Psst...

Q&A

Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone! To celebrate the beginning of this glorious month and to circumvent the standard "I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long" blog-apology, a Q&A:

Q: Elly, why no updates in so long??

A: The autumn is quite a very busy time at my day job, which happens to be a mentally taxing one, full of much reading, writing, and editing. It's a tough thing to read, write, and edit all day, then come home and do same but in an entirely different mode. I've been zapped, and progress on the book stalled.

Q: Oh no!

A: I know, right?

But that's not all. I came to the realization that I had really deluded myself that time spent marketing--including blogging, tweeting, networking, reading about marketing . . . --was time well spent. It wasn't. It was merely a new mode of procrastination that allowed me to feel productive, but was actually keeping me from finishing the book. You can't market something that doesn't exist. When I did have time and energy to work on the book, I was self-stalling by doing things decidedly not work on the book.

Writing about writing is now low priority; writing is the priority.

Q: Totally understand that, though I do miss your wisdom and guidance. What's the status of the book now?

A: End of October, I completed a very large project at work and got a much needed vacation, which has been fully dedicated to finishing my substantive edits.

Q: So are you still on schedule?

A: My original schedule was to release the book in December, to coincide with my 30th birthday. The major delays originally threw that schedule out the window. However, I've realized that if I skip unnecessary steps like the Kickstarter campaign, trying to get advance reviews/blurbs, and picking a place to have a book release party, I can still get the book out in December.

I decided that Kickstarter may, at this point, be too crowded to be successful for me. I've chosen to bite the bullet and self-fund the publishing, while cutting upfront costs as much as possible. I've also decided that advance reviews and blurbs are an unnecessary step that would very probably put me back in the same self-doubting mental space as searching for an agent did. Regarding the party, yeah, that'd be awesome. But it can wait.

I need no more self-defeating, time-eating endeavors. Getting the book out is most important, even if it is a "soft" release.

Q: So, December?? Really?

A: Yup. It's on, baby.

And guess what else: the cover, title, and an excerpt will be released today.

The Pumple Cake Experiment

My friends had a party this weekend. Not just any party, but a grand bacchanalia of food. It was the annual "This is Why You're Fat" party, a celebration of all things, buttered, battered, deep-fried, married with bacon.

This was my first year attending, and being the competitive person I am, I wanted to make a play for one of the prizes: "Best Meat Treat" or "Best Sweet Treat." This led me to the Pumple Cake (or "pake"). I can't take credit for inventing it, but I will take credit for my own unique spin on the recipe and the hours of difficult, risky work that went into baking it. My Pumple Cake was:

An apple pie inside a spice cake

A pumpkin pie inside an apple caramel cake

A middle layer of coconut-pecan frosting with candied bacon

All covered in cream cheese frosting

Every step of the way was a chance for disaster. Thankfully everything came together (albeit a little lopsided), and the results were decadent and delicious. I took home second place "Sweet Treat." The prize was a gallon of Mrs. Butterworth.

With its wonderful combination of spicy autumn flavors, and its consummate over-the-topness, this dish would be perfect for Thanksgiving--if you can find the 5.5 hours of oven time it takes.

Here's the process:

Since the Pumple is labor intensive by itself--as well as a huge gamble--I went for pre-made ingredients. The pies were Marie Calendar frozen pies. The cakes were Duncan Hines Spice Cake and Apple Caramel Cake. I doctored the cake mixes by adding half a box of instant butterscotch pudding mix to each, and subbing in buttermilk for the water.

I used Betty Crocker coconut-pecan frosting and Pillsbury cream cheese frosting. Neither of these was very good. They had that chemical-y, preservative-y, crappy bake sale taste. I think the single thing I could have done to make the Pumple even better would have been to make the cream cheese icing from scratch. Next time...

Rounding out the ingredient list were the maple bacon, brown sugar, and bourbon for the candied bacon middle layer. Sure, this was indulgent and unnecessary, incongruous even, but for "TIWYF," bacon is almost a prerequisite.

I baked the pies the night before, so that they would have a chance to cool completely overnight for easier de-tinning. The pies each took about an hour and the aroma in our apartment just about made me insane.

The next morning, I jumped in with making the cakes. Mixing the first cake batter proved to be the easiest part of a long, hard road.

I'm not much of a baker, so I had to buy a new cake pan just for this project. My friend recommended Calaphon, and I sprung for the springform. I figured, the less I had to handle the cakes, the better. I think the pan made the process a lot less complicated than it could have been.

After buttering and flouring the cake pan, the next step is to put a layer of batter on the bottom of the pan. With the addition of the pudding mix, the spice cake batter was really thick, so it more like putty than batter. It was a good foundation for the very heavy apple pie.

The Marie Callender apple pie was almost too big to fit in the cake pan. Getting it into the pan was really tricky and seriously got my adrenaline pumping. But with a quick, brave flip, it splatted into the pan and fit with a sliver to spare. The other half of the batter gets spread over the top and sides of the pie.

Baking the "pake" was another big challenge. The box cake mix said it would take about 35 minutes. But 35 minutes in, it was clear this cake was not going to be done anytime soon. An hour in, the edges were getting awfully dark and I was afraid they would burn, but the middle was still gooey. I know others have ruined their pakes with overbaking. But I did some quick research and discovered the trick: I covered the top of the cake with foil, lowered the temp to 300, then let it bake away until it was done. It took almost 2 hours, but it didn't burn.

The springform pan allowed for easy removal. I don't think I could have gotten the cake out any other way. It weighed about 5 pounds, and I was worried the weight of the pie would make it fall through the bottom. But thankfully I could remove the outer ring and slide it onto the cooling rack. In the picture below, you can see the pie crust peeking out through the side of the cake.

While the apple pake was cooling in the fridge, I moved onto the pumpkin. The pie was smaller, lighter, and more structurally sound, so it was far easier over all.

After the pumpkin pake was done and cooling, I moved onto candying the bacon for the middle. I par-fried the bacon, then put it on a parchment-covered baking pan. I mixed a teaspoon of maple flavoring with a couple tablespoons of bourbon, and sprinkled it on each piece. Then I covered each piece with brown sugar. I baked then in a 400-degree oven for 10 minutes a side. they got a little dark, so I'd probably bring it down to 8 minutes a side next time.

This stuff was GOOD. I highly recommend it, pumple or not.

Between the layers, we spread the coconut-pecan frosting and added the bacon bits. I had been leery of the bacon and went back and forth and adding it. But in the end, I'm glad I did. The smokey sweet flavor was a perfect counter-note to the sweetness, spice, and caramel in the rest of the dessert.

Getting the pumpkin layer onto the apple layer was another anxiety-inducing moment.

We frosted the outside of the cake with cream cheese frosting, then decorated the top with a dollop of coconut-pecan frosting, candy pumpkins, a sliced gala apple, and a square of candied bacon.

I added it up: The final Pumple Cake has over 13,000 calories. And every bite was worth it.

Recursive Self-Homogenization

I frankly don’t know who Shawn Coyne is, other than he’s pissed me off. I hope he isn’t terribly powerful with connections that could forever keep me unsuccessful. (I have a feeling I can take care of that myself, thankyouverymuch.) But I think he’s doing a disservice to literature and I need to say something about it.

I came across an old interview with him where he was talking with Amy Brozio-Andrews of AbsoluteWrite about his publishing company, Rugged Land. He explains this so-called dirty little secret of the publishing world:

“3 out of 5 books published by the big companies lose money. So you have 40% of the list paying off the debt of the other 60% and, on top of that, holding up the companies overall profitability. Not exactly a great business enterprise to jump on.”

Coyne’s solution to this is that his house puts out only 6 paperback and 6 hardback books per year, and aims to have nearly 100% of his books be profitable. He thinks that’s a better model.

Well, perhaps it’s a better model for business, if making money is the single biggest thing you care about. But if you have an interest in supporting literature as art, expanding people’s minds, leading the edge of creativity, or being a tastemaker, perhaps the 40/60 model of the big guys is a worthwhile endeavor.

What really got my blood boiling was this piece of “advice” Coyne tossed to all the AbsoluteWrite readers: “Figure out who will buy the book. If you can’t figure out who will, then stop writing.”

Stop writing. Amazing, sir. The model you promote is to identify pre-existing audiences and then write for them. Identify a large group of people who already like something and all like the same thing, and then write something like they like so they’ll like it.

I call this the “recursive self-homogenization” of literature. Instead of writing the great new breakout novel, you’re only supposed to write something just like previous breakouts. Let someone else create the audience, and you just piggyback on top of that. If you’re successful too, then someone else will figure out what your book had in common with the breakout, and repeat it. Then someone else will repeat it again. The same audiences keep reading the same books, so the same books keep getting published. The stories become copies of copies of copies, each less vibrant than the previous until you they’re barely anything at all. All the YA fantasy that followed Harry Potter. All the paranormal romance that followed Twilight. All the dystopian fiction that will follow the Hunger Games. But at some point, the quality gets so low, audiences are forced to turn to something new.

Coyne says don’t write it if you can’t sell it. The converse is, if you can sell it, write it.

I say, write what moves your soul and worry about the markets later. Don’t be a copy of a copy of a copy. Don’t perpetuate the homogenization. Your audience is out there. It’s just that they’re not all hanging out together. They’re waiting to be found—by you.

What do you think? Do you write to be successful in the markets? Or is your measure of success something different?

Titular Angst

I finally had a cover layout that I loved. I even showed a few people. I was totally ready to post it on my website, get postcards printed, and start the full court marketing press.

And then I changed it.

The reason? I changed my title. I am more than a bit torn up about it. This is the biggest "darling" I've murdered, after years of attachment. I love the word “Secernere”--the way it sounds like a secret. What it means and the mystery it reflects. I think it’s a great title in the tradition of gothic romances, like Glenarvon, Vastarien, or Malpertuis. It also looks just gorgeous on the cover in all lower-case—all the round letters, the repeating e’s. It’s a very symmetrical, attractive word.

secernere

But I’ve come to realize that I would be making a bad choice to continue to use Secernere as the book title. The number one reason is that no one can pronounce it. Everyone seems to have a slightly different take on it. If you can’t pronounce—hell, if you can’t spell it if you hear it pronounced—how are you going to ask for it in a book store? How are you going to look it up on Amazon? It’s not memorable, because there’s a high probability people will remember it wrong.

I just imagine the conversations:

“Tell me about your book!”

“Oh thanks for asking! It’s historical fantasy with a nod to the old gothic romances. It’s called Secernere.”

“Come again?”

“Secernere.”

“Sesser huh? Can you write that down for me? I’ll never be able to remember that.”

Later, while searching on Google… “I think she said it was something that started with an S? Oh well. Maybe I’ll buy the next Steig Larson.”

I need a title that is easy to pronounce, easy to remember, unmistakable, and—above all—isn’t taken by someone else! (All I need is for someone to end up buying the wrong Surfacing. Thanks, Margaret Atwood! Just kidding.)

So, the book has been retitled. Tentatively. Tentatively retitled. But herein lies the problem: This new, longer, four-word title, which includes such ugliness as an apostrophe and a small article, does not look nice in place of Secernere in the cover I so painstakingly designed. It's not as simple as a find+replace. So it’s back to the drawing board (back to the InDesign screen…).

I hope I arrive at a cover I love as much, and I hope I grow to love the new title. It's a good title. It's sturdy like a milkmaid. It is a textbook title (if your textbook is Save the Cat, like mine has been recently). It has double meanings and is thematically relevant. It describes the hero and has a twist of irony. But it's still not Secernere, something I hope I will get over with time. This has by far been the most frustrating task of the publishing experience so far. I understand now why people outsource the cover. Then again, I would have been in the same boat as I am now: great cover, wrong title.

Stay tuned for the big reveal. As soon as I stop having nightmares about bad titles and awful graphic design, I might be ready to release the cover to the public. Maybe. Perhaps I should have just gone with the Gothic Title Generator.

The Revisions Matrix: My Approach to One-Pass Novel Revising

I wrote earlier about how my excellent beta gave me terrific groundwork for a plan to revise my novel. I have a good framework there. I have all the characters there, and the plot works, without—as I’d feared—any gaping holes. What I’m doing now is, as the late great Blake Snyder puts it, “pulling the arrow back.”

(Side note: I’ve been reading Save the Cat! and finding a lot of it very applicable to novel writing. I highly encourage writers to check out Black Snyder's website. There’s also a great interview with him over at Writer Unboxed.)

Pulling the arrow back means setting up your protagonist at the beginning of the book so that she is in a position to make the longest trajectory to her "new" self at the end of the book. Think about an arrow you don't pull back in the bow very far. It goes only a little wobbly ways before it falls flat to the ground. Now think about the arrow pulled back so far and so hard that it strains your every muscle. That’s the arrow that’s going to make the best flight.

My plan for revision is to pull back the arrow of Lady Aurora of Cavalcata, my protagonist. I’m asking myself, why is this the greatest adventure of her life? I need to make it so the stakes can’t get any higher. I also need to make her choices stronger, so that she is more active in the change she undergoes in the course of the story. And then there are some housekeeping things to attend to: enhance the presence of the war in the story, refine the minor characters, balance the flashbacks between the first and second halves.

So here’s what I did: I figured out the top ten or so major things I need of which I need to be vigilantly aware during the revision process. These are questions I need to ask myself, thematic arcs, things I can enhance to make each scene and character work harder. Examples:

• How is the war present in this scene?
• Is this character acting true to type? Or purposely going against type?
• "My life has changed for having met another” (this is my thematic arc)

I took these things and wrote them in fat, green Sharpie marker on index cards, which I taped all over my desk. All I have to do is glance up and remember what I need to be paying attention to. This isn’t the time to be mulling over word choice or paragraph length. I need to be focused and targeted on the ways I am enhancing the book, and these index cards keep me on track.

The second thing I did was to create an enormous spreadsheet, my Revisions Matrix. Going down the left side, I have every single scene in my book. Across the top, I have the following:

• Chapter number – helps me see if I have tried to stuff too much or too little into a single chapter
• Scene number – for identification purposes
• Time – helps me ensure that the timeline matches up across the whole arc of the book, including flashbacks
• Plot – again, for identification purposes
• Character change – what is the arc of the character in this scene? These are opportunities to “pull the arrow back” in a small way.
• Opportunity (Character) – what opportunity do I have here to enhance the characters in this scene? Are they serving the themes? Are they being true to their essential selves? Are there parallels to late scenes that can be leveraged?
• Opportunity (Conflict) – what is the tension in this scene? Can it be enhanced? Am I making things too easy on my characters? Am I pulling the arrow back far enough as I aim at targets later in the book?
• Opportunity (War) – how is the war present in this scene? Did the characters seem to forget there is a war going on? How can I drop in bits of history and details that make it seem more like a character in itself?
• Theme Stated – In this final column, I take one sentence from the Chapter that sums up the theme for that chapter. This helps me focus the chapter and make sure everything is serving the mini thematic arc. If there is not a stated theme, I have a problem, and I need to address it. One of my favorites: “Sometimes locks are to keep things out.”

When this matrix is complete, it will be my scene-by-scene blueprint for revision. It makes life easier for me because I’ve gotten all the thinking out of the way first. When I get to each scene, I just have to write to my plan. And because I planned it all out ahead of time, I’ve mitigated the risk of introducing something new or making a change that will cascade to other parts of the book in a way I haven't planned for.

The plan now is to revise one chapter per night according to the matrix. Then I print out a hard copy and do my red-line edit. The theory is that, when I get to the end, all I’ll have to do is input the red-line changes and I’ll be done. Pretty sweet! Let’s just see if I can stick to that pace for all 39 chapters…

The Tocking Clock

I am sorely behind schedule.

I’m sore about it because I’m bumping up against these milestones I’ve set for myself in order to meet my goal of publication in December, and also because if I can’t find the time now to do the work, why do I think it’s going to get any better later?

I’m realizing that, once you remove the find an agent/find a publisher piece of the equation, an indie pubber’s timeline is not that different from a traditional publisher. There is a tremendous amount of work to do! And because so much of the work includes sequential tasks, and not parallel tasks, it really stretches that timeline out.

I set my release target as early December. That’s in part because I will turn 30 on December 11^th, and in part because I want to grab at least a piece of the holiday sales action. It’s also in part because that’s about the soonest I thought I could get to where I need to be. Backing out of the date, I need time to get the books printed and shipped. Before that I need to do a round of Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs) to send to reviewers and blurbers in an effort to secure some of those elusive back cover quotes. So before that, I need to have the exterior and the interior done, and at least once-overed by my proofreader. To get the interior done, I need the narrative LOCKED DOWN. I can’t be tinkering with it—at least not in any major way—once it’s layout time.

So where in my schedule do I have “narrative locked down”? Um, August.

Hello, August. I can see you because you are a mere two weeks away. Care to delay your visit for a few weeks while I nail these revisions?

I thought six months of lead time would be ample, generous, even under the constraints of doing all this myself. Add to the work of the actual book itself that I’m planning a Kickstarter campaign and a book trailer, and I need to do a pre-release marketing push: I’ve made myself into quite a busy lady.

Can I make the December deadline? Probably. But I’m not sure I can do it without sacrificing the butt-in-seat time I need to do the revision that will make Secernere shine. I mean, it’s fine now. But I want it to be awesome. My revision plan calls to revise, re-read, and red-line one chapter a night. That plan will take me deep into August, approaching September—and I’ve already missed four days in a row. I’m hoping I can use weekends, holidays, and a few days off to double-up and get back on track. But we’ll see.

There’s always January. Cold, bleak, January, when people just want to curl up beside the fire with a good book. …and spend the Amazon gift cards they got for Christmas.