New Atlantis is a self-contained nation of magic users, ensconced on Nantucket Island after a devastating war and ruled by courts named for the major arcana of the tarot. Rune Saint John and his bound companion and bodyguard, Brand, are the last survivors of the fallen Sun Court; they make a living doing odd jobs involving varying degrees of danger, mostly for the formidable Lord Tower.

After participating in an attack on the Lovers Court, Rune and Brand end up shielding the sheltered and abused grandson of Lady Lovers and searching for the missing son of Lady Justice. Their quest leads them to a conspiracy that involves undead monsters and murder, and may be connected to the fall of Rune’s court and the brutal assault he endured afterward.

TAKE NOTES

Whether you’re a planner or a pantser, there’s so much value in capturing inspiration as it occurs to you. Writers see the world through unique filters—we see real-time events in words and phrases. So journals? They are your friends.

(And the reverse is true. I’ve LOST entire scenes by not having a journal handy. I once lost an entire solution to a bridge between tricky chapters because I ate a cream-based chowder despite my lactose intolerance, and was….er, stuck somewhere without a notepad. To this very day, I can’t remember the idea, I only remember saying to myself, “THIS SOLVES EVERYTHING!”)

It’s also worth your time to figure out a way to categorize those notes. I have a stack of old, filled journals that reach my waist, which are hell to transcribe. I’m much smarter now – I work in concert with my innate laziness, and dictate my notes directly into an email, which I then mail to myself, so all I need to do is copy and paste the email into a larger database.

These notes are my secret weapon. As a die-hard planner, I’ve never felt that having a detailed outline robs me of spontaneity during the writing process. Rather, it’s a huge safety net that I can tightrope walk over without fear.

IT’S OKAY TO USE “SAID” AND “ASKED”

Elmore Leonard said it best in his TEN RULES OF WRITING. It’s okay to use “said” and “asked.” If I find myself struggling with dialog tags, there’s a good chance I’ve forgotten that the reader’s eyes tend to skip over things like that.

In a wider sense, one of my greatest learnings during writing THE LAST SUN—a novel that leveled me up as a writer—is that I can evoke entire scenes with sparse details. It’s one of the most treasured compliments I get from fellow writers. I’ve learned that I can trust the reader to paint between the lines. I’ve learned that it’s okay to give my reader agency; it’s okay to let them finish the setting in their mind without leading them by every bookshelf, every weather event, every article of clothing.

I’ll never forget reading the WICKED LOVELY books. Melissa Marr had this one scene where she described the mansion of a crazy person by saying there was trash all along the floor, and a charred log sticking out of the drywall. That’s all she wrote, and my brain all but exploded with the details of what the rest of the house must look like, because a charred log stuck in a wall is some seriously wild shit.

WRITING TEAM

You’ll hear this a lot: join a writing group. But what KIND of writing group? For me, picking the right people changed my life. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest – joining my NC-based writing group changed my life. It didn’t just help my WIP, it made me a better writer. It made me explore my relationship with criticism, and realize that genuine feedback is a gift.

Not to mention, there’s value in supporting each other, even if someday you’ll be foaming at the mouth because of that one guy who gets published first and meets Robin Hobb before you did.

But seriously, a good writing group is a network that will help you on your road to publication, because every friend you make leads to all the industry friends they’ll make, and so on. While it was my own talent that walked me through the door toward publication, a fellow writer opened the door for me, and gave me an introduction to my now-agent (the incomparable Sara Megibow). I will owe him forever for that, even if he did meet Robin Hobb first.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS AND SALT THE EARTH

For me, 80% of editing is hitting the delete button. I rarely find myself having to do large-scale rewrites, but, by God, do I tell the readers things they don’t need to know. And it doesn’t matter how pretty the words are, or whether diamond and pixie dust rises in fragrant clouds from the prose, it weighs down the story. It blocks the fire exit. It’s like an outstretched leg, tripping the reader into a decision to get up for a snack, or put down the book for the night.

There’s so much value in writing a lot of that exposition in the first place. More often than not, I needed to do it so that I, myself, understood my world and characters better. But once I’d learned that? Its needed to be gone, and I had to develop the cold-blooded skill set to do it.

My best trick was to stick the final WIP in a drawer for 6 months, so that the passage of time made it easier for me to bear down on the manuscript with a knife and axe. And the more I did that, the easier it got. It’s worth it, to develop that mercenary switch in your head.

TAKE CHANCES, DON’T JUST PLAY THE MARKET

I need to write what I’m passionate about. If I don’t, the reader knows. Understanding the market is fine, and I’m not saying it’s entirely without influence, but writing is a labor of love. I need to be able to sustain that love over the course of the boring bits, right? Not every scene can be a character returning from the dead or a car chase or a shower scene.

I made a decision early on that I was going to write novels similar to my biggest mainstream inspirations—but to do it with main characters who just happen to be gay. Even better, to set those novels in worlds where I don’t need the words “gay” or “straight” – to make relationships of all size & shape endemic to the world-building. That was a risk, for me. That was a chance I took. And you know what? It paid off. I’m amazed at the number of people who are responding to my characters. It was so damn awesome to see how hungry people were for a story like that.

So, take chances, because I’ve learned there are plenty of people thinking the same thing I am, and are just waiting to see who else steps forward first.

* * *

K.D. Edwards lives and writes in North Carolina, but has spent time in Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, New Hampshire, Montana, and Washington State. (Common theme until NC: Snow. So, so much snow.) Mercifully short careers in food service, interactive television, corporate banking, retail management, and bariatric furniture have led to a much less short career in higher education, currently for the University of North Carolina System. He is ridiculously proud to guest blog on Chuck Wendig’s site, because Chuck is one of his Big Writing Heroes.

KD Edwards: Twitter

The Last Sun: Indiebound | Amazon

Last week, Laura Anne Gilman finished up the enviable task of writing and then publishing a whole trilogy of books, which is always a success that should be met with fireworks and whiskey and a Herculean nap. That book is Red Waters Rising, and you can check it out now where books are sold. Here she is, with some final thoughts on ending the series…

* * *

Many thanks to Chuck for giving me a bit of a platform today.

This month is the release of RED WATERS RISING, the third book in the Devil’s West series, what I’m calling (in my head, anyway) the “Devil’s Ride trilogy,’ about the adventures of two very different people bound together by a devilish plan to keep the West That Wasn’t safe against the Future to Come…

And I’ve been blessed that the trilogy’s gotten such a positive response from readers and reviewers, because it was, in technical publishing terms, a holy hell crapshoot.

Honestly never had any desire to write “weird west.”  Or any kind of western at all, honestly.  I was born and raised on the East Coast, and at heart am a city girl.  Urban fantasy?  I got you covered.  And as a history major/geek, you wanna do historical fantasy?  Hey, let’s go all the way back to the Etruscans and create a new mythology!  Contemporary dark fantasy?  I’ve got your sociopathic elves right here!  (no, really, I do.  Careful, they definitely bite).

But – despite knowing how to ride a horse and safely handle a shotgun, and, okay, I admit it, owning a pair of authentic, bought-in-a-feed-and-supply store-in-Oklahoma pair of cowboy boots,  the idea of writing a western of any sort had never meandered across my thought patterns.  Or rather, it didn’t until the opening lines of a story – “John came to the crossroads at just shy of noon, where a man dressed all in black was staring up at another man hanging from a gallowstree ” – cracked open a world I didn’t know I’d been creating, and out spilled not just a handful of diverse short stories, but this trilogy,  SILVER ON THE ROAD, THE COLD EYE, and this month’s RED WATERS RISING.

And I went from “no desire to write weird west” to “holy shit I love writing American historical fiction with a heavy dose of Da Weird, give it all to me now please let me do this forever.”

Even if I did have to spend several years explaining why there are no gunslingers in this time period.

And now, with the trilogy complete, and new adventures on the horizon, I’m looking back over the words written, things learned, and hopes both realized and deflated, and trying to sum it all up for you, the joy and the frustration, the heartbreak all writers are heir to.  But that, I discovered, leads me not to words of wisdom, but, well, filk.

Really, having met me, you should have expected nothing less.

…Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to write alt-westerns

Don’t let ’em ride horses or learn about flintlocks

Let ’em write spaceships, or Regency frocks

Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to write alt-westerns

‘Cause they won’t fly off the shelves and they’re quick out of print

Despite dedicated readers who say it’s their thing

Alt-westerns need obscure lib’ry resources and costly road trip wand’rings

Little known factoids and magic and historical plights

Them that don’t read ‘em won’t like ’em

And them that do sometimes won’t ever find ‘em

They’re not bad they’re just a bitch to write

and writers are so stubborn when a book’s got their heart…

Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to write alt-westerns.

Laura Anne Gilman: Website | Twitter

Red Waters Rising: Indiebound | Amazon

LOOK, A PRETTY PICTURE.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is, this here website has gone a little wonky. I spent most of last week dealing with my webhost, LiquidWeb (who are great, by the way) in order to squash some bugs. And squashing some bugs meant doing tons of updates — both to WordPress and to some server side business — which took time and put the website out of commission and such. It’s mostly up and working again, with the exception of the blog page. Individual blog posts, like this one, should work fine, and subscriptions should once again be going out. (They stopped, which was one of the bugs that needed squashing.) But the blog page itself is now weirdly empty, which means I need to somehow find a way to update my theme and hope that does the trick.

So, we’re operating at 90%, but still trying to eke out that last ten.

Worse comes to worse, I may just say fuck it and nab a new theme and just start changing the look of the site, because it’s been a while since YE OLDE TERRIBLEMINDS had a refresh.

In the meantime!

That means I missed announcing the end of the Awkward Author photo contest — I’ve updated that page accordingly and extended the due date out. The contest submission period now runs till July 11th, Wednesday, since this week is a holiday. Get awkward and enter!

Let’s see. What else is up?

The world is still a clogged and bulging sewer pipe, so that’s fun.

Here is a fun Twitter thread I did about dreams, if you’d rather that.

Also, if you haven’t met Mister Carrot, do so.

And I’d be remiss if I did not remind you that today is the last day to grab Zer0es at the $1.99 price for the Kindle e-book. So, if like hackers and artificial intelligence and thrillery fun-times with a little splash of body horror, hey, I got you covered for under two bucks.

I think that’s it for now — expect some potential further wonkiness throughout the week as I continue to fold, spindle and mutilate the website back into fighting shape. Be good to each other.

Previously on Tremontaine…

Ixkaab Balam came to the city to do her family duty and put a botched spying mission behind her; she didn’t expect to find politics, the sword, or a discovery that threatens to put her family’s coveted chocolate monopoly at risk.

By the time of Kaab’s arrival, Diane, Duchess Tremontaine was long used to the surprises her city could deal out. Originally from the north, she had also once been a stranger to this place. With a past to hide and a house in financial peril, the duchess wasted no time in forging a secret alliance with the newcomer.

Politics, however, never has only two players. Kaab and Diane quickly found their plans complicated by Rafe Fenton, a handsome scholar with more passion than sense, and Micah Heslop, a farm girl with a unique perspective on the world and the mathematics that define it.

The dance of betrayal and treachery that followed was mostly fun and games. After all, in this city the powerful hire swordsmen to fight – sometimes to the death – for entertainment.

But now, a complex engineering project that could open the city to the world threatens to put everyone at risk. With little distinction between enemies and lovers or rivals and friends, survival – even for the savviest of players – is not guaranteed.

This city that never was is changing, dear reader. Outcasts are the tastemakers, and now, more than ever, is the time to keep your wit as sharp as your steel!

* * *

As Tremontaine approaches its fourth season, we’re showing off the cover image for the first time — and, to celebrate, its current writers got together digitally to ask each other questions about the weird world of collaborative writing, extreme research, and letting other people see our most draftiest drafts.

Tessa Gratton: What’s your favorite thing about writing for Tremontaine?

Liz Duffy Adams: I like being a sort of stealth collaborator on Tremontaine, emerging from the wilderness into the Land to join my name with another writer and then vanish again. It was intimidating at first. I read and loved Tremontaine before I was invited into it, and of course Swordspoint and the other original novels before that, so I was reasonably steeped in the world. But suddenly to be writing in these fabulous characters’ voices, characters I had no hand in creating, in this immensely rich and detailed world where I had only been a tourist, not a citizen? I quailed a bit.

And then I began to enjoy myself. The hunt episode in Season Three that I wrote with Delia Sherman was sheer pleasure; working with Delia—she of luminous wit and perfect sentences—is always great fun, and among other things a brief moment with Lady Davenant alone in her chamber made me very happy. And now I’m back in Season Four in another episode co-written with Delia, and three with the droll and brilliant Joel Derfner, with whom I got to introduce a couple of new characters and so feel I’ve left a small footprint in the City, before slipping back off across the river.

Joel Derfner: Which of our characters is the most difficult for you to write, and why?

Tessa Gratton: I find it extremely difficult to write Micah. Or rather, to convince myself to write from her POV. Once I’m in it, I can do it–she’s so unique and her voice is fun, interesting, and entertaining, her perspective different from everyone else’s. But when I’m working on an episode in its early stages, choosing which point of view I’m going to use for an episode frame, or for individual scenes, Micah is always my last choice. I avoid her if I can help it, and it took me a while to realize why: she’s not ambitious and she doesn’t have desires the way the rest of the characters do–which is a function of who she is. Sure, she wants things: to learn, to grow, to have family, protect her loved ones, to ascend to a purely mathematical state, probably. Unlike our other main characters, she’s not a schemer, and she isn’t an actor. She’s a reactor. You bet she’ll finish something somebody else starts if it will protect her people, but she doesn’t start things on her own. To me, that makes her a less useful protagonist. I love how she wanders through our narrative, affecting people and making everything just better, but that’s frustrating for me to write, when I need DRAMA.

ALSO anytime somebody calls Micah cinnamon roll, I think to myself, “I like to eat cinnamon rolls.” Especially in a show like Tremontaine, I look for ways to hurt the characters, to make them suffer and dial the angst up to 100%. I just can’t do that to Micah!

Ellen Kushner: Which character do you most identify with?

Karen Lord: Definitely Joshua. A bit of an observer, drama happens around him more than it happens to him, and he tries his best to look out for his friends.

Racheline Maltese: I wouldn’t say I identify with Diane–I don’t have that type of self-control, for one–but I think her actions are highly rational and, for the world she lives in, highly reasonable. I know we’re often supposed to preface discussions of her with “I know she’s a bad person, but…” except I don’t think she is. Davenant is a bad person; he’s not trying to survive, he’s trying to dominate. Diane really is trying to survive, even if that survival is through winning. She’s just a perfectionist about her survival. I get it. I really do.

Karen Lord: What new thing did you learn from writing with a team that changed your own solo writing process?

Ellen Kushner: The main thing I have learned, with humility and respect, is how differently everyone’s brain works. I know by now that we’re going to end up with thirteen highly elegant novellas. But as we work our way through First Outline to Second Outline to Zero Draft to It’s Ready for Editing Draft, some people’s First Outlines read like rough arguments inside their brains, while others are precise right down to the word count for each scene. Some Zero Drafts appear smooth and polished. Others – well, OK, mine – are full of alternate word suggestions and bracketed questions.  The one thing we all have in common is that everyone is convinced that their rough draft is awful, which I find hilarious because they’re all so brilliant. And Joel Derfner taught all of us the [say something really smart here] technique of [adjective] bracketing in Zero Drafts.

Liz Duffy Adams: Is there a character you feel particular ownership over/affinity with, and how does it feel to share them?

Karen Lord: Out of all the strangers in a strange Land, Esha, probably. I quite like sharing her as long as she’s Doing Stuff for Herself more than she’s Doing Stuff for Others.

Ellen Kushner: Which of our gang of authors would you most like to have write your own death scene?

Karen Lord: Tessa, without doubt! It will be profound, touching and remembered for generations to come!

Ellen Kushner: I want Liz Duffy Adams to write my death scene because the dialogue will be spectacular. I want Joel Derfner to write my death scene, because it will happen so fast I won’t feel a thing. I want Karen Lord to write my death scene because the secrets of the universe will be revealed (after some hot sex). I want Tessa Gratton to write my death scene because it will be incredibly moving and everyone would cry buckets. I want Racheline Maltese to write my death scene because there will be a spectacular sword fight – and maybe a cow.

* * *

Tremontaine season 1-3 are available on the Serial Box app and website and on all third party retailers. Season 1 is also available in print wherever books are sold. Tremontaine season 4 will be available on September 12th.

This is a classic, and it’s always a blast — roll a d20 or use a random number generator, once for each of the two tables below. Then, take each of the results and mash them together in a flash fiction story.

Note: the goal is not to tell a literal fan-fic story set in those pop culture storyworlds — though, I guess if you wanna do that, hey, YOU DO YOU. The goal is to take the spirit of those two properties and find a story that embodies the weird mashup. (The origins of this particular challenge come from that old Hollywood conceit of pitching your original story to executives as X meets Y — “It’s The Big Bang Theory meets Westworld ha ha ha right? Hand me money.”)

Length: You have, mmm, let’s say 2000 words for this one.

Due by: next Friday, 7/19, noon EST.

Post the story at your online space.

Give us a linky-poo so we can follow it back.

Now, the two tables —

TABLE X

1. The Incredibles
2. The Last Starfighter
3. Adventure Time
4. Gravity Falls
5. Nightmare on Elm Street
6. Gilmore Girls
7. The Thing
8. Saving Private Ryan
9. Goodfellas
10. The Hobbit
11. Dune
12. The Handmaid’s Tale
13. The Jetsons
14. Batman
15. Stephen King’s The Stand
16. Get Out
17. The Matrix
18. Watership Down
19. The Hunger Games
20. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

TABLE Y

1. DuckTales
2. Hamilton
3. Avatar the Last Airbender
4. The Princess Bride
5. When Harry Met Sally
6. The Shape of Water
7. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
8. Se7en
9. Neuromancer
10. Spirited Away
11. Indiana Jones
12. The Fast & The Furious
13. James Bond
14. Alice in Wonderland
15. Transformers
16. GI Joe
17. The Cat In The Hat
18. Parks and Recreation
19. Twin Peaks
20. The Bible