This morning, I got an email that brought an immediate smile to my face. Final cover art!
Not too long ago, our editor for Tatterdemalion sent us an early draft of the cover art, and then another, and another, each time asking for our opinions. We were pleased with the first draft we saw, but by the time the back-and-forth was finished, we were both thrilled!
The cover artist — who we now know is Mandy M. Roth — had a great feel for one of the main characters, Dane, and did an excellent job of finding not one but two images that suited him. The whole feel of the cover, from color choices to layout, makes me a very happy camper.
So now that I have the go-ahead to share the cover art, I’m doing that, and giving you all a link to the Coming Soon page on the Samhain website.
Yay!
Yesterday, I came home from a lovely visit with the lovely Anah Crow, in which we crocheted, watched the first couple days of the Olympics, and did tight outlines of the two books that follow Tatterdemalion in the Foundations of Magic trilogy. We also, with the help of our awesome editor (Anne Scott), picked out a back-of-book excerpt for Tatterdemalion, and received an early ARC of Tatterdemalion itself. No cover art yet, but the book isn’t coming out until mid-May!
I promised I’d chart the timeline for the path to publication for this book, and so I shall. But… not today. Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about outlining, and the importance of knowing where you’re going when writing a series that isn’t open-ended.
When Anah and I started writing Tatterdemalion, we knew how it was going to end. We also were under the terrible delusion we could fit it all in one book. Hah! That book would’ve been about 500,000 words long and likely unpublishable. But we wrote it anyway, or started to. We got about halfway through and realized that it was a mess, so we started over (about 6 months later) with the idea of splitting it up into a series of stories. A lot of the details have changed since then (the main character’s age and personality, the love interest, the theme), but the endpoint — the goal — has remained the same.
How we get there, though? Well, that took some doing.
Anah and I had to rewrite Tatterdemalion about fifty bazillion times because we had no outline when we started, and kept realizing things didn’t work as we’d thought they would. So it’s been our goal to NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. Ever. Really.
So back in November, we sat down in her office, me with a spiralbound journal and her with a giant sketchbook, and outlined every single scene in the second book in the series. We named all the important characters, figured out how they fit, and bounced ideas off each other until we had it all nailed down.
Then, when I showed up at her house this past weekend, we realized the outline ended too early. So we sat down again — this time at her dining room table, but me still with the same spiralbound journal and her with that same giant sketchbook — and finished it. We found the happy ending, fleshed out the plot, made it work. And then we decided that we needed to outline the third book, too, because I won’t be able to visit her again until April, and if all goes well, we might be actually writing the third book by April.
The third book was harder to outline. It’s the final book in a trilogy. All the story arcs have to be resolved, all the major questions (and most of the minor ones) have to be answered. I started by making a list of goals for the story, everything we needed to touch on, to make sure the trilogy would actually be finished in three books.
Then we sat back down at the dining room table (kicking out her lovely partner, who had been sorting cards for a boardgame) and went back at it. How do we tackle the emotional growth of the main character and show who and what he’s become over the course of the three books? How do we make sure the relationship arc gets enough time to feel complete while still dealing with the political and magical questions we’ve raised throughout the first two stories? How do we deal with the family issues?
Every scene got talked about, dialogue sketched out, goals for the scenes noted down. And when I left yesterday, we had one complete book awaiting publication and two very detailed outlines ready to write from. Maybe after they’re published, I’ll show you the outlines.
Hopefully, we won’t have to rewrite these two nearly as much as we did the first. 
Happy Valentine's Day from Foley
It’s been a busy couple months! If you watch my Twitter feed, you already know something about that.
Anah and I have been hard at work on edits, FLEs, and galley proofs (as well as blurb forms, cover forms, and author bio forms) for our novel Tatterdemalion, which will be coming out from Samhain in May. I’m loving every minute of it.
I love the whole process of taking a story and making it better. I love finding the mistakes and fixing them, making sure that the final product is as close to perfect as it can get. I love learning things I didn’t know before (like that I perpetually misspell both “mantel” and “straitjacket”, even after I’ve just been corrected on them, because muscle memory tells my fingers that’s how those words are typed).
I’m a very goal-oriented person, and I rely heavily on measurable results, so every time I add new words and phrases to my “Worry Words” list that I’ll use to edit future manuscripts, I get a great feeling of satisfaction that I’ve already achieved something, already learned something important from this process. That’s really exciting for me.
In the next few days, I’ll be making a post about the project timeline, too. You can see how long it REALLY takes for a story to get from concept to publication. (Answer: A lot longer than you think!)
2c whole wheat flour
1/2c oatmeal
1/4c nonfat dry milk
1tsp baking powder
1c canned pumpkin
1 egg
1/4c brown sugar
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a large bowl, mix the flour, oatmeal, dry milk, and baking powder.
In a separate bowl, mix the pumpkin, egg, and loosely-packed brown sugar.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until the dough
forms. Knead the dough until it comes together in a large ball.
Form the dough into two-inch diameter balls (or one-inch balls if your dog
is smaller than Samson), and lay them out on a cookie sheet. Press the balls
with a fork to flatten them to a uniform thickness so they bake evenly.
Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until golden brown. Let the cookies cool
completely before giving them to your dog. Samson has burnt his tongue more
than once out of impatience!
Jasper woke long before the lights came on, dragged out of sleep by the dreadful feeling of something going terribly wrong. He woke pawing at his head, trying to untangle the thing that was wrapped around it and finding nothing but his own hair. The thing that was tightening around his brain wasn’t there. There was nothing there to fight.
There never was. Jasper sat up with his back to the cinderblock wall and tried to breathe. Breathing didn’t help, even if he breathed right, but Jasper had to try. Everyone said he would feel better if he just tried. No one seemed to notice that he was trying, that he had been trying ever since he was a kid. He breathed, in through the nose and out through the mouth, counting and trying to relax his shoulders and warm his fingers. The blue nightlight at the foot of his bed cast everything in an eerie glow, but Jasper tried to use it as a focus. If you were trying, he thought, it wouldn’t happen.
It happened anyway. It always did.
Rated 5 Delightful Divas from Dark Diva Reviews –
“I have to say that I didn’t expect the story to go as it did; but that just makes the ending all the sweeter. And yes, I’ll say it—after all this is a romance and a Christmas one at that—of course there’s going to be an HEA… but for a while there, it was debatable. And really, it’s amazing what some authors can do with a short, short story.”
-Katy, Dark Diva Reviews (read the review here.)
They sat on a bench and watched the empty swings sway in the breeze, their fingers still twined together. Gray closed his eyes for a long moment, listening to the faint squeak of the rusted chains, the whisper of the last autumn leaves blown across the newly-fallen snow, and the steady huff of Vale’s breath. He savored the sound, memorizing it for the comfort of another year of days and nights that felt impossibly, infinitely long and lonely.
He knew without looking that Vale was doing the same. They had long since fallen into rhythms and patterns to carry them through the night with nary a pause for planning what was to come next. Those pauses wasted precious moments Gray could otherwise spend as he was now, turning to see Vale’s beautiful golden face lit up with the ecstasy of their contact.
“Has it been a good year for you?” Gray asked. In the beginning, they’d tried to send messages to each other, sharing news of their days, but nothing made it through the barrier of the curse. Even mutual friends, the few they’d once had, found themselves unable to speak of Gray in Vale’s presence, or of Vale to Gray. Those friends had all moved on, now, made too uncomfortable by the curse’s control over their thoughts and actions.
Vale gave the same answer as always: “Long.” After a pause that felt as long as a year, he continued. “I know how to break the curse.”
“Becoming Us is the perfect story about friends who become lovers. It’s laced with tons of emotion and incredibly hot sex. Bryce’s uncertainty and anguish over coming to terms with his sexuality and coming out to his friends and family is tangible, and his journey of sexual discovery is breathtaking in its intensity.”
-Nannette, Joyfully Reviewed (read the review here.)
“You will either love or hate this book – there is no middle ground, but I’m betting that more of you will love it. Definitely recommended.”
-Wave, Reviews by Jessewave (read the review here.)
“Ms. Crow and Ms. Fox have created a wonderful story about the difficulties one man had to overcome to realize his dream, a love for all time.”
-Teresa, Fallen Angel Reviews (read the review here.)
“Bryce and Zac come alive on the pages of the book, and while this is an emotional story, it also has some very entertaining and fun scenes. Overall this is a very well written story that touched my heart and has won a spot on my keeper shelf. I highly recommend it.”
-Lily, Rainbow Reviews (read the review here.)
“Becoming Us is a deeply emotional story about a guy who was in a no win situation, and had to think long and hard about the choice he was about to make. There is no easy way out, and the consequences of picking either road were essentially untenable. I found myself deeply immersed in Bryce’s struggle and, although I wasn’t crying along with him, I certainly understood his frustration and need to vent.”
-EmmyJag (read the review here.)
Becoming Us was also included on the Dear Author Recommended Reads for October 2009. (read the list here.)
“Do you need an ambulance?” A kindly-looking older woman had her phone out.
“No!” Jasper gulped and shook his head. “It’s okay. It… it just happens. I can get home.” Samson could feel him shaking; maybe it was the seizure, but now Jasper smelled like fear. “Come on, Samson.” He wasn’t ready to be walking, but he tugged on Samson’s leash to get Samson to move.
“Jeremy can walk you home,” the woman said, patting at the arm of the scrawny teenager lurking behind her. “Go on, Jer.”
“Oh, no.” Jasper clutched Samson’s leash to him as he backed away, about to fall off the curb. “Samson can help me.”
Samson made sure to flash the SERVICE DOG panel on the sides of his harness as he circled and settled himself at Jasper’s side. Whether it was that or his unusual size that made people back off, Samson didn’t care. As soon as the walk sign lit up, he guided Jasper across the street. The sooner they showed that Jasper was well enough to walk, the sooner the strangers would leave him alone. And then the sour smell of Jasper’s fear would stop clogging Samson’s nose and throat.
Jasper leaned against him as they walked, giving up on the leash with one hand to hold the harness between Samson’s shoulder blades. He could stay upright as long as Samson steered. “I saw something in the street,” he muttered as they got to the other side. Looking over his shoulder, he let Samson guide him so he didn’t walk into the newspaper box. “It was so dark. There was a little white cat. It was trying to get to me, but it ran in front of a car, and…”
diannefox
