Saturday, December 28, 2013

Happy Holidays (and a revision update)

Happy Holidays to all! No white Christmas for us in Boulder this year - it's 50 degrees and last week's snow is long gone - but we've still been having a lovely (if busy!) time with family.  Plus, every night after everyone else goes to bed, I get to settle down with my Labyrinth of Flame draft and enjoy some quality revision time.  (I say "enjoy" without any sarcasm whatsoever.  I love the part where I take a raw mess of a scene and shape it into something that's actually good.  I am having so much fun with the book right now.)

More for myself than anyone else, I thought it'd be interesting to keep track of the revision process.  As of today (12/27) I have the first three chapters (about 56 manuscript pages) of The Labyrinth of Flame revised, and I'm working on a synopsis of the book for my agent's use.  (I haaaaaaaate writing synopses.  I confess I asked my agent, "Can't I just finish revising the entire book instead so you can submit the whole thing instead of a proposal package?"  Agent: "No.")  Looking forward to finishing the synopsis so I can get back to the fun writing.

I also took a quick break from revising to participate in a Mind Meld over at SF Signal talking about our favorite dragons in fantasy.  Check it out to find out what dragon books have influenced me as a fantasy reader (and why I think dragons have such enduring appeal in the genre).

Next week I plan on doing a year end wrap-up post that'll cover my favorite books read in 2013.  As an author I get a huge warm fuzzy every time I see a book of mine show up on that type of list.  I've been delighted and honored to see Whitefire Crossing and Tainted City get a few mentions this year:


Looking forward to sharing my own favorite reads of the year with you all!  In the meantime, back to that pesky synopsis...


          

4 comments:

  1. Huzzah for revision!

    I suspect I'd hate writing a book synopsis, too. Thankfully, I haven't reached the point in my writing career where doing such a thing in necessary (I guess that will come when I can actually I HAVE a writing career :p), but I can only imagine how annoying they could be to write up.

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    1. It's not all that hard to isolate the story's chain of important events and write them down. What's really hard is to make the impact of those events understandable and compelling without the help of all the detail that's included in the real thing. Gaaah, I twitch just thinking about it. At least with this one I do *know* the plot, having finished the first draft and all. I had to write one for Tainted City for the cover artist's use back when I was only about 1/4 of the way into writing the book. I'm pretty sure the rest of the story as actually finished bore almost no resemblance to what I said in that synopsis. :P

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  2. Pete's Dragon! Saw that one in the theater as a boy.

    Which reminds me of another kid favorite, Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon.

    "There once lived a prince among dragons,
    An exquisite dragon was he,
    Not quite green and hardly blue,
    But greeny-blue, just like the sea."

    Hope that inspires your revisions! :-)

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    1. I just watched Pete's Dragon recently with my 4yo so it was fresh in my mind. Not quite as good as many of the other Disney movies of that era, but my 4yo sure loved the idea of having a dragon as a friend. :)

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