Category: Queen of Souls
2011 says HIYA! And also, bring it
| January 1, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Lament of the Dove, Mirror's Gate, Queen of Souls, Shadow of the Rook, Shards of Recollection, Short Pieces |
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So by and large, 2010 went pretty well for me on a personal level–but not quite so much on a writing level. I’d like to change that this year, and that means getting Seriously Back on the Stick. Here are various goals I’m going to aim for this year. Sooner is better, but I’m not going to nail time frames down to these because really, the overall goal boils down to this: Get Back My Writing Discipline. Anything above and beyond that will be cake.
In general order of priority, these are the main goals:
- First and foremost: finish the edit pass on Lament of the Dove and get the revised manuscript back to Carina Press. Current status: Chapter 19 of the word count reduction pass.
upstart_crow- Follow up with Drollerie as to whether Bone Walker will actually be feasible for Drollerie to pursue this year, and if so, what they need from me to make it happen. Either way, I should go ahead and finish it. Current status: still in chapter 11, and I’m about to the point where I need to plan out what’s going to happen for the rest of the book.
- Review where I left off with editing Queen of Souls and get that into queryable shape. Current status: still pretty much on Chapter 2 of the second draft.
Everything above and beyond these things is a stretch goal, right now. This includes all of the current notable works in progress, which are:
- Shadow of the Rook. Current status: Made it into Chapter 4 before serious edits to Lament made it clear the beginning of Shadow will have to be heavily reworked as well. Therefore, Shadow will remain on hold until Lament‘s edits are done.
- Mirror’s Gate. Current status: Chapter 2.
- Child of Ocean, Child of Stars. Current status: Interlude between Chapters 3 and 4.
- Shards of Recollection. Current status: Chapter 1.
- Still-untitled Faerie Blood-universe piece starring Elizabeth the psychic, and Ross the brother of a murdered Warder. It’s still not clear to me whether this piece is going to be a novella or a novel in its own right. Review of it must occur.
And oh yes: I DO still intend to do the last couple of How to Read Ebooks posts, as well as any further ones that occur to me. If anyone has specific requests about ebook-related things you’d like to see me post, please let me know!
Tonight, I can safely say that editing of Lament has happened. I doublechecked Chapter 18 and realized there was another minor scene with Celoren that I could completely nuke–partly because it didn’t really advance the plot much, and partly because removing it also addressed one of the various issues from Carina’s editor. And I’ve headed into Chapter 19, where I’ve re-discovered that I did leave this chapter in a bit of a mess after cleaning up the tail end of 17. Now I get to clean that mess up.
It’s also become clear that I will indeed be swinging back around for a sixth draft once the word count reduction draft is done. It’ll have to be the sixth draft where I go back in and put in significant new content.
And since I’ve made it a couple of pages into Chapter 19, about 20 minutes shy of midnight, I’ll call that today’s writing-related activity. More tomorrow. DAMMIT.
Edited tonight: Quite a bit, actually
Chapter 18 revised total: 3,750
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,815
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,783
Vote for me! Vote for Queen of Souls!
| April 26, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Queen of Souls |
So the fine folks over at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management have a blog I’ve been following for a while, and one of their agents, Mr. Jim McCarthy, is running a little contest. He invited readers to send in the first lines of their manuscripts, and from the hundreds of submissions he received, he chose nine finalists. He’s now put up a poll asking readers to choose their favorite first line, and the winner of the poll gets his attention on the full manuscript.
I’m one of the finalists, with the very first line of my as of yet unqueried Queen of Souls: “The next time Hermes brought her back from the Underworld, Persephone wept tears of rage.”
To wit, YIKES! *^_^*;;
Anybody want to vote for me, the poll is right over here.
There are some other intriguing first lines there too though, so be sure to vote which one is your actual favorite! I won’t hold it against you if you don’t actually vote for me. Though really, do you want to piss off an Olympian? 
Either way, as always, thank you in advance for your support!
Wow, there sure are a lot of books here
| April 8, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Mirror's Gate, Queen of Souls, Shadow of the Rook, Shards of Recollection |
It occurred to me this week that I have six, count ‘em, six books in progress in various stages, and as part of the Great Get My Ass Back in Gear Initiative, it might behoove me to do a quick rundown of where all of these books are and what needs to get done with them. Therefore, by way of high-level overview and more or less in order of priority, here we go!
- Bone Walker. Urban fantasy, the first sequel to Faerie Blood. I’m very close to the end of Chapter 7 on this. I have not yet formally queried it to Drollerie but plan to do so as soon as I have a working draft. Beta readers, be on the lookout for a call in the latter half of the year.
- Queen of Souls. Urban fantasy, a sequel of sorts to the Hades and Persephone myth. This is the most complete of the lot since the first draft is actually finished, and I am stalled out a little ways into doing the second. I last left off finishing editing the Chapter Formerly Known as Chapter 1, and which is more like Chapter 4 now. I need to pick up again from there, so I can get this thing into queryable shape and get it out the door.
- Shadow of the Rook. Fantasy, Book 2 of the trilogy The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk; Book 1 is of course Lament of the Dove, and that’s out getting queried right now. Since this is one big story, I want to have progress done on it in case somebody wants to actually buy the whole shebang. Currently trying to get out of Chapter 2.
- Mirror’s Gate. Fantasy, set in the same universe as The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk. Still in Chapter 1 and the story is still taking shape.
- Child of Ocean, Child of Stars, in which a young telepath discovers things that could completely wreck the budding alliance between humanity and the native species of Nereus. Soft sci-fi. Three chapters and change in.
- Shards of Recollection, in which a young thief falls in with a smuggler eking out a ragtag existence–and discovers that he’s forgotten some dangerous secrets that could bring a world to war, not the least of which is his own past. Soft sci-fi. Didn’t like the first draft’s initial start, started over, still in Chapter 1 on this too.
With pretty much all of the first drafts in progress, I need to buckle down and do some heavy duty outline work. I’m really kind of daunted realizing I have finished three whole novels (Faerie Blood, Lament, and Queen of Souls), and have FIVE MORE waiting to get done. The two big things that really need to get done are finishing Bone Walker so that my editor can tell me if she wants it, and getting Queen of Souls ready for its escape into the wide world. Anything above and beyond that is gravy, but if I want to make some serious progress by the end of the year, it’s time to start some serious planning.
Wish me luck, folks.
Wrote tonight, more or less
| March 29, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Mirror's Gate, Queen of Souls |
Pried a couple hundred more words out of my brain tonight, some for Bone Walker and some for Mirror’s Gate, mostly for the sake of advancing the pointers on at least a couple of stories. And being able to say that I actually wrote something tonight. This long dry spell is frustrating in the extreme, folks. Intellectually I know that the solution is simply to buckle down and write, but man, trying to re-establish the habit is hard.
We’ll see, though. These two stories remain the two pulling at my brain the most for new words, although Queen of Souls is sternly reminding me that its second draft edits are long overdue to be resumed. I really need to beat that thing into proper queryable shape so I can get it out there.
And now, back to business
| September 14, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Queen of Souls, Shadow of the Rook, Shards of Recollection |
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Now that I’m back from a delightful sojourn up to Canada to see my favorite band, and now that I’m done with “The Blood of the Land” and editing Lament of the Dove, it’s time to think about what I need to be doing next.
First up is likely to be resuming editing Queen of Souls. Y’all may remember (at least, those of you who were following my now-defunct annathewriter Livejournal) that I had barely started editing the second draft; now I need to dive back into that and getting it closer to being formally queryable.
Meanwhile, I have four, count ‘em, four other works in progress that need attention, all of which need some serious review of their core concepts so that I can start planning them better and getting more work done on them. These are of course Faerie Bones (the projected Book 2 for Faerie Blood), Shadow of the Rook (Book 2 for Lament of the Dove), Shards of Recollection (which I never have been happy with yet), and Child of Ocean, Child of Stars (which starts okay but which needs further review). I don’t know yet which one I’m going to start throwing serious words at; I think this is a decision I’ll need to make after I get a bunch of outlines written up.
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