The blog of fantasy fiction author and writer Tarah L. Wolff

It’s been a while since I posted (yet again). I am trying to get my feet back under me from the blows of the last two weeks. I’m still walking around through some kind of fog that’s impossible to explain but we all know what it feels like. No matter how I justify everything in my head, no matter how this is even kind of a release, I am very depressed. I’m capable of getting to work on time, doing what I need to do. But, Guitar Hero? Golf? All I want to do is sit and lick this wound. It’s just too heavy to carry around when I don’t have to be doing anything.

The worst thing that happened to be in this recovery stage was that the very first weekend (during the time I wrote my last blog entry) I finished my book. Cheers, right? Woohoo. Oh yeah, yay. But, now I don’t have anything else to do. I’m so desperate I’m starting to shift my focus to the sequel. I need something so badly so I can have an escape from myself, my book was the very best thing.

I’ve already spoken to my aunt about all of it and she’s planning on starting the “on the computer line edit” of my book as soon as we finish The Talking Stick and Richard’s Sedarstrom’s second poetry book. I don’t know if I don’t you about him yet but he’s a fantastic retired professor who is, at this very moment, my favorite person to work for. What’s great about Richard is that his writing is so unbelievably clean that Sharon should have the book ready for publication within less than a week. So, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’ll be able to start my book in no more than three weeks.

The golf course has opened, I don’t know about you but we’ve noticed that this is three weeks earlier and about thirty degrees warmer than any spring that I can remember. So, yay, an extra month of golf this year. I’ve golfed three times and I can’t tell you how good it felt and how good it was for me. Being in the club house has been healing. So many people who remember me, so many guys who are happy to see me. Makes a girl feel a little more than nothing. I needed that.

So, my book is almost there and I feel good about it. I’m biting my nails. The house, down south, is almost finished and should be on the market by August. I do plan on going back for a couple of weeks for the last finishing push but, for right now, I’m going to cross that bridge when I come to it and not think about that trip yet. Right now it’s just one day at a time for me. Thank God for a job to go to everyday and a mom and three dogs that love me without bounds. Even my brother has given me many hugs these past two weeks.

The worst blow was after Joseph left me, I tried to put a nail all the way through the bottom of my foot and then, about a week after that, my mom and I were testing golf cart batteries. We had already gone through almost half of our electric golf carts and I was leaning over the whole rack of 6, 6 volt batteries and I saw the spark. BOOM. The center battery blew up right in my face. The whole thing fucking detonated. I hit the ground, my face covered, my eyes and all of my exposed skin felt like I was on fire. I was convinced I’d lost the eye sight in my right eye, deformed for life. The thing had already swollen to the size of a golf ball. My mom grabbed me, flagged my brother down and they took turns dousing my face and eyes out of water. Then she and I both ran home and took showers to get the battery acid off of us.

To say the least I was a real girl about the whole thing. A couple golfer friends of my saw it happen and offered me two shots of Root Beer Schnapps, from there I smoke four cigarettes and simply sat there shaking for two hours. Never in my life could I have imagined that could happen, but of course, it would happen to me during the worst week of my life. Everyone tells me bad things come in threes so I guess I’m done for the year. We’ll see, I’m certainly not going to say out loud, “It couldn’t get worse! Things have to get better!” Because I’ve been saying that for five years and somehow it has always gotten worse.

So I am one beaten and battered chick, hobbling around with a bad foot and a shiner on my right eye that has taken on every conceivable color of the rainbow. Whatever part of the battery that hit my eye it was about a quarter of an inch higher than hitting my eyeball. I should be thankful, I flinched the right way, no permanent damage. And, God knows, what a hell of a story to tell anyone who asks what happened to my face. But it should heal without scarring and it’s already better. Besides all of that you know about my heavy wound I’m trying to carry around with me.

They say we right from wounds. Maybe this will improve my writing. I don’t think so. I’ll let you know as soon as I start in on the sequel again. Lots of ideas! The other the day I wrote three post-its worth of notes; the final finishing of the base outline for the second book. Wow.

I’m not a smoker. Having said that, I do smoke sometimes. But always in the worst of times, usually when I am so angry all I can see is rage and all I can hear is my heart beat. The worst the days ever got to was a 4 cigarette day. I had a day this week that was a 7. And though I have only bought myself 1 pack of cigarettes in my whole life, and only smoked a couple to stay awake on a hard drive and then gave them away, this week I bought my own pack. That pack is already gone.

This was the worst week of my life.

I can only laugh at myself for the foolishness of thinking five years ago “next year will be better!” And then four years ago, “Next year has to better, how could life be worse?” And the mantra had continued, every year my parents went through the divorce, my mother slipped further into financial ruin, the house he and I bought for a “quick remodel” remained unfinished and I remained separated half the year by a 1,000 miles from the man that I loved. How could ever next year be any worse?

It just wasn’t possible.

That’s what I thought last year. I honestly believed that this year: 2010 would be a better year. A year to end the many wars that we’ve been fighting for so long. The year to become unshackled; when all the costs and tears that we paid would finally be justified. What’s so fucked up is that that is still right but in all the wrong ways.

My boyfriend has set me free.

I haven’t blogged the past week because I had no words. I honestly considered not telling you, letting you know about my book that life is hard etc. But that would have been a lie. How can I not tell you the future I had worked so hard for now no longer exists? How can I try to pretend that this wont affect me as a writer?

The book I’m reading now (the 4th book of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King) has a force in it that they call Ka. Could be God, could be fate, whatever, doesn’t matter, they believe in it so that makes it real. The doomed girl, the gorgeous lover who would never see her 17th birthday was spoken to once by her father before his death. He told her that Ka is like the wind, nothing can stop it and it will blow your whole life away in an instant, regardless of your desires, your plans or your screams.

I have been blown away.

I traveled for three days in a state of disbelief. Of all the fights, of all the good times and the bad, honestly, I never thought that he would do this to me. Truthfully, I thought it would be the other way around up until just a few weeks ago. I made the commitment to him in my heart. Made the commitment that was far deeper and important for me, something he may have never known about. The commitment did not change our lives together. But it did change who I was. I was no longer the doubter or the girl who feared regret. I made the decision (and it took years) to truly try to change for him, to no longer wonder, no longer doubt, ever. I made the decision to stay with him for better or worse.

If you’ve ever been in love you know that this happens and it is despite your actions. Some people marry, some people love without ever truly stepping into this kind of commitment-or not needing to. But, when it happens, there is a peace that follows. A relief that the decision had been made and the shocking truth that it is, somehow, something you can live with and not the end of the world or the chance for regret. Taking the leap: no fucking regrets no matter what.

I regret

trying so hard that I had taken myself to that place of commitment. I regret with all of my being. Being there was being blind, was being certain, was having faith in something I should have known was coming. But, of course, I didn’t, I let myself kneel down in the middle of the highway and was surprised when I was hit by a semi. Love makes you certain. Commitment makes you certain.

Of all the things I doubted (us not wanting the same things, blah, blah, blah), all those things that I had worked through and stayed. He got to them much later than me and he couldn’t stay. A part of me respects him. He’s doing what I didn’t have the courage for. Or, at least, not yet. A part of me is proud of him because I know he had to come a long way to get here. I was along for the journey, fuck how I know how far. When I met him he wouldn’t have been capable of this. I know him and I know who he was better than anyone else who has ever thought they knew him. He wouldn’t have been capable then of seeing himself so clearly, his life so clearly. He wouldn’t have been capable of saying, “I need to go out and figure out who I am. I’ve never been free to make a single choice for myself.” And that’s the same thing I’ve been saying since the beginning.

The very same. Taste the fucking irony.

Oh but I hate him. As much as I understand, I hate him for leaving me. And, the house isn’t quite done and God knows how long it will take to sell, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get to see it. We’re a modern couple. I’m going back in a few weeks to a town that I hate worse then I ever knew I could hate anything, to finish that dog damned house. With him. If there was any chance that this was going to be the quick rip off of a band-aid, it certainly wasn’t right now, before the house sold. There is a huge part of me that wants to get on with my life and I can’t yet. I am doomed to many weeks of certain grief.

I’ve cried so many times for this moment when it’s been so close in the past, I guess I just don’t have anything left to weep. But I want to. I want to cry so badly my chest aches constantly.

I feel like a dead star.

He’s changed his status on Facebook to “It’s Complicated” I can’t yet bring myself to change mine to “Single” I wonder when I’m going to do that. When is the time? Do you stop grieving first or find someone to help you forget? Every part of my life has him in it. Everything. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have someone leave you if you were married and sharing a house full time together. Right now I can just pick up a few things and make the last drive back to Minnesota; where my real home always was. And maybe that’s what destroyed us in the end. My home was never with him. I want to believe that, want to have something concrete to say “this is why” but the truth is Joseph’s facebook status “It’s complicated”. But it is concrete, we want different things. We’re perfect for each other, we are best friends that share everything but we want different everythings. And that’s the end of the story.

If only it were that simple.

In the end I feel betrayed, rejected, unwanted and stabbed in the back by the person I had come to depend upon the most. These are normal I think but knowing that the relationship I had with Joseph, something I thought of as so unique and special, has been degraded down to “its normal” may be the hardest thing of all. Every one thinks their relationships are special. Maybe I’m just an ignorant fucking kid with her head in the clouds. He told me tonight, tried to argue, “We are special. I never want you out of my life. You’re my best friend, think of everything you and I walked away from still friends.” But these feelings I’m having are not special. They are normal and they are black as hell. Tomorrow I’m going to buy myself another pack of cigarettes and think again of what I did tonight. Watched the Sex and the City movie with my mom, now single, my aunt, now also single: two women who have been destroyed by men more times than I can count. With one phone call from him, I have now joined them. It is the saddest thing I have ever experienced. There was no holy dark tonight and I can’t see there ever being any holy in my life again.

But I want to tell you something that happened to me three days ago. You know my outline for my book has been sitting on my desk all this time. The changes I needed to make on the last read through. Maybe just for the sake of doing something other than sitting and being sick with tragedy (I never thought I would be able to actually get any writing done) I picked up that outline and went back to my Embraced by Darkness. For the first time since the entire truly horrible week; His face slipped away. He wasn’t in those pages. The one thing that wasn’t entwined with him in my entire life was my life’s work, my Embraced by Darkness.  The book that I began writing to escape my lonely and hard life as a girl was the book I escaped to again in my lonely and hard days as a woman. I am saved in no way. But that book was my salvation through the last of the worst of days (surely next year will be better, it has be, what could be worse than this?) It was written by me and in it, I found me, alone and still somehow, breathing through the pain.

Billy Collins is coming to Bemidji Minnesota this September!! WooHoo!

I am sooo excited. If you haven’t yet seen them on youtube you need to go watch These By Billy Collins. There are many to see/hear and they are absolutely incredible. I can’t wait to hear him live. And, is it just me or does he sound like Kevin Spacey when he played the serial killer in Seven? And doesn’t that just add another awesome element of dimension or what!

Stage two of The Talking Stick

Everything is in a digital file. Poetry, Creative nonfiction and fiction. There is no more scanning or typing to do (Thank God). Sharon has gone through the digital file and made as many corrections as she can there. The judges have already returned to us the first and second place finishers in all three categories. All that was left to do last Sunday night was for me to sit down and figure out how the book is going to read, which poem goes where, which story goes where. Made all the more difficult that we want to start everything that goes on to more than one page on a right hand page.

It took me four hours.

Not even kidding. Four hours. I started at 11pm and ended up still sitting there at 3am. It was the hardest book I have yet to put together in my life. It is strictly because of our standards of excellence and the fact that we’re getting more and more writing every year. That all translates into “less filler for the book.” Less easy going and blah poetry about nothing etc. We encourage and published clear-voiced pieces that are well described, as short/cut/tight as possible. And we love stuff that ends with a clear message. No, I don’t mean “Kill Hitler!” what I mean by a clear message is that there is a beginning, a middle and an end that translates into something, anything. An emotion, an idea, anything, anything at all without the writer TELLING IT TO US.

And that translates into . . .

A book that was damn hard to put together. I mean, my God, I’m not going to be caught putting a poem about baby’s dying across from a creative nonfiction that is a humorous slant on cabin life. Hell no. Everything this year was clear and imrpessive, but that means everything this year had to be very carefully handled. What a job!

But what a great job to have! I can’t believe I’m saying the quality of the work was so good it actually made my job harder. lol. What a great problem to have.

There was bad too though.

Don’t get me wrong. There is always truly horrible writing that I remain sitting with my mouth open while reading it wondering why the hell the writer thought anyone would want to read it. Half of the creative nonfiction submitted this year I crossed off (with red ink) at least the first and the last paragraphs. Simply put I eliminated the stupid back story that should start NO story (if back story is necessary and, it really shouldn’t be with a word limit of 1,000, then it should only be brought it when its relevant to the action.) and then I eliminated the part when the writer decided to tell us what we learned because of course all readers (especially editors) are too stupid to get it.

What writers don’t seem to understand.

I can imagine them. Flaunting along in tied died t-shirts in their minds as they expand their horizons and click off the editor and slip into that creative bliss where everything is genius. And then they write words that absolutely ooze like honey, thing like, “Expanded into/Void of oppressive/Convulsed noise/Weeping . . . Weeping . . . Weeping/Dreams shattered/A blink and I knew/I was alive!” Wow, really? This is the best you can do? What the hell did that even fucking mean? And, for that matter, who ever said that I cared about whether or not you felt alive? Do you understand that I don’t care? I couldn’t care less actually. You’re job as a writer is to make me give a fuck. Figure it out.

The number one rule that most “hobby” writers don’t seem to get is that writing is half creative process and half intellectual work. It seems they all throw out their brain, their working common sense, for this lofty bull shit hope that you can become a writer by writing what you think is poetic.

Most people who sit down to write a “poem” are always lacking the most important thing. Heart.

The impressive pieces, every one of them, start by the writer being inspired by an emotion. From there, not all writers create anything that’s worth reading (I can’t tell you how many pieces that we don’t put in the book but they had a great idea) the inspiration is the most creative part of it all and it does not create something worth reading. Your intellectual self, your ability to step back and allow that story to shine (or that feeling, that emotion) without ever telling us how to think, is how good writing begins. It takes clear thinking and an absolutely hated eye to get a piece cut down to the only words that matter. Very few things that I’ve read have ever reached this point of brilliant tightness and almost no creative nonfiction that I’ve seen has ever achieved this.

The ability to step back and clearly assess your own writing.

You need to be objective. So often I hear “I wrote it for a class” and I think, “Wow that must be an exciting read!” The basis of your work must be a seed that inspires you. You must have a clear and present knowing of what you are trying to achieve when you’re writing that piece. If you’re not excited about it, God knows, no reader will ever be.

My mom flew down to Oklahoma for a few days and we just drove home. Miss Joseph terribly already and missed out (by only 2 days) the laying of brand new carpet throughout the majority of our house. It sucks royally, we’ve worked on that house for 3 1/2 years and that carpet was a true turning point of the finishing of the whole thing. Tough not to see it when it first went in, but I’ll live. To add insult to injury I don’t know if you’ve been around the midwest at all the past week, or even watched the news but the entirety of the midwest was hit, all of a sudden like (no one forecasted it), by a gigantic, slow, north moving storm. So, I got to drive through the whole fucking thing. 1,100 miles, 18 hours of hydroplaning and gripping the wheel like I was going to save our lives. I’m still totally exhausted two days later.

To add Insult to Injury (again)

We’ve been having some hard times in Oklahoma. We’ve been betrayed and back stabbed by someone we thought was our friend. We have been receiving threats to such an extent that I am a heart beat away from calling the police and filing a report. Joseph has bought himself a gun and has a conceal and carry license. We both live a little bit now in wait for the final conclusion to this whole thing. You may notice that I don’t sound scared. I’ve learned well in my life that the louder the asshole is and the worse the lies he claims: the bigger the pussy he actually is. And, in this case, that’s absolutely correct. Joseph and I are both waiting for him to back up his threats but neither of us expect him to ever have the balls to do it. The threats stopped for a while but the moment I left my house to drive back north he started in on threatening Joseph again.

Really? Scared of a girl, huh?

Well, I don’t blame him, if I was him, after everything that he’s said about me, I would be scared of me too. He’s attacked everything about our lives, our jobs, even our house and our loyalty to each other. He claims that our lives are horrible and that he’s amazingly happy. That he has an incredible job where he’s making a fortune compared to our measly salaries. That his house is worth twice what ours is and that includes everything that he owns, right down to his cars and his wife and child. Joseph and I are looking at each other and we have to laugh. Because if we’re so poor and our lives are so horrible when we’re actually making more money than he is, our cars are worth more, our house is worth more (and I’m not even going to get into the asshole’s excessive drug and alcohol abuse) and we have such a great relationship that we actually trust each other. Isn’t he actually saying then that our worst is not even the best that he can do? I guess it’s a good thing that he’s happy then. It’s unbelievably sad and I’ve never pitied anyone more. When we don’t reply, he thinks he’s won and we haven’t truly replied yet, not like we could. He may want to hurt us, but we can’t be so cruel as to rub our incredible fortune in finding each other into his face. I want to be that bitch but I’m just not. So Joseph and I bite our tongues and hope he’s not stupid enough to force us to pull the trigger.

So here is a toast to every lying piece of shit trailer trash that you were ever stupid enough to trust. Take it from me, if there is a creature like this in your life, arm yourself and sleep well, because everybody else knows that they’re lying dog shit too. Regardless of what they say about you. And we all know that people that deserve something wicked coming to them, always get it in the end. Get as far away as you can, because assholes like that tend to pass what they have coming right on to everything around them, especially their friends and the people that they love.

Not great for work on the book though.

Nope, been too damned busy for work on the book. I have several folks I’ve contacted through Deviantart now that are awaiting my reply about their doing a commission. But, I know the only way the commission could ever be done is if they read the book first and it’s just not ready yet! Damnit! I need to work on it and I have the changes at my left elbow just waiting for me. There actually aren’t a lot, no more than a few hours of work (and you know by now that a few hours of work for me on this beast is literally nothing in comparison to how much time I’ve already spent). But I’m just still so shot from the drive and I want a cigarette too because I feel like shit even though I’m not a smoker. (Boyfriend’s a smoker, sometimes it’s hard not to have one too.)  On top of all that I have one HUGE weekend coming up.

I gotta pay the bills somehow and I’m meeting some folks I did a website design for to show them how to use it etc. I think I’m becoming more and more of the a-typical writer. I do fine with people but I loathe gatherings; they exhaust me, and after that drive all I want to do is curl up at home for two weeks and accomplish absolutely nothing.

But I’m going to try after I write this!

I am going to work on my book at least a little today before my mom gets home from work. Tonight my aunt is coming over and we’re having my Minnesota birthday party after my golden birthday (turned 24 on the 24th of February) in Oklahoma. First time I was without my mom on my birthday, I love her and it was tougher than I thought it would be. Weird how when everything in your life either dies or changes how we revert back to the kids in us and just want our moms on our birthdays. I certainly did.

My aunt (Sharon), my mom (Marilyn), and I are all on the Editorial board for The Talking Stick again this year. Mom just as a substitute in case one of the other three people on the board can’t make it, or to be the deciding vote on something the five of us can’t agree on. It’s a good job and we all like it despite the massive amount of work. Over 160 writers submitted this year (most of them at least 3 things) and the stack of submissions looks like over a ream of paper. Insane and cool. After my birthday dinner and maybe some presents (lol, that’s a real joke, my family would never let anybody go without presents on their birthday, sometimes I feel like a spoiled brat, but then I remember.) we’re going to sit down and compare notes like we usually do before the big meeting when we decide what to put in the book. It helps refresh our memories on everything and think about what’s going to the judges this year too.

It’s a gigantic job but I like it every year and I’m always proud to be a part of it.

Sitting beside me on the desk is the product that I have created over the last few days. A little note pad with five pages, fronts and backs, covered with my bedtime scrawl that only I can understand. Notes written down, trying to cover everything in as few a words as possible without losing what I thought, at the time, had to be changed in Embraced by Darkness. I’m reading my book now you know.

I almost announced it when I got the book from lulu a couple of weeks ago. I bought two copies, the next step toward the book being almost finished. It’s over six hundred pages in pocket size. It cost more but I wanted desperately to see my book in the form of the paperback size that fills up every book store. It’s bigger then the uncut version of The Stand, but seeing it like this is really a wonderful thing.

I started reading it at night.

I started reading it every night, keeping a notepad beside me to write changes and things I couldn’t forget. At first glance I was disappointed. There are missing words, misspelled words, old sentences I meant to delete starting new sentences here and there. Not a lot, I would say I caught maybe thirty of the above in the first four hundred pages. Which, of course, means there’s a lot more.

I’m surprised at how much I miss while reading it on the computer screen day after day. Then taking a break. Then reading it on hard copy. It’s like two completely different books. I see them entirely differently after two weeks and in two different formats. Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing that after the book is written a writer needs to put it away for a minimum of two weeks before working on it again. It is the soundest writing advice I have ever heard.

I took the break.

I took the break while waiting for my lulu book to arrive. I read something that wasn’t going to get me thinking while I was waiting. A teen book The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan that I know you’ve heard of. But, let’s face it, Twilight included, these books aren’t going to keep you up with their incredible depth at night. Neither are they going to inspire you as writers. So, that’s what I read while I waited and that is generally the type of book I choose to read if I don’t want a distraction from my own work. Normally, it doesn’t matter, but my head needed a break. At that pointed I had spent over two hundred hours on my book in little less than two weeks. My boyfriend (Joseph Crawford) suggested I start keeping track of my time. I’m not doing that anymore, it was too shocking and upsetting.

Thoughts on my book.

I was a little disappointed in the first hundred and fifty pages or so. Not the writing, not the characters, not even the sad editing job that I did. I was disappointed and worried that it seemed to jump around so much. In my push to get the reader right into the action I’m afraid I might have pushed too hard. As it is, my book is in four parts and within the four parts I switch between my three characters twice. I think it’s too much for the beginning of my book. I’m considering, in part one and maybe part two as well, scaling it back so instead of jumping back and forth six times in each part, I think I may combine my girls’ parts down to one instead of two separate pieces. So the jump would only be three times and the reader would stay with one main character twice as long. I’m going to keep thinking about it. God knows I’m going to be reading the book again and seeing whether or not my thoughts are justified.

Almost there.

I have about a hundred and fifty pages left to read. I’ve found some more places I’m going to be cutting. Most of it is left over scenes from when I first re-wrote the book a couple of years ago. The writer I am today is sitting there reading them and going “What the hell? That doesn’t make any sense at all, why don’t I just do this and save five thousand words!?” The first major one is where Karalay really comes into the book in part two. The second one is what really feels like a ridiculous amount of words that I devoted to Jezaline. After that, I’m actually pleased with Osondrous, but her stripping down I did right away when I started this last push (again, the last push, how many last pushes can I have?). For both Karalay and Jezaline I need to find better words for some longer arrays of dialogue between them and the men they are with. Karalay with the man she has been with for ages but only now developed an awkward love life with and Jezaline with the gigantic prince of the Draegoone who is very interested in her. Both women are very intelligent. The dialogue is going to have to be the tie that binds it all together and brings the readers to a place where they can understand Jezaline’s attraction to the prince and Karalay’s attraction to the Darkhalk.

It seems like I used to be better at Dialogue.

Or at least I thought I was pretty good at dialogue a couple of years ago. I’ve cut out so much of what I wrote in the last rewrite. Dialogue, that when I wrote it then, seemed drippy and amazing with unsaid layers. Dialogue that I read now and wonder what the fuck it was even in the book for.

My last complaint about my book.

I’m a cutter. I don’t know if I’ve told you that yet. I’ve taken first draft fiction to writers meetings and had people tell me that it felt like I had “cut too much” when I edited it. Everyone is always stunned when I tell them it’s first draft and I haven’t edited it yet. This is my a-typical first draft: an almost bones only, no adjectives with a subtle or nonexistent narrator. I am pleased to say that I have finally cut my book down to where it almost reads like a first draft of my own writing today. Actually more like a second draft. It’s all good news because before the book read like I hadn’t wrote fiction before. Now, I need to add back. I have so much dialogue missing description and I have many characters and places missing the first and most important description of them. I won’t add many words, but I do feel it is time to dress my beast.

I’m looking for a cover designer for my book. I officially have a plan but it cannot begin until I have a fabulous cover for Embraced by Darkness. I have queried several artists I found through DeviantArt (my old stomping grounds) and have made some progress. One fantastic artist told me she does commissions for free but I sense she is suspecting something different than what I am going to throw at her. Most excellent digital artists on DeviantArt get commissions to do profiles sketches of fantasy-sci-fi game characters/not a big job in comparison to what I want on my book cover. After I get the cover done for my book I officialy have a plan.

That’s right – I have a plan.

The plan starts with me not being humble at all. I am a web designer and I know how to get to first page Google within two months. I also know how to create a website that sells. These things I have not considered thoroughly enough as being assets for selling becoming a published novelist. I came upon a pdf file of some poor writer who self-published through lulu and failed miserably (several times) the end of the pdf was that she was finally happy with her book covers and she sold a couple a month etc. I looked at her website and her book covers and could not believe she sold any a month. It also just so happens that I’ve been an editor and layout/print designer for eight years. Funny how until I read that pdf that none of this became very obvious to me. I have the experience in the industry to already know not to make the mistakes that she made. I also have enough experience in the industry that I know most people buy books online these days.

That’s right – Most people buy books online now.

Book stores are barely surviving. I know this because I’ve been in the industry close enough, for long enough, that most people buy online these days. And most of them buy used books from Amazon (if they’re smart -  I just bought a used Stephen King book for 1 cent yesterday).

On top of all of that my writers’ group (The Jackpine Writers’ Bloc) has several ISBNs more than they will ever need and are willing to give me one for free for my book. On top of that my aunt happens to be the most incredibly thorough editor I have ever seen and she’s already told me she would edit my book for me. Take note on my last sentence because on top of everything else I think this kind of editing is really what separates the shitty self published books from the publishing company books. Because of the cover, my layout design and Sharon’s professional editing. My book will not look self published but professionally finished. Also if I publish through Lulu with an ISBN I can use their marketing tools for free and that means: A Free Amazon Listing.

So Far I’ve Only Spent $15

That’s right. Only $15 and that’s for the domain registration because we have our own server and that means free hosting for me. Does it seem a little like I haven’t utilized the tools that have been given to me in the past? You’re damned right. But, I also haven’t had a finished book in the past so regardless of what I’m capable of: I won’t push or try to sell a book I’m not proud of. But now, if you haven’t noticed, I’m just about done with my book and I have the time and I can afford $15 to get my website up.

So, Here’s the Plan.

1. Register the domain embracedbydarkness.com ($15)
2. Commission an incredible bad-ass cover. ($?)
3. Get my aunt to edit my book for me. ($?)
4. Use the cover graphics to create a stunning website at the domain. ($0)
5. Launch the book on lulu (with lulu marketing) and the website ($0)
6. Pay per click advertising on Facebook using bad ass cover ($?)
7. Pay for banner advertising on DeviantArt using bad ass cover for 1 to forever ($20 per month)

Now, a couple of things I already have wrong that you may point out. First off, I really need to get my book on lulu and get lulu marketing going ASAP long before I do anything else (besides getting my domain name) because lulu marketing (getting my book in amazon listings etc.) can take up to eight weeks and I would really rather have all of the finished and set before I start paying for advertising. Regardless though, I won’t put my book up in lulu until the cover is finished so that’s priority #1 and, God knows, I’ve got absolutely no money. So, as I hope that someone may give me a commissioned cover for free, I know that that is really far fetched.

Wondering why I chose Deviantart Ads?

I bought Banner Advertising through Deviantart years ago when I was selling photography prints (or trying to). I sold a few but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I got over a thousand clicks a day for only $20 a month. It was impressive. And the Deviantart people are my kind of people. Most of them are fantasy gamers that are very much so online rats like the rest of us. In other words, the people on DA are the kind of people who would buy a fantasy book online, and God knows they would notice bad ass cover graphics in an ad and fucking click on it to take them to my even more bad ass website.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on Embraced by Darkness

I finished the first thorough read through and then speed read through the book again cutting and cutting and cutting. Last time I updated my blog the book was over 170,000 words now its down to about 163,000. That’s still not good enough for me. I am determined to cut the book down to at least 150,00 but if I could get it under 150,00 than I believe I’ll have a real something that I could sell to an agency or a publishing company.

But I’m not just cutting thoughtlessly: with every cut I am trying to improve the book. I am reading a book right now (because despite that I am pouring everything I’ve got into my own book I am always reading something besides) called Getting Into Character by Brandalinn Collins. It’s a book focusing on what a novelist can learn from actors on how to develop three dimensional characters. It’s really got me thinking and I’ve been jotting notes down while I read it in bed as I get ideas to change Embraced by Darkness, especially Osondrous, and make it more clear and focused.

I can’t tell you how much I look forward to being able to start a book from scratch. I have learned so much from having to go through this monster so many times. I know one thing for certain: I never want to have to do this again. Any book I write from here on out I am going to have a concise and very clear plan from start finish, from scene to scene. I will never write willynilly again. My boyfriends been joking, “At this point you could have just re-written the whole thing and not had so much damned editing and cutting to do.” Very depressingly, but at this point, he’s right. But there’s no going back now.

Meanwhile. Once the book is done. As you might imagine. I am going to be sending out to every Fantasy/Sci-fi agent I can find. Hopefully, somewhere, I am going to be noticed. What really terrifies me is that I better start working on the sequel.

I started this blog entry the night before last, after I had spent several hours looking for scfi-fi/fantasy places to be published and I still had part 4 of my book to go through. I felt good and I was so enthused that I named the blog post “Actual Hope” though I got nothing else written in it. I found eight places (mostly magazines) that pay and accept scfi-fi/fantasy stories. I’m excited about it and have already sent off one of my short stories for consideration. I have plans to work on four more and get those sent off as soon as possible. I’ll be so excited if just one of them gets accepted. What’s really neat is that most of them urge for novel excerpts so I’m already working on pulling some stories out of The Death of Eliana and I’m working on the same for Embraced by Darkness. For some reason all of this has made me feel pretty good. I’ve also bought some cheap back issues of most of the places; research is a must.

Meanwhile I also found seven different scfi-fi and fantasy publishing companies that accept unsolicited submissions. Woot! Though I know the reaction I’m probably going to get from all of them. “Your book’s too damn long. We can’t publish anything over 120 thousand words.” Still, knowing that those publishing houses are out there, looking for books like I want to write, and being willing to take unagented submissions is pretty fucking awesome.

And I have been working on my book. I said in the beginning of this post that the night before last I was down to Part 4 – the end of the book. If you can believe it, I’m feeling pretty good about how the whole thing is reading. There was some doubt throughout the beginning of the book and, of course, I need to work on those places. But, last night, I finished it.

I finished the first complete read-through after putting my book back together!

Without a doubt, the last half of my book is a better read than the first half. I’m hoping I can cut even more but as it stands the book is now down to 173,052 from 236,743 when I started this last push a few months ago.  That’s sixty thousand words that I’ve managed to cut. My boyfriend has taken to teasing, “How much did you delete of all your hard work today? Did it go well?” And I’ll say, “Oh yeah, I just love slaughtering it!” But, the truth of the matter is, that I’m actually not deleting any real substance from the book. Any real writer will know that what I’m doing is just improving what’s already there.

I literally sit and think, “How can I say that in less words?”

The biggest hardship I ran into in this last read through is that, because Karalay’s story is shorter, things were happening for her way before they were spurred to happen for the other characters. I.E. Karalay was reacting to Osondrous becoming queen before she actually became queen. Now, I know a lot of books do that deliberately and there was a part of me that wanted to leave it because the book was so happy and organized as it was. But, I decided, that because of the scope and size of my book, I needed to help my readers out and keep my three characters as close to the same time line as I could. So I had to change my method in Part 1 of the book.

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts than you know that I decided to break the book into four parts and omit chapters all together. In each part of the book I ended up going from Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline to Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline and then moved on to the next part. But because of Karalay’s shorter story and the fact that she HAD to end my book and the fact that she was the main character in my Epilogue I decided to pull half of her story out of Part 1 and move all of her story down. So Part 1 is now going from Osondrous to  Jezaline to Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline and then moving on to Part 2. See diagram. None of the other Parts have changed but I feel this was necessary and the fact of the matter is, no one reading the book is going to care or notice.

I want to cut more.

It’s painful and it’s true. I need to cut more and I want to cut more. There are two places in the book I hope I can slice more of it out, maybe not more than a few thousand words but if I can get the book down into the hundred and sixty thousand word area I think it will look better. Really anything shorter than it is now will look better to publishers.

But I’m not going to start cutting rashly. I’m going to read through it, one more time, and cut as I go. I hate to say it, and it does pain me quite a bit, but the truth of the matter is the places I’m thinking of cutting are out of Jezaline and Karalay’s stories which is pretty frustrating because Osondrous has the most words in the book. But, as I’m typing this I am thinking of a place in Osondrous’ story too that I noticed. When I read through it again I really hope I can cut them down without mercy and maybe “crosses fingers” even cut another ten thousand words out of the book.

So, wish me luck!