According To Hoyt

*I’m working on next installment of how ‘how to write fast’ BUT to hold you off till then…  This is First Blood, which will be coming out from Naked Reader Press, as part of an Antho called Sisters In Blood.*
First Blood

Sarah Marques

He was not a man.

The knowledge washed over the young Rene D’Herblay, as he hid between the wall of the refectory and the side of the lectern, clutching the cross he’d taken from the wall above his bed and trembling.  And the knowledge made him shake more than the sounds coming from the refectory, in the dark: the sounds of broken bone, the sounds of fighting, the laughing of vampires, the sucking of blood.

He was not a man.  Not a real one, a fighting man, fierce and feared as his father had been.  Not even a man like his older brother, the Chevalier D’Herblay, Lord of the D’Herblay Domains and respected by farmers and tenants who looked to him for protection.

Rene might have whiled away his days in this refectory, while father read improving tests from the lectern drawing swords on his spilled soup and dreaming of commanding armies, but his family had always been right about him: small and slight, he had been made for the safe seminary and the protecting arms of the church, not for the rough and tumble, the strife and blood of the battle field.

Only now the church itself had been broached, the seminary had been broken into in the middle of the night.  First, the Judasgoats, the servants of vampires, had come, removing every holy symbol that might disturb their masters, spilling all the holy water and the salt that might have injured the vampires.

That was Rene had awakened to the sound of fighting and dying in the room and, instead of finding a sword and fighting the Judasgoats, he’d minded only his safety, grabbing the cross from the wall above his bed and running madly to the chapel, where he’d taken the holy blood from the monstrance.

Slim, slight, Rene always been told by his towering brother that he was more girl than boy, that he didn’t look like the family, that he partook a sickly and weak nature from being born of a sickly and delicate second wife of dubiously noble blood, who’d proved herself unworthy of the D’Herblay name by dying at Rene’s birth.  Usually Corin added, in an undertone, that Rene should have died with her, and good riddance.  But Rene’s build had served to preserve his life, as he’d been able to squeeze into a corner where no one would think to look for a seminarian.

And now he clutched the cross and the wine and tried to remember the word of a prayer.  Only no prayer would come.  And he was shaking so hard that the holy blood was spilling on his rough linen shirt: the only thing he was wearing since he’d been in bed when the Judasgoats came.  And the cross was leaving marks on his hand from being clutched so tightly.

Someone screamed just on the other side of the tall lectern, and Rene tried to clamp his teeth together, afraid their rattling would call attention to him and tried to form in his mind “Our father–”

“Our father–” but he never got past that, because all he could remember of his father, who’d died before Rene was five, was a stern face, a stern voice telling him not to cry when Rene had just injured himself; and a hand on his shoulder while a voice said, “Always remember that you’re a D’Herblay.  Always make our name proud, my son.  Be a man.”

And now Rene wondered, in a sudden pang of fear if he’d see his father on the other side, and what his father would say.  And would G-d look like his father?

He tried again to form the words in his mind “Our Father–”

But he couldn’t go on.  All those years he’d spent dreaming of leaving the seminary; of joining the musketeers under the assumed name Aramis; of doing great deeds.  It had all been for nothing.

He wasn’t a man.

“Oh, what have we here?” a voice sounded from above him.  And looking up, Rene saw, looking down on him, two wide staring eyes, a very pale face surrounded by a welter of dark hair, and a cruel grin that displayed two large, sharp fangs.

Rene heard the strangled cry leave his lips, as he tried to knit himself even harder with the wall, trying to escape.  But there was no escape.  Why had he thought there would be?  Most people in the seminary: his masters, his colleagues, were now dead or dying.  He could smell spilled blood everywhere, as well as the piss of fear – some likely his own, though he was too scared to be sure – why had he thought he could escape?

The vampire’s large hand plunged behind the lectern, grabbed at the back of Rene’ shirt and lifted him up until his feet left the ground.  Vampires have unnatural strength, Rene thought, his mind stupefied and amazed, as his body tried to scrabble and bring the cross in front of the vampire’s eyes – easier said than done, since the vampire was grabbing him facing away from the vampire.  Vampires have unnatural strength.  And it had to be, because though Rene was shorter than most men in his family and slimmer and limberer than most men, he was not that small for a nineteen year old.  And men shouldn’t be able to lift nineteen years olds as though they were infants.

He tried to spin, without having anything to serve him as a base to spin from, and bring the cross in front of the vampire, but all he managed was to have the corner of it show, when the vampire hit Rene’s wrist hard with his free hand.  It cracked and blinding pain communicated itself up Rene’s wrist, to his arm and shoulder.

And now the vampire spun him around, in the same movement turning away from where the cross had fallen and laughing, a great, amused laugh, “Ah, you’d be a brave one, would you?  But why fight it?  We don’t kill pretty little boys like you, you know?”  The laughter again and something in the vampire’s eye, something that Rene would think fit the word concuspiscence which he’d heard before, from his confessor, but never fully understood.  Oh, sure, he’d loved Maelis.  He’d loved Maelis a corps perdue, which was why Corin had sent him here, but he’d never looked at her as though she were fresh steak and Rene a famished tiger.  That a man, a vampire, should look at Rene that way made Rene’s gorge rise, and his mind befog with fear and disgust.  “No,” he yelled, and – to the new bout of vampire laughter – his hand that had been clutching the chalice with the holy blood to his chest, rose as though of its own accord and flung the liquid in the vampire’s face.

Laughter turned to scream, an unholy scream that rent the night in two, and Rene had time to see the vampire’s face melting like wax in the fire, as the vampire let him go.  And Rene dropped the cup and ran.

Knowing he was lost; knowing he didn’t have much time, knowing the darkness was full of other vampires, Rene scrambled away, half crawling, bent over, before he got to the door of the refectory and ran blindly along the corridor his bare feet slapping the cold flagstones, his pain-wracked right wrist cradled in his left hand.

He was going to hell.  The one thing drummed into them, over and over and over again, since they’d been in the seminary; the one thing that his priest had drummed into him at home, before the seminary, was that the bread and blood were truly parts of Christ.  They were to be preserved from desecration at all costs.  In extreme instances, the faithful was to take the communion into himself, if properly confessed, and safe it from desecration.  Instead Rene had flung it in face of the vampire.  He was going to hell.

It wasn’t until he’d run, headlong, the length of the hallway, and emerged, running, into a street covered in ice, under falling snow, that it occurred to him to wonder how different could hell be from this France where Vampires had taken over, where vampires ruled the night and good people went afraid and locked themselves in their houses at night, hoping that this time the blood suckers would pass them over; hoping to be human one more night.

Rene knit himself with the shadows of the houses and kept running.  It was very quiet out here, and every window and door he passed was heavily barricaded.  There was no refuge, and after a while, he realized his feet hurt with cold, and hurt with the burn of cold every time thy hit the frozen dirt and muck on the streets.  And he thought, distantly, as though it were all happening to some other person, long ago, that his feet would freeze.  And then the rest of him would freeze.  And he would end up dead – as dead as he would have been if the vampire had bit him.  Only in that case there was at least the possibility of a life in death and– No.  He remembered the look in the vampire’s eyes, and for the first time the phrase fate worse than death made itself clear in his head.

He kept running because his body didn’t know enough to realize he was dead, and that there was nothing he could do.  He kept running, looking frantically about for an open door, for smoke, for fire, for a hint that there might be hope, somewhere.  Which was when he saw the light behind him, and, turning around, saw the seminar and the church to which it had been attached go up in a great conflagration of fire, and vampires leaving in groups, laughing and essaying little jigs.  It was impossible not to note some of those vampires wore the same bodies that had, until recently, belonged to his masters and colleagues.

Rene’s gorge rose, and he threw up unexpectedly at his feet, a brief eruption, since all he had in his stomach was the remnants of soup and a slice of bread he’d swallowed for supper, this being advent and a time of fasting.

The vampires would come this.  They’d spread over the neighborhood, looking for fresh blood.  Wiping his mouth to the back of his hand, he scrambled into the first alley he came to.

Which was how he heard the noise of fighting, and the grunt of a man overcome by another.  And, looking ahead, he saw the man in the heavy cloak, and the vampire holding him, bending over him, about to take a bite from the man’s neck.  The memory of the vampire’s eyes, the unclean lust in them – a lust for blood, Rene guessed, more than other pleasures of the flesh – flashed into Rene’s mind.  And, blindly, Rene looked for something he could use as a weapon.  He glimpsed a flowerpot in the recessed doorway of a house.  It was empty of everything but soil and the withered twigs and leaves that remained of the flower that must have grown in it in spring.   Rene would have given something for a heavy tree trunk, but if this was all he had, then this was all he had.  He grabbed at the edge of the flower pot with his left hand and, clumsily, flung it through the air at the vampire’s head.

For a sick moment he thought he’d hit the vampire’s victim, or nothing at all.  Rene had been good at games of marksmanship and strength, but not with a left hand that felt half frozen.  But then the vase hit the back of the vampire’s head.  There was a sick crunch.  The vampire started to turn and Rene jumped back, to knit with the wall.  And then the vampire fell, suddenly, and Rene looked over him, as the vampire’s would-be victim straightened.

He was a man in his late middle age, with a fringe of white hair and a look of decided gentility, and he looked tired, as though he’d fought the vampire to a standstill.  He looked across at Rene and his eyes widened, as though not believing the form his savior had taken, then he looked down at the vampire and spat on it.  Then, reaching down, the man got the largest piece the pot had broken into.

“Monsieur,” Rene managed to say, though his words were barely a whisper, all breath and chattering teeth.  “Monsieur, we must run.  There are many of them, all around.  They’re headed here.”

But You Can’t Write That Fast

Being afflicted with esprit d’escalier I now wish I’d called this “Inconceivable.”  Never mind.  In these blog posts, written day by day, I don’t have the luxury you have when writing a novel – that of going back.  And that’s something to which we’ll return in this post.

So, you’re looking at these posts and going “what do you mean write fast?  How fast can one write?”

I once knew a writer who thought that a book every five years was the normal and fair speed and that writing faster than that led to inferior product.  This writer, much as it will surprise you, did not have a career.

Most writers working in this field consider a book a year normal and two book a year fast.

Surely, you say, surely, if we write faster than that, then the product will suck.

Well, publishers – and agents – seem to think so.  It’s been a source of exasperation to me over the length of my career, to have people look at a book and go “maybe if you’d taken a little more time.”

Worse, as it becomes known that I’m a fast writer, I will get reviews that say “She should have taken more pains over these short stories, and then they would be better.”  That was for my first collection.  The stories collected in that one took on average three to four months to write.  One of the took a year.  I don’t know how many more pains they’d want me to take, (truly.)

It always puzzles the living daylight out of me that people think they can tell how long it took me to write a book from how much they like it (or not) or how cohesive it feels or not.  And that they inevitable prescribe MORE time to make it better.

I’m here to tell you that some of us are “putter inners.”  If we rush a book to the finish, with no time to stop and think about the implications of various things, the book is tight and to the point.  But the minute we slow down and start thinking “Well, maybe I need to put in an incident that shows how she really doesn’t like beets…”  Even though the beets are a minor plot point.  Or “well, we never see him hugging his dog.”  Or…  Then on revision, we throw all these things in, we end up with pointers in the book that give the reader the impression that the plot was going to be about something it was never meant to be about.  “I started reading this book about a beet loving dog, but it was too weird to finish.”  While if you’d rushed the book, it would have been obvious it was about a couple who happens to hate beets and love dogs going to the stars.

How fast is fast when you’re rushing?

Well, my fastest-written book – Plain Jane – was written in three days.  Mostly because it was work for hire (yes, I know, other people write media tie ins, as work for hire, I write the biography of Tudor queens.  Deal) and not under my name.  I desperately needed the money, but my mind wasn’t in that space.  So I put it off and put it off and put it off until I HAD to do it, and then did it in three days.

I THINK I edited it twice, but by that time I was in a sort of daze, so I can’t promise.

Would I recommend people doing that?  Well, no.  It was three days of minimal breaks for bathroom and eating, and I think I slept a cumulative four hours.  By the end of it, I felt as though I was eighty and I couldn’t think.  I had to ask Dan to take me away to Denver for two nights.  We went to a hotel where I sat and embroidered, because TV shows were too hard to follow.

However, as an extreme example of my deciding on a plot (in this case a structure, which I made a Cinderella pattern) and running at it, the book did extremely well.  This despite a cover SO bad that it’s second only to the hard cover cover of Draw One In The Dark in the annals of sucky covers.  It still pays me royalties.  So…

Other books that worked well and were written fast, but not as fast, included Draw One In The Dark (two weeks) and Dipped Stripped And Dead (about two weeks.)

In fact, for my money, two weeks are my best writing speed.  It takes about ten days to lie down the tracks on the book at 10k words per day, but count in a couple of days when the cats or the kids keep me from working… two weeks.  Then I send it out to betas, usually get it back in a week or two, and will then spend three to four days in rewrite, unless it’s involved, when it takes two weeks.

THAT is ideal.  And now I hear you thinking “But Sarah… why don’t you write twelve books a year, then?”

Well, I write more than anyone knows about, let’s put it that way – there are pen names you’ll never get out of me, not even by breaking me at the wheel – but no, I’ve never written 12 – or even 8 – books in a year.   So, why not?

Because I allow myself long silences in between.  I lose track of that discipline and habit of sitting at my desk and working.  Because I’ll be in the middle of a book and will get an editorial letter, and then it all goes by the wayside because I have to shift gears into the PREVIOUS book again.  Because I too, to an extent, interiorized the myths of “slow is better” and I keep braking and going “What if I’m doing something horribly wrong.”

But the sad part about that is that, no, I can’t be.  There have always been writers – though Rex Stout is the only one I can think of right now – who wrote really fast.  As in, they locked themselves in a shed for five days and emerged with a book.  And most of the pulp writers wrote six, seven novels a year.

Right now you’re saying “Yeah, but look at the pulp novels.”

No.  Think about the general quality of writing in the field in those days.  How fast or how slow you wrote had nothing to do with anything.  It’s like my collection of my earliest stories.  You can think they’re the way they are (and I confess some of them are rather two-dimensional) because I didn’t take enough time over them.  In fact, they’re the way they are because I was learning my craft.

I think there are a lot more authors writing much faster today than they admit to, because of publisher prejudice against fast writing.  For instance, almost every author I know who writes only one book a year has a deep, unhealthy relationship with computer games.

At one time, when I was looking for a new agent, the A-lister I interviewed told me that if I wanted to be “big league” I should write only a book every two years. That this wasn’t because he thought my entire time should be occupied with that precious book was betrayed by the fact he advised me to get a college-teaching position.  (Which WOULD slow me down to a book every two years.  The papers.  The bureaucracy.  The boredom.)

But that model is passing from the world.  There is no reason for a writer not to write as much as he wishes to.  In fact, if he is still also working traditional and is afraid of being snubbed, he can (and should) use secret pen names.

So…  What holds you back?

In the spirit of confession, and knowing I’m not as fast as I could be, I’m going to give myself my own prescription for speeding up:

1 – Stop being afraid to.  Believe – truly believe – how fast you write has nothing to do with how good you are.  Sure, some people are faster than others, but how do you know what your fast-limit is if you don’t test it?

2 – Stop stopping in the middle of a short story or a book.  Once you lose it, it’s much harder to get back to it.

3 – Don’t go over a book more than twice for rewrite.  Three times if you REALLY think something is seriously wrong.  After that you’re adding static and losing the signal.

4 – Let yourself go.  It doesn’t have to be good, it has to be finished.  If you allow your internal critic to talk, it will be neither.

5 – Let the words look after the words.  Words are the easiest revision and it’s why G-d gave us copyeditors (instead of as a sick joke, as every author has suspected on occasion.)

Now, ready, set, write.

Running On Empty

So you’re there, like a good little girl – unless you’re a boy – in front of the keyboard, trying to write.  And nothing comes.  And you feel like you’re running on empty.  There is nothing there.  You can’t pull from a well that has no water.  (Yes, I’m getting all metaphysical.  Deal.)

There are several ways to deal with this.

First, our bodies, and believe it or not, your brain is part of your body, are things of habit.  If you do the same thing at a certain hour every day, your body gets used to it.  Like, for instance, for years I believed one had to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning to “wake the system.”  I eventually broke the habit, because (mostly) when I was pregnant with the second boy drinking water on an empty stomach brought on heart burn from beyond.  But it didn’t feel RIGHT for months, to go without that glass of water.

And when I wrote short stories every Saturday morning, I found I woke up on Saturday with an idea and a need to write that story.  (This was a right b*tch at cons or on vacation.  Ask my husband how many times I carried around a pen and note pad while we followed the kids around the amusement park.)

Have a time and a place where you sit down to write and MARK YOU that you do nothing but write in that time and place.  You might edit old stuff if you’re completely out of it – but it’s actually better if you write new stuff, even if you know it’s screamingly bad.  And some of it will be bad.

Right now part of the problem I’m having is that I also edit AND write blogs at my desk.  This makes my mind confused about what I’m supposed to be doing.   What I’d like to do is get another desk and computer for those other tasks, but I’m afraid my husband will kill me when I tell him that (well, I already have TWO art computers and workspaces, and this desk.  Oh, yeah, also my travel laptop.  Which I actually could TOTALLY use for the editing and blog.  So… I need a new desk.  Um…  He’s gonna shoot me.)

If you play games or do anything else with your computer, including email, do it elsewhere.  Save a place JUST to write in.  A lot of the writers famed for speed, like Rex Stout, had their typewriter in some shed where they only went to write – and where they wrote like demons.

Then make it an habit.  Every morning, get up and write.  (Or evening.  Or whenever you have.  Look, you can write a thousand words in two hours.  If all you have is two hours in the evening, you can still write 356 thousand words a year, which is, for sane people, three novels.)  It can only be say three days a week, just do it regularly.

But habit is only part of it.  There will be times you just have no idea what to write.  Well, work through that before you sit down.  Look up three words to inspire a story.  Or take a proverb and twist it.  Or take a what if “What if vampires existed but they were really small?  Like palm sized?”  Or… whatever.

It doesn’t matter how good your story is.  Don’t wait for the perfect story.  Write a story now, you can always write a better one tomorrow.  Or the day after.  And since this is a matter of practice, your stories will get better.

Give yourself permission to suck rotten eggs.  By which I don’t mean JUST your idea, but your writing too.  Yeah, so you’re repeating the word “just” every three words.  You know what, that’s what editing is for.  Get the idea out, get the words out, get the story out.  The words you can deal with later.  As much as this might shock people, facility with words is only a part of what makes people successful as writers, and not the most important part.  If you can find Hamilton’s early, very poorly edited Anita Blake novels, read them and tell me how much of a word-mastery went into them.  And yet, she’s a bestseller, and I know people tossing beautiful, perfect poetic words on the page who can’t sell.

If you are a word-person, take care of the words later.  For now write.  Write even if you think your character is a perfect idiot.  JUST write.  Get your mind and brain used to it.

But sometimes you’re REALLY empty.  As in, there is nothing there.  The very idea of writing HURTS.

Well, I can’t throw stones.  I’ve been there.  If you’re really tired, take a break.  If you haven’t read a book in a while – which is one of the things that makes me run on empty – give yourself permission to take a day off and read.  Go for a walk.  Play with your kids.  Throw a frisbie for the dog.  Watch a movie.  Cook an elaborate meal.

Give yourself a day off, as you would if you SIMPLY couldn’t function at work.  But as with work remember you HAVE to come back the next day.  No work-y, no pay-y.  Even if you’re not being paid yet, that’s your goal, right?  Don’t let THAT turn into an habit.  Come back and work, at the right hour the next day.  Tell yourself you had a day off, now you’re back, and work.  And give yourself permission to suck.

Things I’ve found help: If writing shorts, have a list of titles pinned to a corkboard nearby – or a bunch of whatever sparks stories for you.  Sometimes, for me, it’s a picture.  If writing a novel, have a couple of paragraphs on where the novel is going next if you’re a semi-pantser, or a list of questions raised by the novel so far, if a full pantser.  If you’re a plotter, keep your plot on the corkboard or the computer screen.

Give yourself breaks.  I’ve found I work best when I write two hours then take a half-an-hour break, for coffee, to put wash in, to pet the cats or whatever.

Reward yourself.  For many years you’re not going to be paid or at least, if you go indie, you’ll be paid very slowly.  My reward is that I buy myself a glass float per book I write.  They’re pretty, I like them, and I have a bunch of them hanging from the ceiling.  They’re also on average $40 and I’d never buy them except as a reward.  (My betas for A Few Good Men will appreciate the fact that the float I ordered for it was supposed to be red and was made from the ash from the eruption of mount St. Helen’s – which seemed appropriate – but when it arrived, it was a deep, dark pink.  I decided to keep it.)  Other writers buy mugs (Where would I put them all?) music they like, or charms for a charm bracelet.  Something you like and which is significant to you, and which you can buy tons of before you have to move to a new house.

Also, when you finish a novel or a number of stories, reward yourself in a way your body – as well as your mind – will get.  My way is to go to Denver for a day and go to a diner for dinner.  Yours can be going for a bike ride around the neighborhood, or taking a day off to go hiking, or even taking a day off to sit in your favorite coffeeshop with a book.

Allow yourself a day or two of this.  And then, come back, at the right time to the right place.

And work.

Next up: But It’s Impossible To Write Fast.

Miles Between Chair And Keyboard

It is perhaps appropriate that the first post of a series on writing fast (without sacrificing quality) should go up late.

In my observation most people who are really slow at writing – including myself in my slow periods – owe their slowness to one main reason: they don’t actually sit down and put butt in chair.

I know – oh, trust me, I KNOW – how many miles there are between your real life and sitting butt in chair and putting fingers on keyboard.

Let me start by saying this is not how I imagined being a professional writer would be.  First of all, of course, I never imagined being a professional fiction writer.  I was going to be a journalist.  I read the bios of journalists, I interned in a newspaper.  I was going to go in, early morning shift, type furiously away, while news came in by phone.  Flunkies would run to get me coffee…

Sigh.

If I imagined writing fiction at all, I was – of course! – going to be a bestseller from book one.  After which, I’d have this wonderful office, with built in bookcases all around it, a secretary and a researcher and a flunky to get me coffee.

Sigh.

Of course now I know bestselling writers, and even they don’t have that.  But never mind.

Real life turned out much different.  I sold my first book while I had a three year old and a six year old.  Boys.  For those of you not similarly blessed, picture the stock exchange room during a buying frenzy.  It’s about like that, only not as peaceful.

Yet, over the next six years, through a house move and several illnesses (my body doesn’t like me) I wrote about ten books and seventeen proposals.  Also, about fifty short stories.  All of this trying to only minimally neglect the kids (Not really.  I just didn’t hover over them.)

So, how did I do it?  Well, there are tricks.  Some will work for you, and some won’t.  Today for instance, my schedule was shot to h*ll and back by a couple of friend-emergencies this morning and the fact the cats peed on the older boy’s bed.  That too is a lesson to use.

Tips and trips to get to the chair, with fingers on the keyboard:

1 – Set a time.  No.  REALLY set a time.  Say you decide your writing time is at 8 am every day.  Treat it like a job.  At 8 am be at the keyboard, hands ready to type.

2 – But the attic roof just caved in (remember I get these examples from life?)  Well, if you were at the office, would you know?  Make calls on your lunch break.  Right now, work.

3 – But my kid has a full diaper.  I can’t ignore him.
True.  Pretend you’re at the ofice, and a secretary wants to ask you a question. Change that kid’s diaper, then sit down again.

4 – Speaking of which what do I do with the kids/cats/screaming stock brokers?
Have a plan.  If the kid is awake and mobile, setup a play area for him next to you.  If he’s old enough and you’re a mean mommy (TM) give him work to do.  Actually kids react very well to this.  Give them a laptop with a learning program or a notebook to do his writing in.  Explain you’re working and the kid should too.  They’re grownup now.  You’ll see how much they do/learn.  Cats are a little more difficult.  My method is to have one draped across my lap and one on my shoulders.  Screaming stock brokers… I got nothing.  Why are you trying to write in the middle of the exchange, anyway?

5 – But what if I can’t sit down?  I need to clean house/paint walls/garden and there’s no one else to do it.  Dragon Naturally Speaking.  I hear you can work with one of the remote dictation recorders.  I keep meaning to try it, too.  I know several authors who’ve written entire (good) books while doing this.  (I really need to try it.)

6 – But the phone rang!
Unless it’s someone who is bleeding on the floor, ignore it.  And if they’re bleeding on the floor, ignore it too, unless you’re a registered MT.

7 – I’m HUNGRY
Every writer on first coming home gains a bazillion pounds.  This is because your brain learns to short circuit your chair time with “you are hungry.”  Take scheduled breaks.

8 – But I’m just sitting here and not writing.
Unless you’re ill (it happens) it’s probably a case of the block.  Hint, you’re never blocked on everything at once.  Blocked on your serious vamp novel?  Write a funny short story about nuns in space (I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours!)

9 – Give yourself license to fail
By which I don’t mean just to write crap.  Some days that happens also, but I mean more than that.  Give yourself license to have a truly horrible day, like mine today, where you get nibbled to death by ducks.  It doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be wonderful, or that you shouldn’t continue trying to bring order out of chaos.

10 – Try and try again
Sit down every morning at eight (or whenever) and start afresh.  Today, it’s going to work.

Tomorrow: Running on empty.

I haven’t even had a close call like the other day when I was jogging under snow with my hood up and didn’t see the car which managed to stop inches from me.  Yeah, it was a total idiocy to jog with impaired visibility and headphones on.  Sometimes I’m stupid in more ways than one.  BUT if I had been — if I HAD been, then my counter was clean.  (This was my mom’s own particular obsession.  She never much cared about the state of my underwear, probably figuring if I got hit by a bus it WOULD be messy, but she told me never to leave the house with dishes on the counter, because if the police came to tell people I was dead, if there were dishes on the counter they would know I was a slob.

It’s more that I’ve been dealing with family things.  Robotics let the younger kid come home for a day, so I’m trying to remember what he looks like.  (Build season ends next week, so there might be more opportunities for this.)  Also doing laundry and dragged older kid for a walk (That way he can look out and make sure I’m not run over.)

Now I’m going to go over some stuff that needs to come out with Goldport.  Recently I put out two short stories that are out with my collection Crawling.  (So if you’ve read that, you don’t need these.)

Ariadne’s Skein which is in the Darkship Thieves sequence, before the turmoils (for those who have gleaned the future history, which I promise to put up in chunks really soon.  I’ve been collating it.)

and Thirst which was a an honorable mention in the  year’s best fantasy and horror for 1994, but which also, unfortunately, has given Mike Kabongo the idea I write “Legions of gay vampires”  which is silly, since the legions are barely mentioned in this story.  (Also, it’s a gross exaggeration, since I’ve written… 5 vampire stories and two vampire novels and only two of the short stories even involve gay characters — both historical, btw, so I didn’t have much choice.)

While on that — for those who read Witchfinder’s latest installment, no, it’s not about to turn into supernatural bdsm, much less gay supernatural bdsm.  While the characters might er… lean that way, a) it’s not where the story is GOING.  It remains primarily an adventure story.  b) it’s more an elf thing than an orientation thing.  Oh, also a chip on the shoulder thing.  And, yeah, one of the characters has made a bad, bad choice, and not the one you’d think. (Cue evil writer laugh.)

I don’t know why I — the woman who tends to hide all sex behind a pink veil of decency — should need to reassure you, but be reassured.  I told you at the beginning this book contained a gay villain (You’d complained of the lack of same) though I’ll warn you that like most of my villains he might (or might not) end up redeemed as well as punished.

Now, what else?  Oh, yeah –

Would anyone be interested in a series of posts on speeding up your writing?  (Yes, there are tricks and tips.)  And, if you’re interested, the free short story IS up.  Click on the tab at the top of the blog.

And now I go put another load of laundry in.  The glitz!  The glamor!  The mad whirlwind of a literary career!

As distressing as this is to everyone (myself included) having managed to put up the chapters of Witchfinder late yesterday, I don’t feel up to posting early today.  Instead, I shall go and work — you know… the stuff I get paid for.

There might be Austen fanfic tomorrow and meanwhile I’m considering starting another serial on writing or some aspect of writing.  Anyone have any suggestions?

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet.  I hope you enjoy the two chapters.  These fall under “in which things turn… odd”*

For previous chapters, look here:  http://accordingtohoyt.com/witchfinder/
A World of Hurt
They were in deep trouble.  That much Seraphim knew, and he wished he didn’t feel as though he’d very much like to sleep for the next several months.
He felt weak and vaguely ill, not to mention nauseated as though he’d swallowed a good portion of this particular alternate of the Thames which might not have as many houses around it, but probably was none too wholesome to drink.  And they were going to be pursued.  There was not the slightest doubt about that.
As though cued by his thoughts, he sensed magic groping towards them, the feel and gentle probing of the magical police in this world – he didn’t know much about them, but he and Gabriel had once had a brush with them and – he seemed to remember they were called the Imperial Pures.  He allowed himself to mutter a word between his teeth, and was amused to see Miss Felix’s eyes open very wide and her cheeks tinge a dark pink color.  So, she was female and delicate enough to be shocked, was she?  And what kind of insanity had possessed him that made her look devilishly alluring in soaked night clothes and with her hair plastered to her face?
On the other hand, the soaked nightgown was terribly revealing of her curves, and he almost wanted to laugh at the thought that perhaps he was his father’s son after all: he couldn’t be ill or tired enough not to react.  But he tried to keep it from showing on his face, and instead he said, all propriety, “I beg your pardon, Miss Felix, but they are looking for us, and we must escape.  I’m not absolutely sure what we can do, but I can think of only one place I can take us.  Only one place they won’t dare follow us.  It’s terribly dangerous, as it is a world where magic is absolutely disbelieved and, in fact, where only a very strange kind of magic works.  I will be utterly helpless there, but the chances of anyone trying to find us there are close to none, and even if they try, there is a good chance they will not be able to find us, because the world is choked with iron and therefore it is hard to find anyone there.  In fact, it is dangerous to any magical pattern but the strongest.”
Her eyes looked into his, and a small frown was forming, making a vertical wrinkle between her dark, arched eyebrows.  “But–” she said.
“No,” he said.  “Do listen to me.  I don’t know how long I have, and I would have you understand what I’m trying to do.  If I transport us there, it will use the last of my magical strength.  If I should die–” He watched her opening her mouth and put his hand up, to stop her talking.  “No.  If I should die, which is possible, though not probable, or not merely from the spell, I wish you to keep track of how I transported us, and use those coordinates, in reverse fashion, to take you back to Avalon.  There you are to evade capture, and procure…”  He seemed to think for a moment.  “Gabriel Penn’s help, but if you fail at that – as I think the concerted effort to bring down my house might include him – then you are to procure my fiancé, Miss Blaine, and tell her what happened to me, and to seek redress before the king’s high justice.  Trust me, she will be anxious to do so, as she will not want her name to be linked to someone who has broken the law by willingly traveling to other worlds.  And then you are to convince the king to find who was at the back of the conspiracy and to do your utmost to recover my brother, Michael, from Fairyland.”  He recalled himself, and, this time, gave a startled laugh.  “Listen to me,” he said.  “Laying down the law to you, as though I had the power to compel your obedience in the case of my death.  I absolve you from all responsibility in following my wishes, of course, only beg you to consider that without me, or Michael, my house will devolve to a distant cousin, and the family will be left destitute.  But of course, my transporting us and saving you,” he added, urgently.  “Has absolutely no conditions.  If we are captured here, my family will just as surely be disgraced and thrown into poverty.”  He inclined his head to her.  “But I would appreciate–”
Something like a look of dismay crossed her features, and she protested, “Of course I’ll do what I can to save your family.  Only tell me why you think you might die, but not immediately?”
“In my weakened condition,” he said.  “Being in a world with so much cold iron and so hostile to magic will–”
At that moment, he felt the probe again, and this time, felt the end of it fasten on them.  Through the probe came a voice, unctuous and fullsome, as the voice of a functionary who has completed a difficult task, “I found them, oh, gracious one.  The witches are–”
Seraphim took a deep breath.  He called the last of his magical strength to him.  He could feel his power fighting, his instinct of self preservation attempting to keep him from doing such destructive magic, which could only result in his death or at least in serious damage to his magical power and his shields.  It didn’t matter.  If they stayed here, she would have to fight for him.  And that, he doubted she could do.  Then they would both die.  This world, one of them at least might survive.
He reached with the last of his strength for the coordinates of the world he and Gabriel had called the Madhouse, the world he and Gabriel had sworn never to visit again, not since the last time when the sheer amount of cold iron had almost killed them.
At the last minute, as he was reciting the transport spell, he heard Miss Felix say “Oh!” and reaching in, reaching right into his spell and… twisting.
It was still the madhouse, he thought, frantically, even as the spell activated.  But she had set different coordinates.  What could she be thinking?
The cold of the inbetweener hit him, and then he felt himself fall onto a hard surface, even as the sapping feel of cold iron leeched at his magic.
As consciousness ran away from him, he heard Miss Felix pound on something – sounded like a door – while screaming “Grandmother.  Grandmother.  Please, help me.”
Into The Lion’s Den
Marlon had been reclining on a rosewood sofa upholstered in blue velvet, with a book on his knees.
Gabriel’s first thought was that he’d changed not at all.  His second thought was that he’d changed completely.  And both were true.  Marlon’s hair remained that blond on the edge of red – the flame about to catch – and as unruly as it had been at Cambridge, whisps of it standing on end and forming a hallow around the oval face.  His body remained long and lean, and he wore – as he’d tended to do at Cambridge – blue pants of some serviceable material and a shirt that looked too large for him.
But at Gabriel’s arrival, he looked up.  And in that moment Gabriel sucked in air, remarking the difference in his erstwhile friend.  Marlon had grown almost gaunt, and his blue eyes looked haunted, as though he’d looked too closely at horrors he couldn’t forget.
*Good,* Gabriel thought. *He also didn’t escape unscathed.* And immediately despised himself for it.
After the first start, the shock that widened his blue eyes, Marlon controlled himself and looked as though Gabriel transported into his house every day and twice on Sunday, and not as though they were seeing each other for the first time in years – and after they’d parted in anger and bitterness.
He flowed from the sofa, with slow calculated movements, his fingers between the pages of the book, holding the page he’d been reading.  Standing he came to a little above Gabriel’s shoulder, but managed to give the impression of towering over him, and also of distant, cold dignity.  As though he were the offended one, and not the guilty part.
“You honor me with your visit, prince,” he said, in extremely polite tones.
Gabriel opened his mouth to protest the title, then bit his tongue.  When he spoke, he’d brought his own abominable temper under control, though nothing could stop his heart pounding, or the vague feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.  All the furniture here, everything, was what had been in Marlon’s room at Cambridge, and it remained only the question: where was it?  Where was that which had once been Aiden Gipson?  Gabriel took light breaths, feeling as though, should he breathe deeply he would smell the faint scent of corruption in the air.
“I came to you,” Gabriel said, with as much dignity as he could muster.  “Because you told me I could always come to you if I ran out of places to go, and if I had no one else to help me.”
Marlon’s eyebrows went up.  They were the exact same color as his hair, and when they rose like that they gave the impression of twin flames, dancing above his eyes.  “No where to go, prince?  You astonish me.”
“Don’t call me that.  You know very well I am not a prince.  I gave up my dignity and my power long ago.”
“Oh, I don’t think you can give it up.”  A smile without myrth, an absolutely ghastly grin as unpleasant as a corpse’s bared teeth, contorted Marlon’s face.  “I think if you’re born to it, you will always be a prince.  Not like the rest of us, who are born to less exalted positions.”
“For the love of heaven, cut the tomfoolery,” Gabriel said, impatient.  “None of– None of what happened had anything to do with the fact that my mother was an elf princess or your mother a mere elf commoner.  As different as those are, we still have more in common than with– Than other people.”  Which had been more than half of what had thrown them together.  The other half…  Gabriel looked down, trying to discern any hint of the easy laughter that had once sprang between them, or that wordless understanding that had allowed them to communicate without the need for sound.  He found nothing.  All of that had shattered, years ago, when they’d last seen each other.  “You told me I could come to you, if I were out of all other resources.”
“Your high born brother abandoned you then?” Marlon asked.  His look was almost hungry.  “The Duke’s family has disowned you?”
In the face of that hunger, Gabriel hesitated.  How much could he trust Marlon?  If he told Marlon exactly the trouble he was in, would Marlon betray him?  Run to the authorities?
But at that moment, he caught sight of it: the mortal remains of Aiden Gipson.  In life, he’d been a tall man, and much of Gabriel’s build.  In death, his look remained the same, and he wore what Gabriel presumed were clean clothes – since the smell was not that obvious – in this case a serviceable brown suit.  Above it, Aiden’s face remained as it had been in life: the well formed features, the dark green eyes, the narrow, high nose.  Only the eyes looked lusterless, and the lips receded slightly to show the teeth.  It took more than that, though, and the yellowish wax-like pallor to know the man was dead and had been brought back to life with a resurrection spell.  You wouldn’t know that he couldn’t rest until the man who’d made that spell allowed it.
But if you were a mage you could see it and you could smell it: the not quite physical smell of the dead flesh that had not been allowed to decay and instead sparked and fizzed with unholy magic.  And if you were a mage, you could see that more horrible thing: Aiden’s spectre, just behind the body, attached to it by a thread of spell, faded and impossibly-tired looking.
How could Marlon live with that ghost?  How could he?  When he’d met Marlon at Cambridge he’d heard of Gipson and the odd, too-close relationship Marlon had had with Gipson until Gipson’s death.  But it had taken him more than a year to find Gipson, where Marlon had hid him, in the attic room of his lodgings.  And to realize what Marlon had done.
In sick waves of horror, Gabriel recalled how – in shock – he’d given the whole thing away and how the only reason Marlon hadn’t been arrested and Gipson destroyed was that the two had vanished.  Gabriel, himself, had been sent from Cambridge in disgrace, though nothing could ever be pinned on him.  And weeks later he’d gotten the unsigned letter with the coordinates of Marlon’s hideout and the line “when you run out of places to hide.”
Well, he’d run out of places to hide, but Marlon could not denounce him or call the authorities on him.  Or on Seraphim.  Necromancers were at as great a risk as those who traded with unauthorized worlds.
In a rush, one eye on Gipson who stood, knit with the shadows against the wall, half-immersed in shadow, he told Marlon a very brief version of the events.  What he and Seraphim had found of their father’s activities.  How they’d resumed them, helping rescue witches from the forbidden worlds.  And then the catastrophic cascade of events of the last few days.
Marlon showed surprise only once: when Gabriel mentioned the role that the elves appeared to have played in it.  And that in a way was a relief.  The thought of Marlon in league with the fairy realm was terrifying.  And though his mother had been a low-born elf, thrown out of fairyland for getting pregnant by a mortal, it didn’t mean that fairyland wouldn’t use her son, and willingly too.
When Gabriel came to the end, he was quiet a while, and Marlon said, crossing his arms on his chest, “And what do you want of me, prince?  Am I supposed to hide you?”
Gabriel shook his head.  “I could have hid myself,” he said.  “That is, I’m not so witless that I could not have contrived to.”
“Ah.” Marlon said.  “Then what am I to understand you to want?”
“Oh, curse you,” Gabriel said.  “Stop playing games.  This is not funny.  You know very well what I want.  I want you to find where Seraphim went.  I want you to find where Michael was taken.  I want you to help me recover them and discover who is at the back of this, and why, and what they intend for my– For the Duke’s family.”
Marlon was very close now, looking up and somehow contriving to give the impression of looking down.  “And what’s in it for me?” he asked.  His voice was harsh.
Gabriel felt a spasm of revulsion, but said, his voice controlled, “Whatever I need to do to convince you to save Seraphim and Michael and… and their mother and sister.”
Marlon laughed, a short bark.  “You couldn’t DO enough,” he said.  “It’s more what you need to give.”
“Give?” Gabriel asked, as his stomach lurched.  And, uncomprehending, “Give?”
“My price, sweet prince, is you.”
“Me?”
Marlon was now so close, that Gabriel felt a though he couldn’t look away, even as, by the corner of his eye, he followed Gipson’s movement as he emerged from the shadow driven by who knew what random impulse.
“You,” Marlon said.  “Body and soul and magic too.”
“You do have a penchant for trying to own people!” Gabriel said, before he could stop himself.
Marlon narrowed his eyes.  “It’s my price,” he said.  “Pay it or seek help elsewhere for your precious family.”
Gabriel felt as though his throat had gone very dry, his mind lurching into horror, his body hovering on the edge of nausea.  But Marlon was the only person he knew whose power was as strong as Gabriel’s own.  And Marlon was ten times as knowledgeable.  And there was nowhere else Gabriel could go.
“Which one is it going to be prince?  Yes or no?”
Feeling as though he had to force his body to obey him, Gabriel lowered his head and hissed through clenched teeth, “Yes.”

Again.  How sad.  Meh.  Fine, but I’m going for a walk before I proof and put up the WF chapters.  So, there.

Check back in a couple of hours.  I need to get out of the house now.

We all know what to do in manual professions if you injure the limb you work with, right?  You stop.  You take a break.  You – however reluctantly – step back and let the problem pass.

So, what do we do in intellectual professions?  Our colleagues in the non-creative – or differently creative – side of this often do the same that people in manual labor do.  They take a “I’m not feeling all right” day or sometimes even a “mental health” day.

But I know, from having been in a differently creative – multilingual translator, if you don’t get the “creative” part you’ve never done the job – job years ago that there’s always things you can do that don’t involve your brain.  I mean, when you’re hot on a project you push to the back the things that are the office equivalent of doing the litter boxes.  Memos about the company picnic, that probably should be answered.  A letter from someone asking if you can take on another duty.  A note you meant to send about the quality of the last fax, where you needed a magnifying glass to read it, let alone translate it.  Also, why were people writing German with brushes and characters that look like the western equivalent of Chinese?

Failing that, you pick up the next translation job, underline every word that jumps at you as outre, and go on down to reference (this was pre-internet) and borrow the appropriate set of dictionaries, for Scientific and Chemical terms, and then carefully write the translation above the difficult words.  That way tomorrow, when your brain comes back on line, you won’t have to interrupt the “flying” translation to look them up.

You can fill two/three days with that sort of busywork, and then hopefully it’s either the weekend or your mind comes back from wherever it was hiding.  At least, it never failed me.

But writing is different.  No, I’m not giving you an excuse to slack off or to write only when you are “inspired.”  I’ve spent a lot of time writing “by the numbers.”  If you know your craft, it works.  Weirdly, afterwards you often can’t tell which parts were written under inspiration and which driven by a pressing need.

And yet there is another state – a state in which just thinking of words, let alone of story, hurts in a way you can’t quite describe.  The closest approximation for those of you who read Misty Lackey’s Valdemar, is that all your “channels” are raw and bleeding.

For those who don’t, it’s like this – your writing comes from somewhere inside you.  Not that “divine inspiration” crap, which happens maybe once or twice a month, even for me, but the ability to BE there, to make yourself be there, or to think of the logical next step in the story and fake it.  It’s something some people can do and others, no matter how smart and how inspired, can’t.

Sometimes – not often.  You’re reading the woman who was at the keyboard, in floods of tears, turning her grief into a story within minutes of hearing of her grandmother’s death – the writing just isn’t there.
Sometimes I know why.  For reasons known only to G-d and pharmacists, decongestants turn my writing-thing off.  One niquil flu and I’m off for two days, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.

Sometimes I suspect why – this is when I find myself browsing hotel sites when I’m supposed to be writing, or day-dreaming of a trip to the museum.

And sometimes – like today – I have no idea why.  Yeah, there’s been some daydreaming of vacations, but not serious day dreaming.  And we took a mental health day last Friday.  And I’m not sick – well, not really sick, even if I think I’ve worried myself to the edge of a headache.

And sometimes – like right now – it isn’t there at a level that writing this post feels much like I imagine it does for a dancer, dancing on an injury.  Or for an athlete (which I did in my day) running on an injury.  Or for Andersen’s mermaid “every step on sharpened knives.”

Why?  I don’t know.  There is the lurking suspicion that I’ve “stripped” the writing thing, but that makes no sense as all I’ve done very little writing for two weeks: mostly I’ve done edits.

There’s the possibility I’m exhausted, but again, I took Friday off and this week has been anything but productive.

I’ve been here before – where the space between breaks had to be shorter and shorter.  Weirdly I got over it by sidestepping and taking art classes.  BUT at that time there was a reason for it.  I had six books due, all of which was much like throwing a baby into a volcano when I finished them.    At the same time I was homeschooling a kid with special needs.

Right now I’m on a relatively sane schedule – shut up you – and there’s no reason to feel this way.  Except that I do.

Perhaps it hormones, and this adds the distinct possibility that there will be NO writing-thing on the other side of menopause (though heaven knows there was before adolescence.)

Or perhaps none of this is real and it’s just my mind making up excuses to be lazy.  If the writing-thing really is injured, then time off will help.  If I’m just being creatively lazy making up excuses will not.

The difference between a broken ankle and a broken-writing-thing is that other people can see the first (at least with x rays.)  With the second, there’s always the possibility you’re letting your crazy do its thing.

So what do I do?  Other than go and do the litter boxes and light vacuuming and hope the words come out from wherever they hid?

And for the shameless bit of self promotion “How To Write Interesting Books” which was written in posts here has been expanded and improved and is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords for the princely sum of 2.99.  Maybe money can bring me out of my slump!  (Yes, I’m joking.  Now for the kitty boxes!)

(Oooh.  How well that sounds.  I confess I always wanted to title something “Whither something or other” because it makes one seem so important, grown up and particularly well informed.)

Lately science fiction conventions have become a topic of discussion in my circles.  In fact, I haven’t discussed cons and which cons are worth while so much since I was, myself, a raw beginner.

To begin with let me point out that I didn’t grow up with con-culture.  While I was a fan, I was a fan in Portugal, which meant the only contact I had with other fans were while waiting in line to buy that month’s release from Argonauta which was (except for certain fly by night, appallingly proof-read and probably pirated editions) the only science fiction imprint in Portugal.

Since I had no clue science fiction conventions happened, I managed to live in the South Eastern US for eight years and never even know there were about a dozen every summer within easy driving distance.  (Remember, children, this was before internet.)  I first found out about conventions my very last year in the South (at the time in Columbia, SC) and it was academic for me at that point, because we had a small infant, I was very ill and we were beyond broke.  Oh, yeah, and I found out they existed only because I discovered Locus magazine on a magazine rack in Columbia (and then subscribed.)  I was so disconnected from US fandom I didn’t even know of Locus and/or SF Age.

I think I first saw science fiction cons in some sitcom, which made fun of them, of course, and pictured everyone there as rabid gamers and/or media fans.  Now, I have nothing against Star Trek, (DO NOT ask me about Star Wars) but my love of science fiction existed before Star Trek, and continued after it, and also I have the sort of mind that has trouble remembering world details, (even my own.  If Gentleman Takes A Chance EVER has another edition, there are things to clean up) so I can’t get into those fascinating “in episode 25, the ten seconds that show the Romulan base” conversations.  So I thought that while these were science fiction cons, they had nothing to say to me.

And then I sold my first book, fired my first agent, and needed to find a second.  Kris Rusch suggested I go to World Fantasy on a shopping expedition.  And that’s when I discovered conventions weren’t necessarily all media or all fan.

Oh, sure, fans attend conventions – though there are fewer fans at World Fantasy than the other major cons.  Or rather, there’s a higher ratio of writer to fan than anywhere else except the Nebulas – and most of the stuff is directed at them.  But if you are a pro you attend for completely different reasons.

Because I started so late, the only con I ever attended strictly as a fan was Discworld Con, and it was a blast.  The rest of the time, cons for me are working time.

Oh, sure, they’re fun too, but in a different way.  Working in a field where my colleagues can live all over the world (let alone all over the country), I’ve formed alliances and even close friendships with people I’ll never see in the normal course of life.  However, there are cons at which we all gather by accident or design.

You can usually tell pro writers at cons, because they’re a little better dressed, they rarely attend panels, though they often come in near the end and wait for the panelists to finish speaking then go up and greet them.  That’s another way you can tell pros: someone a little too well dressed and a little too old to be squeeing “I haven’t seen you in ages!” and hugging a friend.

Our first two years of attending cons, Dan happened to be in a very well paying job (now referred to as “when we were rich”) which was a victim of the mini-slump after 9/11 (mini compared to now.)  So we attended all the major cons: Nebs, World Con and World Fantasy.

Of the three, as I said, the Nebs had the highest rate of pros to fans, with world fantasy second and world con third.  However, when it came to cutting our traveling for economic reasons, and we tallied the cons where we “did business” we found that World Fantasy paid for itself every year, while the Nebula Awards didn’t.  (This is possibly because the Nebs had MUCH bigger names than I.)  In Worldcon we did no business whatsoever, though it was a lots and lots of fun.  Also, being a minimum five day con it was too “expensive” in time, particularly for a couple with young kids.  So, we decided to do only world fantasy.

This calculus has changed somewhat.  The last two world fantasies I attended I did no business at all.  Part of this might be the pivot in my career (as what I’m becoming known for is MOSTLY science fiction or fantasy with Baen – and Baen doesn’t really have a presence at WFC) and part of it I think are the changes we’re seeing.  On the other hand, Worldcon is coming online as “a good place to make contact with fans who aren’t local” and money permitting I’m going to try to attend at least every other year.

The last time I attended the Nebulas four? Five? Years ago, it was more sparsely attended than I remember, the attendees were more from the Prestige side of the field, and there were only a couple of editors in attendance.  So unless I or someone in whose work I’m interested is nominated, I will probably not bother.  Or unless I hear reports that they are changed again.

And that brings us to the topic of this – yes, WHITHER cons? – and the fact that we pros (and wanna bes) have been talking behind y’all’s backs again.

The topic, quite specifically is “cons to do business in” and there don’t seem to be any.  I mean, none like World Fantasy where an editor was likely to come up to you and go “Sarah” well, if your name is Sarah, natch.  “We’re starting a new imprint and we really liked your Shakespeare books.  Do you think you can….”   These days editors are just as likely to poke you via LinkedIn or to send you a Face Book email.  Ditto for most of your interaction with colleagues.

So, in terms of cons, which ones are still worth it if you’re an established pro?  The ones where you commune with your fans and can meet most of your far-flung circle.  To me that’s boiling down to World Con, though I understand Dragoncon is bigger and better (and I mean to try it, if ever I’m not QUITE so pinched.)

But what if you’re a wanna-be?  Well, it didn’t hit me that things had changed for you guys (since I was never a wanna be at cons) till a friend said “I used to come as a wanna be and hear the names in the field, and the recently published people, to figure out how to do it.  But now it’s 90% self published people on panels, and who wants to see that?”

He has a point, unless, of course, the panel is on self-publishing.  The other reason for a wanna-be or new pro to come to a con was to meet editors.  With the state the publishing field is in, this hardly seems worth it.  Also, according to my friends in the East, where you got more editors at the local cons, there are fewer and fewer of these personages attending cons and the ones that are there mingle less.  I know this is true for world fantasy and world con.  They have meals with their writers, and they make nice, but they’re not as available as they once were and it’s harder for a newby to just bump into them.

So, I’d say if you’re a wanna be and if – like me – you hate most cons (my exception is Liberty con, which is very relaxed and laid back.  It’s not that I hate the cons, actually.  I just hate being out in public.) don’t go.  Stay home and write and work on getting your work out and getting well known.

Does this mean that I think cons will vanish?  No.  At least not most of them.  Some MIGHT vanish, what I call “prestige cons” attended mostly by pros, but even that is doubtful.  There still needs to be a Nebulas Award ceremony, at least as long as the award exists.  So the con might shrink, but it won’t vanish.  Ditto for World Fantasy where, at any rate, a lot of pros meet just to see their friends.  (And I might go now and then just for that, money permitting.)

But cons will CHANGE.  In these pinched times, I expect – if I’m right about what I’m seeing – that smaller local cons will actually grow, particularly if they have a genuinely popular guest of honor.  This is because they allow fans to see their local authors.  They allow authors to socialize with their local friends.  They allow local self-published authors to promote.  They allow local fans to discover local self-published authors.  Honestly, I think these cons, or most of them, would benefit greatly from having an “Indie track” where they put authors who are mostly or exclusively indie.  Not because they should be segregated in a ghetto, but because they’ll attract their own audience, more interested in what they’re saying than in what the traditionals have to say, and also because we avoid those panels where half the panelists sound like they come from a different world from the other half, with yours truly caught in the middle.

Local cons will grow and flourish if they cultivate the sort of atmosphere Liberty con cultivates, where it’s all relaxed and laid back, everyone knows everyone else, and fans and pros are very permeable groups.  (And yes, I’m still trying to figure out how to go to Liberty con.  If I can get a few more indie properties up, and if the front end of my car doesn’t cost me in the many many thousands, there’s a chance I can make it.)  Liberty con is particularly good at providing a place for the younger ones in sf/f to socialize, and if you think your kids don’t desperately need a place where they’re not considered odd, think again.  However, those local cons who insist on being “Too good for the likes of you” will run into some issues.
The bigger cons might shrink, at least if what I’m hearing about gas/flight prices is true, but it depends on how BIG they are.  They might be big enough they’re worth the price to meet THAT many of your fans and to see THAT many of your friends at once.

The hard-hit ones will be the medium ones, particularly in a region that has small cons also.  Those cons have charged a little more and been a little more upscale, but they also bring in bigger guests, and sometimes editors.  This has been failing for some time, and they’ll lose attendants, as the brought in guests are diluted by a flood of indies and as the prices make people balk.  On the other hand, there are tons of things they can do, like… establish an indie track.  Get one or two of the self-published or even the editors of small presses (or the tech people of small presses) to do workshops on how to put your book on line and the pros and cons of various outlets. Take a page from RWA Nationals and open your doors to the local public for a soiree or books give away (particularly good for small presses and traditionals) – ie. Have local people pay a small ticket price and come in to get books signed by the visiting authors and to get books the houses sent to give away (I don’t suggest one does this on the scale of RWA, but perhaps a raffle.)  In other words – get creative.

Also, try not to have the same authors in the same panels every year.  If I’m put on another Heinlein panel where I’m the ONLY one who comes to praise Heinlein, not to bury him, for instance, and where I KNOW what every panelist is going to say ahead of time, there’s going to be blood.  And while that might attract the audience, it’s not fun for the local CSI, mmkay?  Seriously – even the panels I DO enjoy I get tired of saying the same things every year.  I suspect so does the audience particularly at small local cons get tired of listening to us.

While I HATE some of the experiments, like “Speed date an author” that Mile Hi has engaged in, a lot of experiments NEED to be tried, to keep the mid size cons (and some of the smaller ones) worthwhile.

Again, make sure you don’t have “too good for the likes of you” issues.  As a midlister, I’ve often run into cons that had no idea I was “still” publishing after my first series or where the program person didn’t read my bio and assumed I was ONLY writing historical/literary fantasy.  Look, I don’t mind Shakespeare panels, but while I studied him in college and am interested in him, I’ve spent the last nine years writing non-related things.  The research I did for those books is NOT foremost in my mind.  And when what I have coming out that year is an urban fantasy and a Space Opera, offering me a forum to promote my – out of print – series not only is not useful, it doesn’t exactly make me feel like you give a flying fig for my presence.  So when I become pinched, or am on deadline (when am I not?) OR even if the kids want to go to some event that day, I’m likely to send regrets and not go.

Now, I realize most of the time (There are the odd con where my fans all gather) I am not a great loss.  But when you lose ten of fifteen people like me, you’re losing serious pull.  Get your mind out of the “one big blockbuster guest.”  The future is indie and local, and even blockbusters (unless you’re booking Rawling or Meyers) are not what they used to be.  Think “small local divinities” instead of the great pantheon.  By all means, have the guest of honor, but look, you really have no excuse not to KNOW what local midlisters are doing – not in the age of Internet you don’t – there’s wikipedia and, failing that, there’s Amazon.  Five minutes per midlister will have them feeling cherished and important.  We don’t require much.  We’re used to being second-class-citizens.  But when you don’t even bother, we feel like you think you’re too good for us.  And why would you want to do that?  To attract a higher-grade of attendee?  Good luck with that in the era of the long-tail and divided marketing trends.  You’re not in the seventies or eighties.  Not everyone agrees on what prestige is.  Cultivate loyalty, instead.

Given a minimum effort, the future of cons is better than their past.  Whither cons?  Wherever they very well please.  As with publishing houses, things are changing, but it’s not the end of the world.  You get to choose whether that glow over the horizon is Ragnarok or the bright dawn of a new day.

UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT:  For those who are interested, May You Write Interesting Books, edited and collated should be up at Amazon and Barnes And Noble within hours.  Smashwords is failing my file.  (I’m not amused.)