On Writing a Series

So I started writing the sequel to Ravensborough today. For those of you who don't know, Ravensborough is the young adult urban fantasy novel that I entered in last year's ABNA contest.

It was strange writing as a character that I hadn't visited for almost a year. I really enjoyed being back in the world and meeting up with my secondary characters.

I found that I slipped back into Scarlett's voice relatively easily, and the dialogue came naturally enough. My main problem was this - when writing the second part of a series, how do you pace the details of what happened in the first book? I want to avoid info-dumps at all costs.

I think it's even more difficult with fantasy, because as well as letting the new reader know what happened in the first book, you have to let them know the rules of the world you created. It's a lot of information and it can overwhelm a new reader while boring someone who read the first instalment senseless. I know I tend to skim read when I'm reading the 'last season' recap in books.

Anyone got any tips for me?

(Thanks for all the support while Polly was in hospital. Thankfully she's now home and healthy.)

I Should Probably Talk About Writing...

So yeah, I haven't really talked about my writing lately. Possibly because it's getting rather complicated. I'm progressing well with Lemons, my contemporary fiction novel, and I'm changing Guildhall over from an urban fantasy young adult novel, to steampunk. The steampunk genre suits a lot of my plot points better, and it's nice to think that my knowledge of Victorian Britain is being put to some practical use. I'm starting to outline plans for Ravensborough II. I also have a plot bunny for an adult urban fantasy series that I'm trying to resist, because I have way too many projects going on now as it is.

I'm writing first drafts, which I love. I plan my plot as I type, so I never really know where my story is going. I find out along the way. First draft involve large word counts, fast typing, and can be really tough on my hands. They're already cramping today, and I haven't even written anything, but I hope they hold up so I can get a good bit of work done. I have a ten day foster placement starting tomorrow, and three year old girls who talk a lot aren't conducive to hours of writing. Though I hope to manage an hour or two a day, anyway.

What about all of you? How is your writing going?

Where did the week go?

Honestly, I can't believe that it's Friday already. It's been one of those strange weeks where time seems to have sped up, while my to do list has remained frustratingly high.

I have discovered that drinking beer while writing about it is not the best idea. When I started off it seemed like a good idea, particularly since I was drinking one of the brands I was writing. I started to get tipsy, and realised that my sentence syntax was starting to get muddled up. Fibromyalgia decreases your alcohol tolerance, so I had to stop after one bottle. I am a one drink woman or, in other words, a cheap date. I'm never going to make it as a stereotypical Irish writer who writes Jameson-fuelled prose.

I was feeling a little down about my writing, though my rejections haven't upset me it's hard to get emails and letters that are passing on your work without thinking that maybe this isn't meant to be. However, I got one rejection letter that said they would have taken me on a few months ago, but their client list is now full. They may have just said that to let me down gently, but it definitely beats a form rejection. My partial request came from an agent that I hesitated about querying, because they're such a big name. The odds are still saying that they're going to pass on me, but even the fact that they asked to see my work will give me a boost that should take me through the next round of querying.

Speaking of querying, Ravensborough is going out this weekend. So fingers crossed.

What do you guys do when you get discouraged?

Shelley Watters' First Page Critique Contest

Shelley Watters is holding a first page critique contest over at her blog. You can check it out here. The rules are listed there, but basically writers in certain genres post the first 250 words of their novel on their blog for open critique. Afterwards, the polished extracts go forward to win the chance of being looked at by a hot agent. Pretty cool right? So here's mine:

Prologue

I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart racing. I’d had that dream again. It had been haunting me for the past few weeks, and I still had no idea what it meant.

            It started with me lying face down in a dark room, with a cold stone floor beneath me. I knew there were other people around me – I could sense them, but didn’t know who they were. I heard someone walk across the room, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor.

            ‘This is your last chance,’ I heard a woman’s voice hiss in my ear. ‘Or it will be all over for you and your friends.’

Her tone told me that, if I didn’t do as she asked, something terrible would happen. I got slowly to my feet, and faced her. Moonlight streamed through a window illuminating the voice’s body, but I couldn’t see her face. A black shadow came over the window, blocking out the moonlight. A second later there was a large crash, an explosion.

            Someone pulled me to the ground, away from the shadow.

            ‘Stay where you are,’ another voice whispered in my ear urgently. A high-pitched scream echoed above and I closed my eyes tightly, afraid of what I might see. When the screaming stopped, I opened my eyes. Just inches from where I lay I could see the unmistakeable glossy slick of blood.

How was my day? Honestly, I've had better.

Today was a mixed bag of a day. It started off well, because it's a bank holiday in Ireland this weekend. So straight away that puts me in a good mood. And the sun is shining, so that's another plus.

Unfortunately, I'm really not feeling well today. I can't complain really, because my fibromyalgia has been fairly quiescent lately. They upped the dosage of my meds and I've been feeling really good. I've had lots of energy, and my mobility has been very good. This is somewhat of a mixed blessing, as I find little old ladies are much nicer to me when I'm using a walking stick. They tell me things at the bus stop, things that little old ladies seem to intuitively know. Like why the postal system is bad in our area right now, and what's going on in the private lives of our neighbours. One in particular told me that the bus system is getting worse in our area because the government our secretly selling our buses to the Russians...you heard it here first.

So while I had loads of things planned to do today, most of them fell through. Though I went to my favourite cafe with my husband and sketched down some rough idea for Ravensborough edits which was kind of productive. Bunowrimo took a back seat today, but I hope to catch up next week. I went to a production of Joseph and The Amazing Technicoloured Dreamcoat with my in-laws, which was awful, unfortunately. The pain got worse during it, so my husband and I had to grab a taxi straight home.

I'm a bit down about the pain. It just seems relentless, I've been in pain everyday for two years now. But when I get really bad, like tonight, I start to get scared that the pain won't die back down. Or that I'll deteriorate to the point where I can't write any more.

Anyway, enough pessimism. I have a job, a hobby I love, a fabulous husband and great family and friends. That should be enough for most people.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Goals for June

Well, today marked the deadline for sending out my agent submissions. Unfortunately, while I'm almost done, I came up with a few changes for the novel in question while writing the synopsis. I know it means breaking a deadline, but making the changes will make my book much better. I have spent so much time on the manuscript, I don't want to scupper my chances for the sake of a few days.

So my new goals for June are:

1)  Finish Storms in Teacups edits and send off submissions by June 8th
2)  Complete Bunowrimo by adding 50,000 words to If Life Gives You Lemons
3)  Edit Ravensborough so I can start submitting it in July

I'm going on holiday on July 2 with my family. Four adults and six children in a converted castle with a hidden medieval staircase on the Irish coast. And, bizarrely yet importantly, a built in Nespresso machine. Hopefully the holiday will act like a carrot so I can do the ginormous amount of work that I've landed myself with.

Anyone else got any crazy plans for June?

X is for...(e)Xit

So I'm out of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. And don't get me wrong, I would have loved to go further in the competition, but I'm still very proud. For Ravensborough  to have gotten into the top 5% in its category has been a huge achievement for me. Now I just have to wait for my Publishers Weekly review and get my synopsis done for submitting it to potential publishers. I think I'll incorporate my pitch into my cover letter, it got through round one so I know it's fairly decent.

But the next week is aimed towards submitting Storms in Teacups. Which means writing another synopsis and doing another edit job.

Congratulations to everyone who progressed in the competition, it's a big achievement and you should be very proud of yourselves. :)

N is for...Novel Status

Thanks for all the good wishes. The keys have been located, and all is well. At least until we lose something else.

I write in two genres. Young adult urban fantasy and women's contemporary fiction.I usually have two projects on the go at any one time. I just find it easier that way.

Young Adult:


Ravensborough: Fantasy novel set on an island plagued with divisions and the supernatural. Currently on hold until April 26 when I find out whether it has made it through to the semifinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. If it hasn't, I'll start submitting it to prospective publishers in May.

Guildhall: A work in progress. I'm working on the first draft, but have a long way to go before it's complete. I have about 11,000/70,000 words written.

Women's Contemporary Fiction:


Storms in Teacups: This is pretty much finished. I'm doing a last polish to bring it up to standard. I hope to start submitting it to agents in May.

If Life Gives You Lemons: Also a work in progress. Currently at 23,000/120,000.

I recently found out that I have to write a query letter in order to submit to a couple of agents. In Ireland and the UK the process is usually cover letter + sample chapters + synopsis. Does anyone know what the differences are between a submission cover letter and a query?

B is for Books!

I'm starting to feel a little like I'm on Sesame Street. You know, 'This blog post has been brought to you today by the letter B.' Or something.

Anyway, as I'd rather read a book than do just about anything else, I decided to list the books that have had the biggest impact on my life.

Number Five: Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes

I love this book. Not only does it talk about drug addiction and recovery, but manages to do so in a way that is funny but doesn't take away from the seriousness of the topic. It always makes me laugh, and it shows that women's fiction isn't all handbags and cocktails (though I do love both).

Number Four: Mallory Towers Series by Enid Blyton

In fact, I liked all of Blyton's British Boarding School books. I was enchanted by it, probably because I was an only child at the time, and used to read them in bed, pretending that my bed was part of a dormitory and that I was at boarding school, waiting for the lights to go out so I could steal off with my school friends and have a midnight feast. Of course, I'm a complete home bird who would have cried my entire way through boarding school, but that's another matter.

Number Three: The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

I love this book. I wish she had written more books, but I reread this every so often. I love the imagery, and the way she manages to convey the sense of entrapment through her sentence structure. I think every woman should read this book.

Number Two: Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead

Confession: I love young adult novels. The teenage years are so exciting, your character is starting to form, you're beginning to make decisions for yourself, and your future could go literally anywhere. I liked how Mead too real vampire mythology and wove it into her books, and it made me think that maybe I could do the same with my historical knowledge, use it to form a supernatural but realistic society. So I did, and I wrote Ravensborough.

Number One: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

All right, so strictly these are two novels, but my Dad gave them to me together so I could compare two types of dystopian worlds and ideologies. He asked me to decide which society I'd rather live in, one that was repressive or one in which everyone was programmed to believe they were happy. That was ten years ago, and I still haven't made up my mind.

Ambition and Anonymity

I saw on someone's blog that there's an A-Z April challenge. Everyday for the entire month, bar Sundays, you have to write a post about a topic that begins with that day's letter. Usually I find those things kind of twee, but as I'm new to this whole blogging thing I thought that it would get me into a habit of posting regularly. So I decided to take up the challenge.

I've decided to start with a double post on ambition and anonymity, since the two things are linked for me. My ambition, since I was a small girl, was to become a published author. My parents were both vociferous readers, and passed on their love of books to me. I read more than a hundred books a year, and I'd hate to see a tot up of exactly how much my habit costs me.

I wrote lots as a kid. I won poetry competitions, and short story contest at school. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but the cautious part of me knew that I had to have a back up plan. I went to college and studied history, and later the history of medicine. I started my novel dozens of times, but my critical inner-editor always clicked in and stopped me from progressing more than a few pages. The words on the page just weren't as good as the words in my head, and try as I might I couldn't seem to improve them. I didn't have enough confidence in my work to continue.

Everything changed in 2009. I finished my college finals, and got a pretty good result. I moved in with my fiancé, got accepted for a master's course, and was preparing for my wedding in August. It should have been the happiest time of my life, but it wasn't. I felt listless, and even small movements caused me pain. Some days it was an achievement for me to just get out of bed.

I enjoyed my wedding day, and had a great honeymoon in New York. The pain and fatigue still held me back to some degree, but I had a wonderful time and would go back in a heartbeat. When I came home I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a disorder of the central nervous system, characterised by chronic pain and fatigue. My rheumatologist told me that while there was a two per cent chance I would recover, it would be healthier for me to accept the fact that I would probably never get better.

My first thought was relief that it wasn't something more serious. The relief was short lived as I came to realise just how much my life had really changed. College became difficult, it was hard for me to physically get to classes, never mind do the assignments. It came clear that after graduation, getting full-time employment would be difficult. I'd always been academic, and I felt that lots of lives paths were becoming closed to me. Being in pain all the time takes its toll on you mentally. I was in a very dark place.

In an effort to distract myself, I started writing short stories. Inspired by brilliant urban fantasy author Richelle Mead, I decided to try writing in a different genre. I started Ravensborough - this year's ABNA entry, as part of Nanowrimo and became so involved with my writing that it became a sort of escape. I was also reading a lot of women's fiction, their message of overcoming adversity to find lasting happiness spoke to me at that time, and I found a natural voice in both genres. To be honest I put more effort into my writing than I did to my coursework, though I still got a decent grade.

I now write my books full time, with the odd bit of freelance journalism thrown in on top. It suits me, as I can work it around my condition. On good days I can get a lot of work done, on bad days I mightn't write a word. I'm lucky that I have a supportive husband, he's encourages my writing and believes in me more than I believe in myself.

I haven't told anyone in real life that I'm writing. I'm quite a shy, reserved person, and the idea of putting myself out there and telling people that I want to be a writer makes me feel quite vulnerable. I want it so much, that failing will hurt me so badly that I'm not sure if I want other people to know that I'm a failure. That's where the anonymity comes in, I guess. I entered ABNA sure that I wasn't going to make it past the pitch stage, but thought that it would be a good way to practice the rejections that every writer gets. When I was lucky enough to make it to the quarter finals, I was overwhelmed. That coupled with my favourable vine reviews made me think that maybe I do have something.

Don't get me wrong, an awful lot of good books were probably thrown out unfairly, and a few bad books probably scraped through. But I'm still proud. It gave me the confidence to set up a blog under my real name, and a determination to get published somehow. In that sense, even if I progress no further, I've got a hell of a lot from this competition.

Telling other people though...I don't know. I'm still working up to that :)

I Got Through To The ABNA Quarter-Finals!

I just found out last night that I've made it through to the quarter-final stage of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award!


Ravensborough is my young adult novel, and the first book that I completed. It's very special to me. My husband (who is a journalist and editor) had read through it and liked it, but I still wasn't sure that it was good enough to submit to agents and publishers. So ABNA seemed like a good way to get some constructive feedback.

They took 5,000 entries in the YA category, and in the first round they narrowed the field to 1,000 entries. I was chuffed to get through to the second round. When I found out that I made it through the second round, where they allowed only 250 of the 1,000 to go through, I was completely overwhelmed.

The best thing was the reviews I got. Two Vine reviewers read over my work, and gave me comments. Their comments were super-nice, and they seemed to really enjoy my story. To get praise from people who aren't worried about the repercussions of hurting my feelings is fantastic.

 The big thing now is that Publishers Weekly is going to look at my manuscript! I can't believe it. I'm really nervous about it, but I've got a month to psyche myself up for it I suppose. :)