novels Archives - Annie Bellet

Posts Tagged ‘novels’

Cover Reveal for Nine By Night!

Brand new bundle of nine awesome books, including the first book in my brand new Urban Fantasy series! If you like kick-ass heroines and urban fantasy, keep an eye out for this amazing box set.

Here’s the cover:

Here’s the description of the box set:

Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

Nine books. Nine bestselling authors. Nine heroines that take names—and chances—while confronting dark foes, whether by force of arms or magic, that threaten their entire world.

Over two thousand pages of epic reading await! Let the adventures begin.

***

From NYT and USA Today Bestselling Author, SM REINE, WITCH HUNT –– Shaman on the run. Isobel Stonecrow speaks with the dead…for the right price. She brings closure to the bereaved and heals broken hearts. But when she resurrects someone for the wrong client, she ends up on the OPA’s most wanted list.

From NYT and USA Today Bestselling author, CJ ELLISSON, DEATH’S SERVANT –– Jonathan Winchester has clashed with his werewolf alpha one too many times. He returns to Virginia to find work and meets a young waitress, Raine. As their relationship progresses, Jon’s embroiled in more intrigue than he bargained for and a danger bigger than he can handle.

From bestselling author, LINDSAY BUROKER, TORRENT –– When Delia chose to major in archaeology, she imagined herself as the female Indiana Jones of the Southwest. She didn’t imagine herself stumbling across decapitated bodies in old mine shafts or learning that monsters are real…

From bestselling author, ANTHEA SHARP, SPARK –– What if a high-tech game was a gateway to the treacherous Realm of Faerie? Superstar gamer Spark Jaxley’s life might look easy, but she’s part of an elite few who guard a shocking secret; the Realm of Faerie exists, and its dark magic is desperate for a foothold in the mortal world.

From bestselling authors BOONE BRUX and CJ ELLISSON, DEATH TIMES TWO –– The V V Inn has a ghost problem. New grim reaper, Lisa Carron, accepts the job. She quickly learns the hotel is full of the dearly departed—and she’s working for vampires. Throw in Asa, a young vamp hot enough to melt the Arctic ice, and Lisa realizes she’s way out of her element.

From bestselling author, JC ANDRIJESKI, ROOK: ALLIE’S WAR EPISODES 1-4 –– Like most humans, Allie distanced herself from Seers, a race of human-like beings discovered on Earth. Yanked out of her life by the mysterious Revik, Allie finds out her blood may not be as “human” as she thought, the world is nothing like it appears to be…and she has more in common with Seers than she ever wanted to believe.

From bestselling author, ANNIE BELLET, JUSTICE CALLING –– Gamer. Nerd. Sorceress. Jade Crow lives a quiet life running her comic book and game store in Wylde, Idaho. After twenty-five years fleeing from a powerful sorcerer who wants to eat her heart and take her powers, quiet suits her just fine. Surrounded by friends who are even less human than she is, Jade figures she’s finally safe. As long as she doesn’t use her magic…

From bestselling author, JESI LEA RYAN, ARCADIA’S GIFT –– Teenager Arcadia (Cady) Day’s family tragedy unleashes a hidden power. After experiencing what can only be called a psychic episode, her home life crumbles. As her emotional control slips away, Cady begins to suspect that her first psychic episode was just the beginning…

From Urban Fantasy author, KARA LEGEND, WILD NIGHT ROAD –– One innocent hex sets off a chain reaction of trouble among the shifters of the Kinraven that threatens war between werewolves, seraphim and witches. Lilith Darke will do anything to be free of her seraphim master. All hell breaks loose when rival packs face off only to discover a new, deadly threat that will take all their magick to survive.

September and Sundry

September was a stressful month. I was still recovering from the summer and Clarion (and all the other travel I did). I was also doing a lot of sitting around and trying to figure out what I should be writing and where my energy should be going. I think I’ve got that sorted at least, though it means writing in other genres. Science Fiction just doesn’t have the large readership I want to tap into, so I’m expanding my horizons and testing new waters.

Ebook sales started out amazing and then died off almost completely until the very end of the month. I don’t know why but I wasn’t the only one seeing the Kindle sales fall like a stone, so who knows. I put up another short story collection and a novel in a different genre under a pen name. Over the next six months or so I’ll be putting up quite a bit of work under pen names, so Annie Bellet probably won’t have much new (other than The Raven King which is coming this winter at some point, I promise). My Clarion project book is also in the works and that will be up in the next month or two.

Here are the stats, such as they are:

Ebooks sold: 102

Paper books sold: 0

Words written: 11,206

In other news, Daily SF got SFWA qualified, which means that if I can scrounge up 80 bucks, I, too, can be a full SFWA member. At the moment I’m super broke, so I won’t be joining. But I will before WorldCon next year, probably, even though I’m more or less leaving NY publishing behind and focusing my efforts on publishing my own work. I am still going to write and (hopefully) sell stories to magazines, so it might be useful to be an SFWA member. We’ll see.

I will be a panelist at the Portland, OR convention Orycon. I’ll post my schedule closer to the convention.

So that’s the news with me lately. Chapters of Casimir Hypogean will still go up each Monday and I have many new victims for my Neo-pro Interview series, so look for those on Thursdays.

Learning and Spring Plans

I’ve been reading some really good stuff on story, plotting, and outlines lately. I have always felt, personally, that plotting is where I run into issues. I can handle simple plots (straightforward quests, zomg must run or die now sorts of things) but don’t really have a handle on how to write something super epic or how to keep things so tight the reader can’t breathe for fear something will happen in the book and they’ll miss it on the exhale.

But I’m learning. I don’t like not knowing things so I’ve set out to fill in some of my writer knowledge gaps. As always, I have a plan. (Am I the only one who hears Black Adder in my head whenever I say that or hear someone say that? No?) Book 1 in my Law & Order with swordfights series is almost done. After that, I’m going to try to get the other three done and to the editor before Clarion. Hopefully I can manage to get the second book in the Chwedl duology finished by Clarion also, because I’d like to focus solely on short fiction while there.

So here’s my modified schedule for this spring:

Avarice – finished by April 10th
Wrath- finished by April 30th
Hunger- finished by May14th
Vainglory- finished by May 28th
The Raven King- Finished by the time I leave for Clarion (around June 25th)

As for plotting, here are some of the books I’ve been reading:

Save the Cat and Save the Cat Goes to the Movies by Blake Snyder

The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist by Thomas McCormack

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense by Carolyn Wheat

I got Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel and the Breakout Novel Workbook out of the library as well. I also picked up The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction by R. A. Salvatore and Philip Athans because I heart Salvatore and wanted to see what he said about writing the fantastic. So far the book is very basic, but interesting.

I mention all this because I know that when I do bother to blog, I tend to talk about goals and numbers more than the actual work itself and what my daily job entails. But, personally, I find the details of what I do pretty boring. I mean, I get up, I read some stuff, I write some stuff, I read more stuff, I might make notes about things I want to work on or some such, etc. It’s… well, a job. Writing is fun, but the creation part is the fun part and it’s hard to talk about that in any real way because it’s easier to just point at the created work and be like “yeah, I did that”. But I think just posting goals and such leads to it looking like I’m sitting in the dark beating up a keyboard. There’s a whole lot more that goes into me writing and improving my craft besides the practice part.

Now, mind you, all the study in the world won’t improve my writing if I’m not doing the practice and putting in the writing itself as well. It’s like what I pointed out with Starcraft 2 a while back. I watch tons of SC2 games and can talk the theory with the best of the best (you know, same as any dedicated sport fan *grin*) but I can’t PLAY SC2 worth a damn because I haven’t put in the practice. Writing is the same way. Read books, soak up knowledge, and then GO USE IT.

That’s why I’m trying to get four books written before the end of June. I want to take these things I’m studying and put them to use. These books are a good way to do that since they all will require tight plotting, are set in worlds I already have mapped out and researched (so I don’t need to lose any writing time on world creation) and I’ve got the basic stories in my head already with characters and structure, so they should be fairly quick to outline once I get my new methods worked out. The books are for study, the novels I’m writing are for the practical part. I think of it as Class Time (reading about writing and studying other novels that have worked) and Lab Time (putting what I have learned into practice through practical, hands-on application).

So that’s the plan and I’m (maybe) sticking to it! 😉

February Wrap-up

Short month, went quickly.

I started, deleted, started again, and didn’t finish a novel this month. But I’ve solved how to finish it and now need to start over one final time. This annoying process underlined how important having the right point of view in a book really is (the POV issues were what was stalling me out in the middle, thankfully I figured that out before giving up forever).

Words written this month: approximately 72,000
Words discarded/deleted this month: about 34,000 (this number will GO AWAY next month. Seriously going to stop doing that. Seriously)
Ebook earnings: 22.75 (just slightly less than last month, yay!)

For March, I’ve got two novels to go up as e-pub. I need to get on the POD/Createspace thing and learn how to do that and get print copies out. I’m also going to start the sequel to a book while working on the SF novel (now that POV issues are solved). I’m behind on the Write one/Sub one challenge, so I’m going to try to get seven or eight stories done this month as well to catch up. And I’d like to finish one of the romance novellas. I’m debating on waiting until all eight are done to start putting them up, but we’ll see. I might wait until I have three or four, then start putting them up every couple weeks.

Meanwhile, today I’m going to be approving copy edits and generally taking it easy. Just got back from an amazing week of workshops and really need a little brain break before I start writing for the week.

New Plan, Same as Old Plan

Well, mostly the same as the old plan. I’ve noticed that one of my issues with writing is that I have too many ideas. I don’t get the traditional form of writer’s block (ie not knowing/having anything to write about), but I get the reverse of that. And it does slow me down and sometimes stop me entirely.

What I’ve noticed the last couple months is that I write in shifts. I’ll write for an hour or two and then take a break (breaks often lasting a couple of hours) and then go work again. Starting today, I’ve decided to try to use that to my advantage. I have so many stories in my head right now that I feel like I’ll never get them all out. I have a novel almost done and one started that literally needs to be done by Feb 1st in order to make a workshop deadline. If I write in shifts, I should be able to finish both. So for the rest of this month, I’m going to try that method out. Work on one in the morning and one in the afternoon/late at night or whenever the second “shift” happens. I know I can keep the stories straight in my head because my head is juggling about 20 different novels and short stories at the moment including these two. Hopefully doing things this way will prevent the “but I want to work on this instead” block, because I’ll just go work on that instead.

And hey, if this works, then I’m going to keep assigning shifts to projects and see how writing multiple things concurrently pans out. I’m still adapting my process and finding ways that work for me. I fully intend to try different ways of outlining novels as well at some point this year (that Snowflake method looks interesting, for example).

So that’s the new plan, which is pretty much the same as always. I’ve got a lot of writing to get done (about 90k words) in a short amount of time. But if I finish it or even get close, I’ll have finally gotten my 100k words in a single month. Which is pretty cool (I’ve written about 30k this month already).

So… The Eeeevolution

No, this post isn’t about evolution. It doesn’t matter what I think about evolution anyway because I choose to believe in the Flat Earth theory, which has hot light and cold light and an anti-moon and… (I’m kidding here. Seriously. But google Flat Earth Society if you really really really have to).

This post is about the e-book revolution or whatever you want to call it and some of my history/thoughts at the moment on the whole thing.

About a year and a half ago I decided that this writing thing was for me and that I should give it a real go. I found a blog called A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing by an author named JA Konrath. It kind of blew my mind in many ways for many reasons. Relevant to this particular topic is that Konrath is currently making a very cushy living doing e-books (he’s also traditionally published) and is very candid about his path and where he’s at.

Back then I figured that self publishing was still pretty much the same as vanity publishing and not really an option for what I wanted. That’s changed, clearly. I decided to keep reading everything I could find about ebooks and to follow Konrath’s posts and the comments (more and more e-authors post good comments on his posts, and comments online can be gold. Except on you-tube, and sometimes even then).

Konrath posits that all you need for success as an ebook author are four basic things (and I’m way paraphrasing from memory, so forgive any inaccuracies, they are mine and not Konrath’s): 1) a good book 2) a good cover 3) a good blurb 4) a low price point (he recommends, I believe, under 5 dollars). I don’t think being traditionally published hurts, but he does have an interesting point.

About six months ago, I decided that I would get my feet wet with ebooks in a big way as soon as I fulfilled a couple of conditions. The first was to sell at least two short stories and be getting more personal than form rejections. The second was to have a couple more novels for traditional publishing written and submitted.

I set the first condition because that is where I felt my writing would need to be, ie at a level that has proven it can sell, before I would be comfortable with trying to achieve tenant one of the checklist (write a good book). I set the second condition because a) writing is practice and having a few books written before I write more books is always good and b) I wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking away too much time from other parts of my business plan.

I have fulfilled condition one and will have soon fulfilled condition two. Which means that starting early next year, I’ll be going ahead with operation e-book experiment in which I plan to put Konrath’s theory to the test. The publishing world is changing, there’s no doubt about that. This might be paper book nostalgia talking, but I lean toward trad publishing doing all right in the end and sticking around. I don’t think the big publishers are going anywhere anytime soon. But e-books aren’t going to either, and I see really no way the author who stays on top of this stuff can lose.

Look at the porn industry (stay with me now…). The internet caused a huge shake-up in porn. Huge. The giant piles of money turned into more disparate piles of money because suddenly everyone with a camera could produce and distribute porn. Sound familiar? But there is still porn. And still money to be made in porn, lots of money. Even for amateurs. I look at publishing the same way*. Things are going to change, but books won’t go away. The author provides the product and as long as people want to read, there will be demand for what I do for a living.

So basically, conditions fulfilled, I’m jumping on the e-train. Stay tuned for a post about the specifics in another month or two (as soon as I have some cover art for a preview, perhaps?). I think the future for authors lies somewhere in the happy middle between trad and indy. They are both ways to make money, to find readers and connect with an audience. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and I think there is, in the end, a way to get a bit of the best of both worlds.

*I just know that somehow I’m going to get flack about this porn/publishing analogy. Sigh.

Another Quickie Post, Another Sale

I’m deep in the middle of “oh god oh god we’re all gonna die (before I finish this novel)” land, so this will be a quick post.

First, I sold another story. My story “Insect Effect” will appear in the next issue of Contrary Magazine. Does that title sound familiar? It should, because I put it up on Kindle. See, I somehow mis-marked my submissions records and had the story listed as rejected. Totally my fault. Fortunately, the folks at Contrary were kind enough to overlook that (the story is down now, and won’t be available again except at the magazine until after the contracted date). But it sure has taught me a lesson in double checking everything before doing anything that might compromise a sale. Fortunately this time I don’t have to pay for my mistake and my story still gets published by an awesome ‘zine. (They have some very odd, surreal, and beautiful stories, I’m happy that my odd and surreal story gets to be among them).

Well, my Friday novel deadline is looming tall. Time to drink another monster, stab the short story plot demons in my head (seriously, my brain wants to go back to short fiction. It keeps trying to escape) and go right back to the novel. I’m almost through the swampy middle and into the home stretch. Writing a thriller has been different and more challenging than either of my other novels to date, but I think I’m learning a ton doing this, and hopefully will have a kick-ass book at the end. But first… I gotta get to the end.

Characters and Pain

This will be a fairly short post, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, but I wanted to at least get these thoughts out while I was having them.

First, I quit the middle grade novel. I’m done for now, the fun has gone out of it and the voice of the piece isn’t in my head anymore. So I’m setting it down and turning to finishing my suspense/crime novel. Which turned into me restarting my suspense/crime novel. I hadn’t touched the file in a long time, and it turned out that I had only about 6k words done (2k less than I’d thought, oops). Also, the beginning wasn’t what I wanted. I’ve learned so much about setting and character in the last few months that those six thousand words didn’t reflect what I’m capable of now.

So I started over yesterday. It’s been slow going with the writing this whole week because I’ve been in horrible pain from a shoulder injury. Which brings me to characters and pain. I used to watch House, mostly for Hugh Laurie (ok, maybe ALL for him), and stopped watching when the episodes kept focusing too much on the plots and not so much on the characters. Having spent a scant week in horrible, never-ending pain, I now “get” House’s character even better. I’ve been an irritable bitch this entire week, and I fully blame the pain. Pain really does bring out the worst in me, as it brought out the worst in Dr. House. I don’t know how I’m going to work this into characters yet, but I’ve definitely filed away this hard-learned lesson for later.

I’ve been working on giving my characters more sides, more depth. Sometimes this comes from giving them better goals, and sometimes from giving them better weaknesses. I’m mostly working on pacing in this current novel, but I’m still practicing character building as well. My main character is a con artist, thief, and absentee mother of a chronically sick kid. Not the most obviously sympathetic protagonist. It’s her voice, her opinions, and her ultimate humanity and struggle that will make or break whether readers like her or not (though having a serial killer douchebag as the antagonist won’t hurt I think). That’s a challenge to write, but I think it’ll be good practice (and I love anti-heroes, personally, when done well).

Anyway, I’m going to go ice my shoulder and take more pills. And maybe watch an episode of House after I write a “please don’t divorce me I love you I’m sorry” card to my husband *grin*

(That last is a joke, he’s putting up with me admirably)

Getting Over Lazy

I’ve been writing a fair amount in the last month, but when I looked at the results in terms of finishing projects, it doesn’t look so good. I’ve finished two things in the last month. Two. Not exactly on target with where I want to be by the end of the year. It’s time to quit being lazy and work on the second of Heinlein’s Rules: finish what you write.

It’s easy for me to finish short stories generally. Once I’m writing one, I tend to just get it done (usually within one or two sittings). Novels are tougher to finish, though the endings so far of them are a lot easier than the beginnings and middles. I’ve been tinkering between two novels lately, getting some done on each but not really making huge progress with either. Part of this is fear. Once I’m done, I have to send it out. I’ve worked out a way to overcome that fear by putting together the package for each novel before I finish, so at least that part of the work will be done so I can just focus on getting the book done.

The other part of this is just sheer laziness. I like to work in bursts, when stuff “comes” to me because I’m lazy and making my brain focus and compose is annoying if I’m not in the mood. Yep, just lazy. I know it is laziness because if I have deadlines (real or imagined), I have no problem dumping the “must be in the mood” and getting the work done. I think I can combat my current lazy with some good old habit-forming. I like to take days off writing, but for the next while, I’m not going to. I think I need to build up a nice streak, get in the habit of not letting myself take days off (usually I justify days off because I know I *can* write 10k words in a day to catch up if I have to). So starting today, I’m going to get in at least 3,900 words of fiction a day at least 6 days a week, with the seventh day goal being 1,250 words. At that pace I should be able to finish everything I want to finish by the end of the year. It really doesn’t help that I keep adding things I’d like to finish to my project list.

When I started out this year, I was thinking I’d write four novels and get to 30 or so short stories out to markets. Then I kept having novel ideas, so it turned into five novels. Then because of a conversation at one of the workshops, I decided I was going to aim for 80 short stories on top of that. I’ve since revised that down to 40 or so shorts, not because I don’t think I could write 80, but because at 27 I’m already a little sick of the admin work of keeping track of them so I don’t accidentally sim-sub or something that I think 40-50 will be the max I want to track at a time (and it’ll be a level that, god forbid, if I start selling some, I can replace them). And on top of that, the novel ideas just keep pouring in. I’ve shunted four over to next year already. I’m aiming at seven this year (two of which are shorter, one 50k, one 65-75k). Frankly, I’d love to slow down, but my brain won’t let me. See why I can’t afford to continue being fearful and lazy? I don’t have time! At the least I’ll be getting a lot of practice in and hopefully improving.

Current projects and current word count:

MG novel- ~12k

Suspense/Crime novel- ~8k

Sci/fi novel- ~7k

Sekrit Experiment project- ~1k

Paranormal Mystery, Horror Western, Irish Historical, and Regency Romance- no words yet

Also have one novella that stands at ~1300 words and another that had nearly 5k on it (which I haven’t touched in a year since I really need to redraft the whole beginning, grr).

So… plenty to finish. I should get on that.

From Short to Long

I seriously need to stop writing short stories for the moment and get some real work done on my novels. I’ve been poking at the novels a little, 500 words here, 1000 words there. That would be fine if I wanted to write one or two books a year. But I don’t. I intend to write five.

Short stories are so satisfying, however. I can start and end in the same sitting and have a finished product in relatively few hours. Writing a novel takes more time, a lot more. Even at my fastest typing speed while composing new words (I think I’ve written about 1500 words in an hour before), I couldn’t write a novel in a day, much less in the 4-7 hours a short story generally takes me. I think if I absolutely had to, I could write a novel in about 7-8 days (novel here being defined as at least 85-90k words). I’ve written 13k words in a day before, but my hands and tendons were not my biggest fan afterward.

I’ve been trying to write short stories and novels at the same time, and really, I just end up doing short stories because it still counts as writing in my brain and they are much more satisfying in the short run. But the novels have to get done for me to stay on goal this year (and on goal for my career plans). So after this week (because I have three story ideas that HAVE to get done right now according to my brain), I’m done with short fiction until a couple of those novels get out the door. Three more stories will put my total up to 29 on submission, which is respectable I think.

Then, longer stuff. I think I can finish my middle grade novel by the end of may if I buckle down next week. After that I’ll have five or six weeks to finish my thriller novel before I leave on vacation in July. Then I plan to use July as a break month and write a more short stories before August when I’ll hopefully complete another (shortish) novel. I figure Sept and October I can get another novel done, leaving Nov and Dec to finish the fifth novel, as well as more short stories. Looking at the numbers and knowing I need to get novel writing done, I’m thinking I won’t hit 80 short stories out by the end of the year. But five novels will make me happy and I think I can still manage to get 50 or so shorts out by January.

Of course, in the middle of this I’ve decided to take on another project that will be a giant experiment (and I’m not going to jinx myself by talking about it too much here). I will say that I’ve been doing a lot of research into getting multiple streams of income going and have an idea for something that might or might not pay off. But it will be awesome to write, so that’s a perk already.

Ok, time to get some words done on a short story or my middle grade. I have the sneaking suspicion that two out of the three stories I want to write this week will end up being 7-12k words long. I’m going to try really hard to keep them under 10k so as not to limit my markets too much, but in the end the story will be as long as it requires.

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