Until Death: My First Urban Fantasy Novel

I'm excited! It has taken me about two years, but I've finally published my first full length urban fantasy novel.

Here is the summary:

Darla longs to work magic but when, on her 18th birthday, a demon reveals to her she is a sorcerer, one of the most powerful creatures of magic that can exist, she discovers that nothing comes without a price. Long ago, the Council of Mages declared that sorcerers were too powerful to exist and hunted them almost to extinction. Her family pleads with Darla to renounce her powers, but can she give up what she has sought for so long? Faced with a choice between death and giving up the only thing she has ever wanted, Darla desperately searches for a third option. Perhaps, with the help of a good demon, she can discover how to change her fate.

Until the end of the month I'm running a promotion on Smashwords, giving the book away for free (offer ends August 1, 2011).

Here is the first chapter:

Nervous, I peeked into the break room. It was vacant. I realized I had been holding my breath and exhaled. Hands shaking, I set out my spelling regents, lit incense, purified the area, grounded and then readied myself to cast the spell. It would work this time. It had to work. If it didn't ... I shuddered. I couldn't think about that, it could jinx the spell.

I cast a circle of power, starting in the north then working my way through east, south, west and then back to north. Feeling the circle close I called the guardians of air, fire, water and earth. As the last guardian was invoked I felt a stirring of power, like a light electric charge, infuse the incense laden air.

It was an encouraging beginning but I'd come this far before only to have the spell fall flat as a soufflé on an artillery testing range.

Shaking myself -- no negative thoughts! -- I began the main spellwork. Since all spellwork is fueled by magical energy I needed to raise some. There are as many ways of raising energy as there are magical practitioners. Certain ways are faster than others but almost any repetitive activity will work if you stay focused and keep at it long enough. I love to sing and dance and so used my body and voice to shape the rising currents. This was another reason I wanted privacy.

When the hum of building energy plateaued I began to weave the spell. The idea was that at some point the energy would peek and, at just that point, the last part of the spell would be spoken and the energy raised would be directed into it to fuel the working. If there wasn't enough energy, or if the timing was off, the spell wouldn't have a power source and would be as useful as a cell phone with a dead battery.

This last bit was the tricky part, the part I had never been able to pull off. People were beginning to whisper that I was a mundane -- a person not able to bind energy into a spell. Sure, I could invoke spells someone else had bound to an energy source and stored in an object, a wand for instance, but even a mundane could do that.

As I sang and danced around the break room I could feel the tingle of magical energy glide over my skin. The energy was building. I smiled. It was close. So close.

Keeping my awareness on the magical currents, I uttered the last words of the spell and gave the push of will that would drive the two together, sending the spell to feed off the energy raised and release itself into the world. Only a little more ... There! As I uttered the last syllable of the spell I felt something begin to swirl around me like a breeze. It was working!

And then .... nothing.

At the last moment a wash of cold radiated from my solar plexus, driving the hot airy currents of energy down, grounding them. For a moment I felt the spell reaching for the hot energy, hungering for it, but then it began to unravel.

I fell down on my butt, tears in my eyes. Why! Why did this always happen? I had been so close that time. So close. But close is never good enough, is it?
Noises outside the door, garbled words. Eli's voice. Crap! I lunged toward my spelling supplies and tried to extinguish the burning incense. I wasn't supposed to be spelling in the break room. It had been banned last year after a neophyte practicing an implosion spell had destroyed half the school.

The door opened. My supervisor, Eli, was talking with someone in the other room. "... means we don't have much time, call in Wallace and ...," It took Eli a couple of seconds to notice what I'd been doing in the break room. "What the hell? Waters you know neophytes are banned from spelling in here and, besides, aren't you supposed to be working? Being part of the work-study program is a perk, I can take it away. Is any part of that unclear to you?"

I cringed. To say that Eli was not my biggest fan was the understatement of the century, perhaps the millennia. "I know, I know, it's just that everyone was out and I thought I'd practice."

Oliver, a third year neophyte like myself, pushed into the break room after Eli, fixed me with a malicious eye and grinned. Oliver was the kind of person who lived to create discord. "Don't worry boss, we all know she's a mundane, ain't nothin' going to happen."

My blood froze. Mundane. I felt blood rush to my cheeks.

"Shut up Oliver, when I want your opinion I'll let you know," Eli said.

"Yea Oliver, eat shit and die," I said.

"That's not what he said." Oliver's eyes were an icy blue that became lost in the doughy whiteness of his face. When he became upset, which was often, angry red blotches mottled his skin making it look almost scaly.

"Sure it was, you just weren't listening," I said, grinning at him like I didn't care about him or what he had said. That was false of course. It was stupid, but I did. I knew he was saying what people were thinking, that I was one of the pitied few who would never develop the ability to bind a spell.

Mundanes were social outcasts. Of course there were justifications for treating them as less than. Mundanes, by definition, couldn't bind a spell so certain professions were automatically beyond their reach. Obviously a mundane couldn't become a mage, but that was just the tip of the discrimination iceberg. Any profession that used magic in any significant way -- and most did -- was closed to them.

I'm a runner, a regent runner. Or at least I will be when -- make that if -- I graduate from The Runners Institute in six months. I go out and get magic workers what they need for their spells, no matter how exotic or ... let's just say 'unconventional' and leave it at that. Runners go wherever the regents are so we routinely end up in hostile conditions, whether that is near the mouth of an active volcano in Ecuador harvesting new lava or gathering hairs from a lion's tail at midnight on the new moon. We need to be able to protect ourselves from extreme conditions and extreme predators, not to mention poachers: those people from rival agencies who want to sabotage us by stealing our regents and our customers. For all those reasons and more, we need to be able to use magic.

If it turned out I was a mundane and not just a late bloomer ... well, it was bye, bye career and hello McDonalds.

Just as Oliver was about to come back with what he thought of as a brilliant retort -- probably something along the lines of 'suck it Waters' -- the emergency siren went off. That was bad. The only time the siren went off was if a nuclear bomb was about to explode or a demon servant was on the loose.

Eli walked over to the intercom and pushed a button. "Wallace, come in." He waited. Oliver and I stood where we were and looked at him, unsure what to do. Eli nodded at something someone, presumably Wallace, had said. "Meet me in the communication center." Eli paused a moment longer and then barked, "Now!" I jumped.

Without waiting for a reply Eli clicked a button ending the conversation, then he punched the big red button on the wall, the one that would project his voice over every speaker in the school. "Listen up! There's a demon servant out there carving up our city. Just like the drills people. We hang back to let the police and first responders in and then we back them up, giving them whatever support they need. No one panic and we're all coming home." Eli closed his eyes and I saw his lips move in a silent prayer, then he swiveled on his heel and walked toward the door.

Cleaning the break room of my ritual apparatus went from being a very high priority to completely forgotten. "Eli, who's my partner, I didn't get an assignment." My partner had dropped out of the program months ago and Eli had been dragging his heels assigning another one to me; if I didn't have one I wouldn't be allowed to participate. Partners watched each other's backs, kept each other safe. No one without one would be allowed out on this operation.

Eli was almost out the door before he reluctantly stopped and turned back. He smiled at me but the smile was no more than the corners of his lips curling up, it didn't reach his eyes. It was a mask, a mask I'd seen him wear dozens of times before telling someone something they didn't want to hear. "We've got this covered but, if you want to help, we're going to need all the Brimstone charms we can get so we'll need grave dirt and it better be old. Go to Jamison's Cemetery on 5th ...,"

I felt my pulse spike and I clenched my hands into fists. "Please don't keep me out of this Eli! This is the first demon servant to run amuck since I've been in the program, I want to at least observe runners in action. I won't interfere, I promise. I need the experience!" Truth was, I just wanted to be treated like everyone else. What with my powers coming in a bit late -- okay, really late -- I wanted some reassurance that I was still on track, still part of the team.

Eli scowled at me. "We need people who can do magic, and that's not you." He turned to leave. "Radio the dispatcher when you have the grave dirt," Eli said. As he spoke Eli walked out of the break room and into the hall, his gait oozing with purpose.

Oliver was staring at me, his too-blue eyes boring into me. His smirk was back.

Oh no he doesn't! I ran to the door. " You're keeping me out of the action because you think Oliver was right, you think I'm a mundane. Okay, maybe my magical powers have been a bit slow in coming ...," Oliver snorted and looked at the ceiling, "... but I can handle myself! And, besides, even if I was a mundane ... which I'm not! ... I have a gun and know how to use it and I have pre-invoked amulets and talismans that even a mundane could use. Not that I am one. I get the job done and I should be treated the same as every other recruit!"

Eli stopped walking down the hall, turned on his heel, and glared at me as he ran his hand through his graying brown hair. People like me had put the gray there. "Waters, you really don't want to get into it with me. Not now. I don't have time for this."

"Maybe it's your loyalties he's not sure of," Oliver said, his mouth turned up in a cruel smile. "After all, most demon servants are mundanes. Eli doesn't want your help because he can't trust you not to have sympathy for the poor misunderstood demon servant and screw up when you're needed." He looked at me, studying me, relishing the effect the information was having.

I felt as though my face had been slapped. "Is that true?" I asked, turning to Eli. "You all think I might side with the Demon Servant?"

I felt my heart pounding, felt the blood in my cheeks.

Oliver smirked. "Why not? Don't tell me you've never thought of making a deal with a demon for some magical juice, even just enough to appear normal?"

Oliver was a dickhead, this much was not news, but I had never, ever, thought even he would accuse me of contemplating making a deal with a demon, for any reason. In order to draw on one's own life-energy the demon had to change you, transform you to be more like it, and that tended to drive humans insane. You had to be stupid, or desperate, to sell your soul for a death sentence and I was neither.

A dangerous cast had crept into Eli's gaze. "Waters, you want to be treated the same as every other recruit?"

"Yes," I said, but I wasn't sure anymore. Eli's voice had a feel of barely repressed rage that made me think I'd gone too far.

"Good. That's it Waters, you're outta the program. I don't know why I put up with your shit as long as I have, I need to have my head examined ...,"

"... but ... No. Hold on Eli, I didn't mean ... Don't do something you'll regret."

Eli laughed and it was laughter that I can only describe as bitter. "Oh, I don't see myself regretting this. Waters, it's true that no one wanted to partner with you. That sucks for you and I'm sorry but sooner or later you've got to face the fact that you can't do magic. That's okay, it doesn't make you less as a person but to work here, to be a runner, you need to be able to bind energy into a spell and cast it. Eli shook his head and shrugged. "Yes, okay. Yes. If you really want to know the truth, no one wants to work with you and I can't say I blame them."

Tears stung my eyes.

Eli paused and took a deep breath. I may not be precognitive but I knew I didn't want to hear what he was going to say next. "That's why, as of now, you're out of the program."

It felt like someone had just slugged me beside the head with a baseball bat. I swallowed but my throat wasn't working right. I staggered forward, going nowhere, my eyes seeing shapes but not understanding their significance. I reached out as though to steady myself. Dizziness. The world was turning white. I crouched so as not to fall. I would not give either of them the satisfaction. A moment later I realized Eli was still talking.

"... seen it coming, but we still need grave dirt for the brimstone charms. Since you're no longer in the program I'll pay you what I would pay a real runner for the job, which is a 25% cut of what The Runners Institute makes. Consider it your severance package, just be sure to deliver it before sunrise. I mean it Waters. If we don't receive the grave dirt by sunrise, don't bother," Eli turned on his heel and strode down the hall.

I wanted to yell at him, to scream obscenities, but I was frozen. Cold. Mundane. I ran the word around my mouth and tasted bitterness. Was that what I was? Who I was?

I didn't remember getting into my car, I was just suddenly sitting behind the wheel holding my keys in my hand staring off into space. I considered blowing off the job and going home.

Pam, my adoptive sister, was getting a Ph.D. in Magical Studies next week and her academic supervisor expected her to land a mage's apprentice job soon after. It was a great honor, only the most powerful magicians were considered for those positions. If she was chosen she would work closely with a mage. Sure, she would be an unpaid laborer and general lackey for years until the mage judged she was ready for her initiation trials but, if she passed, she would become the first female mage in history. I was glad one of us was making something of herself.

I sighed, started the car, and headed toward Jamison Cemetery to gather some very old grave dirt.

* * * *

Get the book on Smashwords for free until August 1, 2011.

John Green: Unpublished book hits #1 on Amazon

I wanted to title this blog, "Nice work if you can get it," but -- although true -- that wouldn't have been informative.

From The Wall Street Journal:

In a feat that even the best-selling writers might envy, young-adult author John Green's latest novel is No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com even though he's still working on it from his comfy La-Z-Boy in Indianapolis.

Here's how it happened:

Mr. Green's runaway train started like this: On Tuesday afternoon, he posted the title of his new book on Twitter, Tumblr and the community forum YourPants.org. An hour later, he upped the stakes by promising to sign all pre-orders and the entire first-print run, while also launching a YouTube live show. Mr. Green discussed his plans for signing the book and also read a section to give viewers a sense of what "The Fault in Our Stars" would be about. (It's a story of two young cancer survivors.)

The announcement then assumed a life of its own. Fans began to make and post hundreds of potential dust jackets for the book, which doesn't have one yet. They also turned to Twitter and Tumblr to discuss pre-ordering the books. The book then began a steady climb up the charts, says Mr. Green. It hit No. 1 on Amazon before 9 p.m., and No. 1 on Barnes & Noble.com an hour or so later.

John Green has over a million Twitter followers and over half a million people watch his YouTube videos. Very nice.

Link:
Tweeting from a La-Z-Boy, An Unfinished Book Hits No. 1

Google+

Circles, hangouts and huddles, oh my!

Writers can be out of the information loop, so focused on their little patch of the news world that big news events can take them by surprise.

Or perhaps it's just me.

Until yesterday I had never heard of Google+. Since then I have diligently read up about it (see the links below for articles I thought were informative) and am very excited.

Facebook never worked for me, perhaps because I have groups of friends with very different interests. My writing friends aren't interested in my personal life and many of my closest friends don't read, so you can imagine how interested they are about developments in the book world!

From what I've heard about Google+ it also seems to be an especially good fit for a writer who has more than one pen-name. Writers can organize their readers into groups and send each group only the information they would be interested in. Less spam might mean more satisfied readers, and that would be great.

Links:
The Google+ Project
What is Google+?
Google takes on Facebook with the Google+ project
Google Makes Facebook Look Socially Awkward

How Do You Know If Your Book Is Good Enough To Be Published?

Here's what Dean Wesley Smith has to say:

1… How many words have you written in fiction since you started trying to write? Mystery Grand Master John D. McDonald used to say that all writers starting out had a million words of crap in them. I started selling stories just short of the million word mark and have sold some of my stories that I wrote between half-million and that first million. However, because of a house fire, I can’t look back on any of the words before that.

But if you have a bunch of stories done, maybe a novel, and have been working at writing for a time, I think you are more than safe to let readers be the judge.

2… Realize that you may have paid your storytelling dues in other areas besides fiction. Say if you have written a couple dozen plays and had a couple produced, your storytelling skills are probably pretty good. If you’ve been a reporter or worked nonfiction. Things like that. Lots of other areas transfer over into fiction writing. In that case you might be writing quality fiction right from the first hundred thousand words.

3… How much are you studying writing to become a better storyteller? If you only have three how-to-write books on your shelf and have never even listened to a professional writer speak at a conference, you may be way ahead of yourself in thinking of publishing.

Publishing and telling stories that readers want to read does take skill and craft and it takes some study to even learn the basics. For example, a couple of the writers who attended this last novel workshop brought first-written novels, and wow were they good. But the key is they had spent a lot of time writing other things and were avid learners, which is why they were here in the first place.

In other words, in short, what I am talking about is a learning period, and the learning must go hand-in-hand with the typing.

It’s called “practice” in any other art. In writing you need to practice as well.

But when in doubt, put the story up and let the readers decide. Writers are always the worst judges of their own work.

And readers who pay money always trump any other source of feedback.

So grow a backbone and trust your work and get it out there, either to a traditional publisher or electronically and POD published.

And, just because it is too good not to quote, here is Dean's advice to beginning writers:

1) Never stop writing and learning. Never think you know it all after a few sales. Never believe you are good enough. Learning in this business never, ever ends.


2) Get rid of the early words, the first hundred thousand words. Then after that keep your work for sale somewhere, either on editor’s desks in New York or self-published or both. You are like an artist with your work hanging in an art gallery or a musician working a small bar. You are practicing and earning from your skill as it grows. It might not be much at first, but if you keep learning and practicing, the sales and the money will come with time.

3) Don’t be in a hurry. This is an international business. You can’t get there overnight. Put your work out for sale one way or another and then focus on the next book. Never look back. Leave the book up and alone.

4) Grow a backbone. Believe in your own art without cutting off the learning. No writing is perfect and maybe a few people out there will think it works just fine and enjoy it. No book is perfect.

5) Never do anything that gets in the way of the writing. Stay away from stupid, time-wasting self-promotion beyond your own web site and social media, and just write the next story and the next book. In other words, be a writer, a person who writes.

6) And most of all, have fun. If you are not having fun while at the same time being scared to death, get off this roller coaster. The ride only gets more extreme and more fun the farther you go along the track.

I would encourage you to read the whole article, here's the link: New York Works as a Quality Filter.

Amazon Buys the Book Depository

I know this is old news, but when I first heard about Amazon's acquisition I didn't know the Book Depository was considered to be Amazon's largest rival. This makes me think of a story I heard not too long ago. In the 90s Barnes and Nobel offered to buyout Amazon and, when their offer was rejected, the comment was made that Barnes and Nobel was going to crush Amazon but that it wasn't personal. Perhaps the story is entirely fictional, but I kinda hope it's not; it's just too good.

I don't mean to suggest that Amazon is perfect, but because of places like Amazon many independent writers earn a decent living and that's wonderful.

Amazon Piracy and Ruth Ann Nordin

A few days ago I wrote about Ruth Ann Nordin's troubles with Amazon.com. Someone had uploaded copies of two of her books and was selling them without her permission. From what I could find out Amazon reacted fairly promptly and took the stolen copies down a couple of days later.

I was very happy to learn that Amazon had acted quickly. Just imagine if this issue hadn't been addressed. What would stop thieves from stealing an author's entire line of books? Why bother writing, if you can take an electronic file of another author's work and sell it without their permission and keep all the profit from the sale?

I imagine that large publishers have lawyers on retainer for just this sort of eventuality but independently published authors do not have the deep pockets that large publishing companies do.

Given this, I was distressed to learn that another one of Ruth Ann Nordin's books, The Path to Christmas, had been stolen and that Amazon was slow in removing the book from its site.

Passive Guy has done an excellent job of documenting this unfolding story so I will point you toward his summary post, Amazon Piracy -- Bumped.

Before I started writing this post I checked to see if The Path to Christmas was still for sale on the Amazon site and discovered that the page had been taken down. I looked for an update on this issue at Ruth Ann Nordin's site and elsewhere but didn't find one but it seems as though Ruth's book is no longer for sale on Amazon and that the issue has been resolved.

As a soon-to-be independent author I would like to thank everyone who drew attention to Ruth Ann Nordin's plight and did something to get the word out.

Links:
Amazon Piracy -- Bumped
Ruth Ann Nordin

Renting Electronic Textbooks

According to Inside Higher Ed, some university presses are renting textbooks as ebooks.

For example, instead of buying a paperback or e-book for $20 at the Stanford University Press website, students and scholars can pay $5 to access an e-book for 14 days, or $10 for 60 days.
....
Stanford is not alone. Academic presses at several other universities are running similar rental programs, including the presses at the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, and Ohio University.

Links:
Link to original article at Inside Higher Ed
Link to referring article: Academic Presses push ebook rentals to spur interest in the format
Link to PassiveVoiceBlg where I learnt of this article.

Red Riding Hood: Pages withheld

Red Riding Hood, a book by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright and David Leslie Johnson, does not have an ending. The story has an ending but the publisher decided to not print it.

Doesn't make sense, does it.

You can buy the book but you can't read the last few pages because the publisher has withheld them. It isn't that the author decided to end the book on a cliffhanger -- something that is done often enough -- it is that the publisher intentionally withheld that part of the book.

The kicker is that readers aren't informed of this fact before they buy the book.

Why is the publisher doing this? It seems to be an ill-conceived publicity stunt. After the movie was released readers could go to a website and read the ending.

Many of the one star reviews on Amazon.com mention this publicity stunt as the main reason for their low rating of the book (2.5 stars).

The first thing I thought of was: What would people have said if a small independent publisher had done this rather than Poppy, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group?

Here are the reviews on Amazon.com, they are interesting reading.

Are Gatekeepers Necessary?

Occasionally I read a post by an author and they not only nail what I have been thinking and feeling about a subject but they express it more eloquently than I ever could. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has done just that with her article, "The Business Rusch: Slushpile Truths", a response to Eric Felten's article, "Cherish the Book Publishers—You'll Miss Them When They're Gone", that appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

She writes:

Let me tell you, Mr. Felten, as a person who read slush for a decade, discovered lots of new writers, and won both a World Fantasy award and a Hugo award for her editing work, the slush pile isn’t some growing, breathing, horrible thing to be avoided. It’s a tower of hope, of dreams, of writers who want to do something with their lives.

Yep, there’s bad stuff in it. But the bad stuff is less common than the dull stuff, the mediocre stuff, the unoriginal stuff. The bulk of the slush pile is boring, not terrible. You start reading one of those manuscripts, your eyes glaze, and you set it down, and move onto something else.

Sound familiar, readers? Of course it does. The slush experience mimicks your own reading experience with traditionally published books. Yep, you folks do it with books that have already been published. [Italics in original]

Go Kris! She nailed it. "The bulk of the slush pile is boring, not terrible."

I have heard folks say things like: Indie authors write crap, just pick up 10 indie published books, you're lucky if you find one you'd want to read. I don't disagree, but the same is true for traditionally published books. The books I'm not interested in reading are not terrible books, they just failed to grab my attention.

One last quote:

Why am I taking this guy on? Primarily because so many of you sent me this silly piece, which just goes to show how many of you read The Wall Street Journal as opposed to the more obscure bloggers on the NPR website. (They covered this issue last summer.) I think a bunch of you also sent it to me because you agree with him, because you’ve bought that piece of swampland in Florida with the sign that says “Professional Gatekeepers Necessary.”

That was my much needed laugh of the day. Thanks Kris. Looking forward to next Thursday.

When is a book crap?

Joe Konrath blogged yesterday that

Some people believe the ease of self-publishing means that millions of wannabe writers will flood the market with their crummy ebooks, and the good authors will get lost in the morass, and then family values will go unprotected and the economy will collapse and the world will crash into the sun and puppies and kittens by the truckload will die horrible, screaming deaths.

Or something like that.

This is bullshit, of course. A myth. A fabrication. One rooted in envy and fear.

He titled his blog, "The Tsunami of Crap". It is a good and very funny read.

Antoher good read on the same subject is Michael A. Stackpole's blog, "When is Crap, crap?" He writes:

So, how does a writer know when what they are writing is crap—not relatively, but purely and deeply?

I think every writer knows, in his gut, when he’s put his heart and soul into a story. If he hasn’t been working hard; if he hasn’t been making the tough choices; if he doesn’t love the characters enough to let them grow; if he’s thinking more about the paycheck than the story—then chances are that what he’s turning out is crap. The story won’t have heart. It won’t have characters that readers will want to follow, or shed a tear over. If a writer thinks of a story as just a little “fluff” piece, or has to resort to the invocation of literary criticism to identify and justify the story’s worth, it’s crap.

As Joe says, Don’t. Do. That.

....

If, after ... working as hard as you can on a story, you’ve made the story the best you can possibly make it, it isn’t crap. It might not be the most polished story in the world—developing your skills and voice may take some time—but it’s a better story than you started out with. And if you keep working hard, the next story will be better, and the one after that better still. By offering potential patrons free samples of your work, you let them decide if they want to read you; and they’ll be able to come back and chart your progress to the point where their desire to read and your skill at delivering a story coincide.

If you do that, your work will never sink. It will be good. Folks will notice. They’ll share their discoveries with others. Again, this is not a sprint, this is all about longevity. Keep working, keep writing stories that you’d love to be reading, and you’ll do just fine.

I like that. If a writer works on a story and does the best they can, if the writer has poured her heart and soul into it, then it isn't crap. Nice definition.

Joe's article
Michael's article