July Update!

Welcome to my July 2022 Update!

This month’s lesson on Patreon: July’s Lesson is either going to be “Plot (and also Character),” the companion to the June Lesson because as I mentioned then, plot and character are actually the same thing. Or it’s going to be on networking. I’m traveling for a couple of weeks through here and it’s discombobulated my schedule a bit, so the lesson will be whichever one of those two I can get into shape by next week. Do you have an opinion about which you’d like to see first? Leave a comment!

I have two new publications to tell you about:

“The Voyage of Brenya” appears in Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms, edited by John Joseph Adams, from Grim Oak Press. 

“Dead Poets” appears in Someone In Time, edited by Jonathan Strahan, from Solaris. 

These are both theme-specific anthologies I was invited to, and so wrote the stories specifically for them. When I talk about networking, one of the things I need to talk about is how I get into invitation-only anthologies like this. And then how do I come up with stories for a specific theme, because that’s a topic in itself.

What I’m working on currently:  I’m rewriting the novel manuscript I wrote over the winter. It’s going well. My agent said the story lacked urgency, so I was able to rework the outline to raise the stakes and better link scenes with causal relationships.  I’m making so many more connections than were there before.  (i.e. Character B is now doing this because of what Character A did two chapters ago, rather than doing it randomly.) I’m reminding myself that what happens in the story actually has to have an impact on the characters. I mean, of course, but sometimes I get so deep in the weeds I don’t see the map. Turns out I wrote an entire draft trying to figure out who the characters were and what the story was, but I think I’ve got it, now. Plot beats, ID those plot beats!

I’m reading something like five books at once because I can’t seem to settle. Some fiction and non-fiction, a lot of books on creativity, just seeing what other people write about it. I think this is a symptom of ebooks – it’s so very easy to switch between five different books, everything from stuff I’ve checked out from the library to old favorites.

I’m also bouncing around on TV. I watched Under the Banner of Heaven, which mostly made me want to read the book, and The Essex Serpent, which didn’t. Both underwhelmed me, even with my beloved Tom Hiddleston in the latter. Neither one ended up being quite what I wanted them to be about, and the shows themselves didn’t seem sure what they were about.

I’m really enjoying Kenobi and Ms. Marvel, and I think it may be that amidst all the chaos of the world I really like being in those familiar settings. It’s like a warm fuzzy blanket. Nothing wrong with a little escapism.

The next season of For All Mankind is up, and I’ll get to it soon, but that show is so emotional I need to mentally prepare for it. Seriously, this is one of the most underrated things on streaming TV right now. It’s so good.

Now, back to the word mines with me…

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