A lot has happened since I last posted! Most recently, Spells of Blood and Kin, whose cover reveal was two years ago, has now been in the world for a full year and was recently shortlisted for a Sunburst Award! As a debut novelist who works in the book business, I had two hopes for this book: earn out my advance in the first year (kind of arbitrary, but a generally accepted hallmark of good-enough sales), and get nominated for something. Neither of these things were very much within my control, of course–you write the best book you can, and you promote it as well as you know how, but there’s a huge amount of randomness in the market. I’m lucky to have had a successful tour, some friends in my corner, and some good reviews! It’s pretty great to have checked both boxes! Other cool things happening right now: The Sum of Us is officially out! This anthology focuses on caregivers in a speculative fiction context, with a portion of profits going to the Canadian Mental Health Association. It includes my story “Number One Draft Pick” (why YES, it IS about hockey, funny you should ask). […]
Another Post from the Road
In my last post we’d made it as far as Los Angeles, mainly by plane. The next phase of the tour began with a road trip to San Francisco! Thanks to the generosity of new friends, we had a fun home base in a camper-van near Golden Gate Park and this author & entourage used our time off to explore the city. Here’s the view from Moraga Steps: We visited the Castro on our day off as it was Pride Weekend. It was an emotional visit due to the recent tragic crime in Orlando. We made friends with some lovely folks at a bar near Dolores Park, and I felt like the heart of the community was sore but still so proud, so kind, and so alive. Curtis and I got to sign books at landmark bookstore Borderlands, and then we had a great event at Laurel Bookstore (photo courtesy of my aunt Mia Stageberg): Next stop: Portland! On the road there, we began listening to the audiobook of Spells of Blood and Kin. What a cool experience to hear my characters voiced so well by Vikas Adam (especially Nick and Jonathan–he really nails the stoner-speak!) Powell’s at Cedar […]
Setting Myself Up for the Win
2016 is going to be a huge year for me, with the release of Spells of Blood and Kin in June. And 2014 was a huge year, too: the year I signed with my wonderful agent Connor, the year he made the sale. A year of leveling up. 2015, then, was a bridge year in some ways: a year to consolidate my gains, to do all the work I could to make sure this next phase in my writing life will be a successful one. Timelines in writing are very long compared to some kinds of work: even more than a year, in my case, between deal and launch. I came to learn that it’s very useful time! Edits, proofing, and a lot of other associated tasks took a lot of it. And of course, other projects need to be in the pipeline–my next book, plus some short stories, although the time I’ve spent on those has dropped a lot since the novel has to take priority. Like most working writers, I also have a day job–which is understating it a bit; I have a career which I love, and which is sometimes demanding. Between this, family events, and cons, […]
Cover reveal!
Spells of Blood and Kin is getting closer and closer, you guys. You can now preorder it from a whole bunch of different US retailers here, or of course, from Indigo. And take a look at this cover! It looks even better in person–I am the proud possessor of a mockup (my cover wrapped around a similarly-sized hardcover, since mine won’t be printed for a while yet) and I can’t even describe the rush of seeing it brought to life. Next step for this writer: copyedits! I have a word list from the copy editors detailing things they’ve corrected, and I need to review the changes. (Side note: it’s hilarious to me how many swears appear on the list. Apparently I don’t spell profanity as well as the rest of my vocabulary. For instance, did you know “douche bag” is two words, not one?! It never occurred to me to look that up.) One thing I love about this process is the incredible number of talented people who are involved in making this book the best it can be. I’m grateful to every one and I look forward to thanking them all properly, including those I haven’t yet met… and […]
On the horizon… look what dawns…
This day, my friends, needs a pin in it: SPELLS OF BLOOD AND KIN has gone up on Amazon (and Goodreads!) It has a preorder link and an ISBN number (which, for anyone reading this who isn’t a book nerd, is like your book’s very own fingerprint or DNA). Go and look! Look at the beautiful, generous things people have said about this book already! I am so grateful–and so excited to watch this thing grow. […]
It’s starting to sink in…
When I’m working hard on something, one of the things I like to do is imagine what success will look like. So I’ve constructed a number of scenarios, over the years, for what it would look like to sell my first book. They became pretty realistic, what with my career in the bookselling business, my posse of working writer friends, and my own recent time in the short-fiction trenches. In fact, my scenarios had become so realistic that when the call finally came, I split in two: one of me, Business Me, recognized that my predictions had been accurate and was satisfied and pleased and totally unsurprised, and the other me, the one who’s been dreaming of this since childhood, was pretty much like this: That’s Sidney Crosby scoring a hat trick, in case you were wondering. He looks kind of cheerful about it. But I’ll tell you all about my recent hockey obsession another day, because the important thing about this post is that I have a book deal. It’s currently called KINSHIP but that’s probably going to change; it’s coming out with Thomas Dunne in spring of 2016. My agent, Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary, arranged the deal […]
Writer Blog Hop
Fellow writer Nicole Winters tagged me in this blog hop–the idea is to have a chain of writers all answering questions about our process and tagging other writers we know to do the same. Nicole’s post is here–thanks for tagging me, Nicole! 1) What am I working on/writing? I always have some short fiction on the go. At the moment, I’m revising two stories, which are both very dark–one is about magicians who cut the tongues out of doves, and the other is about a dishonourably discharged soldier waiting out the war and anticipating her army’s defeat. I’m also putting the finishing touches on my second novel, which has been through several drafts; it’s so close to being done that I’m now planning my third novel, which will either be the one about lesbian railway gunners, or the one about the immortal alcoholic badass Gus Hillyard. 2) How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre? I have a foot on each side of the mainstream/genre line: I almost always include an element of magic or the fantastical, but I don’t focus on it as fully as some other speculative writers, choosing instead to centre on the emotional journeys […]
A post I have been planning for ages
…yet now that it’s here, I still haven’t thought of a way to sound clever at it, because I am just too damned cheerful. I have just signed with Connor Goldsmith of Foreword Literary. A writer’s relationship with an agent is incredibly important, and there are a whole lot of variables that go into making the right choice, on both sides. I’m confident that we have, and I’m so excited about working together. The last couple of weeks have been interesting and volatile ones for me, with major changes on several fronts. But saying “changes” makes it sound like I’m talking about single events, like lightning strikes or lottery wins. I should rather say “fruitions”. Change has been happening for a long time. It is always happening, under the surface, and only sometimes does it come to light. This particular fruition, I greeted with some dear friends, some extremely loud music, and some Death in the Afternoon. (Hemingway’s advice on this recipe is “Drink three to five of these slowly.” I maintain that drinking three to five of them quickly is also worthwhile.) It’s been an excellent couple of weeks on the short fiction front, also–a couple of sales that […]
Secrets of writing, unlocked!
Today in my search keywords: “finish a fantasy novel”. Why yes, seeker, I did. Twice. (I’m awesome that way.) How? I will let you in on my secret. Writer + laptop + chair + time = novel. (I left out a few of the nonessential ingredients such as coffee, music and cats… if you are following the basic recipe though, and still having trouble, consider adding one of these.) If you are short of the basics, it is very hard to finish a novel. If you have a laptop, chair, and time, and are still having trouble finishing, it is possible, as Grady Hendrix suggests in a recent post, that you are not actually a writer. It is also possible, in my experience, that instead of writing a novel of fun escapism, you’re writing a novel about hard stuff you have experienced: loss, ill health, depression, abuse, that kind of thing. When I procrastinate, it is not because I’m not a writer. It is because I’m afraid. Once I push past this fear, and take a hard look at whatever is in my path, I make my best work. It doesn’t have to be literally about my experience–in fact, it […]
Novel Enduro: The Finish Line
Done. Wait, let me say that again: DONE. 80,000 words of PURE GENIUS. Yeah: 80,000… despite word counts of more than 2k new stuff per day yesterday and today. I took out a lot of faffing about, especially from the beginning. And here we see the problem with the Pantsing Method: when I started writing this book I had no clue at all where it was going. I wrote a lot of scenes that ended up being character background–worthwhile work for me, but not stuff that really needs to be in the final version, as it has the effect of slowing down the action. So I actually have a 20-item list of things to fix in the next draft, but they feel like next-draft things: strengthening certain thematic threads, punching up some of the action scenes, reading through the dialogue to improve the voices (something I seem to have a problem getting right out of the gate). It’s possible there are continuity issues, because I haven’t done a proper date-map yet. And it’s even possible there will be a character streamlining–I have a few secondary people who all seem to be doing the same job. But the important thing is […]