Teaser Tuesday – ‘Twixt, the Demon in Tweed

I was hoping to write a “real” blog post for today, but work has been zapping my will to live lately. What I have left has been channeled into my revisions and beta-reading. So, instead I leave you with a teaser from ‘Twixt, having realized that I’ve posted only one other from this story.

This is one of the scenes I’ve been revising, and it doesn’t need much introduction. Warning: it’s probably the most foul-mouthed scene in the story. It also contains one of my favorite lines.

“Ms. St.Clair. Stop right there.”

Gabrielle froze, not because the voice told her to, but from shock. She knew that voice. Fists clenched, she turned around. Bonnie Woods had left the town hall, and she strode across the lot as though she weren’t merely a town council member but Empress of Ashbury. One hand held her sensible hat to her golden-died curls. The other resided on her tweed-covered hip. Sunlight flashed off the many gaudy rings on her fingers.

“Listen to me, you little slave of Satan. I want to know what you did with it.”

The hairs on Gabrielle’s neck stood on end. Not this again. She searched the parking lot but there wasn’t a soul in sight. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, I’m not supposed to come near you, so you need to back off.”

“Oh, you know what I’m talking about. You Bible-burning, sister-killing, demon-fucking whore-child—I want that book.” Bonnie’s eyes blackened, a lot like her daughter’s had yesterday but more so. The blackness spread until not even a hint of white remained. The thing advancing on her no longer looked like Bonnie. Just an evil, soulless shell.

Gabrielle stepped back. With her left hand she dug into her pocket for her car keys, and she raised her cane defensively with her right. “Whatever the hell you are, leave me alone. I don’t have your damn book.”

“Liar!” Bonnie lunged. Her movements were sloppy, jerky, and also way faster than Gabrielle figured Bonnie should be able to move. But whatever was controlling Bonnie’s body, it wasn’t the holier-than-thou bitch whose Bible she’d set alight. It was some other underworldly bitch.

Gabrielle faltered backward, barely escaping Bonnie’s hands. Yelling, Bonnie stumbled into a nearby SUV. Gabrielle didn’t wait to see her recover. She dodged the scattered cars, running as fast as her wimpy back would take her.

“Get back here!” A strong hand grasped her shoulder and dragged her away from her car door. The keys clattered to the asphalt. Gabrielle’s back slammed into the trunk, and fresh pain shuddered through her. Her knees buckled with it. “Where is it? Tell me where it is, you demon child!” Bonnie wrapped her fingers around Gabrielle’s head and shook her.

She could feel hair ripping from her scalp, smelled the mint in Bonnie’s hot breath. “Let me go!” Her human arms were no match for Bonnie’s demonic strength, though. The older woman’s grip was like steel. Gabrielle tightened her fingers around the cane and whacked Bonnie’s legs with it.

Bonnie’s face contorted with pain. A hideous red began to glow around the rims of her eyes, as if whatever possessed her was attempting to break through Bonnie’s skin. She smacked Gabrielle’s head against the car, and the world flashed black. Dull pain spread throughout her skull, an unpleasant contrast to the sharp pain in her back. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know.” Bonnie had pressed against her, leaving her no room to gain leverage. No ability to hit or kick. So she did the only thing she could think of—drove the bottom of the cane into Bonnie’s ribs.

With an “oomph,” Bonnie fell off her and landed on the pavement. Gabrielle grabbed the keys and threw herself into the car. Hands trembling, she started the engine and slid forward, not bothering to check whether she’d run over any part of Bonnie.

In Which Our Blogger Discusses How She Handles Her Revisions (and it involves more than a stiff drink)

I’m not finished with my revisions yet, but since this was my first time tackling agent-given revisions, I thought I’d explain how I’ve been going about it. I’m currently coming down the homestretch so I don’t think much will change before I send off the shiny new novel. Thus, here goes….

1. Begin reading novel in preparation for agent’s notes. Try with with the passion and resolve of 300 Spartans to not make a million little changes as you read.
2. Fail at not making those changes because you are a mild-mannered, bookish research consultant from NH, and not a macho, badass warrior from Sparta.
3. Review agent’s notes. Have a breakdown because they make so much sense and you can’t believe you didn’t pick up on all those things yourself. Decide that you must be a horrible writer, and your novel is utter crap.
4. Drink a margarita or two.
5. Get over yourself and review notes a second time. Do something useful like develop a plan.
6. Implement plan. First, highlight the 5 or 6 easiest changes, then make them. All changes are made in red so that you can go back and find them easily if necessary.
7. Feel as though you accomplished something and eat some chocolate to celebrate.
8. Continue with the next round of edits in the same manner. Highlight the next 5 easiest to implement suggestions and get to work.
9. Realize that making these changes in spot A means you will need to fix things in spot B so they still make sense. Decide to attack all the “spot Bs” as you think of them in order to save yourself headaches later.
10. At last your agent’s notes are down to the last 5 or so changes–the big ones you’ve been putting off. Stare at them for a bit and wait for your brain to provide brilliant ideas.
11. While waiting have another margarita.
12. Get to work, naturally starting from the end of the novel and working toward the beginning. Because why work in chronological order when you can make life more interesting?
13. Spend a day rewriting a few sentences, then putting them back to their original form. Decide you’ve reached the point where you need to back away from the computer.
14. Realize you’ve bulked up your novel by 4000 words. Whistle innocently. After all, it’s not your fault that your agent didn’t know about your strange and unnatural love for writing car chase scenes.
15. Double check to make sure you’ve hit everything on the agent’s notes, then print out your novel so it can be freshly attacked with a red pen. At this point, you’re looking for all those dumb “spot B” type errors that you’ve missed, freshly added typos, and overall integration of edits. Strive once more to be a warrior for Sparta and not fiddle with things just for the sake of fiddling.*
16. Make any changes to the electronic version, obsess and bite nails, then send off.*
17. Have a margarita.*

*I haven’t completed these steps yet, so I’m assuming that’s how they’ll go.

This system seems to be working pretty well for me. Of course, the final verdicts on how well it worked will come when I make that last hard copy pass and see how many plotholes I created, and then find out whether my agent thinks I’ve improved things. So we’ll see. Also, please note: the margaritas in these steps are optional. Substitutions will be allowed for any subsequent revisions.

Teaser Tuesday – Necromance Me, IV

Since this will probably be my last teaser from Necromance Me, I’m posting something other than an action scene for a change. This is more like a bonding scene, or at least as close to bonding as Tamar and Eli can get. Eli is Tamar’s mentor. They’re stuck watching a birthday party for Jenny, the girl Tamar is guarding.

Eli walked over with a slice of cake for me. Chocolate with vanilla icing—my favorite. “You’re frowning. Notice anything?”

“No.” I stabbed a large piece of cake with my fork. “A little help would have been nice, but as usual my charge is suffering from I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass-itis.” I stuffed the whole piece in my mouth and chewed in Jenny’s direction.

Squeeing erupted at the table, although I wasn’t sure for what reason. My brain just registered the words “present,” “Switzerland,” and “skiing.” I guessed Jenny won a roundtrip ticket to the Swiss Alps for accomplishing the difficult fete of turning eighteen.

“The Van Allens’ timing with this party is unfortunate,” Eli said.

“Gods, you’re so polite. Of course, they’re not worried. That’s what here for—to worry and work for them. It’s what you hire the help to do.”

Eli scraped the excess icing from his cake. “You work for them, true, but you work for something larger. You work for the Temple, for the gods, and for humanity. Remember your larger purpose.”

“How noble. Are you seriously not going to eat that?” I pointed to his leftover icing with my fork. “That’s horrible. The cake is only the vehicle for delivering the icing. Kind of like the toast is only so you can eat the butter, and the ice cream is only so you can eat the hot fudge. And there you go wasting it. Your lack of normal human qualities worries me sometimes.”

“You’re overabundance of them worries me frequently.”

I had a couple different retorts for that, but I’d stuffed my mouth with the last of the cake, and icing glued my tongue to my teeth.

The Joys of Cleaning

No, not your house. Your writing, of course!

I don’t know why, but the pervasive feeling among most writers is that editing their work is akin to having a root canal. Without the Novocaine. It’s a mindset I’ve never understood. For me, writing is hard and the product is usually messy. Editing, however, is the joy that follows. It’s the process by which you clean up that sloppy, stinky manuscript and turn it into a thing of beauty. Or, barring that, something that wouldn’t embarrass you if your mother saw it.

I’m at a new stage in this editing dance. The novel in question was already edited once by me, then sent to beta readers and edited again. Now, for the first time, I’m also dealing with edit suggestions from my agent. After I did the “ooh, fun!” dance that would mark me as insane in most writing circles, I was faced with a new problem. How to tackle these types of comments. Already my planned strategy is deteriorating.

Case in point, I failed at Step 1: read through the MS but don’t touch anything. Nope, couldn’t do it. I couldn’t read without wanting to rewrite pieces. Fortunately, the pieces that made my fingers itch relate to the things I’m supposed to attack. As if I needed further proof that my agent’s comments were spot on. *bows down*

So this will be a learning experience, one that I assume will be as messy as a first draft, but which will result in a cleaner, shinier novel. Now if only I was this motivated to clean my house…. Alas, I think I’m more allergic to dust rags than dust itself.

On a related note: this blog is due for a cleaning too, particularly my links. So if you notice some changes… yeah, I’ll be working on that for a bit too.

Close Your Eyes; Hold On For Dear Life

Every writer with the goal of being published knows this business/adventure/state of insanity is a rollercoaster. Half the battle is finding the strength to not scream “Stop! Let me off!”

It starts with the actual writing. It’s awesome. It sucks. It’s awesome. It sucks. And finally, who cares because it’s done!

At some point, if you write novels, you start your journey on the query-go-round. Here, it’s a whole ‘nother coaster. I got a rejection. I got a request! My request turned into a rejection. I got another request! Until the hills and dips and twists all start making you motion sick.

At long last, you might think you’re lucky. One of those requests turns into an offer of representation. Yes! You step off the rollercoaster and discover waiting for you… another (bigger) rollercoaster.

And so on. From what I hear, it never ends. Hold onto your barf bags.

I had a rollercoastery (yes, I just invented that word) kind of week recently. The agent I’d searched so long and hard for took a new job as an editor. And while I’m thrilled for him (congrats again and best of luck, Brendan!), I couldn’t help feeling a little motion sick.

You see, I’d discovered yet another roller coaster, one I’d never noticed before. One I’d never even thought about before. But once again, I closed my eyes, held on, screamed a little, and survived the downhill. And I’m happy to announce that I’m now working with the wonderful Suzie Townsend. She has lots of new ideas for ‘Twixt and I can’t wait to dive in again and get to work.

All this to say, as I’ve said before, is that if you want to succeed in writing, you’ve got to just hang on and keep screaming. You only fail for sure if you quit and get off the coaster. (Or well, if you don’t strap yourself in right, go flying out of the cart as the thing spins upside down, drop three stories to the ground below, and go splat all over the concrete. But let’s not talk about that possibility.)

A Tiny Happy Roundup

The past week has been a bad for me on many fronts: writing, work, and the ever-threatening sciatic pain that likes to flare up when I need to shovel snow. I mean it when I say T G I F.

Although I’m a pessimist by nature (aka a “realist” :-p), I don’t actually enjoy wallowing in despair. So this week’s Friday post is a list of the three tiny happys that made me smile through my misery.

1. I picked up a novel I wrote but hadn’t looked at since September, and realized it’s not half bad. Usually I loathe things that have sat for so long. Thus either my writing is improving, or it’s simply a kick-ass novel.

2. The WIP I’m editing is pretty good. Sure, it’s an absolute mess right now. (Personal note: NEVER change the plot and the worldbuilding halfway through a WIP again.) But the extensive edits I’m working on are helping, and the basics of the story and the characters are fun.

3. I found a card from the lovely Clovia on Absolute Write in my mail yesterday, with a wicked funny poem she wrote. I needed something to make me smile, and that totally did it.

So there it is – a tiny happy roundup from my hellish week. May the door hit the past week on its ass as it leaves. What kind of tiny happys have you had recently?

Teaser Tuesday – Strange Misery, the Feline Version

For reasons I can’t go into publicly yet, I may be getting familiar with this story again. It’s been on hold since September when my YA went on sub, and I’d forgotten how much I like it. This scene follows Jessica (the MC) as she and her quasi-allies hunt down the guy who framed her for murder. Only Jessica’s stuck in a cat’s body at the moment and is extremely frustrated by her size and lack of human vocal cords.

The sun was high so the satyrs looked particularly menacing in the head to toe clothing that protected their sun-phobic skin. Hoods or hats covered their heads. Sunglasses hid their eyes. Only I ruined their street cred, but I liked to think the black fur on my legs made it look like I was wearing a feline version of leather pants.

Scumbag lived on the right side of a dilapidated duplex. The vinyl siding was worn, and large sheets of white paint peeled off the door. Beer cans littered the patch of dead lawn, and on the sidewalk glass shards sparkled in the light.

Devon knocked.

I heard male voices inside. Oh, it would be so nice, so convenient if Note-writer was here now. Then we could wrap this party up, go home, and figure out a way to explain it all to the sylfs and Gryphons. I could be back in my bed by tonight.

Instead, the door was thrown open and a pudgy guy stared us down. Well, stared the satyrs down. I was so short that he probably didn’t see me. A cigarette dangled from between his lips. “Yeah?” He didn’t bother to remove it and stuck there, glued to his lip with spit.

“We’re looking for Pete,” Lucen said, taking a step forward.

“Hey now.” The guy thrust himself between Lucen and the doorway. “What you—”

But Lucen pulled off his hat, revealing his goat-like horns, and the guy didn’t merely shut up. He blanched. Lucen grabbed his arm. “Tell you what. You bring him to the front door, then you leave out the back door. Got it?”

The guy nodded, murmuring something in Spanish, and backed up. “Pete! You got friends here!”

Pete appeared around the corner, looking just like I remembered him. Though my gift was dulled in this form, I could taste a weak burnt oil oozing from him. Cat instinct took over. My back arched and I bared my teeth.

But Pete didn’t see me. His gaze took in Lucen’s horns and the three other men with him, and he came up with the only sane idea. He spun and fled.

With a scream, I charged him down. There really was something to be said for the power of four legs. I snatched his ankle, dug in my claws, and sunk my teeth into his jeans.

“Motherfucker!” He shook his leg violently, trying to dislodge me, and the extra second gave the satyrs time to grab his arms and slam him into the wall.

Devon closed the door behind us. The roommate had vanished.

Lucen pulled Pete’s ID from his pocket while the other two lugged Pete, who was now cursing in something that could have been Russian, into a folding chair. “You lose this a week or so ago?”

Pete’s fear washed over me in great tangerine waves. I hopped up on the cluttered table and settled on my haunches—I had haunches?—to watch a show I’d rather have been able to participate in.

Friday Free-for-all

First, got to show off my fab faux cover for ‘Twixt created by Gretchen McNeil, Master Procrastinator. It is lovely, isn’t? Gretchen was obviously bored this week and so did mock covers for a bunch of purgie novels. That’s creativity. Me–I just mindlessly read about stuff I’m not interested in or stare out the window when I’m bored.

We racked the elderberry wine last weekend. (Ok, the husband did most of the work, I just helped out.) Translation for people who don’t home brew: the remains of what were once elderberries got discarded, and the wine got moved from the primary fermentation bucket to the carboy where it will sit for a long time, finish any remaining fermentation, and all the nasties will fall out of solution.

Husband and I tasted it, and it tasted surprisingly like dry red wine. Not at all what I was expecting. Of course, it also tasted pretty foul because wine at this stage is not something you actually want to drink. Much spitting and washing out the mouth happened afterward.

I know, I know… I want to do a post on the wine-making and how it relates to writing (which is to say, it doesn’t but it will be fun trying to create an analogy there). Besides, to tie this all back into my lovely faux cover art above – one of the major characters in ‘Twixt is a wine-maker. And so we’ve come full circle. That’s probably my cue for ending this post.

Happy weekend!

Teaser Tuesday – Necromance Me, 3

Hopping back into this one for the week since the new WIP doesn’t have a good teaser yet. Tamar’ is on a mission to rescue Jenny, the girl she’s supposed to be protecting. Templeton runs the private school Tamar and Jenny attend.

The door loomed in front of me. I set my bag down and mentally prepared myself. I had one chance to barge in and take everyone by surprise. Maybe three seconds before someone could pull a gun on me or use Jenny as a shield. I had to make them count. The door would either open or it wouldn’t. If it did, I had to be ready.

Not for the first time since I’d regained consciousness today, I fervently wished I was cramming for midterms.

My hand shook. Three… two… grab. I yanked on the handle. The door flew open.

One second: I took in the scene. There was no hallway leading to more rooms. There was just this creepy, candle-lit space with rough wooden walls and a dirt floor. Oil lamps burned on a couple of polished wood tables next to some nasty looking knives. Five robed figures, identifiable only by their heights, stood in a circle with a slumped over Jenny in the center. Necromancy symbols glowed with power on the floor. The stench of incense filled my head.

Two seconds: Everyone turned to me. Hands began to move. I didn’t have time to be choosy with my targets. I needed to eliminate as many threats as possible, as quickly as possible. No time to feel my inner revulsion at the thought of shooting someone. No time to worry if the person I shot was my father.

Three seconds: I fired. The council would want whoever they could get alive, but that wasn’t my problem right now. Two of the figures went down in succession.

One of the three left standing pulled out a gun. I whipped around the doorway as it went off.

“No!” It was my father’s voice.

I gritted my teeth. Gods, he was in there. He chose this, I told myself. He chose to do this. I dug my shoulder into the wall, summoning the courage stick my head back in the line of fire and see what was going on.

“Tamar, put the gun down. Come in here.”

Bastard. He spoke in the same tone he’d used on me when I was child. I ought to shoot him just for the insult.

Anger led to recklessness, which was good a substitute for courage as I usually got. Gun at the ready, I checked around the corner.

Everyone had thrown off their hoods for better visibility. My father had one arm outstretched, resting on the German guy’s gun. Templeton had broken the protective shields around Jenny, and crouched next to her, a knife at Jenny’s throat. As for Jenny, she looked pale but her eyes were alert. Blood pooled under legs. Bleeding someone to death was the favored trick of a necromancer because the victim could die slowly in a controlled fashion.

“Listen to your father,” Templeton said. “Or we’ll speed up the process.”

Jenny shut her eyes.

I trained the gun on Templeton, vying for time since I was all out of ideas. “Yeah? And then what will you do? Give me detention? Listen, bitch. You’re not the one who’s had to live with Jenny for the past four months. If anyone deserves to kill her, it’s me.”

Friday Free-for-all

As usual, any news about my life is dull. So here’s an idea… Check out Jill Myles’ steamy, paranormal romance debut: Gentleman Prefer Succubi. Confession time – I am a romance novel virgin. So Jill’s book will be my first. Ha! Seriously, Jill’s awesome, and I’ve heard nothing but great things about this book. I can’t wait to start my copy.

As for my dull news, the husband (with a little assistance from me) started his/our first batch of elderberry wine last week. I hope to do a post about the process soon. Assuming, he’ll give me access to the photos. *taps foot*

I am also, with a heavy heart, putting aside the novel from this Tuesday’s teaser, to go work on a different project. I will return to it, but first I’m going to work on a project that the agent is more interested in. (Hey, I want to get published, all right?) And although I’m sad to be bidding (a temporary) adieu to Fire Dance, I’m also getting excited again about the new project. My brain has been spinning with ideas. It’s a modern retelling of one of my favorite novels, with a paranormal twist. So it’s also a reason to dig out my dog-eared, yellow-paged copy of the book and re-immerse myself in it.

Finally, I’m sharing my joy at having discovered the perfect food for writers – rumballs. They are chocolate and booze combined in one small, high calorie, soul-soothing, ego-replenishing treat. And they taste wonderful.

Happy Friday, all!