Of All Stripes

I did it. I finished the line edit revise on The Poison Prince, book two of what the publisher calls Throne of the Five Winds and I call Hostage to Empire. This book fought me every. step. of the way.

Second books in trilogies are difficult. The throughlines have to be placed just so to get from Book One to Book Three, and certain choices made in Book One affect the range of choices one has available for the rest of the series. And being “orphaned”–switching editors mid-series-stream, for whatever reason–makes it even more difficult, even when both Previous Editor and New Editor are flat-out amazing.

I tried to take some time off, but with the pandemic and all, it was hardly relaxing. Now I’m in initial revisions for Finder’s Watcher (how on earth did we get to six Watcher books, my goodness!) and if I can just get these turned around by tomorrow, I’ll feel caught up.

For, oh, about two seconds before I take a look at what’s next on the schedule.

I was going to do a giveaway this month, but… well, you know. I was also going to take the week off from subscription duty because Season Two of HOOD is a wrap and the book is up for preorder. Unfortunately, I think my beloved subscribers probably need a thing or two to take their minds off the state of the world, so I’m foregoing any vacation at the moment. I’d say until things calm down but it doesn’t seem like they will, honestly.

So today is for laundry and for pushing on these revisions, shaking each sentence, turning it upside down, eyeing editor remarks, and just generally ripping out what doesn’t work and crocheting together what does. At least while I’m working I’m not thinking about the current shitshow, except as a rumble-mumbling background of anxiety.

And frankly I’m used to anxiety of all stripes. The current state of the world feels very familiar; I grew up holding my breath, walking on eggshells, in a constant state of low-grade tear spiking at random intervals. I could even view it as somewhat relaxing, in a weird way–at least people aren’t telling me to “calm down, it could be worse” or “calm down, it’s not that bad.” There’s less shaming of people with trauma-based or even regular anxiety because every reasonable person is absolutely petrified.

I also meant to read a few books I’ve been looking forward to, but instead I’ve crawled back into the well of true crime. For some reason Ann Rule and criminology textbooks soothe the anxiety, probably because the narratives either presuppose some small manner of justice or are entirely focused on doing something in the face of terror.

Maybe once I get this round of revisions done I’ll have some leeway to take a breath and read something else. My goal has shrunk to “ride the next wave.”

What are you up to today, dear Readers? How is your quarantine? If you’re an “essential worker”, how’s that going? Tell me everything.

We’re here for a little while; we might as well enjoy each other. So to speak.


It’s Tuesday, which means paid Haggard Feathers subscribers get a new post at 11am PST. This week, continuing Marketing March, the focus is on book marketing “ancillaries.” I’m wondering what the theme should be next month…

Staying Calm, Carrying On

I dropped the Princess off at work this morning (of course, since she works for a large service corporation, sick leave isn’t an option, GO ‘MURICA) and decided to do the usual weekly grocery shopping. It wasn’t until I actually got to the store that I realized…

…well, I’m beginning to think we’re doomed. At least, a certain slice of America is.

I did my best to stay six feet away from everyone else. The store was doing its best by allowing people through the door in five-person groups. Unfortunately the herd was fear-crazed and rampaging. Elderly white people were doing their level best to run me over and breathe in my face. The younger people I saw were all attempting, like me, to allow everyone space and wait turns.

Every single person who cut in line, attempted to breathe on me, hip-checked and barged past me, or who was being nasty to a grocery worker was white and over 60. I am absolutely not joking. It was horrifying to see, and I hope I never witness anything like it ever again.

Unfortunately, I suspect that hope is vain indeed. It was like those videos of young people determined to Spring Break on Florida beaches yesterday, a display of selfishness almost unequalled in my experience.

Almost.

I did my best to slow everything around me down, and moved at a snail’s pace. And of course the writer in me was taking notes; all things serve the work. I’m shaking now that I’m safely home, but I wonder how many of the people absolutely determined to be assholes this morning were already carrying COVID-19 and spreading it with abandon in order to get their aloe vera juice and complain at top, spittle-laced volume about the store being out of flour.

Normally we’re pretty well stocked here at the Chez, so I might have skipped the regular weekly trip to the grocers if I’d known it was going to be like this. But once I was there, I figured going through was better than leaving, and since my online groups and IRL neighbors have all been so amazing I trusted naively that everyone involved would be a reasonable adult.

I’ve been wrong before in my life, though seldom to this degree. May the gods have mercy upon us, because white Americans (of any age) seemingly won’t.

Now I’ve got to take the dogs for a walk and do my best to avoid other people during that, too. I knocked off 200 pages’ worth of revisions yesterday; there’s another 280 left in this epic fantasy. Either I’m going down, or this book is.

At least I can work at home. Silver linings, and all that.

Please be kind to each other out there, folks. I’m sorry this is happening; hopefully we can all work together to at least not make it worse.

Mad March Scheduling

Well. It’s March, it’s a Monday. There is a pea-soup fog; even the cedars across the back yard are hazy and indistinct. I meant to get up early and start my spring-forward on the right foot, but… the dogs were heavy, I was dreaming about a glass labyrinth, and the enormity of a few professional steps I’ve taken lately has come crashing down.

I have to write an agent query letter. I have never had to write an agent query letter, so this should be fun. (Yes, there are a lot of things in publishing I don’t know about. Always learning is the name of the game.)

This week, Serial Time and Nest Egg subscribers get the unedited ebook of HOOD‘s Season Two, and next week they get the edited one–well before it goes on sale anywhere, I might add, though I do need to update the buy links on the book page. I’m hard at work on Season Three, where all the characters come together–the double-crosses are revealed, Ged Gizabón commits murder, Robb Locke commits even more, Parl Jun makes his bid for absolute power, Marah decides to hell with deportment and responsibility because all of Anglene needs to be saved, Bookman Trick finds out he’s not a coward after all, and Alladal finally gets a few things she wants.

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? And then there’s breaking an embargo, a deadly speeder chase, not one but two jailbreaks, and a whole lot else planned.

I mean, I knew writing Robin Hood IN SPACE was going to be fun, but I didn’t know it would be this fun. I’m eyeing what I have to pull off and rubbing my hands together with glee.

There’s also a podcast I want to listen to, which doesn’t happen often. I should have cued it up yesterday while I was doing housework, but I was busily dancing to the book soundtrack for The Calling Knife. (That’s what the trunk novel is calling itself now.)

So the work schedule looks like: HOOD‘s Season Three, The Bloody Throne (third and final Hostage book), The Black God’s Heart (which is American Gods meets John Wick meets Conan the Destroyer), and The Highlands War (which is the last Steelflower book for a while; I probably won’t write her and D’ri’s return to G’maihallan). And there’s revisions on Finder’s Watcher to get done, as well as line edits on The Poison Prince–that’s book two of Hostage to Empire. Plus Sons of Ymre and Damage both need another draft, since both are somewhere between zero and first draft status.

I also need to write that damn query letter, and it would be super great if I could also make The Calling Knife leave me alone for a little while. Basically I’m running in circles screaming with my hair afire, but you know I prefer too much work to too little, indeed. And some gardening this month wouldn’t be amiss either.

Right now, though, I should focus on finishing my coffee and getting the dogs walked. The rest of it will happen in due time. Breaking tasks into bite-size pieces is the name of adulthood’s game, and I’ve had all the rest I’m allowed–or want.

Plus, I’ve got this machete handy. Monday had better behave, and March had better straighten up.

*wanders away muttering, slurping at coffee*

Flamethrower and Swan

I’m in a Mood today. It might be leftover from last week, which was full of non-optimal stuff; it might be the weather, it might just be generalized anxiety. I’ll decide after coffee and a run.

At least I got all my Sunday housecleaning chores sorted, and I have a list of things to get done today. The attack of the don’t-wannas is deep and toothy, but if I nibble around the edges I might get to evening without feeling like a giant useless lump of pudding. Which is devoutly to be desired.

The Little Prince is reading The Great Gatsby in English class, which means I should probably take a spin through it once I finish the Francis Young I’m working through. So far the Young is really great, except for an assertion that accusations of witchcraft leveled at the marginalized means said accusations are “depoliticized.” Which is a bunch of bullshit, but then again, I don’t think the author is a witch and definitely doesn’t identify as female.

I told the Prince that everyone in Gatsby is awful, and so far he agrees. I don’t think there’s a single reasonable person in the entire novel. The Prince thinks Fitzgerald would really have liked to be Gatsby but sensed on some level how that would go terribly wrong, so he invented the narrator to keep some distance. Not a bad analysis at all; I’m so proud of my young reader I could just about burst.

So there are good things–chief among them the coffee soaking into my tissues and making me much, much less murder-y. I’m not quite sucking on the chewy stuff at the bottom, but it’s close. I should get the dogs out for walkies; Boxnoggin needs a short run to get his fidgets worked out.

Who am I kidding? I need a short run to get my fidgets out, too. Today will be full of proofing, always a fun time, but I have enough else to do that I can switch to other tasks when fatigue hits and go back to the text when I’m renewed. Once the proofing’s done there’ll be incorporating changes in the text, then I can upload, schedule, and call it dusted.

None of that will happen if I don’t bid you a civil adieu, though, my friends, so off I go. Bad mornings can turn into bad days, but this one I think I have a chance to fight off.

It is a Monday, after all. Grab the flamethrowers, get on the swan, and let’s go.

Maintenance and Morning

So last night, while I was doing some site maintenance, a plugin choked and tossed about twenty old, old posts–from 2017–into the blog-subscription-queue. I’m so sorry about that, guys–I hate getting my inbox snowed under, and I can only imagine how much you guys do. I apologize; that plugin has been told to go sit in the corner and THINK about what it’s done, and that was the end of my Wednesday.

I decided, after that, it was time to go to bed.

This morning went from fog to a pink-striped, cotton-candy sky. I watched the sun rise while lying warm and safe in bed, Miss B snuggled against my side and Boxnoggin snoring in a furry lump, as he is wont to do. Both dogs were worn out after yesterday’s rainy fun and games. I found out that yes, I do still need breakfast on running days, and furthermore found out that Boxnoggin can practically drag me home if necessary. (He didn’t have to… but he could have, and it was a comfort.)

Now I’m up, and have a few toads to swallow before I can get back to Sons of Ymre. I think that’ll be the thing I finish next. I have an idea of what I want to do with the story, which hinges on the fact that the Sons can’t really trust their own perceptions in certain cases. Being under constant siege from the whispers of a mad god has a certain effect on one, and it’ll be a hat trick to delineate the mounting dread of a certain main character. Especially once their safe haven is broken into and it becomes a road-trip book.

Other than that, Damage is with a beta reader, I’m clearing my submissions queue by the end of February (which means nothing will be out on sub come April), there’s Season Two of HOOD to CE, proof, and format, the third installment of Hostage to Empire to write now that I have the structure of the book decided, a monthly price on my writing advice column to decide upon–I’m thinking $6/mo–not to mention Season Three of HOOD to get underway–and Guilder to frame for it.

I’m swamped.

You know I like the feeling of having too much work; it’s oodles better than not enough. Some exciting stuff I can’t talk about is coming down the pike, and I might, might be able to squeeze in writing a good chunk of The Highlands War (that’s a fresh new Kaia Steelflower book, natch) for upcoming serial purposes. Don’t get your hopes up yet, though–I’ve so much else to do, I might not be able to, and of course the people who write to me demanding (not encouraging, not telling me how much they like Kaia’s adventures but flat-out DEMANDING) more of that world are doing more harm than good.

I haven’t forgotten that one person who was extremely vocal about demanding other Steelflower books/chapters was the person putting them up on thieving torrenting sites. (Yes, I include a nag and specific typos in certain things, so I can pinpoint who’s listing my stuff on pirate/thievery sites.) So, outright demanding that I write more Kaia makes me want to dig in my heels and is extremely counterproductive.

Anyway, the dogs need a brisk walk to shake off morning fidgets, and I need it in order to shake off the logy feeling of not nearly enough caffeine. I might make myself another jolt if I still feel woolly-headed when we come back home.

Again, I’m super sorry about last night’s snafu, guys. I take being invited into your inbox very seriously, and accidents are embarrassing. You can bet your sweet bippy I’ll be deleting that plugin during the next scheduled maintenance session.

And tomorrow’s Friday. It can’t come soon enough…

While They Stay

The weekend was… busy. The neighbor’s beloved Big Cat–more properly a dog in a feline body, one of the few cats I’ve ever met whose fuzzy belly is not a trap–came down late Saturday night with what we’re almost sure is saddle thrombosis. The vet at the animal hospital agrees, so now it’s just keeping him quiet and stable long enough to get him to his regular vet, where further decisions will be made.

Poor fellow. He’s got painkillers, so his human is probably feeling worse than he is at this point. I just wish I could punch the offending disorder right in the face, knocking it out of his poor kitty body and restoring him to health. May Bastet watch over him and his human today.

So that’s happening. I did get the winners of the Happy New Strange Angels Giveaway notified, so at least there’s that. And I got plenty of housework done in between trips to the animal hospital and helping with Big Cat. I swear, I need Monday and Tuesday to recover from every damn weekend lately.

I feel like I want to change up some of the Soundtrack Monday vibe, too, so I’ve got to think of that. Maybe I’ll highlight a song on a working soundtrack instead of one for a published book. Hm.

…I’d add more, but I’m too tired. I should probably think about breakfast; 6am was just too early for a nervous stomach to accept anything but coffee. I’m tetchy despite a short run. Maybe wanting to punch intangibles will go away when I get something solid in me, but I’m not betting on it.

The rest of today’s work involves outlining, after a fashion. I know I’m going to throw out the outline halfway through when the true shape of the work becomes visible, but before then it’s nice to have handholds, even if they’re entirely wrong. As in warfare, no plan survives contact with the enemy but planning is indispensable nonetheless.

Hug your furry friends today, my dears. They are with us so briefly, and give so much while they stay.

*sigh* Onwards, I guess. If I sit still and think about it, I’ll drown.

Shillin’ My Wares

I am so close to the end of revisions for HOOD‘s Season Two, I can taste it. Of course, there’ll still be CEs and proofing, but the season has its shape now, and it’s… actually… not a bad book? Which means I’m almost at the final gate.

I go through phases of hating each book. Generally the first one hits in the Slough of Despond from about halfway through the zero draft until four-fifths through, when the gallop to the finish takes me and I have no time for any emotion other than weary focus, then again it strikes midway through the revision into a reasonable first draft, then there’s the point halfway through other revisions when I think I have always been revising this book, I will always be revising this book, and weep.

It gets to where I’m afraid, each time, that I will always hate the book, and that it will go out into the world an unloved child. Which dovetails neatly with the “everyone will hate this, then they’ll hate YOU, then your career will crash and you’ll be homeless and your kids and dogs will starve and then the sun will go out and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT, LILI, ALL OF IT!” that strikes right before Release Day.

But in between those bursts, I have shoals of time where I think, well, this book ain’t perfect, but it’s not totally awful, and I’m grateful for the respite.

This particular burst of “maybe not bad” came when I reached a particular scene, frowned, and realized that the hole I’d sensed in the book was right there, plainly visible. I just needed to let the season rest for a wee bit before I got enough distance to see it. Which meant I could reel back in Scrivener and drop in an extra chapter (hey, I wrote about that earlier this week!) that makes the entire book hang in the shape it needs like a 3D tapestry.

It was a welcome discovery. I knew the hole was there, I just couldn’t see it.

Which reminds me! Some of you are asking about Haggard Feathers, my writing Substack. Come February, one weekly post there will be free and the rest will be subscriber-only. I’m still going back and forth about what’s a reasonable price to charge for it; the Substack will focus on being a working writer as well as refining your craft as a casual hobbyist. I plan on also doing a Thursday Evening Open Thread over there, where subscribers can ask questions, play, and generally interact with each other and me. I’m thinking around $5/mo wouldn’t be too much to ask; I might end up doing subscription tiers if Substack supports that. In any case, it has not changed to subscriber-only yet, and one post a month (probably on the first Tuesday) will be utterly free so you know what you’re getting. Come February, I’ll trot out the subscription option.

Also, if I’m shilling my wares (as one is frequently required to do in order to keep body and soul together) I have a Patreon, and also have subscription options at Gumroad. They fall into three classes: A Latte’s Worth (a once-monthly fiction drop, the price of a cheap but good coffee), Crow’s Nest (weekly fiction drop, generally on Thursdays) and the Nest Egg option, which not only gives you the weekly fiction drop but also gives you access to whatever serial I’m running currently–including the unedited and edited ebooks of said serials, before they go on sale and most times before they can even be preordered. The current serial is my Robin Hood in Space story, of which Season One is available in entirety and Season Two is spiking for a finish involving a ball, assassination attempts, and a GIANT SPACESHIP BLOWING UP because hey, write what you love, right?

I’m trying to maneuver myself into an emotional-mental space where I can have the next serial be The Highlands War–that’s right, the next Steelflower book. But there’s still Season Three of HOOD to get through, so I have time to think about, doodle, dream, and prep to my heart’s content. The next serial might end up being Lightning Bound instead of Highlands War, too. I haven’t decided yet.

Giving yourself enough time to make decisions is a skill that edges into a luxury. But if one can possibly take it, I recommend it. There are very few decisions that are as pressing as the world would like us to believe, especially that slice of the world full of people who (wrongly) think they’re entitled to something from us just because they want it.

Anyway, the dogs need walking, I have a workout to get into, and there’s correspondence to take care of before I can get to what I really want to do–revise this book so I can get to the next stage of the publication process.

See you around, chickadees.