Bewitched & Betrayed snippet with Raine & Piaras

Today's snippet features Raine, Piaras, and Vegard.

Be sure to drop by tomorrow. Jennifer Estep, author of Spider's Bite, will be guest blogging on world building in fantasy. There will also be a contest for a signed copy of Spider's Bite!

Now, on to our regularly scheduled Monday snippet. . .

Becoming a Conclave Guardian was the fulfillment of Piaras's lifelong dream. He couldn't see himself behind an apothecary counter or singing magical lullabies for some noble's bratty children. As a Guardian, he felt he could make a difference.

Piaras wasn't singing right now. He was fighting, the hand-to-hand variety. At eighteen years old, Piaras was plenty tall, but he had some filling out to do.

"How's he doing?" I asked Vegard.

"There are a few rough spots." He shrugged. "But we all have our strong points, and our not-so-strong points. Piaras's should solve themselves once he gets some more weight on him. He's quick; he's got that going for him." He flashed a grin. "If you have to be scrawny, at least be fast."

I smiled. "Is he eating the Guardians out of house and home?"

Vegard chuckled. "He's trying, but we haven't had a cadet succeed yet."

Piaras spotted me and took his attention off his trainer for a blink of an eye. That was all the time it took for the man to administer an object lesson Piaras wouldn't soon forget. I winced. One second Piaras was on his feet, the next he was on the mat, flat on his back.

Vegard whistled. "That one's gonna hurt tomorrow."

Piaras was slowly picking himself up as we walked over to the ring.

"That was my fault, darlin'," I told Piaras. "Sorry about that."

"It was his eyes' fault for wandering," the trainer said.

Piaras finished hauling himself to his feet with no help. Made sense. Your enemy sure as hell wasn't going to help you up on a battlefield or in a back alley.

His trainer spoke without turning to look at him. "Distractions are deadly, Cadet Rivalin."

Vegard grinned. "It's not always good to let a beautiful woman catch your eye."

My muse balked at the jump -- again.

I had another blog topic planned for today, but I'll push that one until next week (Keeping your story believable). I thought all of you writers would be more interested in the quagmire I find myself in now.

On the first draft of Con & Conjure, I got up to Chapter 17 before I realized that I couldn't go any further (let alone actually finish the book) until I went back to Chapter 1 and filled out the story a bit more. Basically my foundation wasn't strong enough to support the entire story. So I went back and I wrote, and I went ahead and called this Draft 2.

And to tell you the truth, all this didn't bother me because I remembered that this ALWAYS happens. I've never been able to write a book all the way from start to finish, even in a rough draft form. I need to have more details -- physical details, but mainly more character emotional depth -- before I could go any further. And I typically don't get the depth of character feeling and emotional punch I need until subsequent drafts.

Thus, feeling reassured, I started at Chapter 1 and went through to . . . you guessed it, Chapter 17. I spent the past two days trying to force the story forward, but it just isn't going. That tells me that I'm missing an important sub-plot somewhere, the mortar that will hold the book's bricks together. And who always has ended up being book "mortar"?

Piaras and Talon.

The boys just haven't fit into the story so far (the story's plenty action-packed without them) . I didn't want to leave them out, but they just didn't fit. This also happens in every book, but not to the extent it has here.

So Talon and Piaras are the problem. Though Talon being a problem is no surprise to anyone who knows him. The two of them are essentially standing on the other side of the Chapter 17 "wall" keeping me from getting through. And I'm sure Talon has been laughing at me the whole time. (growl, grumble) Punk kid. So I'm going to relent and let the boys in to play.

Your newly enlightened author,
Lisa

BTW -- To pacify Piaras, Monday's snippet from Bewitched & Betrayed will feature him.

We're moving!

Thought I'd let you all in on what Derek & I will be doing over the next few months.

We're selling the house we're in now, then we'll be buying and moving into another house. Naturally that entails packing and moving all of our stuff (and all of our fur-kids) from one house to the other and then unpacking. Oh, the joy (yes, that's sarcasm). We're looking forward to the new house (at least new to us), but I don't know of anyone in their right mind who enjoys the physical act of moving all their worldly goods. During all of this time-consuming activity, I have a book deadline (Con & Conjure), and a book coming out (Bewitched & Betrayed). Add to that my full-time day job and my magazine column, and the next few months are gonna be nuts.

Our house will be going on the market in the next week or so, and Derek and I have been looking at potential new homes for quite some time now. We've found a fabulous candidate, and plan to look at it on Sunday (that'll be our Super Bowl party).

I'll be keeping up my blogs, but just wanted to give ya'll a heads up that I may have to take a blogging day or two off occasionally. Some days I just won't be able to get it all done -- especially during the actual move itself. When we moved into the house we're in now, it took TWO WEEKS to get Internet access. Basically, anything could happen, so I'm just gonna roll with it.

That being said, tomorrow's post was going to be "Keeping a story believable," but with what I've discovered in the past few days about schedules for different books, I'm going to blog on that instead.

Lisa

Massive Amazon fail on every level

Most of you probably know about the corporate hissy fit that Amazon threw this weekend using Macmillian books (which includes the Tor fantasy line) as ammo. Whether or not you've been keeping track of how Amazon is -- as my agent Kristin said in her blog of yesterday -- repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot, today's post from Tor author John Scalzi will bring you up to speed and give you a good chuckle over your morning coffee at the same time.

My personal take on all of this is short and sweet: I will never buy anything from Amazon again.

This isn't the first time they've done the corporate equivalent of kicking sand into authors' eyes, and if their behavior this past weekend is any indication, it won't be the last. You don't pull the plug on every, single book a publisher offers and emerge unscathed. That hurts authors, and authors (and their fans) can speak very loudly with their credit cards. My card will be doing all of its talking somewhere else. If Amazon pulled this with one publisher, they'd just as easily do it to another.

Tuesday is traditionally book launch day. Quite a few Tor authors (including some debut authors) books weren't launched on Amazon yesterday. This affects their sales, which in turn affects their sales rankings, which determines whether or not their books make a bestseller list. In publishing, sales determine book contracts. Poor sales equals no book contract. So you can see why I'm angry. By pulling the plug on Macmillian's books, Amazon is hurting authors. Hurt one group of authors and you piss ALL of us off.

A pissed author and ex-Amazon customer,
Lisa

Book signing/panel discussion June 15

Just a heads up -- a really early heads up. In what's becoming an annual event, we'll be having another Fantasy/SciFi book signing/panel discussion/Q&A session at the Barnes & Noble in Cary, NC, on Tuesday, June 15 at 7:00 p.m.

The "we" I'm referring to is myself, Mark Van Name, James Maxey, David Drake, and joining us for the first time is Kelly Gay.

Those of you who have made it to our events before know that we have a great time, we'll answer pretty much anything, and Linda Maloof, the awesome event coordinator at the Cary B&N will have plenty of our books on hand for signing. Here is the store link with the address, a map, and driving directions.

I hope to get to meet some of you there!
Lisa

Monday Bewitched & Betrayed snippet featuring Talon

As promised, today's snippet features Raine and Talon. Enjoy!

I finally got into the cell.

Talon was conscious and giving me a lascivious look that I'd gotten on numerous occasions from his father. The similarities made me uncomfortable in ways I'd never imagined.

Talon was chained to the wall. There were enough links to allow limited movement, but that was about it. I thought it was a little overdone. No doubt the kid was nimble, and he was a knockout spellsinger, but wards, a gag spell and chained to the wall? Apparently I could add paranoid to my list of Sarad Nukpana descriptors.

Talon rattled his chains and grinned, slow and wicked. "I've had this dream before."

Yep, like father, like son.

I just looked at him. "Kid, I can go right back out the way I came in -- without you."

"I'll shut up."

"Smart choice."

A Saturday morning quickie

Yeah, ya'll can go ahead and take that title any way you want to. ; )

I just wanted to let you know that I've been getting all of your Name Raine's 6th Book entries. I normally respond to each and every one, but there have been so many entries (and I'm so swamped writing), that I haven't responded. Sorry. But I thought that you would rather have a book stay on deadline than a personal response. Love you, mean it. : )

We've only had about five inches of snow here and no ice, so losing power shouldn't be a problem. So I'll be posting a Talon snippet on time on Monday morning.

Going back to frenzied writing,
Lisa