Y is for Yippee!: A to Z blogging challenge

So, I just had my birthday (yesterday).  It was pretty darn awesome. I spent it with my family. There was cake. There were hugs. There was singing and my girls both sing beautifully.

http://www.picgifs.com/graphics/snoopy
/graphics-snoopy-360370-840738/

But what really made this one special is that it was my first one celebrated as a published novelist.

Good golly but that's great to say.

I was visiting with a high school friend this past summer (Hi, +David Holland ) and he reminded me that, in high school, I always said I was going to write a book. I don't actually remember that myself--high school is sort of this ugly smear on my memory that I've tried to obliterate with better experiences ever since.  I try not to remember it in too much detail as I do with other painful things in my past.

But I know he's right all the same. I can't remember a time before I wanted to be a writer. Pretty much as soon as I learned that was a job a person might have, it was on my list of dreams.

And this year, 2015, it feels more realized that ever before. Going Through the Change is out there--on shelves and stuff! People might buy it and read it. Some of them might like it! If I'm really lucky, my other books will get out there in world, too.

Yeah. It was a pretty awesome birthday.

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

X is for X chromosomes: A to Z blogging challenge

When I started to write Going Through the Change, I hadn't thought my way in too deeply. I'm a discovery writer that way--I just start writing and see where the story takes me. I don't really make a plan, it's more like I find the plan by looking at what's there. Then, I work backwards, making the story lead more clearly to where it ended up meandering.

L. Alvarez, drawn by +Charles C. Dowd 

Part of that meander was a research wander through genetics an gender.  Writing Linda/Leonel Alvarez had me researching and considering estrogen and testosterone, X and Y chromosomes, what kinds of things make a person "male" or "female" both genetically and socially.

Gender as a feature of identity is fascinating. Myself, I'm pretty dull. I'm cisgender. The world sees me as female and so do I. I'm even straight. Boring. But, it's who I am.

Linda's much more fluid than that. She was cisgender for 48 years. Then, a fluke of comic book science turned her into a man. The world sees her as Leonel, a virile man. Inside, though, she still feels like she's Linda, a wife, mother and grandmother.

Gender identity is extra tricky for her because she didn't choose change. As she says in the sequel I'm working on now: "I didn't cross the border; the border crossed me."

In writing, I found I needed both sets of pronouns for Linda/Leonel. When we're in her point of view, she calls herself by female pronouns and uses the name Linda, but the other characters call her Leonel and describe her with male pronouns. It meant I got to write fun things like:

"Her penis stirred a little against her new bathrobe as she remembered the pleasures of the night and the morning. He could still be hers, and she could still be his. They were the same people, even if she was housed differently now."

I'm so glad Linda came into my story. She's teaching me so much!

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

W is for Women Warriors: A to Z blogging challenge

Women are tough. Even those of us without comic book superpowers have regular superpowers like multitasking, managing crises, organizing families and partner-soothing.

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small
/0/3133/105619-18439-108206-1-red-sonja.jpg

Maybe this is part of why stories about kick-ass women become so popular. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black Widow from the Avengers series, Lisbeth Salander from the Girl Who series, Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, etc. There's my childhood favorite: Red Sonja.

The frustrating thing to me has been that, even in stories about amazing women, we still worship at the altar of youth. Think about that list I just made. Not a gray hair or stretch mark among them. Several of them still respond to "girl" without feeling insulted or weird. (And I listed the ones who work mostly dressed…unlike our friend Red here)

That's part of what drew me to writing Going Through the Change. I wanted a superhero story about full grown women with lives, jobs, families and responsibilities.

There's not a lot of them out there. Let's see…Helen Mirren in Red, Judi Dench as M, though neither of them are the "star" of those particular movies. Um, yeah. I'm stuck. Can you think of any? Hmmm…best get to work on those sequels. We need more of these.

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

V is for Violence: A to Z Blogging Challenge

Before I began writing Going Through the Change, I had never really written action scenes. My first novel (unpublished, His Other Mother, women's issues fiction), my short stories, my poetry and my essays had not featured things like people who could wield fire and fly, or even people who threw punches.

http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/di6/ppR/di6ppR6i9.jpeg

Writing violence well requires a different set of writing chops than I had yet developed. When I first started trying to do this, I really began to pay attention to what other writers did when they did it well (Larry Correia's Hard Magic is a great one). I also attended a writing advice panel at GenCon's Writer's Symposium called Mano a Mano that helped immensely. Lastly, I began studying German longsword. No one in my book fights with a sword, but it still helped me think about and understand body position in combat. (I'd like to think I did it well in the end, but that's for readers to say).

So, for other writers giving it a try, here are a few tips:

• Keep logistics simple: The reader needs to quickly understand where the players are in relationship to each other and what exactly is happening. Don't lose your reader in over-detailed explanations or too-vague descriptions. 
• Pacing is king: The middle of a fight is probably not your moment for a deep thought or flashback--stay in the moment
• Raise the stakes: The scenes are best if kept short, but even in a short scene changing the setting to someplace more dangerous, or putting someone in direct peril can really add interest for the reader
• Don't talk too much: dialogue can really slow down a fight
• Characterization still matters: It's not enough to describe what everyone is doing. Your reader needs to have a pony in this race--they need to care who wins, who gets hurt, who gets away. 

If you can keep these things in mind, you can create a scene that is exciting and engaging for the reader and that forwards your plot and characterization at the same time. You can rule the world! (at least that's how it feels)

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

U is for Unusual: A to Z Blogging Challenge

The women in Going Through the Change aren't used to thinking of themselves as unusual. In their own circles, each of them is pretty normal.

Patricia fits in well with the suits she spends her day with in the corporate world. Linda is happy among her family and neighborhood friends in her role as mother and grandmother. Jessica enjoyed her role as half of a power couple, at least until she was slowed down by cancer. Even Helen, who isn't exactly happy, doesn't stand out too much from other real estate agents and midlife divorcees.

Menopause can make any woman feel alienated from her own body. One of the major emotions of this time of life seems to be WTF!

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/5/22/1369230882515/wtf.gif

If you've been reading along so far, you already know that the changes that these women went through were more extreme. The emotions though are more universal--we've all made this face at one time or another when we looked in a mirror.

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

T is for Time: A to Z Blogging Challenge

You hear a lot about how slowly the traditional publishing world moves. It's been described as glacial. It's a source of frustration, especially for eager new writers who are anxious to get their words into the hands of readers.

So I thought I'd share some details of the how much time went into the creation and release of Going Through the Change. For me, from conception of the idea to a book you can now buy (!) was almost exactly three years.

http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbicfqDTiv1rfyxp4o1_500.jpg

In Spring 2012, I was struggling to finish the first novel I ever wrote (unpublished, His Other Mother, women's issues fiction). It's a dark story and it was emotionally hard on me to finish it.  So, part of my brain was trying to escape, and I came up with the general concept and some rough character descriptions for a superhero novel, escapism at its best. I filed them away and used them as a bribe to myself to make myself finish that first book.

In July 2012, I finished writing His Other Mother (that one took four years just for the writing of the first draft), and let myself start writing Going Through the Change. I finished the first draft in August 2013 (somewhere in there, I picked up my Magic Spreadsheet habit, which really increased my productivity). By the end of 2013, the book had been through my critique group and I had rewritten it. Keep in mind I also had a full time day job (middle school teaching) and a family during this time--there was only 1-2 hours per day I could get for direct focus on writing, often less.

I started querying it and submitting it in January 2014.  I won't make you suffer through the rejections and no-answer-answers with me.  The story ends happily with a book contract from +Curiosity Quills Press in August 2014. CQ had a really quick process. From my initial submission to my contract offer was only a space of about two weeks.

Since then, we've been working steadily on edits, cover art, marketing plans, etc. All the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes my book as beautiful and polished and perfect as it can be.  So, here we are on BOOK RELEASE DAY! It's been nearly three years to the day since I thought up the idea. In traditional publishing, I'd call that speedy-fast-quick!

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

S is for Superheroes: A to Z blogging challenge

"A superhero novel? Really?"

That's a pretty common response when I tell people what Going Through the Change is about. Superhero novels is getting to be a pretty nifty little niche market in fiction (check out Eric Searleman's excellent blog on the topic for more information), but it's still pretty small. A lot of people say, "I didn't know that was a thing!"

I've been a comics fan my whole life and I didn't know there were such things as superhero novels until a few years ago when I met James Maxey, author of Nobody Gets the Girl, and was thereby introduced to the sub-genre.

I've since read a lot more great books in this genre. (See my posting on DIY MFA on April 24, 2015 for some of my favorites).

Writing a superhero novel about menopausal women was the most fun I've had so far as a writer. It's still fun, as I finish up the sequel and make plans for a third book. I'm so happy to be playing on this particular playground!

_______________________________________________

This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!