One Week In & Over My Head

Posted on March 21, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

So, one week into the world of the Blogger, and I feel like I’m in over my head.

But as busy as I am (my WIP is in danger of being lost) I’m really feeling like I’m regaining some of those braincells I lost during those years with fertility drugs, then pregnancy, then mommy-dom.  My concentration is better.  I feel like I’m doing something selfish for me, beyond being a homemaker.  But even though the housework is feeling neglected and my daughter is never satisfied no matter how many books I read her, this newfound occupation is a good thing!

I don’t mind too much that I have very few visitors so far.  Anyone who’s visited yet will notice that I only have the bare basics, and I don’t even have my “About” page done, nor the basic blurbs about the books.  But it’s only been a week, and I’m sure I will gain followers as I add content.

Two major things I did in the past week were to start doing interviews, first with Sara Creasy, next with Tiffany Reisz, then I have lined up Glenn Smith, Jane Kindred, and Patty Wright .  If I limit myself to one interview a week, hopefully I can keep up with the pace, and not run out of people to interview.

The other major thing I added was a second blog.  It is mostly being ignored for now, but the intention is to put some story samples there, and to make it an “adults only” area.  Not to say my writing is particularly inappropriate, but it can get steamy!  I’ve sent a note to WordPress support, asking if such a thing is allowed, and if I can get some kind of a warning screen that comes up when someone views that blog, asking them to click “yes I am 18” before they can continue to the content.  That was this weekend, and no one has answered my query yet.  Go figure.

Another major thing that happened this weekend was that I found John DeChancie, author of the “Castle Perilous” books, on facebook!  And he accepted my friend request!  I am so over the moon and starstruck.  I love those books!  And it’s a real page, a personal one, not just an ad I can “like”.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll work up the cajones to interview him someday.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Interview with Sara Creasy

Posted on March 18, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

Sara Creasy’s debut novel, Song of Scarabaeus came out in 2010 and was nominated for the Philip K Dick Award.  Her second novel, Children of Scarabaeus is coming out March 29, 2011 from Eos’s new incarnation, Harper Voyager.  You can read the first chapter on her website.

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1)      I wish I could have grown up in a tumbling-down Victorian house with secret rooms!  Can you tell us more about the house’s secrets?

My dad convinced us all that the previous owner had murdered his wife and buried her in the cellar. Half the cellar was, indeed, bricked off, and there were a few bricks missing, leaving a creepy hole… My dad used the cellar to store wine and for his woodwork, rather innocuous stuff, but I always hated going down there.

2)      You’ve lived in several countries.  What prompted those moves, and how did it affect your writing?

My dad moved us all from the UK to Australia when I was a teenager. He wanted to move somewhere warm, he says. A few years ago I married an American and moved to Arizona because my husband had a good job and dogs, while I was freelancing and had no pets, so I was more mobile. Then last year after our baby was born and the dogs had since died and my husband’s job became unstable, we made the move back to Australia. If all these moves have affected my writing, I’m not sure how. I’ve lived “all over the world” but these are three English-speaking countries with cultures about as similar as you can get! Selling all my stuff and leaving friends and family has been hard to do, although these days, with cheap phone calls and emailing and instant messaging, it’s easier to not feel cut off.

3)      How much and what kind of writing did you do before being published?

I wrote stories for my own amusement, nothing novel-length. My sister and I used to write horrible soap opera scripts (inspired by American daytime soaps) where the characters kept freaking out because their “cawfee” machines were broken, and equally horrible family sagas about promiscuous girls having dozens of children with different men. Yes, you read that right. Anyway, not exactly masterpieces.  At college I read a lot of science fiction and later I read the slush pile for Aurealis, an Australian SF magazine. During that time, even though I was absorbing a lot of valuable information about writing, I didn’t think I had the skill or staying power to write my own stuff. I did write some short stories but tended not to finish them very often.

4)      What was your path to publication?  Was it an adventure?

It was really very typical, exactly what editors and agents would tell you to do, I think. I workshopped my manuscript, rewrote it, and edited it for over 5 years. I submitted it to appropriate agents following their guidelines to a T. I had three requests for the full and landed agent Kristin Nelson. She had me rewrite the book again before sending it to six top SF editors. We got four quick rejections for various reasons. Then the Christmas holidays intervened. I was thinking we’d have to go to the “b” list of editors. Suddenly, we got two offers and had the luxury of choosing.

5)      Many writers say they go through a stage when they hate what they’ve written.  Did you ever feel that way about Song of Scarabaeus?  If so, how did you get through it?

I never hated that book – I confess I still like reading bits of it now and then, even though I should be thoroughly sick of it. It was the first book I wrote so I feel quite attached to it. Of course, in all the rewriting I had to dump a lot of the stuff I was so attached to. At some point in the process I had to stop thinking of it as my firstborn and start thinking of it as a commodity I was trying to sell.

6)      What was your editing process for this novel?  How many people were involved?

I worked for years as an editor so I was constantly editing the manuscript while I wrote it. This is a Very Bad Idea, by the way. It meant my first draft took years to get out. The main rewriting happened, as I said, when my agent got hold of it. And then again the “edit letter” from Diana Gill at HarperCollins Eos (now Harper Voyager). During the publication process there was the usual copyedit, which picks up grammar and repetition problems as well as minor plot problems.

7)      Were any changes suggested to you during this process that you were reluctant to make?

Not really – I think I got great feedback. The ending, in particular, is stronger. There was a push to beef up the romance angle, and I did that just a little, but I was always aware that with a sequel in the works, I didn’t want things to move too fast in the first book. Also, I didn’t write the book as science fiction romance. I didn’t know such a genre existed. I wasn’t aware of trying to fit the relationship between Edie and Finn into a “romance” mold.

8)      Did you always intend for the stories of Scarabaeus to be a series?  Dare we hope for several more?

I doubt there will be several more! I have too many other ideas I need to get through first. I did intend for there to be two or three books. Right now, I’m stopping at two.

9)      In what ways do you use social media with regards to your writing?

If you mean promotion, I have been a bit reluctant to get into all that because I don’t really know quite what to do with it, to be honest. When I’m in a writerly mood I don’t want to be dashing off to Twitter to talk about a cool new character I just created, or stopping to write a blog post on a completely different subject. With Children of Scarabaeus coming out this month, I am doing some guest blogs and interviews that I hope will reach a wider audience. When it comes to research, I use the internet all the time of course!

10)   What is your favorite electronic or digital tool to use for writing?

No secrets there – I use Microsoft Word like just about everyone else. My document is set up so that the chapter header and a short description of the chapter are styled for the table of contents generator, which then forms a sort of quick-look summary as well as keeping track of how long each chapter is. I use a desktop PC but would love to shift to a laptop, if only I could get used to the keyboards on those things. I also have an Alphasmart, which is a simple portable electronic keyboard. I can get a lot of writing done on that because there’s no internet to distract me. Also, I can only read 6 lines at a time and that, combined with there being no mouse, makes it really hard to edit as I go. So I just write and write.

11)   What is your favorite non-electronic writing aide?

Coffee.

12)   What is the most persistent distraction from writing?

A 9-month-old baby! It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find blocks of time longer than about 30 minutes in which to write. I can write outlines and do research in short periods of time like that, but I need a few uninterrupted hours to produce actual manuscript draft.

13)   What is your ideal writing environment?  For example, do you prefer silence or background noise?

I prefer silence. I’m the most productive at four in the morning when everything is dark and still (and particularly if I have a deadline). However, working that late is no longer feasible. I also like it when my husband is sitting here beside me doing his own writing. We feel guilty if we slack off. Guilt is a good motivator.

14)   What stage in writing had you reached when your baby was born?  Were you able to do any writing at all during those early months?

She was born halfway into my contractually allotted 60 days when I was rewriting Children of Scarabaeus for my editor. It was absolutely dreadful. Well, it was wonderful of course, because I had a beautiful new baby, but it was also impossible. I didn’t want to be doing anything but spend time with her, and instead I had all this work to do. I was completely exhausted and didn’t have a creative thought in my head. In the end I got a one-month extension, and I then missed that deadline by two weeks. I had already been late turning in the manuscript because I couldn’t write for three months the previous year thanks to morning sickness. All in all, not a confluence of events I’d want to repeat. I’m sure I learned… something from the entire experience. I’m just not sure what.

15)   In your novels, space ships use jump points for interstellar travel.  With all the many theories that scientists and writers have for crossing the vast distances of space, what made you choose this one?

The two main ideas for fast interstellar travel are fancy engines, such as “warp drive”, or wormholes. What I like about wormholes (my fictional wormholes, anyway) is that they aren’t generated by the ship itself. They are where they are and can’t be manipulated. It’s the difference between taking an off-road vehicle to your destination and driving a car, forced to stick to the paved roads. I find that cutting a character’s options leads to a more dramatic plot, because the character has to be more inventive to achieve her goal. Wormholes have some cool effects. They bring two distant places close together, or make two nearby places far apart. And they distort time for the person inside the wormhole. I’m using these concepts in my current work-in-progress.

16)   The Scarabaeus books have a strong biological element.  What is your background in science?

I have a Bachelor of Science degree, although I’ve never directly used it. I majored in Zoology and Cell Anatomy. The latter is a technical subject where you learn how to observe cells, and what the various organelles within cells do. The former concerns the physiology and behavior of animals – the small scale and the large scale. I always preferred the large scale stuff, how animals live, how they fit into their ecosystems. My books explore what happens when both the micro and the macro biology of an ecosystem goes horribly wrong.

17)   My favorite word from Song of Scarabaeus is “Linguish”.  What are some of your favorite words that others have coined in the genre?

Well, I don’t know if this counts but I always liked “shiny” from the Firefly TV show. I have a special affinity for that word because I happened to say it when I first met my husband, which he (being a Firefly fan, though I didn’t know it then) thought was too good to be true.

18)   This interview will be posted on my blog when it is only one week old!  What advice do you have for my fledgling blog?

It takes a while to build up a readership, so be patient. Tag your posts so they can be picked up by bots (sort of like retweeting). Answer comments from readers so they feel involved and will come back for more. And, I suppose, make useful and interesting posts. By the way, I’m not sure I do any of that stuff on my blog, so you probably shouldn’t be taking advice from me.

19)   For any readers who have finished writing their first complete science fiction novel, and are thinking about publishing, what would you say is the next critical step?

Workshop the manuscript. Join critters.org (an online workshop for SF, F & H writers), where others will read your manuscript and you get to read theirs. Reading the work of others is a great way to learn what to do and what not to do when it comes to storytelling. Also learn about the business of publishing so you know how to be professional and so you don’t get ripped off.

20)   When the day comes that you are presented with a prestigious award, who are you most likely to forget to thank?

If that ever happens I’m sure I’ll be dumbstruck and forget to thank anyone at all. That’s why you’re supposed to write the speech ahead of time, right? Which, believe me, feels reeeeally awkward to do.

Check out another great interview with Sara on the “My Bookish Ways” blog!

And here’s a review of Children of Scarabaeus on Alternative Worlds.

And another review on Dangerous Romance.

Listed in “15 Sci-Fi Romances Your Boyfriend Will Love” on The Galaxy Express.

Vote for Song of Scarabaeus on DABWAHA!  (Polling has now closed for this link)

The shortlink for this post is http://wp.me/p1qnT4-10

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Places

Posted on March 18, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

Just as I like to design, draw, and model the buildings in my stories, I also find it necessary to draw a map.  This is most important when my story takes place over a large area, like Kingdom Come.  Some stories take place on the far western edge of the civilization, others in the east.

I started writing the Kingdom Come stories around the time I had my baby.  My wild hormones appreciated the outlet, especially the story that began with describing the honeymoon week for a new Duchy!  But I digress…  at that time, I also drew a map of the entire planet.  That’s fun for me, I love designing coastlines.  And I wanted to be able to be consistent if I said they traveled “east” to get somewhere, they must travel “west” to get back.  The planet’s topography differs from Earth’s primarily in that they have a greater spread of water and land mass.  Instead of two huge oceans like Earth’s Atlantic and Pacific, Kingdom Come has many smaller oceans and many smaller landmasses.

I can’t find the map now.  We moved, and it might be somewhere in the garage, lost in a squished box.  Or, it might be forever lost.

I wasn’t too worried about it when we moved.  Sure, I had scribbled down some stories in a handwritten journal, and later typed a few other in the same setting.  But I’d done that for other worlds before, stories I wrote for my own amusement.  It wasn’t till NaNoWriMo in November 2010 that I decided to get serious about writing.

The first story and several others take place in a Duchy called Drakeshead on the western edge of the Kingdom.  Fortunately, the general topography of that area is very clear in my head.  But as I write more, and add detail, I feel lost that I don’t have that map.  But, it is my world… I can make it whatever I want, I can even change it if it suits me!

So, I’m at an impasse.  Do I tear apart the garage?  There’s a ton of snow outside… that chore is being put off till the Spring.  Do I want to wait, knowing that it might be futile, and I might not find it?  Or do I want to take the time to recreate it?

I’m leaning towards recreating.  Of course, this will probably mean I will come across it in some unexpected place as soon as I’m done drawing a new one!  But I’m adding more stories, and although the location on the planet isn’t critical, it is important to me that I am consistent and don’t contradict myself.  The more I write, the more intricate my world becomes, and the more difficult it is to keep track of the details in my head.

Sometimes I start a story with a very real Earth location in my head, something I’m very familiar with.  In Under the Radar, the main characters grew up in a city I call Laredo, which is a very thinly veiled Laramie, Wyoming.  I am quite familiar with Laramie, as I spent my first two years of college there back in 1989-1991.  I later lived in Cheyenne, and in the story I didn’t bother changing that city’s name at all.  Fort Collins, Colorado, appears in the story as Collinswood.  The details and layout of the cities aren’t terribly important, but certain facts are.  The major highways that intersect in Cheyenne do close at times during the winter, not just for snow, but for high winds.  The leg of the triangle that connects Collinswood and Laredo is a windy mountain road, though it does not dive into the range, it skirts along the edge.  West of Laredo is nothing but tiny towns and mountains.  East of Cheyenne is nothing but vast open plains.

Nick's photo from Banff, Alberta, Canada

This reminds me of my fictional camp called "Grand Mesa"

Sometimes I come across an image that I think really portrays the sense of place strongly.  Like this scene from my friend, Nick.  I met Nick Rogers when we were both going to VTC, studying architecture.  (Unlike me, Nick is using his degree for its intended purpose.  He is also slowly becoming Canadian.)  Nick got up very very early one morning this month and went up to Banff, in Alberta, Canada, to take pictures of the sunrise and view.  After posting them on facebook, several of us commented about how gorgeous they turned out, and he very kindly shared the images!  I also used his sunrise picture as the header for my blog.  Here’s the original picture…

Nick's sunrise photo from Banff

Sunrise in Banff

 Yesterday I bought a big styrofoam ball.  Today, I’ll start coating it with paper mache.  Then I’ll start recreating the planet “Kingdom Come” on the globe, and later transcribe it to a flat map.  A lot of work, but fun for me and the kids!  I’ll post pics later.

Posted in Kingdom Come, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Using my Degree

Posted on March 16, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

I must admit to a certain amount of professional jealousy when I learn that another writer, published or not, has a degree in English, or Literature, or something that is directly related to the story crafting we both do.  My degree is in Architecture.

When I was in grade school, I was constantly wavering between wanting to be an author (I never used the term “writer”, it was always “author”) or an architect.  I loved words and writing, and I was good at it.  But I was also good at drafting and geometry and I loved designing fantastic buildings!  By High School, the practical side of me won out.  Being an “author” was akin to being an actress… it sounds like fun, if you can actually make a living at it.  Just don’t quit your day job.  So, I went to Vermont Technical College and earned my degree in Architectural Engineering Technology.

Having taken several detours in life, I didn’t earn that degree till I was well into my thirties.  And instead of being a CAD monkey, doing drawings for a real architect till I had a further degree and several other requirements, I used my degree to teach computers to the incoming Freshmen.  I loved teaching, and I only left it when I gave birth to my second child.

So how am I using my degree now?  Well, just as Sara Creasy adds a strong biological aspect to her novels, and Glenn Smith writes about a future military, my architectural love and training shows itself in my own novels.  Sometimes it is as simple as drawing a house plan so I can keep track of whether I said a character threw a rock at a bedroom window from the front yard or back.  Sometimes it is much more involved, and I describe a building that is not possible with today’s technology.

In The Scar (the second Kingdom Come novel), there is a need for temporary housing to be built quickly.  The equivalent of the Army Corps of Engineers comes in, and uses machines that inflate huge resin bubbles that harden into a translucent, strong structure that can be easily altered and modified.  The idea began out of my fascination with Monolithic Concrete Domes, but I made the futuristic process much simpler.  For the biggest domes, a large machine pumps just the right balance of liquid resin and air onto a prepared foundation.  High winds can cause problems, but otherwise the engineer simply gets the dome to the right size, then waits for it to harden.  In The Scar, the architects and engineers added three levels of “subbles” (I love making up words!  That’s why I write SyFy)  These were all attached after the larger dome was hardened, and then openings were cut and interior walls and utilities and everything else necessary for habitation were constructed.  But the initial structure was up in less than a day. 

Subble

I love building models almost as much as I love designing fanciful structures.  Sometimes, I get very detailed, and work exactly to a specific scale.  But sometimes I just put together a simple representation to get the basic idea across.

I made this in just about an hour, after a trip to the local craft store.  The hot glue is messy, and I did nothing to disguise the holes in the beads, but it is a good representation of the building.
I would love to see someone who is better at CAD than I input this into a 3D program!  This dome is three stories.  The bottom subbles are bermed, and mostly below grade.  Two of the bottom subbles connect via tunnels to neighboring domes.  The entrance is on the second level.  Residents can then go around the second level balcony to their own subble, or up to the third level balcony, or down to the large common area.
So, I am using my degree!  I am designing buildings, just like I always wanted to.  It is almost as fulfilling seeing my creations come to life in these stories as it would be seeing them erected in real life.  In some ways, it is more fulfilling, as I find it much more fun to extrapolate the current state of architecture and create buildings that are, for now, impossible.
But not for long.
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Mommy Time, a short story about a detour in time

Posted on March 15, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

I woke up Tuesday morning with this idea in my head, then found that The Red Dress Club had a prompt for a story about a Detour.  Do you think it fits?

Whoever told her it was a good idea to have children at a young age while she still had lots of energy grossly underestimated the amount of energy two children in diapers require. Not to mention the fact that “Mommy Brain” was a very real condition that would prevent her from concentrating on anything more complicated than whether she was out of size two diapers or size four.
Her husband was working late, putting in extra hours so she could stay home and take care of the kids. Having dropped out of college during her first pregnancy, most jobs she might be able to get wouldn’t be worth the cost of daycare anyway. Denbora listened to the blessed sound of silence. Both kids were asleep… at the same time! Finally, a moment of peace. She could catch up on the laundry, or sort the pile of shoes, or…
Denbora retreated into her bubble and sealed it shut. She pushed the button. “Just an hour…” she promised herself. “Just an hour this time…”
After an hour, she felt much better. She reassured herself that both her children were sleeping exactly as she’d left them, and attacked the pile of mismatched and worn out shoes.
She promised herself she would only use the bubble when she absolutely needed it, but she found she needed it more and more. By the time her youngest left for Kindergarten, people were no longer remarking on what a young mother she was.
Denbora resolved to stop using the bubble altogether, and she succeeded till the day they brought their third baby home from the hospital. She wished she could have stayed in the hospital just one more day, where there were nurses to take care of her and the baby, but the insurance company saw no real need, and the doctors sent her home.
Every time the baby slept, she retreated into the bubble, pushed the button, and cried. Sometimes it was far more than an hour. Sometimes, although she didn’t mean to, she fell asleep. It was quiet in the bubble, and she was never, ever interrupted. But she knew that each time she stepped out, no matter how long it had been, everything outside would be exactly as she had left it.
Her daughter thought she was a miracle worker when she forgot to tell her mother about a costume she needed for school until it was the night before the play. Miraculously, the costume was complete in the morning in plenty of time for school.
A few years later, when the same daughter was yelling about how unfair life was, and what a terrible mother she was, Denbora stayed in her bubble for three hours straight. Her daughter never did understand how her mother could be flustered and upset one moment, then calm and collected after no more than a moment in her “special room.”
At their youngest child’s high school graduation, more than one person mistook her for a grandmother. She was tired again, but she desperately wished she could turn back the clock, and return all those hours she had stolen from her own life.

Posted in Short Stories and Samples | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

You’re the Inspiration

Posted on March 14, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

I’m always trying to strike a balance between describing my characters enough to give my readers a good idea of what they look like, while still letting my readers form their own images in their minds. One idea of the population of Kingdom Come is that the many cultures and nationalities of Earth are forever mixed and blended out in the colonies. I prefer to describe a character as “A big guy, but he carried the extra weight like an athlete” and leave my reader to decide what his skin tone and facial features are. Rarely do I specify an Earth-recognized nationality for a character, and I often don’t even specify hair and eye color.

Confession time. If you want to know the truth, almost every lead male character I create begins their fictional life as either Ricky Schroder or Christian Slater! I also frequently visualize a certain hunky Scotsman who has no real-life equivalent, or if he’s a guy-next-door type, Paul Teutul Jr.

Why Ricky Schroder and Christian Slater? Well, there is the obvious fact that, as a 40 year old woman, I grew up with the two of them being the main heart throbs of my generation. But more importantly, they are both accomplished actors who have created a variety of characters over more than thirty years. It is easy for me to think about the cocky young hustler in Poolhall Junkies, or either the unassuming Henry Spivey or the enigmatic Edward Albright from My Own Worst Enemy.  They’re like sculpey polymer clay; I can make them into whatever I need.

The Kingdom Come stories are not about one specific set of characters.  They are romance novels in the Regency tradition where you get a new hero and heroine (or several, since the planet practices group marriage) in every book.  But there is some crossover, and I sometimes find myself getting confused because I have two Christian Slater characters in the same room, talking to each other.  Surreal, in my mind, but hopefully my readers will fill in all the physical details in whatever way they find attractive.

I’m interested to hear if other writers have real-life inspirations for their characters, whether actors or friends, or whether anyone else using the same ones over and over in different ways…

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#amwriting

Posted on March 13, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

Some writers write with a monkey on their back.  I have a cat on mine.  Or, more specifically, he is draped comfortably across my shoulders in a pose akin to many pictures of shepherds I’ve seen in biblical illustrations.

Before you completely tune out, be assured that, no, this is not going to turn into one of those blogs!  Sure, my kids and pets are cute.  But not that cute.  By the end of this post, he will probably have moved from my shoulders to the window shelf which is almost perfectly even with my shoulders and kept clear for the express purpose of cat-watching. 

If I look around, I’ll find the other four (yes, I have five cats, but not on purpose.)  There is one already on said shelf, about to step down onto my desk, hopefully avoiding the keyboard.  Ah, yes, he has avoided the keyboard… he is now between me and the keyboard…

*thunk*

That is the sound of a cat (gently) being shoved to the floor.  There is one cat on the little inflatable kiddie bed just on the other side of my desk.  We still need to figure out where the pinholes are in that mattress… he still has all his claws.  (The mattress is there because my 3yo was sick a few weeks ago, and this way she could sleep close to Mommy and Daddy.)

Two other cats are on the bed.  One has found the hole in the blanket that the dog chewed when he was a puppy.  The cat thinks the hole is not yet big enough, all he can fit through is his head.

So, back to the monkey on my back…

My wonderful husband said he would watch the girls so I can write.  I have come to accept the fact that it is all but impossible for me to write in fits and spurts.  I can I can accomplish that way is a basic outline or summary.  The words don’t flow.  It isn’t entertaining to read.  So, what did I do when I came upstairs to write?  I actually skipped e-mail, but I did go right to facebook and check both the profile for my pseudonym and my own personal profile.  I played “Ghost Trappers” on both accounts.  Then one of my Trek friends, Patty Wright, commented on my status and I noticed that her status said something really neat about sunflowers, so of course I had to go to YouTube and try to find a video that showed a time lapse of how sunflowers follow the sun.  That led to the notice that I’m using an outdated browser, which I know, and don’t intend to change on this old laptop that I leave upstairs.  But I didn’t find anything close to what I wanted, so I gave up and came here.

I must express my deepest sympathies and appreciation to those who are reading this from the beginning!  I haven’t even filled out my “about” page yet.  I have two entries that I wrote in advance, then cut and pasted here.  This is my first off the cuff entry, made even more interesting by the fact that, since I am using the old laptop with an outdated browser, the last half of every line I type ends up hidden behind another widgit or something and I’m typing half blind!  We’ll just have to see what it looks like after I hit that “post” button…

If I can find it…  I think it is also hiding behind a widgit somewhere…

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The “Kingdom Come” novels… intro

Posted on March 13, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

 I love romance novels!  So when I decided to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge in November 2010 and write a complete novel in one month, that’s the genre I chose.  But I wanted to put a twist on it, so I returned to a science fiction world I’d written about while I was pregnant.  The planet is a human colony set in a future when colonies are common, but Kingdom Come is an out of the way world.  Interstellar commerce is common, but thier backwater world only sees starliners a few times a year. 

The unusual thing about Kingdom Come is that a traditional family consists of several men and several women.  The most desireable combination is four of each gender, called a “perfect eight”.  It is just as common to see groups that are smaller, or more of one gender than another.  Larger groups are not as common, and the law only permits groups up to twelve, but that limit is imposed for logistical reasons, not morality. 

This twist opens up a whole new world for romantic storylines!  Instead of ending with boy gets girl, the reader may constantly wonder if there’s something more in store for the characters.  Sometimes, a story is complete with two or more people falling in love, only to be continued in another book where the relationship expands to include even more love interests.  Misunderstandings are easy to come by, since a married group might be open to dating other singles or groups. 

Another interesting aspect for the romance writer is the idea of arranged marriages.  On Kingdom Come, besides the numerous elected officials, their government consists of three levels of nobility:  Kings & Queens, Dukes & Duchesses, and Counts & Contessas.  They are not  inherited positions, but they are for life, and they include an arranged marriage.  If a citizen aspires to nobility, they have to complete a set of requirements including petitioning the populace.  Once a citizen qualifies for the pool of noble candidates, they simply wait for an offer that may never come.  A noble marriage is formed by balancing a team of four men and four women, and each of the eight must be qualified in a different segment of the eight parts of government.  It is almost unheard of for anyone to turn down an offer of nobility.  Once accepted, the eight are married and installed in the ruling house of the duchy or county for which they were selected.

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In the Beginning Was the Word

Posted on March 12, 2011 by AmyBeth Inverness

…and then there were more words, and then the word count passed 50,000, then 100,000, and something had to be done!

It feels odd writing a blog post when I don’t even have a blog, but it does make sense to make sure I have some content ready when I do take the plunge.
So, why have a blog at all? I must admit, just a few weeks ago all I knew about blogging was that it was the kind of thing billions of Moms did because they were just bursting with tales of the cuteness of their children. Blogs were the kind of thing that journalists or people with a cause to promote wrote. Not me. Do I really have anything to say that other people want to read? I might be popular on facebook, but there’s a big difference between my entertaining and thought-provoking status updates and a full length blog!
Then, I took up the NaNoWriMo challenge. For those of you who don’t know, that is National Novel Writers Month, sponsored by the Office of Letters and Light. Every November, thousands of people across the globe attempt to write a 50,000+ word novel before the month is out. We encourage each other, sympathize with each other, and along the way discover the writer in each of us, whether we were previously published or not.
I made it, with plenty of time to spare. But success came at a cost. I have two marvelous daughters, and taking the time to write meant stealing time from them. Not to mention the dishes, laundry, and other household necessities that were being neglected. But my wonderful hubby stepped in, taking over a lot of my responsibilities so that I would have the time to write. His only caveat was that, this time (I’ve written quite a bit over the 16 years we’ve been married) I would send my manuscript to an agent or publisher.
As my peers in NaNoWriMo predicted, even though I had pushed out 50,000+ words without editing anything as I went, I actually liked what I produced. I bought a copy of the Writer’s Market, and spent several hours pouring over the agent listings, highlighting the ones that might be a match for my novel. There were many who specifically stated they were not interested in one or more aspects of my story, but that left about a dozen possibilities.
In particular, the Nelson Literary Agency seemed to be a perfect fit for both me and my work. So I went to their website, and found a plethora of information for writers like me who are seeking to get published for the first time. Some advice surprised me, such as the suggestion that an aspiring author join the appropriate professional organization such as Romance Writers of America. Sure enough, the RWA site was very welcoming to unpublished writers! I had assumed that I needed to earn the right to membership by being published first, but the opposite was true. Membership in the organization is a good way to show both an agent and a publisher that you, as a writer, are serious about what you’re doing. It differentiates a committed writer from the ugly hoards of amateurs who produce a piece of crap and throw it across a publisher’s desk, expecting them to love it.
I read the Senior Literary Agent’s blog, perused the list of authors they already represent, and noticed that many of those authors and agents had twitter accounts. Now, as a self-professed facebook addict, there was a time I saw no need for twitter. But, for the love of a cute guy on a motorcycle, I signed up! Paul Teutul Jr. is absolutely adorable, and I wanted to follow his new endeavor, Paul Jr. Designs, separate from Orange County Choppers. But he was only on twitter, not facebook.
Twitter turned out to be far more interesting than I thought! Relationships are not reciprocal, like on facebook, and I only had two followers for quite a while. I have no idea why these random people decided I was interesting! Then I began to follow Sara Megibow of NLA and several authors she represents. Some of them were quite friendly, and I began to interact with them instead of just following them. Once that connection was made, many more followed, and I gained a dozen or so followers who were genuinely interested in me. I also found a whole virtual world of interesting tidbits for authors, so vast that I had to force myself to withdraw each night so I could put my energy into my WIP where it was needed.
From my personal twitterati, I learned that many writers, even those who have not yet been published, have blogs. Also, it is useful when commenting on other’s blogs to link back to one’s own. In this first experience with blogging, I followed one blogger to another and that led me to a writer I liked and wanted to see more from. I realized that, if I had my own blog, then all these people I was interacting with would have a place to interact with me. From a practical point of view, the more people who visit my blog, the more people out there who can create buzz about my work. It is good publicity. From a personal point of view, it is a great way for me to share tidbits about me, the worlds I create, and the process of writing. I can share with groups like the Red Dress Club and have a virtual home where my friends can visit me. When someone I meet either in person, or via twitter or facebook asks about my writing, I have a place to direct them to explore at their leisure.
So the reasons to have a blog are overwhelming! I look forward to it. I look forward to the comments I’ll get from my peers and my prospective readers. And I hope I can find the time to write worthwhile posts amidst the demands of not just my WIP, but laundry and dishes and daughters as well.

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