2015 Writing Year in Review

The year's end is nearly upon us, NaNoWriMo just ended, and I have a ton of stories to edit. For a while there, I was just producing new words and doing very few edits. So, editing will most likely fill my time for the next couple of months or so. Since I don't plan on writing any more new stories for what remains of this year, I thought I'd post my numbers.

I wrote eleven new short stories this year, four novelettes (or really long short stories, depending on your definition), and one novel. I don't keep track of words written, but I probably produced about 125,000 words this year. And so far this year I've made 43 short story submissions.

Publication and sales-wise for short stories, this was a sparse year. I made one reprint sale and had one other publication. I think part of the drop was due to having several sales last year, and part of it is just the fickle nature of publishing. But, I had two novels published this year. Fractured Days, the sequel to my fantasy novel Shards of History came out, as did the final book in my Necromancer's Inheritance series, The Necromancer's Book of Magic.

I guess the image for this year has been of a duck in water. Everything looks calm above, but my feet have been madly moving below. Hopefully it all pays off next year with more sales, more publications, and more writing awesomeness.

Bubonicon 2015 Report

I can't believe it's been a month since my last blog post. I've been extremely busy, though, with the first week of the kiddo's school, with company, and with writing. In fact, this past weekend was filled with Bubonicon, which is a local SFF convention. I went to panels, cruised through the sellers' room, and had some great conversations. As always, I added a ton of books to my to-be-read pile and had some great insight into the novel I'm working on right now. I was initially a little bummed about missing out on WorldCon in Spokane this year, but Bubonicon was fantastic and more than made up for my sad previous weekend of living vicariously through others on Twitter as they attended WorldCon.

One of the first people I spotted when I walked into the hotel on Friday night was George R. R. Martin. Not long after that I also saw Loki and a giant furry squirrel. I feel like I have the start of a great joke there, but I haven't gotten far with it...

This year's theme was "Women of Wonder." Several panels focused on women in fiction, and those were the majority that I went to. The first panel I attended was about warrior women. There was some great practical advice (from Livia Blackburne: it's easier for women to choke someone because of their flexibility and how their slim arms can fit around a neck) and discussion about women pirates.

Panel on whether strong women need strong men

Another panel asked the question: Do strong female characters need strong male characters? Susan Krinard said strength does not necessarily mean muscle bound; there are different types of strength. Pari Noskin said she thought strong means having a solid self identity and core. Strong women don't need strong men. Jane Linskold said men should not be strawmen who exist simply to show how strong the women are. Carrie Vaughn flipped the question around and asked whether strong male characters need strong female characters, and Tamora Pierce said you should have well rounded characters in general. This panel went on to discuss LGBTQIA pairings as well as pairings between characters who were simply friends and not love interests.

In the panel on the curse of the strong female character, Catherynne Valente talked about how people love bad guys in fiction, but they don't feel the same way about bad girls. People love Walter White from Breaking Bad, but not Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. She attributed this to societal coding. I do agree that most people find it easier to like a bad guy than a bad girl. After all, girls are 'sugar and spice and everything nice' while boys are 'snips and snails and puppy dog tails.' Okay, now I suddenly want to watch The Powerpuff Girls.

Panel on writing different genders

The last panel I attended was on writing different genders. World Weaver Press editor Sarena Ulibarri (who edited my latest novel Fractured Days) was on this one. All of the panelists had great things to add to the discussion. I was lax at this point about noting who said what, so most of this is my best guess here. I believe S. M. Stirling was the one who pointed out that sometimes socioeconomic differences stood out more than gender differences. He relayed a story about two women police officers out on patrol. One calmly tried to talk a perpetrator into relinquishing his weapon. The other simply grabbed it and, uh, rather forcefully handled the situation. There might have been some blood involved. At any rate, one woman came from an upper middle class background, while the other came from a blue collar family. Guess which was which?

John Barnes also made a great point when he said that there are cultural gender differences. Men have been socialized to have agency. "You pick up the wrench and do it." Sarena said that when you create your own world, such as a secondary world fantasy, you get to choose who gets agency and who gets what role. The panel also touched on non-binary genders, and when it comes to writing a transgender character, for example, Sarena suggested reading something by--rather than about--someone transgender. And finally, because this was quite possibly one of my favorite quotes of the whole weekend, S. M. Stirling said, while describing his experience at an all boys' boarding school, "It's like being locked in a baboon house at the zoo."

Scarf dragon puppet

I also attended a highly entertaining and informative panel on puppetry given by Mary Robinette Kowal. She turned an ordinary scarf into a dragon to demonstrate movement, breath, and rhythm. She showed pictures of some of the puppets she's worked on. She told a hilarious story about a puppet show fail (I'm still chuckling). One of the things that stuck with me, though, was how the person operating Big Bird is, of course, inside the bird, but also has their right arm fully flexed overhead with their hand operating part of the puppet. I immediately thought, "Oh, that poor person must suffer some severe shoulder impingement at some point." And then I couldn't get it out of my head, imagining a patient coming in because of shoulder impingement from operating Big Bird's head, and how that medical note would go...

There was a lot of other cool stuff that happened, but those are some of the highlights. I was having so much fun that I hardly took any pictures. I can hardly wait for next year's con!

Epiphany on the Treadmill

It's been a while since my last update on this blog (she says in the tone she uses in the confessional). I wrote what felt like a hundred guest blog posts when my novel Fractured Days came out, and I was just all blogged out. And, it's summer, which means I have the kiddo at home on my days off from the day job, which means I don't get a whole lot of writing time unless it's while he's in swimming lessons or after he's gone to sleep. And on the days I work, forget it. I usually come home with mushy brain. For a while there, I felt like my brain was on strike.

But this week I've been remembering my dreams, and my subconscious has been stirring even when I'm awake. Like this morning, on the treadmill, it dumped a huge plot solution into my head. I whooped, stopped the treadmill to note it in my phone, and then resumed my workout. The ironic thing is, I had just been thinking about how often people do funny things at the gym, then there I go, doing a funny thing at the gym.

Normally, I can write a minimum of a thousand new words a day, plus fit in other writing tasks, like editing another piece or blogging or critiquing or updating my website, and so on. But there are lulls in my ability to Achieve It All, and summer is a big one. I love spending time with my kiddo and hanging out at the pool or the botanical gardens or the library or wherever we feel like going while other people have to work (nana nana boo boo) but it means cutting back on writing stuff. Then at the summer's end, I feel like I have to spend some time priming the pump to get it all flowing again.

But this summer, I decided that instead of an all-or-none approach, I would simply cut back, do what I could, and be happy with it, and... I think it worked. I managed to nurture my writer self just enough to keep that part of me content and productive, as evidence by the eureka moment on the treadmill in front of a hundred or so strangers.

Incidentally, I have nicknames for the regulars at the gym, like Stomper (I'm waiting for his knees to blow out on the treadmill), Clanker (I'm waiting for his back to blow out on a machine), Coach, Joined-at-the-Hip (for a couple), Mr. Perfect (he does a hanging leg raise with super controlled scissor kicks and has fantastic flexibility), and many others. After today, I'm sure they all have a nickname for me if they didn't have one already--Weird Chick. But at least I'm a weird chick with an idea.

Spring Fever

The first day of spring has come and gone. The grass in the backyard and in the park is greening. The trees are putting out buds and flowers. The weeds are sprouting. Have I mentioned I'm one of those crazy people who enjoys pulling weeds? I find it cathartic, and I like seeing the progress I make in cleaning up the yard. Seriously, I go pull weeds when I'm feeling stabby. You're welcome, world.

Snow at the beginning of March

The weather makes me feel like I'm coming out of a long sleep. To enhance the feeling, I just finished the last book in my Necromancer's Inheritance series. This is the first time I've completed a huge project like that. Finishing the last book also makes me feel like I'm coming out of a long sleep, like I've been in this dreamworld for a long time and am waking up to a bright world and blinking my eyes.

While I enjoyed working on the series, I'm also glad to have the bulk of it done (with the exception of final edits and, ya know, actually publishing it). There are so many other things I want to write. I still probably have another good forty years ahead of me (pardon me while I go knock on wood), and yet I'm scared I won't have enough time to tell all the stories inside me.

Soon it'll be sunning weather

Things are also moving ahead on my fantasy novel Fractured Days, which is the follow-up to Shards of History. It sort of hit me this week that I have two books coming out soon, which means I get to start working on a brand new one. Eep! I've been in edit mode for so long that I need to shift gears hard to get back into rough draft mode. I love it when I get to dream about the story and imagine all the shapes it can take. So I guess I'm going right back into dreamland while the rest of the world wakes up around me. With breaks now and then to tend the garden and take care of weeds when I feel stabby.