The 50K Word Event Horizon
Posted on: April 8, 2011
This past week I hit a psychological milestone on one of my works-in-progress: 50,000 words written. Hooray! I told Twitter all about it and had a celebratory drink.
Of course, the story’s not nearly finished. We’re just now getting in to some of the major action! If I had to guess, this one will clock in around 80K words, maybe a bit more, but there’s really no telling. Word counts are interesting, but stories take as long as they’re going to take, and books are as long as they are. The word count is usually irrelevant. I know this, intellectually.
And yet! 50K has fixed itself as a major goal in my mind. I think I may blame NaNo for this. I did NaNo back in 2004, (the result of that became BROKEN, which in its final form is a bit under 60K words total), and since then I’ve always thought of 50K in a work-in-progress as some sort of monumental, awe-inspiring, chisel-it-into-a-stone-in-the-desert achievement. When I hit that magic number during the first draft of FLY INTO FIRE, I thought, yes, this might really get finished! And now that I’ve done the same for this work-in-progress, tentatively titled THE DAUGHTER STAR, I’m starting to think that I may have a third novel in me after all. Now that it’s past a certain point, it has a much better chance to survive.
This might be one of the better things that NaNo does by setting that rather arbitrary 50K finish line–once that goal is reached, the work suddenly seems a lot more solid and official. It’s here, it’s past that first big hurdle, and finishing it suddenly seems a lot less daunting.
Of course, now I actually have to do so. I’d better get back to writing.
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The BROKEN Blog Tour is ongoing! You can click the above image for more information on what’s happening. So far this week, I’ve done an interview over at The Fiction Enthusiast, with a review coming tomorrow at Rex Robot Reviews.
Wednesday and Thursday are reviews at The Neverending Bookshelf and Novapsych, and the week ends back at The Fiction Enthusiast for a fun top ten list.
And that’s that!
In Other News
I’ve got a post up about the transgender anti-discrimination bill being considered in Connecticut at CT News Junkie. I don’t usually mix trans stuff and state politics, but in this case, I felt I had a lot I wanted to say.
Also: Shiny things have arrived at my publisher. Oh yes.
- In: Broken | Other writing | Politics
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Before I began my current existence in this world of writers, reviewers and readers, I had no idea what a blog tour was. This came as something of a surprise to me, considering I’d been a political blogger for five years beforehand! However, I’ve learned that this is a way for writers to connect with new audiences by popping up on various book blogs for either a review, or a guest post/interview.
It’s actually been a lot of fun to pull diverse material together for the tour I’ve just begun. I’ll keep you posted about what’s going on with it as it progresses, but so far the tour has gone to two blogs this week:
Hobbitsies – I wrote a little biographical sketch for this site.
Bibliophile Brouhaha – There is a lovely, thorough review of the book up here today.
Planned stops for the rest of this week:
Wednesday: Alisia Leavitt
Thursday: Girls in the Stacks
Friday: Lost for Words
It was a ton of work to get everything put together for this tour, but I had a blast doing it, and I hope you all enjoy the stuff I came up with!
Other updates
Do YOU like early voting? Well, I do, and you can read about it at CT News Junkie. My favorite negative comment on the article asks, “Do you actually think before you make statements like this?” The answer, unsurprisingly, is no. I just make it up as I go along!
New Pieces and Other Updates
Posted on: March 16, 2011
Sorry I haven’t posted here in a bit, I’ve been busy with all kinds of other work! A few updates:
- I have a new piece up at 30Pov, “Sinners in the Hands of a Forgetful God.” The topic for the month is Saints and Sinners, so my mind gravitated for some reason to Jonathan Edwards’s famous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon, which was delivered in the town where I live some 270 years ago. I once had to teach this miserable thing as part of a literature course for high school kids when I was a student teacher. They loved it just about as much as you’d expect. Also: this piece is NOT about gender. I swear! I SWEAR IT TO YOU.
- New at CT News Junkie is this cool piece with a map in it, all about using census data to make more sensible congressional districts. There is no way in hell my plan will happen, but hey.
- Lastly, The Book Smugglers are reviewing BROKEN this Friday, so check that out. Update The review’s up! Here it is
There’s also all kinds of good stuff I’m working on, including new book(s), a short story in the BROKEN universe that will hopefully see release at some point, and an extended blog tour happening next month. I’m busy! It’s great.
Connecticut Census Data!
Posted on: March 9, 2011
Lots of cool stuff here, including a map widget that won’t embed on this site, darn it.
One thing I saw right away in the Excel data released (Excel file) is that all of the big cities have gained population, for the first time that I can remember. Has the urban bleed started to reverse? What’s going on? Is it immigration, a trickle of people moving from suburbs to cities, or what? Either way, it’s something new.
Return of the Death Penalty Debate
Posted on: March 7, 2011
The Connecticut General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee is holding hearings about the death penalty again today. I’ve said a lot about this in the past, and I think a lot of the arguments are so well-worn by this point that the testimony could really be a series of references to testimonies past: “I’d like to take a moment if I may to replay for you a montage I’ve made of the remarks I’ve given on this subject over the past ten years. It’s twenty minutes long. Can we get the lights?”
There’s a central question everyone’s trying to get at with death penalty debates, though I don’t think we ever quite get there. It seems to me like we’re all trying to figure out just who justice is for, and what it’s about. Is it for the victims or their families? The accused? Are we about revenge? Rehabilitation? Bettering society in some way? Keeping society safe? The death penalty debate crystalizes these issues in a way that few other policy discussions do. It holds a mirror up to our society, and forces us to very closely examine one of its foundations.
I personally believe that there’s little to be gained and much to lose when when the state takes a life, but many people believe that death is the ultimate justice for victims and their families. I respect that point of view, because both come from that place in the human soul that demands justice when someone is wronged.
There are a lot of pieces of our justice system which could do with a good, long and very public examination. Our casual acceptance of abuse in prisons, for one. What happens to ex-offenders when they leave the system is another. The death penalty is not a bad place to start, though, because the answers we find here could become a lens through which to see these other, larger and more entrenched problems.
Collected reviews for BROKEN
Posted on: March 3, 2011
- In: Broken
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An awful lot of blogs have reviewed BROKEN, so I thought I’d try to gather them all together in one place, and at least send them some linkage in thanks for reading and reviewing! So please do go check out these sites, and support all these wonderful bloggers–without these folks, publishing with a small, new house would be much more difficult (and less fun).
Nancy Brauer
Glinda Harrison
Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers
Tiger Gray
Bibliognome (Bibliognome also did an interview with me)
Judy Black Cloud
Reading With Tequila
Fandomania
Superhero Novels
Between the Covers
Obligated to Exaggerate
Blather. Rants. Repeat. [Captainsblog]
SF Book Reviews
SciFi Mafia
The Book Smugglers new! 3/17
The Discriminating Fangirl New! 3/23
There’s also some nice reviews at Goodreads and Amazon.
Did I miss any? Please let me know if I did!
Also see this great short interview I just did for Saundra Mitchell, whose book VESPERTINE is coming out very soon (and looks seriously cool).
What Makes a Book YA, Anyway?
Posted on: February 28, 2011
- In: Broken
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One of the things that caught both my publisher and I off-guard was that BROKEN started getting reviewed as a YA novel. I hadn’t written the book specifically for young adults, and I know we wondered (and are still wondering) just what it is about the book that makes some people class it as YA fiction. Part of the the reason might be the age of one of the protagonists: Michael Forward is 14. There is also a definite theme of growing up; Michael has to find a way to do the right thing despite facing his worst fears, and he doesn’t always succeed. Plus, BROKEN is relatively short, it clocks in at about 60,000 words (most non-YA SF/Fantasy seems to be longer, averaging around 100K, at least from what I’ve heard).
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it’s exactly the kind of story I would have loved when I was 14.
But does that make it YA? What does make something YA? I’m still not sure. I’ve found a couple of definitions here and there, but I haven’t found any of them satisfying. I think there are plenty of books which are easily identifiable as YA fiction, but there are plenty more that fall into this sort of gray area BROKEN is in. Is YA in some cases more about marketing than content (see: Urban Fantasy vs. Paranormal Romance for another very, very fine distinction that may just come down to which cover goes on the book)? Does the author’s intended audience matter? I have no objection to BROKEN being classed this way, for the record, but I do have to admit it wasn’t my thought when I was writing it.
I’m still mulling all this over. What do you think, folks who have read the book? Could it/should it be classed as YA? Does the label we give a book matter, except as a tool to reach new audiences?
- In: Broken
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It might not surprise you that there’s a lot of background stuff for the BROKEN universe that never made it into the book. I don’t subscribe to the idea that just because I’ve created a huge world with tons of background information you’ll be interested in hearing about every inch of it. But there are lots of extras, and from time to time I’ll probably post a few of them here.
One of the things I created is a handy reference chart for Extrahumans and their powers. Here it is, in memo form–the most evil, sinister form of all (click “fullscreen” to see everything more easily).
Don’t forget: you can buy BROKEN in electronic format for a mere $10 at the following locations:
- Candlemark & Gleam store, the best choice, lots of formats available
- Amazon.com as a quick and easy Kindle download
- Smashwords
- Barnes & Noble, as a quick download for your NOOK.
I’ll have more to say about this on the weekend, I think, but this poll just out from the conservative Yankee Institute, if it’s accurate, shows us a lot about the “Can’t someone else do it?” mentality of the public when it comes to how to fix budget shortfalls. Here’s the major results, from the press release:
By 73-15%, voters oppose eliminating the $500 property tax credit (least popular)
By 68-21%, voters oppose creating a state earned income tax credit
By 67-31%, voters oppose increasing the gas tax
By 60-34%, voters oppose eliminating sales tax exemptions
By 54-38%, voters oppose increasing the income tax
By 53-43%, voters oppose increasing the sales tax
By 71-20%, voters support seeking concessions from state employees (most popular)
By 68-39%, voters support increasing tobacco and alcohol taxes
By 47-28%, voters support budget cuts in social services and higher education
58% of voters say they have considered moving out of Connecticut because of high taxes
This poll needs a much more thorough analysis, and I’d love to know the demographic breakdown. (There’s also some weird stuff in there–did you know that after the 65+ crowd, the people most interested in repealing health care are between the ages of 30-39? Yeah. Go see the crosstabs). Plus that question about the Earned Income Tax Credit is a huge, biased paragraph, really shifty–it’s the only question where they give a LOT of context. Hm.
Governor Malloy has proposed an Earned Income Tax Credit for low income households that earn less than about $21,000 a year from their jobs. Such households would be eligible for a tax refund of about $1,700 even though they did not pay any state income taxes because their income was too low. This credit would be in addition to an existing federal earned income tax credit of more than $5,000 such households are already eligible for. The new tax credit would cost Connecticut taxpayers more than $100 million a year in new spending. Do you support or oppose a STATE Earned Income Tax Credit for low income households?
So do you support FREE MONEY FOR LAYABOUTS? Well? Do you?
The one thing I can take away that I think is honest, though, is this: people want the sacrifice to be shared by others. As long as they don’t have to pay more taxes or see their own services cut, they’re fine. Since most people aren’t state workers, they’d prefer for them to shoulder the burden–or else they’ll move out of state!
I think this is pretty universal. The public likes to blame everyone but ourselves for the mess we’re in: state employees, unions, politicians, corporations–but our twin demands for more and better services and juicy tax cuts are a massive part of the problem, as well.
The Extrahuman Union 