Coming Full Circle

Last week I dropped in to let y'all know that I'm still here, I've just been busy. And one of the things I've been busy with is BRASS STARS.

Some of y'all might remember that this SF Western novella was first published by Eggplant Literary Productions back in 2013. That was a year that felt like a really big deal as far as my writing career was concerned. This novella was accepted and published, and - after ten months and a shiteload of queries - I also found representation for The Steampunk Novel.

It felt like the wheel was starting to turn in my favor after five years of working really hard to not only polish my craft, but push beyond short stories. I shared links and the gorgeous cover art and told myself that This is it. This is the break I've been looking for.

And then things... just didn't go the way I thought. BRASS STARS sold, but not well. And then the publisher folded less than a year later and I was left with a book I loved, but was now a reprint.

What to do?

My first thought was to find another home for it, but that proved unsuccessful (despite getting all the way to final consideration at another small press). And I was worried that maybe this little book that I really love so much was, well, maybe not that good. (I know, I know. Why am I telling you this? In the business side of things everything is supposed to be shiny and wonderful.)

The good news is, I still love this novella to death. It's not a fancy book. It's not a literary book. It is a book about a snarky, sweary, determined woman who wants revenge. And a psychopathic, cybernetic horse. I mean, really? What's not to love?

So, I am republishing this one myself, complete with additional revisions (about 10% new material) and a brand, spankin' new cover. The exact release date has not been decided on yet, but I should have a preorder page up on Gumroad in the next week or so.

In the meantime, you can check out the cover and blurb below.

Tashndelu Sand has traveled across the deeps of space in the company of Snyder - a cybernetic beast who has no ones best interest in mind - to Paradise, a lonely town on a desert planet, to find the
last man in the posse that killed her mother. The plan is simple. Get in, kill Brannigan, and get out, and nothing is going to stand in her way. Not John Crow, an Extra Sapien like herself, trying desperately to win her heart. Not Diamondback Jack, a retired gunner who is determined to save her soul. Not even her own fear of the brutal darkness growing inside her.
Fifteen years ago, Brannigan shot her and left her for dead. It’s time to return the favor.

Growth (Writing Update 8.7.14)

When I learned that Eggplant was going to close down and my little SF Western novella was coming back to me, I did what any author would. I emailed my agent and said "Help! Now what?" and flailed a bit.


I was really hoping he would get back to me with "Of course we can find a new home for this." Instead his response boiled down to "Egh. This needs some work." So, I figured I'd put it on the shelf for a bit and let it simmer. Maybe there would be new subplots I could work into the already tight plot structure. (It's a revenge western. In space. The plot is mostly "I'm looking for the bastard who killed my mother." and then lots of bodies dropping because folks are stupid enough to get between my very dedicated, revenge-hungry protagonist and her psychotic, cybernetic horse.) I would let it sit it for a while and then come back to it.


Naturally, as soon as I decided that was the plan of action, I immediately came up with a new solution. It wasn't the sort of thing I was anticipating. It involves the clever juggling of two timelines and the addition of a new character into past events. It also meant starting the story from a different place.


It also meant that my opening paragraphs - which I loved - would have to go. I didn't want to get rid of my opening. It was snarky and set the stage for the story in just a few words.


So, I balked. I shook my fist at my muse (who, being a right proper bastard, flipped me off) and tried to figure out some way to keep this thing that I loved about the original version and work it into the new version. But none was apparent. (Because my muse is a right proper bastard who doesn't compromise.)


Reluctantly, I resigned myself to the idea that if I were going to rework this book (because there's nothing quite like being told "This isn't quite good enough" to get my stubborn up) I would have to start from scratch. No clinging to the parts I loved. No hanging onto the turns of phrase or witty comebacks or lovely, gritty descriptions and noirish narrative. I would have to start from scratch.


And, as soon as I committed to that, I was struck from behind by a brilliant opening line. (Because my muse is also a right proper genius when he's not being a bastard.) A line that is just better than my original. Soooo much better. (And bear in mind, the opening for the novella as published was this: By the time I was born Mankind was dying on a hundred worlds and Earth, our legendary mother, was lost. Not lost in a metaphorical sense. Not lost to famine or plague or war or the inevitable destruction of Sol. Just plain where-did-we-put-that-mother-fucking-planet lost.) Not award-winning prose, but certainly solid. And I loved it, or I wouldn't have written it.

But... sometimes in order to grow we have to let go of the things we have already done well in order do to new things better. And, yes, that also means sometimes we do things worse. But worse is always fixable and we can't do better if we don't let go of doing things the same. 

Wordcount: Dust and Stars - 355

Setbacks

Writing a book is a challenge and a labor of love. Even for the more practically minded, with an overall goal of making a career of this, not just jotting down words as a hobby, there is a piece of us that goes into every story.

There are few things more satisfying than finding a home for a story. (Except for cake. Cake is always good.) It's confirmation that the work you put into it wasn't a waste. It's affirmation that these characters who speak to you also speak to others. It's validation of your craft, both personally and as a part of the larger world of authors. 


And then, sometimes, after you've put all that time and effort into a book, after you've searched and queried and found a publisher who loves your story as much as you do, sometimes things go wrong.


Yesterday morning I found out that Eggplant Literary Productions is closing due to on-going health concerns and my book (and all the others they've published) are being withdrawn from publication.

Which, quite frankly, sucks.

Eggplant is doing the right thing and returning the rights to all their authors. And I can't blame anyone for recognizing that they can't run a business if they aren't healthy.

But it still sucks. I feel like I'm back at square one, even though I know I'm not.
And in the meantime, there will be cake. Because cake is always good.

Relationships and Other Fascinations (Update 5.5.14)

Every writer has themes or tropes they keep coming back to. Particular twists of fate they like to visit on their characters. Particular character types that intrigue them.


Some days I feel guilty about the fact I like to write primarily female MCs, usually tough, lonely and with a secret/not-secret talent. I start wondering if it's too formulaic that they tend to find a partner who is slightly older, capable but not a Prince Charming to their damsel in distress. (Mostly because my damsels may be in distress but they tend to solve their own problems with fists or magic or guns.) I worry that no one will be as interested in seeing how misunderstandings and hurt feelings happen and resolve without relying on the dreaded Big Misunderstanding (which I loathe in general principle).


But the truth is, I like exploring relationships between my characters. I like looking at what makes families tick. How children grow up and create their own families. How friends become lovers. Or enemies. (Or enemies become lovers.) I like the interaction because I think interaction is a significant part of the human experience.

The latest project (which was a short story that grew into a novella that is still growing into a real novel) has a relationship at its core. The Steampunk Novel has a relationship at its core. Why? Because a wild and imaginative as I can make my stories, the thing that tends to motivate my characters is the other people in their lives. And, because people need to act like people, and real people interact.

(Even Tashn, who is possibly the coldest, most driven character I've written yet, interacts. It doesn't end well, but she still interacts with those around her.)

In writing news: The aforementioned former-novella is up past 40k now. There's a fair chunk still to go, but I am reminding myself that there are really only two sequences left. BIG sequences, but they're all scenes in a row which makes them easy. Er. Easier. The plan is to have it all wrapped up by the end of the month.

"The Spider-thief and The Sorcerer" is due out from Crowded Magazine on May 14th. I'm very excited about seeing this one make it into the world and I will post the link as soon possible.

Also, reorganizing the blog. It's a slow process, but I'm working on it. Added a bibliography for the shorts. Next up is the flash fiction. At that point I will probably drastically reduce the "Published" list in the sidebar. (It will be redundant, that's why.) And, I don't know. Try and remember to write on the blog more often. (I'm currently experimenting with being more active on Twitter. And stuff.)

Happy Monday, folks!

Giveaway! (Take 2!)

Want to have a copy of the amazingly fantastic cover art for BRASS STARS in hard copy? Well, you're in luck.

Starting Thursday April 17th at 8 PM (EST) through Sunday April 20th at 8 PM (EST), I'm giving away postcards featuring the brilliant cover from BRASS STARS (created by the totally amazing Lex Paul).

To enter your name in the drawing just leave a comment below OR send a tweet my way @aggy_c with the hashtag #BrassStarsPostcardGiveaway. (Or both, but only one entry per method per person, please.)

Want an extra entry? Then tweet a link to this blog post and mention the giveaway.

I will draw at least two names from a hat on Monday (April 21st) and contact the winners to arrange receipt of their postcard. (Custom autographed in my terrible unique handwriting.) The more entries I receive, the more postcards I will give away.

Good luck!

P.S. This is the first of several giveaways I am arranging over the next couple of months. If you don't get a postcard this time around be sure to check back because I'll be giving away more postcards, bookstubs and a couple other goodies.

2013 In Review

2013 was a year that felt like I spun my wheels. A lot.

I was deep in the query trenches for the bulk of the year, trying to find an agent for The Steampunk Novel. That search also led to two different R&Rs (one in June and one in November), taking even bigger bites out of my limited writing time and reducing my short story output drastically.

In fact, this is my slowest year to produce new shorts since I started W1S1 in 2011. In fact, by my count, I only finished two new stories this year. (Although, I did revise several things, including two which sold. More on that in a minute.)

So, lets look at my submissions stats for the year. (These numbers cover micro-fiction through novella length. The numbers on the agent quest are larger. Much larger.)

Submissions: 44
Rejections: 37
Acceptances: 4 (There are still a few out there that haven't come home yet.)
Publications: 4

The acceptances were:
"The Spider-thief and The Sorcerer" (forthcoming, Crowded Magazine, April 2014)
"Vessels for Destruction" (forthcoming, Nature Magazine's Futures)
Brass Stars (Eggplant Literary Productions, November 2013)
"Love Like Dysphoria" (Southern Gothic, New Lit Salon Press, October 2013)

The publications were:
"Caught" (Stupefying Stories Showcase, June 14, 2013)
"In the Cool of The Day" (Abyss & Apex, July 2013)
"Love Like Dysphoria" (Southern Gothic, New Lit Salon Press, October 2013)
Brass Stars (Eggplant Literary Productions, November 2013)

The two new stories written for the year were "Made" (a contemporary fantasy with a cowardly vampire) and "Kraken" (creepy flash about a man becoming a monster). And I revised "The Spider-thief and The Sorcerer", Brass Stars, and The Steampunk Novel. (I've also been working on "All That is Precious" and "Damsel", but those are not done yet.)

Looking back I think it was a productive year, but more time was spent on improving my craft by refining existing work and less on creating new work. And that's okay. But this year... this year I want to start putting more out on submission again. Which will mean not only refining my work, but getting new words on paper in the first place.

(More on how I intend to accomplish that shortly.)

Happy Twelfth Night, folks! 

The Oxford Comma Can Kiss My Arse (But Details Matter)

I am not Oscar Wilde. I do not deliberate for hours over comma placement. Nor do I stress over whether I need more or fewer commas. I know that I tend to under-use the comma, but it's not something I lose sleep over.

Before BRASS STARS was released there was a round of copy edits. Not really an arduous task, but one thing was immediately clear. The copy-editor knew the proper use of the Oxford comma and he wielded it mightily.


Changes were made with only minor grumbling on my part. (Mostly to the tune of "Maybe I should have done this when I wrote it." and a small chorus of "Fucking hell I do hate commas.")


But (and this is the important thing) it made the book better.


Currently, I'm revising a longer novel. Not a novella of a mere 90 someodd pages, but a full on novel that pushes 500+ pages. And by revising, I mean retyping from a paper copy while making notated changes and adding content where necessary. It's... tedious. But I'm more aware of the commas left out of the last pass. Commas I would normally not stress over. But, having just done this sort of tweak for publication, it's on my mind. So, as I see them (and certainly there are still some that I miss) I have been fixing them and, in future, I will likely try and put them where they belong in the first place.

Sometimes I see young writers (and by this I mean folks new to the craft, not young people) referring with some disdain to "the rules" of writing. Not "Don't start with a prologue rules" but things like "Pick a tense and stick with it". Story, I've heard it said, is more important than clean writing.

There is a smidgen of truth to that assessment. Clean writing will not save a dull story. But messy writing will kill even the most interesting tale.

So. Why do I say the Oxford comma can kiss my butt? Because when I start a story, I don't worry about the minutiae of the writing. I use fragments and drop in semicolons where they plain don't belong because I'm writing a draft and the only thing I'm worried about is the story.

BUT, once I start revisions, the details matter. Not just the details of the story or the characters, but also the details of the writing. The basic mechanics of the sentences and paragraphs and chapters. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the bigger picture of a story can survive a death of a thousand little errors. It cannot.

Write your story however you feel necessary. And then polish that baby 'til every little comma shines. 

Writing BRASS STARS: Influences

As a human being, everything I bump into on a daily basis has some influence - good, bad, subtle, obvious. Every book I read, every movie I see, every song that trickles across the radio, even billboards and conversations overheard at the gas station, they all filter through into the dark sticky space of my creative subconscious.


But some things have a more direct influence.


As a kid there was one brief year when we had cable, and I used to watch reruns of Bonanza, Big Valley, Gunsmoke and The Rifleman on Saturday mornings. (This was back in the days when The Family Channel was cool.) Then in the evening I would watch gems like The Avengers, Star Trek and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. At the time I had no plans to write a story that would combine both Science Fiction and Western, but looking back it's clear where the seeds of Brass Stars were planted.


Of course, Brass Stars is not as bright and happy as the westerns I watched when I was young. Maybe because in college I discovered a director named Sergio Leone and actors named Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Charles Bronson. Then I discovered a related genre - the samurai film - and the brilliance of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune.

I also discovered SF like Pitch Black and Alien, where the heroes are not always who you think and the ending may twist your expectations so hard you get whiplash.


The specifics get hard to pin down. I see a little bit of Last Man Standing (a retelling of Yojimbo set in a border town in the 1920s), a little bit of The Quick and The Dead, even a little bit of that horrible movie about Mars with Val Kilmer in it.


But that's how influences work. They seep into the deep parts of your brain and come back out colored by your own experience and belief and perspective.


There's more coming every day.

Writing BRASS STARS: Dust, Sky and Religion in Space

The early drafts of Brass Stars (and there were two and a half before I got to the one that was published by Eggplant Literary Productions) didn't have much in the way of religion. Tashn wasn't much a believer in anything except revenge and it didn't seem necessary to develop a system of belief for the other characters who popped in and out of the story.


There was, of course, mention of the crucifix her mother had given her, but Tashn never put much stock in it. She carried it for two reasons. One: because her father believed it was strong medicine that would protect her in the future as it had in the past and it was a small concession to his outlook on the world. Two: because it was a constant reminder of what had happened - a concrete little piece of the injustice done to her and her mother.


But that was the extent of the mention of religion, barely more than speck of history from the long-lost Earth.


Then Jackson became a central character and a foil of sorts to Tashn's quest for vengeance. He was on a mission of his own: redemption. And that meant I had to think harder about what sort of belief system might exist in the dusty edge of space.


The result was, at first glance, a kind of Yin/Yang or a dichotomy between flesh and spirit.
The idea of Sky: the invisible, eternal and all-encompassing thing sometimes called Space. Boundless and intangible, its appearance changing based on the perspective of the viewer, but never its nature.
The idea of Dust: the physical, palpable and corruptible matter of the universe. The building blocks that every visible thing is made of and to which we all return.


It was a simple idea.

But on paper it was complex. Tashn knew and acknowledged the existence of both, but rarely in a meaningful way. John Crow relished the nature of Dust, the needs generated by the physical and the satisfaction that came from sharing in the tangible. And Jackson looked to something transcendent to make up for his own corruption.


And that corruption and redemption, much like Tashn's need for revenge and Johnny's need for love, played out in the physical realm but reflected something that was more than just flesh and bone.


I tweaked and fiddled and put stuff in and took it out and finally decided to let it all ride. I'd chosen not to use a specific existing religion or spiritual system because I didn't feel it needed to be one special thing or another, so why would I try and make it into one special thing or another?

And that was that. Dust. Sky. Redemption. Judgement. Loss. Love. And a merciless young woman with a score to settle. All the makings of a good story.

Goals

Last December I proposed the following goals for myself during 2013.


1: Find an Agent Who Can Sell The Steampunk Novel
2: Finish the Novellas I started This Year but HAVEN'T FINISHED
3: Write another Novel or Two
4: Sell my Short Stories

Two of those (#2 and #3) were things I could control. And with that thought in mind I finished up BRASS STARS and put some good effort into ALL THAT IS PRECIOUS and SURVIVOR. I've also revised The Steampunk Novel (and am currently delving into another revision round) and started work on the rewrite of THINGBREAKER (a magic-punk thriller).

#4 was one that required a combination of doing the work I could to ensure I met the goal, and waiting for the alignment of the stars that ensured my story hit the right desk at the right time. (Remember, the best way for that to happen is to make sure that a story is on someone's desk to be read, rather than sitting in a drawer gathering dust.) I used the fantastic Submission Grinder over at Diabolical Plots to help me tackle the short stories, sending each one out to a new market as soon as it got booted from the previous one.

In addition to a handful of short stories I wanted to find homes for, I was still trying to meet the goal of selling a longer work (novel or novella) that I had set for myself in 2012. So, I did pitch contests on Twitter, summarizing both The Steampunk Novel and BRASS STARS in a microscopic 130 characters. I got requests for both, but ultimately they turned into rejections.  

I dug in deeper, researching publishers that took novella length, speculative fiction and submitted the MS for BRASS STARS to Eggplant Literary Productions.

In the meantime, I was having some success with the shorter work. I placed "Love Like Dysphoria" with New Lit Salon Press in their Southern Gothic anthology. And later in the year, I sold "The Spider-thief and The Sorcerer" to Crowded Magazine. (And last week I sold "Vessels for Destruction" to Nature Magazine's "Futures" column.)

I'd also been working hard at goal #1. Starting in December of last year, I'd been querying agents with The Steampunk Novel. Dozens and dozens of queries sent out over nearly eight months. Hours worth of mindnumbing research on AgentQuery and QueryTracker trying to find every single agent who might be a good fit for my alternate history/fantasy/steampunk/murder mystery mashup.

I got requests to see more. And a lot of rejections - most from the initial query and some after partial or full requests. A lot of rejections.

Then I got a letter from Raechel Henderson of Eggplant Literary saying "Yes! I love this and here's a contract." (Okay. She didn't quite say that, but it's close.) And suddenly BRASS STARS was scheduled for publication. Only a few days later I got a phone call from an agent who'd been looking at the full MS of The Steampunk Novel. He was interested and wanted to know if I could do some more revisions.  

Hell, yes, I could do some more revisions. So we talked and brainstormed and I started in on those just this past weekend. Along with still working on The Magic-punk Thriller. And all the "OMG! I have a book coming out Monday!" madness that precedes a release day.

"And this is all great, but what is the point here?" you say.

The point is this. I'm sitting here, realizing that I have successfully accomplished one of the things on my List of Things To-Do. (Admittedly, the Sell a Novella goal was for 2012 so I'm almost two years behind, but it has been done.) I'm also realizing that the list never gets any smaller.

Writing goals are not destinations, they are mile-markers. It's not like saying "I want to visit Australia" and then going and being like "Well that was hot and those koalas sure were cute but now I've DONE that so cross it off the list." Every goal I reach reveals a new one. 

Every story written makes room for a new one. Every sale is a step up to the next. Every goal achieved gives way to another one down the road.

The list never gets any smaller. It just gets different.  

P.S. My SF Western novella, BRASS STARS, is available now from Eggplant Literary Productions: http://eggplantproductions.com/e-books/brass-stars-g-carpenter/