No Rest for the Wicked

Sometimes I wonder if I've started repeating blog post titles. Then I remember I'm coming up on the 11-year anniversary (!!!) of this site and I've decided not to let it bother me.

Okay, so! As of my last post about a month ago, I'd finished writing a book that had taken me on quite the journey. Whenever I finish a writing project, I always say I'm going to take a little break, maybe read some books that have been on my list for a while, play some video games, etc. Aside from my usual August vacation, though, I've noticed that break getting shorter and shorter. My "to-write" list never seems to get any smaller, and I guess I've gotten used to my routine, even if I'm not as fast as some other authors out there. There's probably also something to be said about how with the current state of indie publishing, especially for romance/erotica, the faster you produce, the more successful you are, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to tackle that topic.

All that is to say...yeah, I've started a new project. I'm not going to say "book," nor am I going to say "short story," as I don't know yet exactly where I'm going to land word count-wise. Originally, I thought it was going to be a short story, but as I started writing, the words started coming out FAST. Like, really fast. I'm as shocked as you are right now. I started it almost three weeks ago, and I'm already creeping up on 10K words. For me, that is fast.

By my estimations, which have actually been getting worse over the years as my writing has become more detailed, I think I'm around the halfway point. So much for a short story. Either way, I'm having a lot of fun, and that's the important part, right?

(I'm not 100% sure about the title yet, so no tag for now!)

Structure/Pacing in Romance (specifically THOSE scenes)

I'm still happily chugging along on Elemental Forces. I passed the 20K word mark and have plenty of story left to tell. While I don't have a firm word count estimate just yet, this is shaping up to be the longest book I've written in quite some time.

Believe it or not, I don't have a written outline here. At this point, everything's plotted out pretty well in my head, so maybe I'll never get around to making one. But as I've been thinking over the structure and pacing in this project, I realized that I have two distinct categories for my books, and most romances probably fall into one or the other. And those categories are differentiated by...wait for it...*drumroll*...the sex scenes.

(The rest of this post will probably not be sexy. Sorry to disappoint.)

Category 1: One Sex Scene

All the novellas go here, which makes sense. (Hey, sex scenes take a lot of words!) I guess in these books, the primary plot/conflict/focus/whatever you want to call it is the good ol' "will they or won't they?" and everything gets wrapped up in a pretty little bow at the end when the characters finally bang. Excuse me, get their "happily ever after." Sure, other plot stuff happens, but it's all leading up to the big moment. To be fair, in some of my novellas, the one sex scene doesn't come right at the end, as the characters still have to work out their relationship issues before riding off into the sunset, but the concept stands.

Nothing is absolute, though, so there are some slight exceptions. Elysium, while novella-length, *technically* has two sex scenes, but they're back-to-back, so lumping them together is fair. Likewise with Seductive Suspect, which hovers on the border of "long novella" and "short novel" - the two sex scenes are adjacent to each other, and then the resolution of the mystery part of the plot comes afterward.

Category 2: Multiple Sex Scenes

It's not a surprise that the longer books go here, and then that got me thinking about various plots and their purposes. "Happily ever after" is still always the primary goal of romance, but the length of the route to get there varies. I admit this is where I sometimes struggle with the pacing. When the main characters get together relatively early on, the plot has to keep moving. It's easy to say "time for a sex scene, yay!" but the scenes also have to mean something and not feel gratuitous. I also realize this is highly subjective, as a look at any book with conflicting reviews will indicate. This also probably gets into the topic of romance vs. erotic romance vs. erotica, which I'm not going to touch here.

When writing Disintegration (which I'll likely re-release sometime in 2021), I was extra super careful while plotting out the progression of the sex scenes in the book, of which there are many. Almost, if not all of them are relevant to the plot, each building on the one that came before it. On the other hand, in Fire Beyond the Frost, there might be one or two in there that aren't necessarily relevant to the overall plot, but hey, they're fun, so why not. Then, while I was reviewing The Edge of the Sphere for its eventual re-release (no date set yet), there was even a sex scene I'd completely forgotten about. OOPS.

So, those are my two categories I've discovered. Is one better than the other? No, of course not. Does one take more careful plotting than the other? Eh, possibly. Most writers have cut huge chunks of work out of their final product, and I'm no exception. As noted above, there's no right answer for when to include these scenes, or how many to put in, and so on. If it works, it works, and I try not to ask too many questions when it *does* work!

Still Alive, Still Not Writing

When last we left off, I'd been sick for a month and hadn't been doing much of anything. Long story short, I wound up having major surgery for my chronic illness in mid-January. Major as in, "we'll try to do it laparoscopically, but we might have to cut you open," and sure enough, I woke up with a large incision and a temporary drain. At least I'll look like a badass on the beach this summer with my new scars. Recovery mostly went well, though I had a few false alarms in the past week or two, but I seem to be headed in the right direction now. I haven't written anything yet, but I've at least started thinking about it again!

While I was following doctors' orders and sitting at home, resting, I did finally do some reading, which I rarely have time for. As I read some books that have been on my list for a long time, I realized my reading preferences have aligned with the way I write. I discovered that for me, it doesn't matter how beautiful and deeply descriptive the prose is, I prefer a plot that moves along at a quick pace. My reading list does contain a lot of mystery and suspense, and I was trying to branch out, but I guess there's a reason I lean toward those genres.

Other than that, I've just been loafing around on the internet, going to doctors appointments, and working on the neverending scarf/shawl/wrap thingy that Ravelry tells me I started back in August. (Oof.) I've been gradually getting out more, though I miss doing fun things with the kids, going to the gym, and drinking wine. Writing will come soon, I promise!

More Than Filler

I'm still plugging along on Sonata for Springtime, though between promo for Closing Montage and life in general, it's been slow. By my estimation, I think I'm around a third of the way done, which isn't too shabby. But since I write in order, I'm at a point that's a tad less exciting than the chapters around it.

Obviously, I want the book as a whole to be exciting, or at least enough to keep the readers engaged and satisfied. And it's not like the entire book's plot can be climax after climax. (Insert erotic romance joke here.) Pacing and moving things along between the key points, though, can be a challenge.

The previous chapter is the longest so far, and probably one of the most significant ones. I have an outline, and there's a lot of good stuff coming up in the next three chapters that I'm looking forward to writing. Unfortunately, I can't just jump ahead to the good stuff, as it would be jarring and mess with the pacing. Besides, there needs to be some aftermath to the GREAT REVELATIONS! of that prior chapter. I just need to make it interesting.

I hate the idea of writing "filler", but sometimes you just need to connect the dots and move from Point A to Point B. Will anything particularly noteworthy happen in this chapter? Probably not. But as long as it doesn't drag down the pacing too much, I'm fine with its function of bridging the gaps between more crucial scenes. As one of my college professors once said (about something unrelated, admittedly), you're never going to make an apple out of a potato. It is what it is.

Just Pacing, No Racing

Since I last checked in 20 days ago, I did, in fact, finish the novella-in-progress. I'm wrapping up proofing/editing now, and then I'll write the %#$&-ing blurbs, and then I guess it's ready to ship off. Yay.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm not 100% thrilled with the pacing in parts. It is a bit back-heavy, but a lot of that is due to the romance scenes. I know, I know, the obvious answer is "go back and fix it!" I even know exactly where I should add another scene/chapter to help balance it out. (In between Chapters 4 and 5, if anyone's keeping track.) The problem is, I don't know *what* that scene/chapter should be about. And if I'm forcing it, it's probably not going to be my finest writing.

On the other hand, though, I had similar qualms about another chapter I inserted into my original outline to help with pacing. (And, um, hitting the minimum word count.) And that chapter wound up being one of the better ones, and I'm definitely glad I included it. But that might have exhausted my reservoir of logical scenes to include.

So...I don't know. I think I'm going to leave it for now, and then if wiser people tell me to go back and add something else, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I guess this could go either way - either my instincts are right, or I'm totally overthinking this. One day I'll have all the answers, right? (haha no.)

Racing and Pacing

I've finally arrived at the final chapter of my novella-in-progress (okay, there's going to be a little epilogue, too), and as always, I'm sprinting toward the finish line. I don't know what it is about endings that gets me to write faster. Maybe it's because since I write in order, I've been thinking about the ending for so long, it's planned out spectacularly well in my head. Maybe I just want the accomplishment of getting the damn thing done.

Either way, as I ponder this, I sometimes worry that this phenomenon affects my pacing. I ran into this issue a bit with Seductive Suspect - so much happened at the end of the book, I had to go back and balance out the beginning a bit. (And then that all got chopped up in editing anyway, but I digress.) Same thing here - word count-wise, these last two chapters are taking up, like, a third of the book. I'm going to have to go back and expand on those earlier chapters, I think, but for now, I just want to get to the end before I start working on the smaller details.

Then again, as I ponder this even more, I wonder if this issue crops up often due to the structure of romance stories. It depends on the structure of the story, of course, but there is a certain...format? template? that focuses on the journey of the characters getting together, and then explicitly stating what happens when they finally accomplish that. Or, as I sometimes joke around about, there's the climax, and then there's the climax. ;)

I've done it both ways, either saving the big bedroom scene for the end, or peppering them in throughout. For me, it seems like shorter stories are more likely to have just one explicit scene in them. Obviously, those scenes require words, but since it's expected in my genre, does that *really* count toward the overall balance of a work?

I think I've been navel-gazing for too long, instead of just writing the damn story and figuring out the more minor things later on. Also, I should turn off the word count display to avoid more crazymaking, but that's a different story for a different day.

Decisions, Decisions

In case you missed it (unlikely, I know), Seductive Suspect has been officially released. You can tell it's official because it now has its own entry under the Books tab. :D

They say the best way to promote your current book is to write the next one, so I'm happy to report I've finally gotten started on my next project. I hemmed and hawed for a while as to what to start next. I suppose it's nice to have too many ideas, but that just adds to the indecision. Here were my choices:

Option A: Fully outlined (a rarity!), projected word count not terribly high. Still a novella rather than a short story, but a short-ish novella. (Which might be redundant?) I know exactly how it will begin and end.

Option B: Somewhat outlined. The basic structure is there, but some details still need to be filled in and some dots need connecting. I know certain scenes I want to include, but I'm not positive about the order. I know how it will begin, and I have a general idea of how it will end, but not the exact words.

Option C: Still needs some baking. I know how the prologue will go, and I have a very basic timeline, but it needs a lot of work. Pacing is going to be a big one here. I know the general idea of the conclusion, but obviously books don't stop immediately after the climax. However, out of the three, this is probably the most unique, imaginative idea, and that calls to me.

I waffled between A and C instead of actually writing for a long time, even going so far as to do more research on C. Ultimately, I decided on A, figuring it won't take me *too* long to knock it out. We don't talk about how long Seductive Suspect took, even though I have plenty of valid excuses, so I felt like I needed an easy win, so to speak. It's coming along nicely so far, and while I don't have a specific set goal in mind at the moment, I feel like I can get a pretty decent-sized chunk of it done by the end of the year.

(Though I might have to take some time off in October for the upcoming Seductive Suspect book tour, shhhh.... ;) )

Setting the Pace

As promised, here are some spoiler-free thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda. The game's been out for almost a month and I'm not finished with it yet (how's that for pacing?), and I'm really not sure how much I have left to go. Based on the level requirements to unlock certain things, I think there's still a decent amount left, but I can't say for sure. That said, I've played enough of it to spout off some of my thoughts and how they relate to storytelling.

So far, I'm really enjoying the game. Some parts of it have been frustrating, but the good stuff more than makes up for it. While I do love Dragon Age: Inquisition, as we all know (the previous BioWare game), I wouldn't say the game was without its faults. MEA has improved on the elements I took issue with, which I appreciate.

As the title of this post indicates, I'm going to talk about pacing. That was my number one qualm with DAI, in that the pacing seemed really uneven and just...off. There are certain plot points you have to hit in order to progress the main plot, and in some cases, you can choose the order in which you do them, but the sheer number of side quests (many optional, to be fair) killed the sense of urgency for me. And what really bugged me was that the main plot quests were SO GOOD. Like, I distinctly recall staying up way too late while playing one of them because I HAD to know what happened next (a mark of good storytelling). I wish there had been more of that instead of Fetch Quest #2837.

To be fair, the structure of MEA isn't too dissimilar, but something about it flows better for me. Maybe it's because all the little side quests add up to a bigger whole, or contribute more to the overall story. It's funny, in DAI, the Big Bad is established relatively early on and you know your goal is to defeat him. In MEA, I'm pretty sure, though not positive, I know who the final boss is going to be, but the overall goal is just making a safe place for your people to live. You'd think that the game with the more defined goal would be the one with better pacing, but it's not working out that way for me.

Moving on! The other issue I had with DAI is that I thought there were way too many characters, and as such, not all of them felt as developed and well-written as they could have been. (For the record, I said the same exact thing about Mass Effect 2.) MEA pared down the number of companions and as a result, I don't feel like any of them are useless or redundant. Sure, there are some I like better than others, but even my least favorite has a detailed background and has had some good moments.

I'll stop here before this gets too long. I know you're all wondering about the romances, because obviously that's the main reason people play these games ( ;) ). I've chosen who I'm going to pursue the first time around, but the romance hasn't progressed super far, so I'll get back to you on that!

Plop!

Almost a month since my last post? How'd that happen?

At least I can report that Out of Orbit is underway. I'm not going to lie and say I have an astronomical word count I can brag about, but it's coming along. Really.

It's been quite some time since I've done serious sci-fi and the extensive world-building that goes along with it. (And to be fair, The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions is a sequel, so when I was writing that, I was working within an established universe.) In the beginning of this book, I'm facing the expected challenge: walking the fine line between world-building and info dumping.

It's not easy, and since I'm still in the early stages, I don't even know yet if I've been successful. I'm going with my usual technique of "assume the reader already knows everything and doesn't need to be spoonfed all the information, and it'll eventually make sense". I've got all my notes on the way things work in this world, and they'll come out when necessary. Even so, I'm still stressing about the pacing in the first couple chapters.

I'm confident everything will eventually come together. If I have to cut later on, so be it. I feel strongly about this project, enough that it bumped several other ideas that have been bouncing around for a while down the to-do list. I just need to make sure readers will love the story as much as I do and not get bogged down in all the details.

(Spoiler-Free) Thoughts on Dragon Age: Inquisition (and how they relate to writing)

I'm nearing the end of my second playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition. This time, obviously, I've been taking my time and not blazing through to get to the end, letting the game consume every moment of my free time. Also (and I'll elaborate on this throughout), I was able to almost halve the number of hours spent on this playthrough, and not all of that was due to efficiency.

First, I need to preface this with my overall, general feelings: The game is excellent. I feel like the designers took the best parts of the two previous games without necessarily favoring one over the other. Perhaps most importantly for a game, it's fun, and I look forward to replaying it. HOWEVER (we all knew that was coming), there were definitely aspects that could have been better. A lot better. I'm not going to say I was disappointed, because I wasn't, and paying for the pre-order and immersing myself in the game as soon as possible was worthwhile. But it's not perfect.

Boobulon, who hasn't played yet, summed up my feelings perfectly when I told him of my impressions after I first beat the game. It's a short game, but very wide. Now at first, that statement may sound a little ridiculous - I spent over 100 hours (111 to be exact) just playing through the game once. How can that possibly be a short game?

Without going into too much detail about the mechanics, there are certain mandatory plot points you have to hit. While there's an order to them (except for two which are available simultaneously), you can pretty much do them whenever you want. As is typical for Bioware games, there are a crapload of side quests and companion quests available, along with many areas to explore. (For those of you familiar with the first Mass Effect, it's structured similarly.)

Ultimately, I think it's that lack of set pacing that drags the game down a little. And unfortunately, most of those little side quests did nothing to enhance the overall plot, in my opinion. Also unfortunately, it made me feel like a lot of the game was filler and the designers were having fun playing around with the new game engine while not focusing enough on tying all the elements together.

Gorgeous, right? I didn't even bother coming here the second time through, because it was unnecessary.

The actual plot stuff? EXCELLENT. FANTASTIC. LOVED. Like, "shit, it's 1:00 in the morning but I have to know what happens next but it's 1:00 in the morning but I have to know what happens next!" There just wasn't enough of it, and I was left wanting more. So for me, that's my biggest qualm. Yes, the world was incredibly detailed and amazing and expansive, but some of the storytelling was lacking.


So I'm going to use that to segue into talking about writing. (Smooth, right?) We all know by now that style is subjective and readers are often picky about the prose they enjoy. There are writers out there who use their words to paint pictures and spend pages and pages describing scenes in achingly beautiful detail. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But it's not me. I don't like to write that way, and I don't particularly like reading that style either. I prefer well-developed characters who do and feel, which again, isn't everyone's cup of tea. There's no one method of telling a story that's better than the others, and it really does just come down to personal preference. And I personally would have preferred more characters doing and feeling in those initial 111 hours, but hey, you can't make everyone happy all the time.

I could probably write another novel about my feelings on the game, but I'll leave off here. Also on the topic of my own writing, I just miiiiight have a cover to reveal soon-ish, so stay tuned!

It's Only Words

It took some time, but I seem to have finally gotten some writing mojo back. I finished up the first draft for a short story I plan on submitting to an anthology, and I'm starting to get super excited about the projects I intend to work on next.

Writing for anthologies is always an interesting exercise. This time around, my biggest challenge was the word count. This call specified a range of 2500 to 5000 words, which I consider a pretty good length: long enough to develop a plot and characters, but short enough that it doesn't become a massive undertaking.

Here's a confession: I was never all that good at estimating word count for myself. For many of my longer words, I just sat down and started writing, and wherever I wound up, I wound up. I mean, when I'm sifting through the ideas in my brain, I can usually differentiate between, say, "short story idea" and "novel idea", but I was never one for saying, "Okay, I am going to write X and it will come out to be approximately 60,000 words." To give an example, I figured The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions would end up being around the same length as its predecessor...and then it went about 10K longer. Oops. But since I didn't have any strict guidelines for it, no big deal.

So this anthology submission. I liked the theme, I mulled over some ideas, and came up with something that made me say, "Oh, I can definitely tell that story in 2500 to 5000 words!" I started off and everything went according to plan...until I started encroaching upon the 3000th word and realized I still had a lot of story to tell. Eeek.

I soldiered on, and when I didn't feel like writing new words, I went back to cut some of the previous ones to give myself some wiggle room. The 4000th word came and went and I started sweating again. When I only had the final scene to go, I did the only thing that could save my sanity and let the prose just flow out of my fingers: I turned off the word count display.

I merrily wrote the conclusion of this fun little story without concentrating on the bottom corner of the screen. (All right, I confess that I cheated and peeked twice just to see where I was.) I wrote the last word, capped it off with a period, and right-clicked for the results.

5015. DAMN IT, SO CLOSE.

It was getting late at night, but no way was I going to bed without finding 15 unnecessary words to chop. I did a quick skim, got rid of them, and now the story's waiting at 5000 words on the nose for revisions and edits. (And, uh, a spell check, because I haven't done that yet.) My editing usually involves more cutting than adding, so I'm feeling pretty confident that I'll keep it under 5000.

And if it doesn't get picked up after all that? Maybe I'll add the 15+ words back in and release it as a freebie. ;)

The End is In Sight

As of right now, Second Skin is set to release on Friday. Cross your fingers and mark it on your calendars!

Nextly, it seems I have finally unearthed myself from the great big whopping pile of work I had. Of course it's only a matter of time before things get crazy and I'm swamped again, but for now, I'm going to enjoy the breathing room while it lasts.

During the Escape from Work Mountain, I did get a fair amount of writing done on The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions. As much as I like my site/blog, if a choice has to be made, writing fiction is always going to win out over writing here. Sad but true. Anyway, it's been coming along, and sometime in the past week, I had that moment.

That glorious moment.

That wonderful moment.

The one where you've been writing for months, chiseling away at that fantastic plot you've been dreaming about for ages, getting the damn words onto the damn page, and then all of a sudden...the end is in sight. You can see the finish line. You're in the home stretch.

It always seems to sneak up on me, and then I rejoice when I finally realize it. By my current calculations, I have three more chapters and an epilogue to do before going back through and adding in the things I forgot. Then it's time for the final proofing and then shipping it off. In some ways, it feels like quite the lengthy list, while in others, it feels like I'm right there.

I write in order (as I've mentioned before), which means that I save the climax for, well, where it goes. The excitement's there, the motivation is there, so I'm hoping this part will just fly by. These parts have been in my head for so long, and now it's finally time to put my heart and soul on the page and it's going to FEEL SO GOOD.

If I were a runner, I'm sure there's some type of running or marathon metaphor I could be using here. But HAHAno. I don't run. Ever. I'd best leave that alone.