Musings

How to end a book is much on my mind right now because I’m racing like an an out-of-control train toward the end of THE EDGE OF RUIN, book two in my series. Two scenes, that’s all I have left two scenes. I was going to try and finish last night, but at 9:30 I realized I was beat and couldn’t think anymore so I shut down. I then stayed up too late to try and finish the latest novel I’m reading. I didn’t make it, but I came close enough to realize that this author has developed a habit that doesn’t work for me, and as a matter of craft I don’t think it works.

Last week I completed another book by this writer, and discovered that the big climax, the thing to which we’d been building for three volumes was completed on page 624. Then the book goes on and on and on ending on page 914. There are some minor loose ends that get tied up, people who are dead don’t stay dead (a particular pet peeve of mine. Check out my posts about HEROES and you’ll get the full rant), and finally we reach the happy ending with our hero at rest with his lady love and a new family.

I don’t think it works. Some of this is probably due to my long years working as a screen writer, but give me the big climax, and then within a few pages I better be hearing the violins and trumpets and the credits better start rolling. If you did a graph line for a book I think it should be a steady trending up. You can throw in a few dips to the tangent to give the readers a chance to breath, bond more with characters, have a character moment, but the overall direction should be up. Then you hit the pinnacle and the line should drop almost vertically down and you get out. For me this long dragging conclusion feels like watching a slow death.

Or maybe I’m missing something here. Has the taste of readers changed are they just reluctant to let go of a world and the characters, and want to luxuriate in an ending? See every step of the Happily Ever After coming toward them?

Melinda

Yesterday we had the triumphant relaunch of Wild Cards in the form of Tor’s absolutely gorgeous hardcover of INSIDE STRAIGHT. We had a mass autographing at Page One in Albuquerque, and six of the eight authors were present, and Michael Cassutt had signed bookplates. So, if you want a copy signed by seven of the eight writers please check with Page One, and order a copy. They will happily do mail order. For Albuquerque we had an enormous crowd, a lot of good commentary and questions from the audience, and then we signed and signed and signed.

Afterward our wonderful agent, Kay McCauley treated us to a reception at Garduno’s where we feasted on queso, rolled tacos, enchiladas, nachos, etc. etc. etc., washed down with magaritas and sangria. It was a great opportunity for a number of the Wild Card contributors both past and present to rub elbows, discuss the project and reminisce about fun moments, and those we have lost. Roger was with us today as we evoked Croyd.

Please check out the swell website for Wild Cards at Tor.com, and please go and take a look at our American Hero website The link is here:

http://americanhero.wildcardsbooks.com/

And talk to us. We’re eager for feedback as people start to read the book.

Melinda

I wrote all day yesterday, and by six I was unable to think any longer. So, I prepared my February pages for submission to Critical Mass, I built a fire in the fireplace, and listened to the wind howl around the house and alternated between watching the flames and watching the snow, and focussing on the book I was currently reading. It is FARTHING by Jo Walton, and it is stunning. Ian had read it first and passed it on to me, and I’m very grateful for the recommendation.

FARTHING is a British country house murder mystery set in an alternate time where Britain and Hitler reached a peace accord in 1940. Walton captures the voices perfectly and evokes the period wonderfully, and she has all these nods to those wonderful grand dames of British mysteries, Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers. She also tosses a few nods toward Georgette Heyer so on many levels Walton hooked me completely.

Because I am a mystery reader, (and have played in far too many of Walter Jon’s mystery games) I had figured out the motive and killer, and then I began to get the feeling that this book wasn’t going to end with the conventional “win” for the good guys. It’s a satisfying ending, but the issues she raised had me sitting by the fire and staring into the flames and thinking a lot about where our country finds itself after seven years of George Bush.

The steps she sketches for a takeover of a democratic government by non-democratic forces was chillingly familiar. We have a climate where we are demonizing brown people whether from Mexico or the Middle East. We have a return of really vicious nativism. We have a frightening level of mix between religion and politics, we have the courts being marginalized, and we have a distortion of the Constitutional grants of power between the three branches of government. Bush has deliberately and systematically aggrandized rights that are reserved to the legislature and brought them under the executive. People need to remember that these are three _co-equal_ branches.

Despite having read an absolutely terrific book I found myself very melancholy in the dark hours. And I have to say I’m getting tired of winter. I want to pull the blanket off Vento and let him play outside.

This is one of those days where the business of writing seems very hard. I’m in the middle of a big rewrite and at that point where I can’t tell if I’m making it better or worse. I also looked back over the past four years and I realized how many, many things I’ve written, particularly for Hollywood, that have gone nowhere or continue to just spin in limbo. To quote Marv Wolfman, “Hollywood, the town that kills you with hope.”

I realized that this is a system that is guaranteed to make the participants crazy. I have written a spec Wild Cards script. I created a whole other Wild Card script that I prepared as a pitch, and I talked earlier about how much work that represented. My manager has made noises about me writing _that_ version of the script. I’ve written two spec pilots. (Thank heaven for Ian’s help on the last one). I’ve got a portion of a new movie script that has hit a road block. And my manager wants me to start on a new movie script with Ian. I’m game, but sometimes I get tired.

Just think if other professions worked this way. Architects for example. Instead of being hired on a project what if an architect had to design the entire building and prepare all the working drawings, and make models and colored sketches. And then show those drawings and sketches and models around and hope that somebody says, “Say, that’s a great building. Okay, we’re going to hire you to build it. But once the foundation is in and even when the walls are up we might decide we no longer like this building so we’ll fire you and bring in a whole new architect to remodel the building.

I ask you, is this anyway to make art?

Forgive the small meeping rant. I think I’m just tired and tired of being cold. When I reached the barn at 10:30 this morning it was 19 degrees and the wind was whipping. My _face_ became numb as I rode. Some fun.

Melinda

I’d like to recommend QUEEN FERRIS to anybody lurking on my blog. This is the second volume in the STONEWAYS TRILOGY and it was just wonderful. S.C. Butler does an incredible job of making characters in a fantasy novel into people. The kind of people you’ll recognize — your chatty aunt Ethel, or the mother with whom you’ve had this difficult relationship. Too often characters in fantasy novels sound like British actors playing Roman generals and politicians. You know what I mean, that feeling that by making them BBC formal they’ll seem ancient and different. Butler doesn’t do that — he has people being people, and that includes dithering and second guessing themselves. I loved it.

He also has the coolest Dwarves, ever. I want a Moonstone necklace, _right now!_ I don’t want to spoil anything, but these are moonstones like no moonstones you’ve ever seen or heard about. He had a daunting task because when book one ended his protagonists were very young people ten or eleven years old, but he gracefully moves us forward in just a few chapters until they are 18, and on the verge of adulthood.

Anyway, that’s my book plug for the day. I’m halfway through Jack McDevitt’s latest, CAULDRON and enjoying it very much. I’m trying to find time to read, but it’s hard when I have so much writing to do, and my wonderful horse to ride.

Melinda

I’m rewriting book II in the EDGE series, and the theme I’m exploring is the issue of command. How do people come to lead, find the strength to take command, learn to issue orders. I realized as I looked back over my writing history that this is a theme I return to often.

That Star Trek script I mentioned, the one that got wrecked, THE ENSIGNS OF COMMAND. Well, I’m going to post it on my website. So let folks know who might be interested in reading it in its original form. It’s all about issues of leadership.

This is my CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER. Unfortunately I didn’t have D.C. Fontana rewriting my script so the final result was not as good as CITY. Yes, I know Harlan prefers the original, but Dorothy was very respectful.

So, look for Ensigns to show up soon. I’ll let people know once it does go up.

Melinda

I’m in the midst of the rewrite of book two in the Edge series, and I was closing in on that middle section. Even back when I first wrote the book it felt slow to me, but I kept telling myself I was exploring character and relationships, and it was okay. From the beginning I had been looking at this action set piece as the climax of the book, and in my head that had to come at the end. It was the climax, right?

Well, I stepped back from the book and tried to look at it as if it were a movie up on white board, and suddenly it hit me that the climax would also make a hell of a second stage rocket. It would also punch up the pace in the middle section of the book. It makes this a much bigger rewrite, but it just feels completely right.

It also solves some problems at the end of the book where it felt like there was an awful lot happening after the “climax” of the book. I was trying to work in these scenes because it’s very important to me to make a time jump between books two and three (fingers crossed there will be a book three), but it felt like the book kept dribbling on after it should be over. I think I’ve got a powerful end for this new, restructured book, and I’m very exciting.

I’m not using this as an argument against plotting and outlining. In fact the reverse. I wouldn’t have spotted this if I couldn’t pull back from a work and look at the scenes I need, the tent poles that they’re building toward, and how those big scenes will anchor the entire structure. I think this is an example of not getting to wedded to your ideas and conclusions. I also realize that I didn’t subject this book to a rigorous plot break. I just started writing and then Tor said they wanted another book, and I just kept going without stopping to do the spade work in the beginning. Let that be a lesson to me. Still I’m happy because I’m going to end up with a better book at the end of the day.

Melinda

Good Morning, folks, the Wild Card web site, hosted by Tor Books is officially launched. The address is http://www.wildcardsbooks.com. There’s a lot of fun material on the site, and we’ll be adding more as we go along. Carrie Vaughn is going to be writing webisodes about the rest of the season of American Hero.

Please check it out.

Melinda

I’d be interested in getting people’s input on how they title books, and what they think of doing something different with chapter headings other than just _Chapter One, Chapter Two, etc._ Thanks to Vic Milan book two in the Edge series has a new, and great title. THE EDGE OF RUIN. Vic also titled the first book, THE EDGE OF REASON. I confess that titles are the ban of my existence. I pour over Bartlett’s, I try different word combinations, and my titles (for the most part) suck. What tricks or techniques do other folks use? I’m really interested because I’d like to get better at this skill.

Next point. Music is a vital component in my books. It represents one of the underpinnings of the rational world, and my protagonist is an accomplished pianist and singer. I’m doing something different in book two. My experience writing in first person was so rewarding in the second Wild Card book that I wanted to try it in my Edge novel. I had a number of view point characters, and I think it would have been hard to keep distinct voices for the four view point characters if all of the them were in first person, so I decided to put my hero’s section in first, and the others in third. I’m also using the first chapter/prologue as a means to direct the reader’s attention toward my protagonist by presenting a number of people all of whom are thinking about or trying to reach my hero.

As I was reading through some of my musical texts I came across a couple of definitions that seemed really right on point about what I was trying to do with the book. In essence I was thinking of this book as if it were a concerto grosso. The movements of a concerto weren’t exactly right, but it seemed that hero’s sections were a ritornello, a short reoccuring passage that unifies a piece. The other voices are just that, voices commenting and orbiting the main theme/character. In a way they are a fugue, and there are nice psychological resonances to that word — fugue.

I know a lot of readers hate it when they open a book, and they first thing they hit is a prologue so I wanted to avoid that title. I also didn’t want to call it chapter one because I pull in a number of POV’s in that first section, and most of them will never be a point of view again. This is a statement or an exposition if this were a composition. So what do people think? Is it just to precious and artsy to use unusual headings? Or does it matter? Do people even notice chapter headings or just read right over them?

Melinda

A train ride down the Hudson. It sounds so prosaic. I expected it to be your average train ride despite what the gentleman had said. I even had a book out and in my lap as we pulled out of the station in Albany. I never opened the book.

I’m a high desert rat. I think the mountains of New Mexico are unequaled for beauty, but we do get cheated on the fall colors. Our aspens are exquisite, turning the sides of the Sangre de Cristos into sheets of shimmering gold, but gold is pretty much what we get. But the cliffs and hillsides lining the Hudson was like a mad artist’s palette — gold, red, orange, rust, yellow, titan. The grass was still green so the trees seemed to spring up like the scarves on swirling dancers. Add to that the gray of the granite and you had a backdrop of equisite beauty. When we went clicking and swaying past the robber barons ruined castle I had this momentary sense we had somehow passed through a fold in space and time and were suddenly in Scotland. (Apparently the castle was a folly that was eventually used to store munitions and had the expected bad result. If someone has the full story I’d love to hear it.)

The Hudson is an impressive body of water. I’m used to the Rio Grande that sinks to a slender muddy ribbon by the end of August and is completely dry south of Albuquerque because so many farmers rely on its water. The Hudson had actual eddies and waves that caught the sunlight and threw it back like spears of silver. I was especially charmed by the tiny lighthouses set on rock islands in the center of the river.

Some of the homes along the water would qualify as mansions, but they were dwarfed by the gray bulk of West Point looming high on a cliff. I’m told that the train ride from New York to Montreal is non-stop beauty. It makes me want to fly to NY and take the train up to WorldCon in 2009.

Once at Penn Station it was an easy cab ride to our hotel on W 57th across the street and just down from Carnegie Hall. As a former singer, music minor I loved the fact we were so close to that great performance center. That was my one disappointment with our trip. We never did get to hear any music, but we were only in town for three nights, and they were very busy nights.

Ian had been to New York several times before, but had never done any of the silly, tourist things. So being a total kid about this kind of thing, I set about to rectify that oversight. After lunch at a great Thai place (we’d found the food in Saratoga to be really bland) we went walking until we reached the Empire State Building, and I took Ian up to the observation deck. As we gazed out in each of the four directions I gave him the Wild Cards tour of New York. “Now over there is Joker Town, and it was here that Fortunato made love to Peregrine so he had enough power to fight the Astronomer.”

We had a dinner date with our agent, the amazing Kay McCauley. We changed, and walked to the Beekman Towers for drinks on the 24th floor, art deco bar. Kay was her usual vibrant self, and I got a great picture of her and Ian. We then went walking up uptown in search of dinner. We ended up at this terrific little French bistro. We sat in the window so we could watch New York going past, and talked about life, and art, and Minnesota. Kay and Ian are both from Minneapolis. We eventually got around to business Ian made it clear that what he really wanted was the chance to tell the entire Milkweed story so if he got an offer, Ian wanted a deal on all three books.

We finally finished off our coffee and dessert and headed back to the hotel discussing our wonderful agent and enjoying the energy and excitement of NYC.

Next morning we grabbed subway passes from a kiosk and headed off to see The Cloisters. This is one of my favorite spots in NY. The city seems very far away as you walk through the park and look down at the Hudson River. It was rainy and misty and grey so the square tower of grey stone with it’s red tinged stone roof seemed dream-like as we came around a curve and saw it looming over the trees. A few more feet, then the stone walls of the Cloisters are in front of you. You pass through an archway, through a heavy brass bound wooden door and you’ve stepped back centuries.

Rockefeller brought together pieces of monasteries, chapels, etc. from all over Europe to build this amazing building. He wanted to be sure to preserve his view across the Hudson so he also bought all the land on the palisades across the river. Nothing can ever be built there. The building now houses most of the medieval art from the Met in this perfect setting. It’s most famous for The Unicorn Tapestries and they dominate one enormous room. But there are other treasuers, a tenth century cross carved from walrus tusk, illuminated manuscripts, exquisite carved reliqueries made of rose wood, tomb effigies. I actually find these very compelling because there was an effort to capture the features of the knight who is entombed beneath. I wonder what they thought? Did they love their wives? Did they want to be warriors? I find myself looking into the stone faces and looking through to the living person.

We left the museum at noon, and had planned to grab lunch and then head off to the Met to use our entry tickets again. But there was a message from the agent on Ian’s phone. We stood in the park as the sun came breaking through the clouds and danced on the water’s of the river, and I watched Ian’s face as he learned from Kay that he had a three book deal with Tor Books for the Milkweed Triptich. Other than two Wild Card stories this is his first professional sale. It will be the first of many.

I found myself remembering my first sale, and that sense of delrious joy. It was a wonderful moment to be able to share in the culmination of so much work and effort. Critical Mass had helped with a plot break, and the usual critiques at our monthly meetings, but this is his victory — a genius idea, beautifully executed. Everyone is in for a real treat when the first book comes out.

The Met was right off our agenda. We couldn’t concentrate on anything but this news, and we had to get ready to go out to dinner with Tom Dougherty, the publisher of Tor books, and Ian’s new editor, (and my editor) Patrick Nielsen-Hayden, George R.R. and our agent, Kay.

We got all dressed up, and went over to George’s hotel to wait for our car. George loves this old steak house over in Brooklyn, Peter Lugar’s so that’s where we were going.
When we walked in Tom shook Ian’s hand, and said “Welcom aboard”. It was a great moment because Tor really does feel like a family. Of course they want to make money, it’s a business, but they really try to help a writer find an audience, and they don’t expect you to hit a home run the first time you’re up at bat.

Tom is a real “bookman”. He loves books, and is fighting to keep great books in the hands of readers despite a distribution system that works against anything but the known Big Best Seller. He talked about how the drivers knew their routes, knew what kind of books sold in what neighborhoods, could nuture a book, but that is all gone. It was a fascinating look at the industry from the business side, and I valued the lesson.

I made Patrick jump out of his chair and give a shout of joy when I mentioned Paul Cornell. It’s neat to discover that your editor shares your passion for Dr. Who, and who sees the power and value in having writers cross back and forth between screen and page.

It was an early evening since we couldn’t get a later table. Which left us all back at the hotel at 8:30. Kay went home, but Ian, George and I sat in the bar and had drinks and talked for a few more hours. I discovered the Bellini Martini, and it was wonderful. I held at one though I could have had another. If I had the boys would have had to carry me back to The Salisbury Hotel.

Wednesday I had a business breakfast then Ian and I took a walk through Central Park. The 19th century carousel was still up and running so we took a ride, and I dreamed about my new horse.

We had an appointment at Tor at 2:00 for me to see my cover art. (Which you have now seen and which I love.) Patrick loaded us down with free books, and I was able to talk to him about the rewrite I wanted to do on the second EDGE book. He said something fascinating and very thought provoking. I’ll throw it out here, and I’d love to get some discussion going on this point.

I told him I wanted to reduce the number of view point characters from 7 to 4, and cast my protagonist’s sections in first person. He said those sounded like good ideas because he said, “You want reading to be like a trance. You want to make reading easy. You don’t want reading to be such an effort that blood is bursting from your forehead.” This ties in totally with Daniel Abraham’s thoughts about accessability. I’ve started to think of it as removing impediments to achieving that trance. Or as Maurice Hurley, my old boss on Star Trek used to say, “A simple story well told”, and “Just say the words.”

Patrick slipped us into Tom’s office at the point of the Flatiron Building to see the view. For an instant as Tom pointed out the Chrysler Building and the lake in Central Park, and the Empire State I had this feeling that I was caught in a great stream of history. When I looked down at the people walking far below I could visualize the top hats of 1902, and the snap brim fedora’s of the thirties, Go Go Boots in the sixties, and sailing through this sea of lives and memories was the building, like the prow of some great ship.

As Ian and I rode the subway back to our hotel I clutched my book cover, and we shared a little manta. “Three books.” “Great Cover.”

We were joing Sam and Susan for dinner in China Town that night, and to get to the subway station we walked past some of the most elegant stores in New York, Bergdof Goodman’s, Tiffany’s etc. Then we got to China Town, and we were walking through throngs of people inching between small stores whose wares tumbled out onto the sidewalks as if the stores had been tipped on their sides and shaken — DVD’s, purses, scarves, shoes, radios, fish stands with whole fish laying on beds of ice and staring up at us from a single bulging eye, fruit and vegetable stands. We found the restaurant and Sam and Susan waiting.

I unlimbered my camera, and snapped a photo at the moment Ian told them about his book sale. It’s wonderful when you have good friends with whom you can share joy. Too often in life people begrudge you your moments of joy and victory. A real friend is the person who takes joy in your wins, and never feels diminished by your success.

Finally, reluctantly we parted from our friends, and headed back to the hotel. Thursday was a day to face Security Theater, and airplanes, and a return to the work-a-day world. But –

Three books!

Great Cover!

Melinda