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A question for the legal eagles

More a question for the legislative eagles, I suppose. This has nothing to do with the Memoirs of Lady Trent; it’s a question for the modern-day U.S. (Because when I’m on the home stretch of a book is a great time for totally unrelated stories to mug me!)

Suppose there is a federal law to deal with Topic X. Ambiguous Situation B arises, sparking disagreement over whether the law applies in this instance or not. This is the first time Ambiguous Situation B has occurred, but it likely won’t be the last, and Topic X is a pretty serious issue, so people are very invested in getting the matter settled beyond question.

Quite apart from the fact that there would be presumably be a legal brangle over the applicability or irrelevance of Law for Topic X, I imagine that there would also be a rush to amend the law and render that question permanently moot.

My question for you all: how would this proceed?

Assume that Congress is very interested in getting the law amended ASAP, but that it is divided as to whether it should be amended to say “nope, definitely doesn’t apply here” or “hell yes it applies.” Would there be competing bills, one for each side? (I imagine there would.) Different bills in the House and the Senate? How do those get started? What process do they go through before they come to a vote? How rapidly could all of this unfold, presuming there is a compelling reason for trying to make it happen quickly? How would Congress deal with there being two bills in direct opposition to one another, if that’s actually what would be going on? What effect would the ongoing legal brangle have on the legislative process? (The lawsuit being settled in favor of “yes, it applies” could theoretically render unnecessary any change to say that yes, it applies, but Congress is now worried about the possibility of Ambiguous Situations C, D, E, and everything else they can think up. And if the lawsuit gets settled the other way, the side that wants Ambiguous Situation B covered could say “well, we just changed the law, and this version definitely applies.”)

I know only slightly more than zilch about the legislative process in this country, so this is one of those “talk to me like I’m five” questions. I need to know the procedure here before I can judge what it would do to the rest of the story.

Things They Do Not Teach You in Writer School, #17

So as I mentioned before, I think this book is going to run a little long.

How exactly do I know that?

Nobody ever talks about this in books of writing advice, at least not that I’ve ever seen. Nor have I heard it being discussed in creative writing classes (though if your teacher taught you this, I’d love to hear about it). We all know writers need a variety of skills, things like characterization and plotting and the ability to string together an interesting sentence . . . but nobody talks about how you learn to tell how much story you’ve got in your hand.

I thought of this because I was doing some calculations, trying to figure out how hard I would need to drive myself to get a draft done by the end of the month. It’s a little tricky, doing that math when you don’t actually know what goes on the other side of the equal sign. I knew I couldn’t fit the remaining plot into ten thousand words; fine, that means I’ll overrun my target length of 90K. By how much? Not sure. Well, okay: if I wrote two thousand words a day instead of one thousand, then I could write 26K by the end of the month. Ooof, no, way overkill — there’s no way this is 26K of plot remaining. Somewhere between 10 and 26. 15-ish, maybe? That sounds about right . . . .

How do I know this? I can’t even really tell you. I am not the sort of writer who says “this chapter will consist of four scenes, two of them one thousand words long and the other two five hundred.” The scenes are as long as they need to be to get the job done, and I find out how long that is by writing them. I keep forgetting to put in chapter breaks, because for four years I wrote Onyx Court novels that didn’t have any; now I go back and drop them in wherever there’s an appropriate point within a certain range of wordcount. But I can only forecast by approximation: can I get Isabella off Lahaui in a thousand words? Definitely not. Two thousand? Ehhhh, maybe . . . (Verdict as of tonight’s writing: nope, definitely not.) I won’t need five thousand, that’s for damn sure. Somewhere between 2 and 5.

I have to do this all book long. I want to write a 90K book; that means I need to be able to judge how much stuffing goes into the sausage. I sort of weigh it in my hand as I go, looking at the casing, trying to decide whether I should pack more in or not. Eventually I start to feel like okay, we’re at the point now where it’s time to pull things together and wrap them up, rather than adding in new stuff. Within a certain margin of error, I’m right. (When Ashes ran 30K long, I saw that coming a mile off. I hadn’t even finished writing Part One when I e-mailed my editor to say, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.)

Nobody taught me how to do this. I don’t know if it can be taught, because the answers can vary so much from writer to writer. What one person knocks off in five hundred words, another might spend two thousand on. Even if you’re the sort who outlines ahead of time instead of making it up as you go along, you need a sense for how many words it will take you to say something. And I’m not sure how you acquire that sense, other than by writing a lot and seeing how many words you end up with.

All of which is just sort of me rambling, because wordcount has been on my brain lately. But it’s one of those things I never really see discussed — a skill nobody tells you you’ll have to acquire.

I knew this was coming

Oh god, book. You’re going to run long, aren’t you?

Of course you’re going to run long. We’re at eighty thousand words, and Isabella has only just reached Lahaui. There’s still [spoiler] to recognize, [spoiler] to steal (again), [more spoilers] to find, and then [great big spoiler] before we can have our denoument. I don’t think I’m going to manage that in the next ten thousand words.

. . . bugger.

Has any author anywhere in the world ever written a series that got shorter as it went along? (Probably.) But the natural tendency of series seems to be to acquire a few thousand extra words here, a few thousand there, as you get more accustomed to the characters and the setting and find more interesting (and complex) (and wordy) things to do with them.

Oh well. I suppose I should just be glad this isn’t In Ashes Lie, running thirty thousand words over my original estimate. NEVER. AGAIN.

131 more words to go tonight, and then I can stop. Because three 3K days in a row is fun! >_<

(Actually, it kind of is. But only because I’m filling those 3K wodges with pulp-tastic adventurey goodness.)

For Your Consideration

‘Tis the season — the season in which every writer-blog you read features a list of what that writer published in the previous year, in case you’re looking to nominate things for awards. 🙂

I had a book. You may have noticed me talking about it once or twice. 😛 A Natural History of Dragons feels like forever ago, since I’m nearing the end of a draft of #3 in that series, but it was in fact just last year.

I also had two short stories, both courtesy of Mike Allen’s editorial efforts:

“The Wives of Paris,” which was in Mythic Delirium and can be read in its entirety at that link, and

“What Still Abides,” which was in Clockwork Phoenix 4 and has gotten a surprising amount of praise. (I guess there’s a bigger audience for stories written in Anglish than I expected.)

Not a vast quantity, but I’m quite pleased with all three.

Yuletide reveals

My assignment this year was for Diana Wynne Jones’ A Tale of Time City. My recipient wanted something worldbuildy, but also had requested fic about Elio in several previous Yuletides, so I wrote Elio-centric fic with some worldbuilding crammed in around the edges: “Historical Curiosity,” which looks at his hundred years in the city.

I also picked up two pinch-hits. The first, “Wisdom and Power,” is another Wheel of Time story; the requester asked for several things, so I went with backstory expanding on the first time Nynaeve channeled the One Power without knowing it. The other one I grabbed because I was already halfway through a treat for the recipient: “The Life and Times of a Crusader King,” for the historical strategy game Crusader Kings 2. I don’t think you need to have played the game to read that fic; just know that it’s kind of like Risk, if Risk involved you playing a dynasty as your character and focused on things like marrying off your unattached relatives, hatching espionage plots, persuading the Pope to declare somebody a heretic so you can annex their territory, and tearing your hair out because (to quote the request) “your heir is an inbred bastard with no diplomatic or military prowess to speak of while your daughter is a grey eminence with claims on half the titles in Europe, yet you can’t switch the succession laws because you aren’t Basque”. It’s kind of absurd fun to play, and I tried to show some of that in the story. 🙂

The last full-length piece was a pure treat, based on a cracktastic request for Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet: “Nothing But One of Your Nine Lives.” The fic itself is less cracky, since I didn’t actually go so far as to make Tybalt a werecat, but, well. 🙂

Then there were four stocking stuffers, because at one point I was feeling grumpy and Grinch-ish and not at all in the holiday spirit, so I decided that I was going to write random things for people, dammit. 🙂 They are, in order, “The Faces of Halloweentown” (Nightmare Before Christmas), “No Man Needs Nothing” (Lawrence of Arabia), “One Spark” (Banlieue 13 | District 13), and “Clearbrook vs. the Strangleweed” (Elfquest). That last one is pure silliness: teleidoplex always says I am Clearbrook, so when I saw a request for a story about her learning to braid her hair, I couldn’t resist.

As always, much fun. I look forward to next year. (And if you’re looking to dip your toes in the water, not only is there New Year’s Resolutions — an ongoing collection for people who want to write to a Yuletide prompt after Yuletide is over — but this year I’m helping to organize Some Day My Fic Will Come, which is a challenge for prompts that have gone unfilled for at least three years. You could make somebody very happy . . . .)

It doesn’t have to be pretty; it only has to work

Welcome to the thing I’ve been meaning to do for, oh, two years now? By which I mean, I am posting to you from my new WordPress installation, which is hosted on (nearly) the same server as my website, putting all of this more properly under my control. (How can it be nearly the same server? It’s a server administered by my brother, who also runs the server that has my site, but at the moment they’re separate due to technical issues that will be solved when he has a spare moment to run the upgrade he’s been meaning to arrange for the last two years.)

Anyway, if all goes well, this will also crosspost to Dreamwidth and LJ. We’ll see what happens when I hit “publish.”

You may notice that the actual WordPress page isn’t very pretty yet. That will be fixed — hopefully soon — but right now, the priority was to get this up and running. In fact, you might say that was one of my New Year’s Resolutions. 😛 Let’s see if it works!

Interview on Sword and Laser; also, looking back at 2013

I think I mentioned before that Sword & Laser chose A Natural History of Dragons for their book club this month, and that they were also planning on interviewing me. That’s gone live now, so you can listen to me in all my rambling ridiculousness. 🙂

I have to say . . . 2013 has been a pretty good year for me, and A Natural History of Dragons deserves a lot of the credit for that. It’s done really, really well: good sales, good reviews, multiple hardcover printings, made some year-end “Best Of” lists (NPR! Slate!). I think what’s made me the most happy, though, is the number of people who seem to have gotten the book — by which I mean, they’re picking up on the stuff I tried very hard to put in there. Things like the effect of contrasting Isabella’s older perspective with her younger actions, or the way in which the book is kind of science fiction, or the finer points of the gender commentary (like how those expectations constrain Jacob as well as Isabella). Every time I read a review that calls out an aspect like that, I glow a little, because really: as an author, that’s pretty much what you hope to achieve. And this time, I seem to have done it.

I hope The Tropic of Serpents does equally well. And whether 2013 was a good year or a bad one for you, I hope that 2014 treats us all even better.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/605715.html. Comment here or there.

Yuletide!!!!!

Travel and working on the book have kept me busy (and quiet) around here, but I should say something about Yuletide!

I got a lovely gift this year: “Ninth Life,” which is a Chrestomanci filling in the details of how Christopher stole his life out of Gabriel’s safe before the events of Conrad’s Fate.

On the writing side, I produced four full-length stories — my assignment, two pinch hits, and a treat — and four stocking stuffers for Yuletide Madness. If anybody wants to try and guess what they are, I can offer the following hints:

1. Two of the full-length stories were for books; one was for a video game; and one was for a play.
2. Three of the stocking stuffers were for movies; one was for a comic book.
3. I’d written for one of the full-length fandoms before, but the other three were new.
4. The same is true of the stocking stuffers.

Any guesses?

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Half-Off PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING

Okay, I exaggerate — but only a little.

Did you get an e-reader for Christmas? Or a little extra cash to blow where you please? Or are you just hungry for new things to read? Book View Cafe is having an ENORMOUS sale from now through January 6th. No, seriously: there are five pages of things on sale right now, in genres ranging from fantasy to science fiction to romance to mystery to nonfiction.

Including three titles of my own! Lies and Prophecy, Deeds of Men, and Writing Fight Scenes are all half-off right now — that’s half off the price listed on those pages, as the way we’re handling the back end of the sale is just to apply the discount at checkout, rather than changing every book page.

As mentioned before, this lasts through January 6th, so you have plenty of time to browse the whole slate. (Nice thing about ebooks is, we don’t run out of stock.) There are things to cater to many tastes in there; you might find more things to enjoy.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/605261.html. Comment here or there.

light against the darkness

I’m not very religious. Growing up, I remember my family going to church occasionally; I was confirmed Methodist, for all the good it did.. Then it became Christmas, Easter, and whenever my grandparents were in town. Then my grandparents stopped traveling, and it became Christmas and Easter. Then Easter fell by the wayside and it was just Christmas. These days, I’m pretty much just an agnostic . . . but Christmas has stayed.

Because the Christmas Eve service is sacred to me, in a way that has nothing to do with Christianity or even necessarily with religion. Not the whole service, really — just the end. Where they light the candles from the central one and come down the aisles to light yours in turn, and then you light your neighbor’s candle and they light their neighbor’s and so on, and the sanctuary goes dark except for those little flickering flames, and everyone is singing.

That’s sacred. Sharing light in the midst of darkness.

(The only way it could be more perfect is if it happened on the winter solstice.)

So I’ll keep going to Christmas Eve service, because I need that moment in the depths of winter. I need the candles and the darkness and the sharing and the singing. I will keep resenting the church we go to in Dallas, where they don’t turn off the stupid LCD screens at the front of the sanctuary that advertise upcoming events or what hymn you’re supposed to turn to next, because dammit, I want the only light around me to be the little flickering flames. I will keep sharing that flame in the depths of night.

Whatever religion you celebrate — or lack thereof — I wish you light in the darkness, and the company of neighbors.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/605145.html. Comment here or there.

Now’s your chance . . . .

Bit of a belated announcement, but in an hour and a half (4 p.m. PST), I’ll be interviewed on the Sword & Laser podcast. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, you can post it here! (A Natural History of Dragons is the general topic, but there are already questions about other things, too, so I don’t think you’re confined to only that book.)

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/604806.html. Comment here or there.

odds and ends

I’m still face-down in the book, plus trying to get ready for Christmas travel. In the meantime, have some random stuff!

Like this month’s SF Novelists post: “I’m not allowed to tab away until this post is done,” in which I talk about distractions.

Or a very wise post from Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith, on “Who Gets to Escape?”

Or some frickin’ amazing tattoos.

Or an explanation of this poll. My family and I had been speculating that guys were more likely to have scars on the underside of their chins, due to exactly the kinds of hijinks various people described in the comments. But it turns out the data, at least as collected from my readership, does not support the anecdata; a slightly higher percentage of the women who responded have such scars than men.

Or, um . . . okay, I don’t have a fifth thing. Feel free to suggest #5 in the comments!

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/604510.html. Comment here or there.

‘Tis the season of good news, after all . . . .

I’ve been scarce around here because I’m head-down in the third book of the Memoirs, but I do feel compelled to brag a little bit more. 🙂

The big thing is the Sword and Laser podcast (also posted here), which gives a brief but glowing review of A Natural History of Dragons. Why is this a big thing? Well, apart from the fact that they’ll be interviewing me soon, check out the URL on that first link. They’re partnered with BoingBoing, which means that for a little while yesterday, their review was posted on the front page of BoingBoing.

I don’t know what that did to my sales, but I bet it was pretty good. ^_^

And then you’ve got Mary Robinette Kowal saying exceedingly nice things over on Book Smugglers, and Liz Bourke singled it out as one of her favorite books of the year, and so did Juliet Kincaid, and y’all, this is so totally the best thing I could have when we’re nine days from the solstice and I’m in the Middle of the Book and everything is conspiring to make me have no energy and just want to sleeeeeeeeep. (Well, that and caffeine. Of which I have some in the fridge.)

Now if you’ll pardon me, I have to go chop a character’s hand off.

(No, I’m not telling you whose.)

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/604179.html. Comment here or there.

in which the author is quite chuffed

A number of you probably know about this by now, but: NPR has included A Natural History of Dragons in their Best of Year . . . Venn diagaram . . . Oort cloud . . . not-actually-a-list . . . thingy.

Basically, although it looks like a list, what they’ve done is go the tag route. That’s the “science fiction and fantasy” tag, but if you click on ANHoD there, you’ll find it’s also tagged “love stories,” “for history lovers,” and “it’s all geek to me.” (You can also read Annalee Newitz’ recommendation.) Anyway, this is pretty awesome — like, “it has apparently had a measurable effect on sales” levels of awesome.

Plus there’s also this: A Natural History of Dragons was picked as one of the top 15 books of the year by Slate.com’s book editor Dan Kois. Put that together with the Goodreads semifinalist thing, and the fact that there are still new reviews coming in at a steady pace, and, well, see the title of the post. Quite chuffed. Quite, quite chuffed. It’s good encouragement to have as I tackle the dreaded Middle of the Book for #3.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/604026.html. Comment here or there.

two copies left

In the course of contacting people who had bid in the Philippines disaster relief auction, I realized that most of the mad rush had been for the ARCs of The Tropic of Serpents (surprise!), with only some going toward A Natural History of Dragons. There are two copies of that left; the asking price is $10, but thus far people have been paying $20 and up. It’s a good cause, so I have no compunctions about using peer pressure to encourage you to donate more than the baseline. ^_^ (Really, I should have had the good sense to list them at $20 to start with. I just plugged in my usual “I’m looking to get rid of some of this stock” prices without thinking it through.)

So yes: two copies left. Signed and personalized, if you wish! And good causes. So go forth and bid.

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Hear ye, hear ye! . . . Again!

Seven and a half years with my books being only ink on the page or pixels on the screen, and now I have two audiobooks landing atop one another. 😀

Remember me mentioning that giant deal Book View Cafe signed with Audible? Well, now you can listen to Lies and Prophecy, too! Different narrator than A Natural History of Dragons (and by the way, I’ve listened to the sample for that one now, and it’s fabulous), and it’s likely that my other project will get yet a different reader — especially since the pov in that one is male.

Did I mention that I have a third project with them? No? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see what that one is. 🙂

I do, by the way, still have plans for a print edition of Lies and Prophecy. I’m dependent on the assistance of others for that, though, so it will have to wait for a moment when somebody can spare the time and energy to help. In the meanwhile, the ebook isn’t going away. 🙂

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Hear ye, hear ye . . . .

A Natural History of Dragons is now an audiobook.

Actually, it’s been an audiobook since Friday, but I was busy running around doing other things and didn’t manage to post about it right away. And then it was the weekend, so I waited. Mondays need fun things to liven them up, don’t you think?

I haven’t yet heard the thing myself, but I did correspond with the narrator beforehand, and based on that I expect she did an excellent job. She asked all the kinds of questions you’re supposed to hope your narrator asks, like how to pronounce things and whether you have any models in mind for what the voices should be like and so on. (In fact, her pronunciation of the names is probably better than mine, since my instructions included a lot of things like “this is how I say it, but it’s supposed to sound like French and I’m terrible at that so ignore me if I’ve got it wrong.”)

So if you’ve been waiting for the chance to listen to the book — those of you with driving commutes or gym workouts or such — now you can!

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