C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 107

So right after we got to Dublin, a comics convention started up. Even the first year, which was held in a small cramped location, had a strangely good lineup of guests for a tiny con, and the 2nd or 3rd year they even had Jim Lee. This is because EVERYONE wants to come to Ireland. :) But things happened and the con disappeared for a while, and now it has returned with gusto. We had a great time, and I’m really looking forard to next year.

It being Ireland, and perhaps it being a convention, things got started late. An hour late, which made my complicated day considerably more complicated, but I had so much fun that nevermind that. :)

First panel was “Meet the Editors”, where Marvel editors Lauren Sankovitch and Jeanine Schaefer teamed up with Vertigo editor Mark Doyle to talk about What It Is Editors Do. They were funny and informative, although most of it wasn’t new information to me. Mark Doyle repeated the oft-heard truth that you need publication credits to get publication credits, but the difference in the comics industry is that making your own comics and self or web or whatever publishing them is fine, which is not so much true in book publications.

I then didn’t go to any more panels on Saturday, I think, because I was too busy fangirling at Kelly Sue Deconnick, who is writing the wonderful new Captain Marvel comic for Marvel, and meeting the creators of Roller Grrls, an upcoming comic I’m pretty excited about, and hanging with friends who were there, talking with artist PJ Holden, and standing in line to formally introduce myself as somebody who wanted to work for the Big Two to the editors.

Honestly, probably my favorite moment of the convention was standing in line for Mark Doyle, while a young man with an artist’s portfolio got his review. I couldn’t quite see the guy’s work, but Doyle was very enthusiastic about it, and at one point said, “I mean, you know this is good–” and then with the realization of one who has been in this situation before, said, “You know this is good, right?” much more seriously.

The guy seemed–I mean, I think he did know he was good, but being told repeatedly by editors seemed to overwhelm him a bit. And at one point Doyle asked if the artist would be interested in maybe doing some sample work, and the guy gave him such a “Ya *think*?” look that even from the back it made me laugh, and Doyle looked sheepish and amused. It was great. :)

Later in the weekend, when I’d sat down to talk with one of the Marvel people, the same artist went to talk to one of Marvel’s writers. The guy I was talking to asked if I’d excuse him for a minute*, and went to laud the artist’s talents. So that was pretty great, and really, I love seeing that kind of thing so much that even if I’d had an otherwise lousy weekend that would have made it. As it was, I’d had a great weekend and that made it all the better!

I’ve been at the Dublin International Comics Expo (AKA DICE), which is Dublin’s rebooted comics convention.

Tell ya what, I’m feeling really enthusiastic about making comics now. :) I mean, that’s not unusual, but I’m ready to press on with “Take A Chance” and see what’s going to happen with it as a graphic novel, and perhaps soon do another chapter of that story. And–I do tend to think in completionist arcs, so when one of the things discussed repeatedly this weekend was short stories, it was something I listened to. So I’d like to put together a few shorter scripts, and talk to some of the artists I know, and see if we can’t at least do some web stuff, probably in Chance’s world, just to develop it some more. We’ll see, but I’m excited about the prospect!

It was a terrific weekend, and I’ll write some more about it in the next few days!

I don’t typically read reviews, but periodically my editors will send one directly to my mailbox and I read it out of a sense of obligation. Usually they’re nice, because generally my editors wouldn’t bother sending me bad ones. :) So a nice BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER review from Publisher’s Weekly landed in my mailbox, courtesy of my SubPress editors, and it is thus:

In this strong collection of 11* short stories, a mixture of reprints and originals, Murphy (Raven Calls) returns to the setting of her Negotiator trilogy. The spotlight is on two immortals: the dragon Janx and the vampire Eliseo Daisani. Both friends and enemies, they cross paths regularly over the centuries, often drawn to and influenced by women. “From Russia, with Love” features the titular powerful Russian witch; “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” brings in Susannah Stacey, a would-be vampire hunter in 1870s Chicago, and Vanessa Grey, Daisani’s long-lived assistant. Murphy plays with styles and tone, injecting a sense of myth into “From Russia, with Love,” evoking hard-boiled sensibilities with “Chicago Bang Bang,” and lacing other tales with mystery, romance, and action. Ranging from vignettes to novellas, these offerings grant glimpses of a much larger world, fleshing out its history and pleasing series fans.

*pleased*

*10. I’m pretty sure it’s 10 stories… o.O

In comments on that last post, someone said: “I would like to read what you think should be thrown away. I’m not sure I’d agree.”

Here’s the thing: you’re right. You wouldn’t agree. But you would be wrong.

I have written entire books without plots. I am a good enough writer that I can almost get away with that, and without an editor who wouldn’t let me, in one case, I would have. And that’s what’s wrong with what I’ve been working on: I had something that looked like a plot, but it wasn’t really. It was interesting, entertaining encounters between characters. Some exciting things happened. Reading it would have been fun.

But if I wrote the whole book that way, a reader would enjoy reading it and get to the end and feel like something was missing. They wouldn’t know what exactly, just that it didn’t feel quite right, and they’d keep looking at it trying to figure out what was wrong and they wouldn’t be able to quite put their finger on it.

Which is essentially what I’d been doing in the 6 weeks I’d been working on the book. The really critical thing, though, is if I pushed through and wrote that plotless book and, God forbid, an editor let it slide on through to publication…

…then I would be leaving my readers disappointed, even if they couldn’t quite put their finger on why. And if I did that, then next time a book of mine came out they might say, “Eh, meh, the last one was okay but I donno, maybe I’ll wait a while until I get this one…” and that’s one way careers are destroyed.

It’s really not that what I was writing wasn’t well-written, or even unreadable. It’s that ultimately it wouldn’t have provided a satisfying reading experience, and *that* is why it had to be thrown out.

For the past six weeks I’ve been working on starting a new book. Now, it often only *takes* me six weeks to write a book, and although there have been some distractions, taking six weeks to get started is really a bad sign. Usually when I don’t want to work on a new project, it means I’ve done something wrong. I *know* that, so I kept looking at it, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. I reached 75 pages on the manuscript twice, and the first time, I threw out half of them.

This, the second time, I have realized that the book’s structure is fundamentally broken. I’ve been trying desperately to insert conflict into the story, and it just has not been working. I finally realized it’s because I’ve made things too easy for my main character, right from page one.

From where I’m sitting, that’s a rookie mistake. I haven’t done that since about my fourth published novel, and this is something like the 28th one I’ve written. So yeah, rookie mistake. A really, really aggravating one, too, because it means absolutely everything I’ve written is useless, including my synopsis. I have to throw it all out, and start all over again.

And this, my friends, is part of what it is to be a professional writer: looking a complete failure in the eye, tossing it, and starting anew. *mutter*

One of my favorite commercials ever is one where there’s an American football game on, and the ball is spiraling through the air toward the goal posts, and there are thousands of fans coming to their feet roaring with hope. The voiceover says, “Not even the will of fifty thousand fans can send the ball through the goalposts…

“…or can it?”

And no. Of course not. Not with an inanimate object.

And yet. And yet.

Nine months ago NASA sent a machine toward Mars, and that machine had a crazy complicated set of manuevers it had to accomplish in order to land safely. NASA dubbed it “Seven Minutes of Terror” (the video is really worth watching), and for the past week or two people have been getting increasingly excited/nervous/worried/hopeful over its imminent landing date. The good will for this thing to succeed was tremendous.

This morning I got up early–not quite early enough, as it turned out–and logged onto the computer to see /Laura Anne Gilman’s Twitter post as the first thing, crying out, “TOUCHDOWN CONFIRMED!”

I spent the next half hour with tears streaming down my face as I watched the live stream FROM MARS FOR GOD’S SAKE, as Curiosity Rover took and sent her first photographs of Gale Crater back to Earth, and as the men and women at JPL sobbed and cheered and hugged and high-fived with their success.

And I did it all with the rest of the world, with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people who had stayed up late, gotten up early, all of us sharing it at the same time, all of us sharing it on Facebook and Twitter and, for the love of all, Times Square, thousands of people at Times Square at three in the morning to watch Curiosity and cheer SCIENCE! SCIENCE! SCIENCE!.

Not even global will for success can make a machine land safely on another planet…and yet.

If this is not a post-Singularity moment, I don’t know what is. Humans have gathered for important events as long as there’ve been humans, of course, but the whole world connecting like this, able to share the moment instantaneously across the globe, for all that emotion to be so broadly extended…I mean, that’s just beyond wonderful. That’s humanity at its best, and we ought to do more of that.

The last Old Races e-book collection, AFTERMATH, has now been published!

This collection has one reprint, “Perchance to Dream”, a Janx story also available in the anthology DRAGON’S LURE. It has the ORSSP stories “Awakening” and “Aftermath” (which was the surprise bonus story for ORSSP patrons who subscribed to the ORSSP in the first 5 months of 2011). The other two stories, “Betrayals” and “Choices,” are brand-new.

Margrit Knight has broken the long-held covenants of the Old Races. Ancient rivals are scattered, friendships are broken, and the dragons, djinn, selkies, vampires and gargoyles are beginning to step out of the shadows and into the light.

But the new world may not be what they expect. Dragonlord Janx faces more than he bargained for when human magic interferes with his own. Half-vampire Ursula Hopkins is only starting to understand what she may have unleashed by awakening her brethren, and Margrit Knight herself still has debts to pay after the death of a djinn…

Watch the future unfold in these five new stories of the Old Races!

Buy the AFTERMATH collection:

at Amazon

at Barnes & Noble

at Smashwords

Links to all the blurbs and various places to purchase the e-books are available through this nifty animated ad that I made:

(I made the ad for Bitten By Books, but because it’s animated it was TOOOOO BIG for them. But I liked it enough that I wanted to use it, and, y’know, if you want to, you can too. :))

I’ve been given the all-clear to post the MOUNTAIN ECHOES cover!

Holy beans, guys! Penultimate Walker Papers book! (And damn, I wish I’d thought of saying RAVEN CALLS was the antepenultimate book when it came out, ’cause I love that word. :))

I’ve been reading quite a lot and doing a terrible job of keeping up on blogging my recent reads. This week I’ve read:

- the 2nd and 3rd WVMP RADIO series by Jeri Smith-Ready, and I just bought the, er, free download novella that is book 3.5. Something happened in the 3rd book that I didn’t like, but I’m waiting to see if it pays off and is justified or if I think it was just a mistake. :)

- the 2nd Starbridge book, SILENT DANCES, which in my callow yout’ was my favorite of the series and which I suspect still remains my favorite, although there’s one aspect of it that makes me go o.O when it didn’t when I was 17. (It’s a romantic subplot where it’s very nearly love at first site for the 20 year old protagonist. Which, since it didn’t bother me when I was 17, is probably fine, but as an adult I thought it was too convenient.)9

- the first Agatha Raisin mystery novel, which became increasingly charming as it progressed and which I am now looking forward to reading many more of. My big plan for the day may be to go find books 2 & 4, in fact, as I already have 3 & 5. :)

I don’t normally link to reviews, but then, I don’t normally have a limited edition collection of short stories that I’m all nervous about coming out, so I shall point you at this review of BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER, which is generally a nice one. The reviewer had a completely legitimate problem with one of the stories–I sort of never imagined people who hadn’t read the Negotiator Trilogy would be reading BYD, and the story the reviewer was uncertain about is the flip side of something that happens in the trilogy. Without the trilogy side of the story I can totally see it not working as well as it should, but I genuinely didn’t think of that until, er, I read this review. :)

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Subterranean Press has their new website up and running, and it’s beautiful! Wow! Here, admire it while you pre-order BYD! (Actually, I’m pretty sure everybody who reads this blog who is *going* to preorder BYD already has, but, y’know. One must do one’s duty, or something. :))

Speaking of BYD, I’m going to pat my own back about it for a minute here, so let me put this behind a cut tag… :)

Just before I went on holiday I very belatedly finished the proofs for BYD. I had a real and particular goal for the collection, which was that it would tell the stories of several characters who are secondary, tertiary or even non-existent in the Negotiator Trilogy. I wanted them to be linked, but for the collection to be in no way considered a novel. I also wanted the collection to enrich the Old Races universe in a meaningful way, but also for it to be completely unnecessary for readers to pick up the collection for backstory if I should ever write more novels in that world.

And to be frank, I succeeded admirably. The book does exactly what I hoped it would in all of those respects, and I’m very, very pleased about that.

But here’s the thing that surprised me: the first story in the book, “From Russia, With Love,” is one of the best things I’ve ever written. I was a little uncomfortable, in fact, with the idea that it is the first story, because it’s good enough that I didn’t think the others could stand up to it. But in doing proofs, and reading the stories both all out of order and also as a cohesive unit for the first time…they do stand up. Every one of them is really well written, the voices change for the different stories, the characters grow and remain true to themselves, and one of the stories (the above difficult one) puts a completely different spin on some of the events of The Negotiator Trilogy. I was really, really surprised at how much I just flat-out liked the stories, and at how well I thought they did their job.

So not only is the collection, to me, a successful attempts on a physical, it-does-what-I-was-aiming-for level, but it’s also a tremendous artistic triumph. I’m really, really proud of it.

BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER is my 19th published book. It’s the first one I’ve ever come close to regarding as an artistic triumph: I do not think of my writing in that way. I find that hugely encouraging, when you get right down to it. It kind of suggests I’m continuing to learn and improve, and that’s rather heartening.