Year: 2014 (page 43 of 61)

The logline. The so-called “elevator pitch.”

I think in writing novels, the logline maybe claims more importance than it really has — some folks paint a world where you have to sharpen this short blurb of your own work to an atom-splitting point, keeping the weapon in your back pocket because at some point you may find yourself at a coffee counter with an agent or editor and have a sudden chance to pitch them. (Which I’m sure is awesome for the agent or editor. Particularly if they haven’t had their coffee yet. Pro-Tip: never pitch an agent or editor before they have consumed at least one cup of their daily caffeine. You may lose a hand, an eye, a few toes.)

Still — I like it as an intellectual exercise because it helps you distill the work you’re doing down to its manageable essence. You’re figuring out what lies at the core of the work and you’re also helping figure out how the work can be mentioned and brokered without taking people on a ten minute snooze-worthy journey — because, man, I’ve been the guy who gets cornered by an “aspiring” novelist who wants to tell you about his book. It takes forever, and it makes me want to rip your trachea out and shove it in my earholes.

Plus, you’re keeping me from refilling my drink.

(Pro-Tip: never keep a writer from refilling your drink. We won’t just take a hand, eye, toes. We’ll go for the soul. We’ll write you into our next book as a possum-molesting Neo-Nazi who gets thrown into a wood chipper as everyone else laughs.)

Clarity and conciseness are powerful skills for the writer.

So, let’s practice.

You’re working on something now, I take it?

Give us the logline.

Meaning, hook us into the story with a single sentence.

Then: feel free to discuss everyone’s logline with them. How’d it work? How’s it sound? Did it hook you? Did it compel you in some fashion? Was it both clear and concise?

Last week’s challenge: Five Random Words.

This week’s challenge is as straightforward or as oblique as you care to make it:

I want you to write a story about Hell.

Now, this can be a literal Hell.

It can be a literal Hell from actual religion.

It can be a Hell of your own design and desire.

It can be a metaphorical or figurative Hell.

The story needn’t take place in Hell — but it needs to touch on the idea or the metaphor in some way or fashion. Feel free to get creative with the idea — don’t feel constrained by precise definitions (though you can be, if you choose to be).

I put up this challenge as a bit of a nod to the fact that my own Hell-book, The Blue Blazes, is today a Kindle Daily Deal. (And here I’m shamelessly elbowing you to see if you care to check it out.) Plus, I’m writing the sequel, now, so I too will be writing about Hell this morning!

You’ve got 1000 words. Due in a week — in by noon EST on Friday, 4/11. Post the story at your online space, then drop a link back to that story in the comments below.

Welcome to Hell.

We have such sights to show you.

Yoinks and Gadzooks!

The Blue Blazes today is a Kindle Daily Deal.

Which puts this book at a sweet $1.99 for your Kindle device or app.

“Rounded off with an emotional finale, The Blue Blazes is a serious contender for book of the year.” — Alister Davison, Starburst Magazine

“There’s something gloriously unhinged about the crazy mix of fantasy, horror and crime-fic that is The Blue Blazes.” — Stefan Raets, Tor.com.

The book details the events of a knee-breaker named Mookie Pearl who stands between the rock that is the criminal underworld and the hard place that is the very real mythical and monstrous Underworld that exists beneath the streets of Manhattan. He thinks he’s got it all figured out until his own daughter rises against him and his organization.

The book contains, in no specific order:

Gobbos, Snakefaces, Trogbodies, cankerpedes, milk spiders, the Five Occulted Pigments, a roller derby girl gang, charcuterie, pierogies, daemon families, god-worms, Half-and-Halfs, mad cartographers, guns, fists, family strife, the zombie town of Daisypusher, cleavers, Sandhogs, magic mushrooms, an old goat, a hell-driving four-wheeler, goblin temples, and more.

I do hope you’ll check it out. I’m thisclose to finishing the sequel, The Hellsblood Bride, which releases before the end of the year. And then a third book will be coming soon after…

One-ninety-nine.

Nab it before Hell swallows it up once more.

(Oh, and tell your friends! AND FOES.)

AAAAH ME AND SWORD AND LASER ALL HAD A VIDEO BABY

Ahem.

Sorry, what I mean is, the very nice humans of the Sword & Laser show had me on — and the show aired today. (You can check it out above or, if you want the audio-only version, click here.)

There I talk about, y’know, books, but also profanity. And about people who want to have a baby with me. Not just like, a video baby, but apparently a real baby, or maybe a bearded demon baby, or something. Whatever. I dunno. JUST GO WATCH IT JEEZ.

It was very exciting, so thanks to Veronica and Tom for hosting me.

As the sister of the Kjallan emperor, Celeste cannot choose where to bestow her heart….

The imperial princess has been offered in marriage to the Prince of Inya as part of an alliance needed to ensure Kjall’s military prowess. And despite having been hurt in the past by men using her to gain power, Celeste finds herself falling for the passionate fire mage.

Prince Rayn has no intention of allying his country with the militaristic Kjallans. But his political enemies at home may be the greater threat. The princess’s beauty and intelligence catch him off guard, throwing an unexpected and dangerous hurdle in the way of his plans.

As a deadly political plot threatens Rayn’s life, the attraction between Celeste and Rayn ignites into a sizzling affair. But to save her people and herself, Celeste will have to discover if Rayn’s intentions are true or risk having her love burn her yet again….

* * *

THAT GENRE DOESN’T EXIST? WRITE IT ANYWAY.

I love two genres equally, SFF and romance. So when I started writing, I naturally combined the two. I wrote character-based stories set in a complex fantasy world, with magic and swordfights and adventure, plus a romantic conflict and sex and a happily-ever-after.

The problem? No such genre as epic fantasy romance. You won’t find a shelf for it at the bookstore. And you won’t find it as an Amazon subcategory.

The series did sell, but publishers disagree about how to classify it. In the U.S., it sold to a romance imprint and is shelved in romance. In France, it sold to a fantasy imprint and is shelved in fantasy. At least one bookseller in the U.S. moved it from the romance shelf to the SFF shelf (I know because she contacted me and let me know).

Writing a hybrid book like Prince’s Fire is tough because nobody knows what to do with something that has the head of a zebra and the body of a giraffe. But it’s also rewarding, because there are a ton of readers who are looking for exactly this kind of book, and they’re delighted when they find it.

A NERDY HEROINE IS A STRONG HEROINE.

All the books in my series feature strong heroines, but I wanted the heroine of each book to be different.  One is a chess-playing assassin. Another is a world-class archer.

But when I came to Prince’s Fire, the third book in the series, I wanted to pay homage to the nerdy girl, the introverted thinker who loves math and science and engineering. But these are fantasy adventure stories. How does a mathematician or scientist or engineer save the day?

Fortunately, history offers a ton of examples. Looking at just a few military applications of math, science, and engineering, consider Greek fire, siege weaponry, the Manhattan project, and the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

Codebreaking fit my adventure story nicely. So my heroine Celeste from Prince’s Fire became a mathematician and cryptanalyst. Because brawn is nice, but brains are better.

NICE GUYS DON’T FINISH LAST.

What’s the sexiest trait a guy can possess? I think it’s a combination of two traits: intelligence and kindness. Those two traits make up the foundation of every romance hero I write.

Which puts me at odds, somewhat, with the historical roots of the genre. Older romances often featured the “alphole” (short for “alpha asshole”) hero, a domineering, autocratic, chest-pounder. But the romance novel has come a long way over the years. While alpholes can still be found, modern romances often feature a hero whose strength is paired with kindness and moral integrity.

While I worried at first that readers wouldn’t go for my kind, decent heroes, I’ve discovered to my joy that many readers are looking specifically for the type of hero I write. In fact, when I wrote a character with some alphole tendencies in a completely different series, a beta reader became upset. Why was I writing a hero like this instead of the nice heroes I used to write? The answer is that I was trying to write a redemption story. But her response gave me an idea of how strongly some readers prefer the kind and decent hero.

YOU CAN DIVERT A VOLCANIC LAVA FLOW — SOMETIMES.

One of the plot points of Prince’s Fire is that the hero, Rayn, lives near a shield volcano. He’s part of a team of fire mages whose job is divert regular lava flows from that volcano to uninhabited areas so that the city is not destroyed.

Before I could write this, I wanted to get a sense of whether it was actually possible. Sure, in a fantasy novel you can always wave your hand and say, “Of course it’s possible! Magic!” But the magic system in this series is specific and limited. While Rayn’s magic is called fire magic, it’s really more like temperature magic in that he can alter the temperature of things. He can cool or heat his own body, or the air around him, or the water around him if he’s swimming. He can cool and heat inanimate objects or people if he’s in close proximity to them.

So could he, working with a large group of other fire mages, divert or stop a lava flow by cooling and hardening the lava?

I researched this, and it turns out there have been several historical attempts at diverting lava flows. Two unsuccessful attempts took place in Hawaii, during eruptions of Mauna Loa in 1935 and 1942. What did the U.S. Army Air Corps do to control the lava flow? They bombed the lava from the air. It didn’t work, but fortunately both lava flows stopped short of the city on their own.

Another attempt was made in Iceland, and this one was successful. An eruption occurred 200 meters east of the town of Vestmannaeyjar. It threatened to destroy the harbor, so a dredging ship was brought in to pour seawater on the encroaching lava at a rate of 20,000 liters per minute. They managed to solidify enough lava to create a basalt barricade to protect the harbor. The barricade held, and the harbor was saved. So it is possible to divert a lava flow, not by bombing perhaps, but by strategically cooling the lava.

I CAN WRITE TO A DEADLINE.

I sold Prince’s Fire as the third book of a 3-book series. The first two books were already finished, but at the time the contract was signed, I had not written a word yet of Prince’s Fire. My contract gave me 9 months to write the book. I got started, and then my editor contacted me, saying that if I could write it in 6 months she could give me a more desirable publishing date. It was totally up to me, and I could keep the original date if I preferred.

I thought about it for a while, and then I did what I used to do when I worked in the software industry. I broke down the task of writing a 100k word novel into subtasks. I figured out how many words I would need to write per day, and how many editing passes I would need and how long they would take, when chapters needed to go out to my critique partners, how long it would take me to make revisions based on feedback.

And the math worked out! I knew how many hours I could work on the manuscript per day, and how many words I generally turned out per hour. I saw that the book could comfortably be written in six months. So I took the earlier publishing date. Now I write all my books in six months, using roughly the same schedule.

There are as many ways to write a novel as there are novelists, but for me an orderly, systematic schedule, like what I was accustomed to in the business world, worked nicely.

* * *

Amy Raby is literally a product of the U.S. space program, since her parents met working for NASA on the Apollo missions. After earning her Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Amy settled in the Pacific Northwest with her family, where she’s always looking for life’s next adventure, whether it’s capsizing tiny sailboats in Lake Washington, training hunting dogs, or riding horses. Amy is a 2011 Golden Heart® finalist and a 2012 Daphne du Maurier winner.

Amy Raby: Website | Twitter

Prince’s Fire: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | iBooks

A side quest novella in the bestselling Geekomancy urban fantasy series–when D&D style adventures go from the tabletop to real life, look out!

Ree Reyes, urban fantasy heroine of Geekomancy, is working her regular barista/drink-slinger shift at Grognard’s when it all goes wrong. Everything.

As with Geekomancy (pop culture magic!) and its sequel Celebromancy (celebrity magic!), Attack of the Geek is perfect for anyone who wants to visit a world “where all the books and shows and movies and games [that you] love are a source of power, not only in psychological terms, but in practical, villain-pounding ones” (Marie Brennan, award-winning author of A Natural History of Dragons).

* * *

1. ENSEMBLES ARE AMAZING, AND TRICKY AS HELL

What’s better than one main character? Two, obviously. And by that, logic ensembles are even better – since you get to balance the spotlight between five or more characters and have them enrich and illuminate one another. Part of why Marvel’s The Avengers was amazing was that it was an ensemble piece, playing with the character’s relationships (Captain America & Iron Man, Hulk & Iron Man, Black Widow & Hawkeye, etc.) and using them to deepen the meaning of the action.

The downside is that writing an ensemble piece is like being the DM for an unruly party of six players who are all already half-drunk and yet also buzzed on Mountain Dew. Each character has their own agenda, their own voice, and to do right by the ensemble, you have to find a way to get them all motivated, carry the story forward even when one half of the group would rather just stay in the bar and flirt with the barmaid and/or bartender. Ensembles require flexibility in writing character voice, and quite a lot of organization (ala “Eastwood done anything for five pages, and the last time we saw him he was holding a grenade that was about to explode. Revision time!”)

But when they work, ensemble stories are incredible – characters become crystal-clear and dynamic when reacting to one another, relationships develop, and you get the classic ‘here’s my awesome team, don’t you love them’ awesomeness which so many readers and viewers adore.

2. CHARACTER CONFLICT IS THE MOST DELICIOUS FLAVOR IN THE BASKIN ROBBINS OF STORYTELLING

Speaking of ensembles and clashing personalities…In Attack the Geek, I really connected with the dramatic win that was character conflict. If your entire party all have the exact same priorities and agenda, you’ll get a cohesive team, but it’ll be far less enjoyable a ride. But if the characters are yelling at one another over a crucial point of morality or philosophy (or whether Deep Dish or NYC-style pizza is superior), the story can be all the better. And after all, everything is better with pizza.

Putting characters in conflict ads tension to absolutely everything else about a scene. Two people walking down the street? Meh. Two people walking down the street, each trying to muster the courage to tell the other that their relationship is over? Dynamite. If you add character conflict on top of external/plot conflict, you get to cross the streams of storytelling excitement. And as we know from the late, great, Harold Ramis, crossing the streams leads to explosions. And as storytellers, explosions are great.

3.WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW, BUT NOT JUST THAT, OKAY?

Attack the Geek is set largely at a game store-slash-bar. I spent about eight years of my life hanging out at a game store, so I knew that world pretty well. By adding the bar element, plus the ‘magical hangout where people buy geeky props to do magic,’ I found a mix of ‘write what you know’ and ‘write what you don’t know,’ with Grognard’s Grog and Games as a place that was both familiar and strange, and would be similarly familiar and strange to readers, most of whom I imagine have spent substantial amounts of time in bars and/or game stores.

Where Grognard’s had been a notable side-location in Geekomancy and Celebromancy, it is to Attack the Geek what the Serenity is to the series Firefly. Since the story happened 75% in or just outside Grognard’s , the sense of place, was of utmost importance, moreso than in any other story I’d written so far. The setting itself had to step up and help tell the story, something I’m looking forward to doing even more of in the future.

4. VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE. ALSO, FIGHT SCENES.

When you’re constraining location, other aspects of a story need to vary more, so that the reader doesn’t get bored. Since I was telling a very action and fight-driven story, I needed to make sure to find ways to vary things up to keep the action fresh.

Here’s how I did it – I changed weapons, I switched up who was fighting and who was standing by, I injured the characters, I ramped up or slowed down the action, and I changed the bad guys, forcing the heroes to have to fight differently for each challenge. I switched between fights that were about gaining ground and fights that were about holding ground. Fights that included rescues and people watching each other’s back with fights where my lead had to break off from the pack and achieve an objective.

Fight scenes are a type of storytelling, and like anything else, they need variety, and most importantly, they need stakes. By shifting the immediate stakes each fight, with all of them pointing towards larger stakes, I worked to keep the story moving and the reader happy.

5. TAKE THE THING THAT WAS COOL, BLOW IT UP, THEN PUT IT BACK TOGETHER

What if geekdom was its own magic system? That was the idea that kicked off this whole crazy series, and what lead to the magic system of geekomancy. But while in Celebromancy I introduced a separate magic system, for Attack the Geek, I wanted to go back to basics while also showing that there were as many ways to be a geek (And therefore a geekomancer) as there are in our world.

While Ree focuses on genre emulation, re-watching her favorite shows and movies to temporarily gain associated powers (watch The Matrix, do Wire-Fu. Watch Sherlock, get super-investigation skills), other members of the magical community do geekomancy their own way. The mild-mannered Uncle Joe uses collectible cards to achieve one-shot effects like a classic D&D Wizard, while weapon-seller Patricia Talon connects with geekdom by using famous weapons and armor to embody her favorite characters.

Attack the Geek let me step back and provide several more interpretations of that central question which had inspired the whole series, and lead to me deepening and widening the Wild World of geekomancy.

Michael R. Underwood Website | Twitter

Attack the Geek: Amazon | B&N | Kobo