Yeearrrgghhh!

Having a very busy week. Sorry for not posting and for not commenting on your blogs often. I’ll try and get back in the groove soon.

Are you following Maria Zannini’s blog tour yet? Better be!

^_^

Not a long post this morning

Maybe this afternoon. Bleh.

Anyway, here’s where Maria Zannini has been so far this week on her blog tour for True Believers:

Absolute Write

and Me, My Muse and I

Enjoy!

(I love following someone’s tour around!!!)

No messing around mountains

Last week I was in Telluride and Mountain Village, Colorado. My husband and I needed a relaxing vacation, so we went where the scenery was mostly like this:

So tranquil…so relaxing. Unless you think that walking down a mountain should be a cakewalk compared to walking up, like I did. I found a trail to Telluride and decided to walk down this mountain:

We didn’t walk straight off the edge there. That’s actually a ski slope. We took a winding trail that’s probably also a ski slope in winter. I spent so much time banging my toes into the front of my shoes that both my big toenails are now purple and will likely not survive. Needless to say, I began the trek gasping at the beauty surrounding me and ended up two hours later cursing the fact that mountains existed in the first place.

We also decided to drive over a very skinny mountain pass. The drive up a mountain wasn’t so bad:

Mostly because my fearless husband was driving. And the scenery was absolutely gorgeous and mostly free of man-made objects. You can kind of see the pass curling out behind us in this one:

But then I got to drive on the way down. Again, I had fooled myself into thinking that down was the easy part. There are no pics of the actual drive down. It was terrifying. The trail was barely wide enough for our SUV, and every time I looked out my window, I saw just how high we were. There was one switchback where I had to do a three-point turn. Worst of all, the road was covered in this:

Those are mounds of pulverized rock that made up the very top of the pass. I think I’ve heard it called scree before. It was loose. It covered the road, and the steering wheel constantly tried to bounce out of my hands as we drove over it. I had to stop from time to time so my husband could move large chunks of it out of our path. I remember thinking to myself, “I cannot do this. No one can do this.” But we couldn’t turn around, and I knew backing up the mountain would be a hundred times harder. So, I just kept my foot on the brake and went on. Here’s the view from the town at the end of the pass:

You can just see the road winding up the mountain on the left before it disappears between the mountain on the left and the small one in the middle. I was terrified while it was happening, but I surprised myself by still feeling calm and intense. I don’t know if I blinked for that entire drive down. But after it was over, I was exhilarated. I understand how someone can become an adrenaline junkie. I felt a sense of accomplishment so strong it was akin to what I felt after completing a novel. Try as a I might, it’s a little indescribable.

All in all, I thought it was a nice relaxing vacation with one painful and one terrifying/incredible moment. And if you’re a dog lover, Telluride, Colorado is the place to be. They love their dogs there, signs be damned:

Terrifying yet exciting moments? Please share!

Also, my coverage of Maria Zannini’s blog tour continues! Today, visit her at Mia Marlowe’s blog!

Self-editing is what now?

Okay, campers, I’m back! Didn’t know I was gone, did ya? My husband and I took a trip to Colorado for some rest and relaxation (pics to follow), and we thought it would be fun to drive, spreading the getting-there to two days.

But what to listen to for two days? A book on tape! Sure to make the hours fly by.

Or….not. Sure to frustrate the hell out of us? Most definitely. And it prompted me to concoct today’s PSA topic: self-editing. Two authors leap to mind who need help with this. I’m not going to name names. See if you can guess!

So, the book on tape guy. NYT best-selling author for…forever. His books used to be snappy little roller coasters, and now it’s clear that no one is reading them before they hit the shelves. I don’t know if there were typos, but there was so much info that didn’t need to be there! Not only did we get a first and last name for Every Single Character (so many…) but they all had loads of backstory that had no bearing on the plot. Everything that happened reminded the people involved of some other incident years before, and the flashback went on for pages and sometimes involved another flashback, just chains of events that, I think, were meant to build tension…but didn’t.

The flashbacks came in the middle of exciting events, but once I’d read a flashback for everyone involved, the event was no longer exciting, merely frustrating.

No one cut this book for content, or if they tried, the author didn’t listen, and the editor decided to publish it anyway, probably thinking like the editor that once commented on my next candidate for self-editing.

I went to a writing conference a few years back, and an editor for Tor (I think) was on one of the panels. She mentioned my next self-editing candidate, and people in the audience groaned. One person even stood to ask a question and added that this author (another NYT bestseller) had really dropped the ball as far as book quality is concerned, mentioning that said author’s books now regularly appeared in the B&N bargain bin where they never had before. The editor just blinked and said, “But she’s still making money. She’s still selling books.”

The audience was aghast. She’s not selling as many! The people in the room who had read her had stopped buying her books. Sales were falling, in a large part due to the fact that no one was reading them before they hit the shelves.

She had long tracts of dialogue, lasting pages and pages, about stuff that had no bearing on the plot. She rehashed topics that were discussed in previous chapters, repeating herself word for word at times. And let’s not forget the word repetition. In one tiny paragraph alone, she used the word “hand” ten times. “She grasped the whatsit in her hand, and then passed it to her other hand. Then she took the whosit from her belt with her hand and grabbed it firmly with her hand.” That’s not exactly a quote, but you get the idea. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she just didn’t spot this, but surely she had someone ANYONE reading for her?!?! My writing group would have caught that in a New York minute. I think any voracious reader would have.

Oh, and just to address a pet peeve of mine, I think no one needs to say, “She grasped it in her hand” unless the circumstances require you to use right or left. Hand is default. Only tell me if she’s grasping it in her foot or mouth or tentacle or lady-bits. With this woman’s books, none of those would surprise me.

Promise me guys, when you all reach the NYT bestselling list and become ultra famous, that you’ll continue to practice self-editing. And if you don’t trust yourself, if you know you’ll want to wax poetic about the stars in the middle of a battle, if you can’t control your impulse to talk to the reader, or if you want to share with the reader (via your characters) your love for Target when it’s got nothing to do with the plot, HAVE SOMEONE ELSE READ FOR YOU AND THEN TAKE THEIR ADVICE. Ahem. Please, don’t frustrate someone’s road-trip.

Ever read a bestselling author and wondered if you could somehow get out and push the book along? Ever wondered, who in the hell read this before it was published? Ever read a much touted author whose book included typos? *Raises hand*

The hills are alive…

…but not usually in my fiction. When I invent a landscape, I find it almost always bears a resemblance to the terrain I grew up on: rolling plains (mostly pasture) with dots of trees and forests in the distance. I grew up on a farm 20 miles or so south of Dallas, TX, and unfortunately, so do most of my characters.

It’s not entirely my fault. How many great fantasy novels have the same landscape? Frodo’s race through the wilderness with the Nazgul on his heels could have taken place partly in my backyard. Years after I first read those books as a teen, Frodo’s night-time flight still stays with me, as do the adventures of many plains-bound characters.

I’ve been trying to branch out lately. I had a recent experience with a mountain that I’ll tell you all about next week, and it taught me a lot about breathing at elevation when one is used to sea level. I’ll have to incorporate that into the characters in my sequel who move from the plains to a mine in the hills. I also want to play around with deserts, maybe some oceans, hell, anywhere but rolling plains with occasional forest.

How about you? Made up worlds look remarkably like where you spend the bulk of your time? Or maybe your childhood home? Do you like to imagine your stories in landscapes completely different than your own, real or imaginary?

Squee again!

Squuueeeeeeee x1,000,000,000!!!

Crossed Genres bought another of my stories! Ack, my second fiction sale! I’m very excited! Now I know the excitement of a sale never gets old. I’ll let everyone know when it’s up there to read.

I’m in love with the world. ^_^