Deadlines

Well, as happens now and again, you, my Dear Readers (you even get capitalized letters-- that's how much I love you), will have to put up with an abbreviated post. Deadlines have hit and I must nose-to-the-wall edit my little eyeballs off to get things done. I am sure you will forgive me.

Look forward to hearing all about it next week during our usual hour. I will most dramatically faint on the floor, surrounded by drafting papers and completed manuscripts (for work, not for me-- just to clarify). I will also update you on writing news: I have finished a book, and I am in the throes of beginning a new one, a stand-alone 'companion' to the last one-- which is now available for purchase. See flagrant advertising below.

Shifted by Caitlyn Mitchell

Yes. My book is AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM!! How cool is that. You can even read a summary, a short excerpt, and a review of it.

Another Place You Can Buy My Book

You should totally buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. Review it. And let me know what you think.

So I bid you farewell, my dear readers, and wish me best of luck.

Until next week, enjoy this picture of a sassy llama.

Finally Made the Switch

Hey everyone! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and welcome to Maudlin's Shoes in 2014! I hope you enjoy your first official dabble of shoeless madness of the next 365 days.

So my most recent publishing news is that I finally took the plunge. After finishing my latest book, "Shifted," I have made good use of the counsel of fellow-author and self-published, award-winning Amanda DeWees and uploaded my book onto Create Space.

For those of you who don't know Create Space, it's a self-publishing platform that is so easy to use it's not even funny. You'll be sitting there thinking, wow, this is so easy, I can't believe how much I am not laughing at it.

Or you'll think it's hysterical. One of the two. I guess that doesn't leave you very many reaction options. I will also allow you amazement. You may also be allowed to show your pleasure.

I've been hesitant about self-publishing for a while, just because I still want to go the traditional publishing route. But hey, I just finished a book I'm really proud of, and I want my friends, family, loved ones, and complete strangers to read it. They can't exactly do that if I only print 10 copies from a local printer and book binding company. There's no distribution involved that way.

So I made an account and uploaded my book. Now, there are some hurdles you have to figure out as you go. Like being sure that all of your images are more than 300 dpi, which is standard quality for printing. If you don't have a program of design that will let you do that, you can use a lower resolution but it may make things a little blurry. Not necessarily the end of the world if it's not really bad, but you may also want to invest in either a good program that will let you save high-res, or invest in someone to design for you. My next book will be getting a professionally-designed cover by one of my good friends, who is a very talented artist. Now, I like doing all my own art, but I also like things looking clear. And she has Photoshop. 'Nuff said.

Making an account will take you like two seconds. Then you need a few things-- one, a full PDF of your manuscripts, and two, a back-spine-front PDF of your book cover. That gets a little tricky just because it's so hard to measure accurately, but here's the cool thing-- your files will get checked by Create Space before you can print a proof (which you want to do so you can double check it for quality before you release it on the market), so they make sure that if there's a little wonkyness, you get an alert or they just fix it automatically, or both.

So the whole process will likely take you about a week and a half to two weeks. Then your book will be available on Create Space website. You set a price, you get royalties, you have an official ISBN number-- it's really neat. You can pick the platforms that the book will be available on. For example, mine will be available on Amazon.com in a week or so. It'll also be available through various other platforms, like Barnes & Noble, etc.

Because really-- if you get an answer from an agency or a publisher, you can just take the book off the platform. But people can still get it and see it while it's up. And if you do really well on your own, well-- I guess that means you don't need a publisher, eh?

By the way, you can look at my book here. I'd love to hear what you think about it.

I'll be posting more when it's available on Amazon.com. Please, buy a copy, support local (or not so local, as the case may be) authors, and leave a review either here or on Amazon.com.

New Book

Things always get so busy during the holidays!

News news news-- Twitter is still down, which forms the main basis of my 'writing' news as it contains all the threads I visit for various articles and commentaries on the publishing world. I'm wondering what is going on with that...anyone able to use Twitter normally? Anyone else experiencing this difficulty?

I am beginning a new book this Christmas holiday, after just finishing one the past couple of months. I am really excited about it-- I think it's a great idea and will serve well!

I'm also in the process of getting my last book, Shifted, a retelling of beauty and the beast, only gender-swapped, available for purchase on Amazon.com and other retailers! More details to come when that is complete. I'm using a platform called Create Space that was suggested to me by a fellow, self-published author.

You may be recalling, now wait, you always said you were going to hold off on self-publishing! Well, this is true. However I've had a thought. I'm still sending out queries and submissions for this book. But why not distribute it easily to my friend and family (and maybe others!) while I wait? I am not foreseeing moving so much stock that a publisher would not want to take on the project for that reason, and if I do sell that many copies, I don't think I'll be worried anyway!

So I'm going to give this a whirl and start putting my books up on Amazon.com and see what happens.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Thursdays, huh?

This is the second week in a row that I have been slammed on my usual blog-Wednesday and ended up writing to you on Thursday. Not to mention that Twitter (a source of many ideas and articles and news updates for this blog) was on the fritz yesterday. The whole website was down.

Correction. The whole website is down. I just checked again.

So you're going to have to put up with late, news-less rantings from me. I know you're thrilled.

Well you'll get an in-progress book report from me. I'm currently reading Destiny's Road by Larry Niven (who I bumped into, sort of...he was in the same concert room as me at Dragon Con but he left before the band I was merchandising for went on stage...we did a little dance around each other when the first crowd was leaving...) who is one of the kings of the science fiction world. His name ranks up there with Isaac Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, and Ursula K. LeGuin.

He's the author of Ringworld, an incredibly popular and ground-breaking science fiction tale that joined the ranks of Hard Science Fiction (different than soft science fiction in that it has to be within the laws of physics and science; aka, not a space opera or Star Wars) in 1970. Not long after, the science fiction world threw the gauntlet at Niven, claiming that the book wasn't realistic. In response, he picked up that gauntlet and threw it back with Ringworld Engineers, a book dedicated to proving that the physics were sound.

"After the publication of Ringworld many fans identified numerous engineering problems in the Ringworld as described in the novel. One major problem was that the Ringworld, being a rigid structure, was not actually in orbit around the star it encircled and would eventually drift, ultimately colliding with its sun and disintegrating. This led MIT students attending the 1971 Worldcon to chant, "The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!" Niven wrote the 1980 sequel in part to address these engineering issues."

In case you're still wondering, Ringworld is what inspired the game series Halo.

This is the first book by Niven that I've ever read, and I was warned beforehand that his books tend to be rather mature in content. Explicitly so. Well, this one has not been bad, in my eyes. It's certainly an adult book but I'm not needing to use bleach on my eyes or soap in my brain after every chapter. So feel free to read.

The story is about settlers who landed on an Earth-like planet 200-300 years ago and eked out an existence from the peninsula. A Road was formed by the shuttles hovering along over the land, burning out the ground. And spartan civilizations, some very rudimentary in technology, sprang up. But mysteries are everywhere. No one follows the road except for the merchants. No one asks where the Road goes. No one asks anything.

Jemmy, forced onto the Road by accident, is off to find out the answers to all his questions.

The writing style jumps around a lot. I'm just now entering part three, before which the biggest gaps in time were a few days or weeks. The leap from part two to part three, however, is 27 years without mention until later. I spent the first few pages wondering who I was reading about and where the last nearly three decades went. There are a lot of name changes too, as Jemmy becomes a fugitive and has to take cover. He changes names three or four times in the first two parts of the book. Also a tad confusing if you're not paying strict attention.

But I like it so far. It's a good, detailed book, paints vivid pictures of a strange life, draws you into the mystery of it. I can't wait to find out what the whole point is, what happened to the initial crews of the ships that led to the scattered lifestyles of the now-inhabitants of the planet who have so diversified a way of life-- some living like tribes, some like futuristic societies.

In other news, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug opens tonight.

I'm stupid excited.

It's A Love/Hate Relationship

Now if you're like me and you have pale, northern-European, so-white-it-blinds-the-eyes skin, you may not be a huge fan of the sun in general. You can get sunburned in ten minutes. You have higher chances of skin cancer. You may already (like me) have a history of skin cancer and have to get skin exams every year. Your dermatologist would murder you if he knew how negligent you were about putting on sunscreen, which you're supposed to do every time you step outside, not just when you're going to be in the direct sunlight for an extended amount of time. You can get sun damage just going to get your mail.

You could also be like me and absolutely love the sun. You wish you didn't have to put on sunscreen because it's such a pain in the butt, but sunbathing and turning into a lobster is even more a pain in the butt. Or the shoulders, or nose, or forehead, or feet. Yes, I have gotten sunburn on my feet before. Ouch. You feel like a cat sometimes because you've been known to follow a patch of sun around the house and just lie in it. You want to turn your face up to the sun and soak it in like a sunflower. I read Robin McKinley's Sunshine with great jealousy, as the heroine draws her magical power from the sun and can drink it up like a plant.

You also may be wondering what in the world this has to do with writing or books or anything at all.

Unless you read or write outside (Which, by the way, is delightful. Wheelbarrows make exceptionally good cubbies. So do hammocks.), the author-species doesn't get out much. Especially during the winter months.

We need to.

It is a scientifically proven fact that humans need sunlight. It provides vitamin D, which helps against depression and moodiness and general gloom. Fluorescent lights have been known to facilitate depressed emotions. And just being outside, even if you can't see the sun-- like with all the rainy weather we've had these past weeks-- is a balm and a restorative.

In the past month I have recently finished my latest book. This meant a lot of lunch-break writing sessions. I haven't gone outside to eat my lunch because of these as well as the fact that it's winter now, which means cold weather and more rain. So I've stayed indoors. I also, now having exited the collegiate world, haven't been walking between classes and all across campus as I have been used to doing for the past four years. Soaking up even an hour or two of sun just by being a pedestrian.

It also gets dark by the time I leave work, with the time change, so I get up and go to work in the dawn light, and I go home in the twilight, leaving no time for sunlight at all.

I have been feeling gloomy and melancholy and frankly morbid for the last two weeks without knowing why.

I spent my lunch break outside a bit, yesterday, just thinking, praying, musing, and turning my face up to the sun. I felt like I had been plugged in to an electrical circuit.

We need the sunlight. Especially because we're writers. We divulge so much of our creative energy onto the pages, but if we give ourselves no way or rebooting, we're going to be running on empty way faster than we would otherwise.

And even just a few minutes a day, just an hour, can make a huge difference between none at all.

Go outside. Breathe the fresh air. Feel some sunlight. And put on your sunscreen. But get your vitamins for the day and recharge a little.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Now go eat some pie. Here. Here's a picture of pie for you.

 

Oh...Oh dear.

 

Oog, so hungry!

 

That looks delicious!!

 

That's it. I'm going to find some nommings.

 

And a book to read.

 

Happy Thanksgiving. I'm going to go eat until I can't breathe and read for 8+ hours.

Riddle Master by Patricia McKillip

Patricia McKillip is one of my favorite authors.

This is due to the fact that one of her books, Winter Rose, is an annual read for me. Once December hits, I whip out that novel and read it, every single year. It is the embodiment of how I feel about winter and the cold. It takes my desire for spring and green growing things and the forest and wraps it into a real-life, fantastical twist. If I could pick a book character who I feel most akin to, it would be Rois, the heroine of Winter Rose.

It is probably because this book is so integral to my continual growth as a writer, a reader, and a dreamer that I am very critical of any other book that McKillip publishes.

You may recall my review on her book that came out a couple of years ago, The Bards of Bone Plain. It was a more critical review -- the book didn't sit with me very well. It did not capture the true writing genius that I know McKillip can have. Her other book Ombria in Shadow is one that has it. The Bell at Sealey Head is another. But McKillip does have one overarching fault that, when it absorbs into her writing, can almost destroy a book -- that is when she gives in to or falls in to her own personal cliches (a style which I discuss in my earlier book review).

Personal cliches are cliches that authors make for themselves. You can very easily fall into them just by having a distinctive writing style and being lazy. The first is good; the second is bad. By the third or fourth time you use the phrase 'gimlet eye' (which I may or may not have been guilty of in the last week which is why that is the example used *coughcough*) your readers are going to notice and roll their eyes.

You never want your readers to roll their eyes at you. At your characters, yes. At your humor, sure. But never at you. Your readers should forget you exist until they pick the book up or put the book down. Between the pages, you are invisible.

McKillip's cliches generally take the form of being overly flowery. Now if you've ever read any of my writing or know my favorite books, you'll know that I love descriptions! I love words and vocabulary, I love flowery writing. I love magical phrases. But there is a line, and past that line I'm waiting for Puff the magic dragon to come gallivanting out with his eyeballs googling in opposite directions. Don't go that far.

McKillip can have the tendency to do this with the magical descriptions. The cliche that makes me almost groan when she falls in to it is her overuse of mystical, magical, rhetorical questions delivered by her characters.

Now McKillip is, as I have called her before, a true 'chef with words'. I adore her writing. I want to own every book she has ever published, even the ones I'm not a huge fan of. So don't take all of this criticism and negativity as a whole opinion.

But to the matter at hand, finally -- I am almost finished reading the Riddle Master Trilogy by McKillip. And it's a mixed bag of worms, I can tell you.

I almost took a break a third of the way in to the trilogy. The first book is an absolute bear, filled with every personal cliche McKillip has ever employed way too many times. I was, frankly, bored. The whole underlying theme of the book is comprised of riddles. However, you never get any answers to any of the riddles in the first book. It felt to me like McKillip was trying to be overly mysterious. She didn't reveal anything. You didn't know anything after finishing the book. Nothing was ever figured out. And frankly, I wasn't interested. I thought I wasn't going to enjoy the rest of the trilogy at all.

It's a good thing I bought an omnibus three-in-one because if I hadn't owned the other two books already, I likely would never have finished the trilogy.

The second and third books in the trilogy fly by -- this is the McKillip I love!! There are still some flowery rhetorical questions in there, but the plot and pace and what you can actually know about the book grows rapidly. We finally start to get some answers, and the tale begins to unfold. It shouldn't have taken 180 pages to do so, but it does at last.

Is it worth struggling through those 180 pages to get to the second and third book? Yes. I would definitely say so. I have a general principle, anyway, that if I start something I'm going to finish it -- there are very few books or series I have not finished, due to this. I had one book earlier this summer that I put down after a hundred pages because it was just bad and that is very rare for me. But even without that stubborn principle of seeing a book through to the end, this trilogy is worth it. I would recommend it to any fan of fantasy or fiction and definitely any fan of Patricia McKillip.