feel very impatient when thinking about how long I might have left for these Fireflies fulls.
You’re also an AW moderator. Firstly, you must invest a lot of your time on the boards. What drives you to commit such a big chunk of time to the writers, lurkers and learners at AW?  I’m a fairly new mod.  I go through stages of being obsessed with AW and then others when I’m feeling depressed about writing and don’t want to hear about it anymore, lol.  That latter time is when it’s really hard to convince myself to go hang out with all the prodigies in the YA forum.  But the YA forum really didn’t have a mod for a while, and then we had one that we shared with other forums.  The nice thing about the YA forum, though, is that it’s a great bunch of writers.  They’re very good at modding themselves, and I usually end up just being the person who sends threads to the right forum or merges the hundred word count threads that pop up in a week.  Right now I’m working on a FAQ, where I’m just placing every post that covers our most talked about subjects in that thread.  You can’t imagine how often we get asked about edgy topics.  And I know the regulars are trying soooo hard not to roll their eyes or yell, “READ THE STICKIES,” so I thought I’d give them a few less instances to do that.  Because I was a newbie four or five years ago too, and I’ve learned so much on AW, I want to make sure we don’t scare away the newer members.

Secondly, you have an insider perspective on how AW works. What do you see as the top benefits (and maybe drawbacks, too) of any writer’s being a part of this community? How has it enhanced your own writing?  I’m going to start with drawbacks.  There are two drawbacks I can see from how AW works.  1) There are so many threads about so many things, both writing-related and not, and it is so easy to fall into procrastination mode once you get online.  2) There are a few “rules” that occasionally get drilled into people’s brains that you hear over and over and over, even as you see new books from debut writers breaking them.  Now, of course, they are “rules” for a reason, but you cannot believe how set people will get in their belief that a prologue ruins a novel or first-person present tense is a gimmick.  As for the benefits, there are so many.  One of the best is the support you get.  When I started writing TiaFoM, I wasn’t getting much love from another group of writer friends.  But when I posted my first excerpt on AW, I was given this huge boost of reps from people telling me what they loved about the scene and the character (who was being a brat, so I’m glad they loved him).  When I posted my trial beginning to Fireflies, my first comments were how beautiful the writing was and how literary, which were exactly the comments I needed at the time.  And of course there is a lot of good advice to be found on the website.  I talked about people getting stuck on the “rules,” but a lot of those guidelines are based on good reasons, and that really can help enhance a newbie’s writing.  And for those “rules” that aren’t really “rules” (like about first-person present, which is a pretty popular POV in YA), you can have many different voices giving their opinion and reading and writing experiences, which isn’t true of other sources of info for writers, like a book on writing or a writing class.  And the Bewares and Background Checks forum is vital for any querying writer.  Obviously Share Your Work, where you can get critiques on pieces of your novels or on your query gives you invaluable experience.  I hang out more in Query Letter Hell than other parts of SYW, and I was surprised by how naturally I was able to write this query for Fireflies, which is my most successful query.
Lastly, your wildest publishing dream comes true… what is it?  I’m usually quite modest and fine with just getting published and having a small cult following who write fanfic (but, of course, I wouldn’t know about it) about my books, but when I dream big, I imagine television shows based on my books.  Or, like, AFTRLYF would make a pretty awesome movie, I’m not going to lie.  But one of the agents who recently rejected Fireflies made revision suggestions, and she said that if I followed them she had no doubt that the book could win an award.  And I was just blown away by the thought that any of my books could win an award.  So now that’s stuck in my imagination too, lol.