Now, of course, I can’t go and copy what the Bioshock writers did. And I wouldn’t want to. But it did give me a lot of ideas for the steampunk story Anah and I have been talking about writing, about how important it is to put a fresh spin on the idea of steampunk without losing the substance of the story.

After Bioshock, my partner played the original Halo, and now we’re on to Dragon Age: Origins. Wonder what inspirations and ideas will come from that…

He’s already finished his first year away at college, his first year of being Out. He thinks he’s being open about who he is until he goes back home for the summer and has to face the fact that his parents still don’t know he’s gay. Even once that hurdle is past, he’s still hiding a lot, and throughout the story, Ricky struggles with how to handle his secrets.

Ricky isn’t the only one hiding himself, though. Jack thinks he knows himself, thinks he’s faced his past and that shutting himself up in his great big house in suburbia is the answer to everything, but Ricky shows him just how much of himself he’s turned his back on. In some ways, Jack’s road to being true to himself is easier than Ricky’s, because he’s already been through so much. In other ways, though, it’s Ricky who has it easy. The hurt Jack has been ignoring all these years is harsh, and it takes a lot to rip open those old wounds so they can finally heal.

Looking back on the story, I can only hope we conveyed how difficult the process was for both of them as well as I would like. From the inside — even two years on — it can be hard to tell what a reader will see in the story. This is one of those times when I’m actually seeking out the reviews that get posted, trying to out if we got it right.

I hope we did.

By 1am, we’d finished the final scene in Trammel (sequel to Tatterdemalion) and I went to collapse in bed. Tuesday morning, we got started with the outlines. We settled on four stories to outline, two for submission calls that we’re interested in and two that have been on our to-do list for… years, in one case.

Scene by scene, we outlined a novella and a short story the first day, and were up late into the night hashing out how to structure the first novel we wanted to outline. There were issues — who was the protagonist, why does the protagonist care about the problem, why does the romantic interest care about the problem — but we eventually nailed them down and ended up with a story we could work on. We got through the first chunk of the story that night, and finished up the outline on Wednesday, then moved on to the second novel we’d wanted to outline.

A note about outlining: We discovered, during this time, that it takes us a LONG TIME to choose appropriate character names.

The second novel was easier. We knew how the story was supposed to work already because we’d talked about it before, so we threw out some ideas for key events and crises, and then got started. The fourth outline of the week was finished Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, Anah looked at me and said “another outline?” I almost agreed, but in the end, we decided to put together our submission package for a novel that had been languishing in our files since last fall. I’d recently finished the last scene that had to be written and I’d done some editing in the process, so while Anah read that over and put in her own edits, I started on first drafts of the query letter and synopsis.

Around dinner time, I finished those first drafts and, once Anah finished her edits of the manuscript, we traded. She shorted the query letter and expanded the synopsis. And then we spent — I am not kidding — two hours debating the first sentence of the query letter, the sentence that would serve as the story’s tag line.

Two hours. One sentence.

But finally! Finally we agreed on one. And, looking back, I love it. It fits the story perfectly.

And then we decided to wait until Friday morning to submit. Because, man, after midnight, you do NOT want to turn something in, and then as soon as your head hits the pillow, you realize you were too damn braindead to realize you’d forgotten something major. Or, worse, when you wake up the next morning.

So when I got up Friday morning, we went over the synopsis and query letter one last time — and found things to change in both of them, of course. And then we double- and triple-checked the requirements for submission, and finally sent it off.

Now for the waiting.

It begins with my pink highlighter pencil (Faber-Castell Textliner Dry, from Levenger) and my dayjob work schedule. I draw a pink line across the top of each dayjob workday. That way, I don’t accidentally think any of those days will be big writing days.

Then I move on to checking for upcoming release dates. I put little flags on the calendar for each release date (April doesn’t have any for me). This lets me see, at a glance, if I need to be ready to update my website with new book information or not. And also if I need to be ready to celebrate.

After that, I pencil in closing dates for any submission calls I’m interested in (Samhain has a steampunk romance call that looks fun) and color over it in green highlighter pencil so I won’t accidentally miss it (as opposed to deliberately missing it because I’ve decided not to write for it).

This month, I have a vacation coming up, so that goes in next. One whole week of plotting and plotzing with Anah Crow. Any other important dates go in at this point, too.

Then I make my goal list. I have arrow-shaped Post-It stickies for this. This month’s goal sticky looks like this:

GOALS FOR APRIL:

Trammel
One Real Thing (this is actually already done now, completed while I was visiting Anah)
Percussion

I stick the sticky (that’s fun to type) on the top of the calendar and post it on my door at eye level. The May calendar is empty (except for the release date I already know about — Tatterdemalion, May 18) and posted higher up on the door. The March calendar is on my desk, ready to be filed away in my “calendars” folder for future reference.

And now, every time I turn my head, I can see my goals and dates right there, reminding me what’s important. I won’t forget.

How will we figure out where to move the chapter markers to during edits? I’m not sure. We changed some during the edits of Tatterdemalion, adding extra chapters here and there to break up long ones and better show shifts in the romance and character arcs, so I imagine that’s what will happen this time, too.

And there are a lot of shifts in the romance and character arcs.

I feel like this story is perhaps even more complex, emotionally, than Tatterdemalion. Anah and I are not big fans of the breakup-backtogether method of creating romantic tension in a series, but the political arc of the story definitely sets in motion a lot of changes for the characters — individually and as a group.

And those changes will help us mark out where the final chapters should go.

…I hope.

I’m just settling in to the idea of a new month. Next week, I’ll be visiting Anah Crow. Other than that, it’s just lots of dayjob and writing goals.

Right now, one of the big foci in my writing is setting details. The part of Trammel we’re writing right now is set in Detroit, and in a couple locations in Ohio, and I’m working hard to make sure the unique aspects of those locations really come through in the text. It’s not just street names and place names, it’s more about the feel of a place, architecture, sounds and smells… Is the night quiet, or noisy — if it’s noisy, is it with birds and animals or cars and sirens? And it’s not like I can take any part of Detroit and extrapolate out — I have to focus on the specific area of Detroit we’re working in, because every neighborhood of Detroit has a different feel to it, different sights and sounds.

Earlier in the book, we were in Atlantic City. Though both Detroit and Atlantic City are places with casinos (and therefore tourists), Atlantic City has a totally different feel to it, and we’ve worked hard to make the two settings very distinct. Different smells, different architecture, different sounds in the middle of the night.

When you’re writing, how much do you pay attention to setting details? When you’re reading, do you notice setting details, do they help the world feel more real?

*looks at Trammel file*

Oh. There. Right.

So the lovely Anah Crow did some checking and, since March 9, she and I have written more than 60,000 words on Trammel. It’s not quite finished yet (we’ve just started the last scene in Chapter 8 of 10), but we’re getting close. I’m at work today and tomorrow, but I wonder if we’ll manage to finish it by Monday when I leave to go visit her? Could happen.

The math works out to be about 3,000 words a day, by the way. And I know there were days when we did far, far less than that because of other obligations (like work, parenting, social events, and life in general), so I’m more than pleased with our output.

(Someday, we’ll learn how to manage our time so that we actually have days off, too. Maybe after we turn this novel in.)

See, over the weekend, while Anah was off doing more interesting things (being social), I remembered that One Real Thing was sitting in my to-do folder waiting for me to write a couple more scenes in to finish off the manuscript. And I thought, well, why not? I have time. I can’t work on the current bit of Trammel until Anah gets back. So why not work on this instead?

Oh, I’d forgotten how much I love this story. It has friends-to-lovers and TPE and damsels in distress and rediscovering yourself (or discovering who you are for the first time) and and and…

Yes. So I’m enjoying working on these little bits and pieces in between the rest of my work today.

How’s your Monday going?

Tomorrow, we’ll start work on chapter three. Some of the emotional conflicts have already been set up, but more are coming in the next chapter, and then the political plotline will begin to move in earnest, as well. Lindsay and Dane have come a long way since the start of Tatterdemalion, and I love showing how that book and the time since its ending have shaped them. The new characters and new challenges of this story will continue to shape them, and I’m thrilled to be working on it.

For the writers out here, do you prefer working on open-ended series or tightly-planned ones? And for the readers, do you prefer reading series with planned endings or more open-ended series?

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!