So the first draft of The Far West is done at last, turned in a bit over two weeks ago, and I’m past the first walking-around-in-a-daze bit where I spend all my time feeling as if I ought to be finishing the book and then remembering that no, I’m actually done until the editorial revision [...]
First things first: a bit over two weeks ago, our own Michelle Wood emailed me that she’s done a wonderful video trailer for the Frontier Magic series. I’ve been planning to put a link to it on the website, but I’m in the downhill rush to finish the book and updating the web page is [...]
I’m in what I hope is the downhill stretch of The Far West at last. I have finally gotten my characters out of town and moving, and yesterday I got to what was supposed to be a throwaway bit at their first stop, just a little bit of business to establish how their expedition operates [...]
February 6, 2011 – 10:34 am
As regular readers of this blog may remember, a couple of months back I realized I’d gotten partway into the third of the Frontier Magic books and realized that I’d gotten the events in the wrong order.
Not “wrong” in the sense that I’d gotten cause and effect reversed (you know, the sort of thing where someone’s suffering [...]
October 31, 2010 – 6:38 am
As you may recall, dear reader, in our last exciting episode on Wednesday morning I stated categorically that I wouldn’t be doing NaNoWriMo this year for a lot of good reasons, including house guests, Thanksgiving, and general life workload. November-December are supposed to be slow months for work, because of all the holiday busy-ness.
I should know [...]
September 26, 2010 – 11:02 am
Every story, short or long, takes place somewhere. Every scene takes place somewhere. And every place has features about it that are unique, whether it is the collection of overly cute fairy-figurines on the mantelpiece in the parlor, the cracked and faded mural across the back wall of the bar, or the odd kink in the third-level [...]
September 19, 2010 – 6:55 pm
Last Wednesday, I finished reviewing the copy-edit of Across the Great Barrier, which was my last chance to make any major changes to the book. I’ll get another look at it when the galleys/page proofs come, but barring some totally egregious error that’s slipped past every single person who’s gone over the ms. thus far, [...]
August 16, 2010 – 8:27 am
Every saga has a beginning, and this one begins four weeks ago, when my editor sent me a three-page, single-spaced revisions e-mail and a copy of the ms. for what is now Across the Great Barrier that was full of comment balloons.
It didn’t arrive.
We didn’t realize this for a week, because I was being restrained and not asking [...]
So the revisions request for Book 2 of the Frontier Magic trilogy have come in, and I’m head down for the next week and a half.
After much emailing, the consensus is that, among many other things, it needs a title change. The editors felt that Circuit Magician was a good title…for a different book. I [...]
I’m currently just getting started on the third, as-yet-untitled book of the Frontier Magic trilogy, and the first step of that is working out the plot in more detail than “they explore the Far West to find out what happened to Lewis and Clark and what’s up in the Rocky Mountains; various characters solve assorted [...]