Welcome to my blog!

Here, I write angsty (occasionally gleeful) updates on my writing progress (BLOOD MAGIC releases summer 2011!), nostalgic rambles, random weirdness, and in general try to be entertaining. Sometimes that means I'm only amusing myself. :D

Friend me! Comment so I know who you are! Or, you know, lurk. There is a lot to be said for lurking. Mysteriousness and shadows and all that.

Be sure to check out the free short stories posted every week over on merry_fates by myself, Maggie Stiefvater (m_stiefvater), and Brenna Yovanoff (brennayovanoff)!

There's this song in The Sound of Music. "I Have Confidence."

Maria, the sweet, life-loving, virgin nun-to-be sings it as she's heading off on her own to start a new life as a nanny to a crapload of motherless kids. She's terrified, and trying to build up her courage, so she's singing about her fears and about what she has confidence in.

Like: sunshine, rain, and that spring will come again. But the build up throughout the song leads to this line: "I have confidence in confidence alone."

When I was a senior in high school, I played Maria for the fall musical, so I spent a lot of time thinking about what was going on in hear head. I have to say, that line always baffled me. Confidence in confidence? How does that make sense? How can you have confidence in something that you clearly are trying to convince yourself to have confidence in? It isn't like spring, which always comes, or weather.

I didn't really get it, but I belted it out anyway. See?*



A few weeks ago, apocalypticbob asked me at the BookCrossing convention if/how my writing has been affected by my experiences with theater.

I couldn't answer her (other than to say that it made it possible for me to easily stand in front of 30 strangers and entertain them for half-an-hour by making fun of myself). But I wrote the question down in My Brain (also known as my notebook), and have been mulling on it ever since.

The answer, I think, goes back to that line in The Sound of Music.

In theater, you have to perform. I mean, duh, right? You have a script, and you have a director, you have costumes and sets and a built in audience. All these things you don't have when you write a novel. But when the moment comes to step out on that stage and the bright lights are shining and the whole scene rests on you - on your ability to remember cues, lines, hit high notes, project to the back, not trip on the guitar, and most of all to convince an auditorium of people to forget your name and only see this invented character - the only thing you can do it focus on the moment and pour all of yourself into it.

And, damn, that's a lot like writing.

I think of writing as a performance. Because I never write something that isn't intended to be shared somehow. Either I'm publishing it straight to my blog, where I hope there will be a back-and-forth discussion, or I'm publishing it on Merry Fates as a professional author, or I'm going to give it to my crit partners and eventually to my agent and editor in the hopes of selling it and turning it into a Real Book.

Although I don't write for my audience, because that way lies the path to derivative works and paralyzation of creativity, I do always keep my audience in mind. Not only the audience I know (regular blog readers, crit partners, etc), but the audience I want to create. The audience I want to draw to me.

Writing is communication, and communication MUST be a two-way street.

If I'm just putting down words because I like them, that's merely self-reflective. If I'm thinking of all the different ways to communicate the thought/idea/emotion to my audience, my writing takes on a whole new dimension. It's not just words, not only a monologue on an empty, black stage. It becomes costumes, backdrop, lighting, curtains, and me there in the center using not only my voice, but my entire body to communicate.

What it comes down to is that you're pretending to be someone else, and the audience is agreeing to the pretense. But you have to keep them convinced. They give you one iota of a free pass, and from that moment on it's all on you.

When a reader picks up your book, it's because they heard you were funny, the cover is nice, the plot sounds intriguing, or it was recommended to them. That right there is the tiny little moment where they agree to give you a chance to convince them.

Every word is an opportunity for you to mess it up.

It's scary, but the thing that makes us (ok, me) go out onto that stage, or push post on a new short story, is the bliss when you reach that moment of catharsis with your audience (and with yourself). But you know at every moment that it could all go wrong. Anything could happen. You could botch a line. You could trip on your skirt. There could be a fire on the lighting board (this actually happened once at my high school).

The only thing you have to trust in at that one final moment before stepping into the spotlight is yourself. And if you don't know if you can do it, you have to take the leap of faith and pretend that you do.

That's what Maria meant. She has confidence in confidence. Because if she pretends she's confident for long enough and hard enough, she will be. We're so good at lying to ourselves. The thing to do is to turn that to your advantage.

Lie to yourself. Pretend you're talented and brilliant and can act/write everybody's socks off. Believe it. Make yourself a mask in your imagination that you can put on when you sit down to write. It won't be long before it's true enough that you don't have to pretend to believe it.

So that, more than anything, is what I think the theater gave to my writing. It gave me this sense of writing as performance, of writing as a dynamic creation of story. And it gave me Maria, and the lesson it took me years to figure out. By the time I could put it into words, it had already permeated my writing philosophy.

Yes, that's my butt. And my real hair.

I was 15. It was packed with tourists. Hazy clouds hung low, and I remember having this overwhelming sense of history under my feet. I'd read about the Wall for years. Everybody knows what it is. It's a monument that can supposedly be seen from space. Built on the dead bodies of thousands of workers. It has all this baggage and expectations. A symbol of oppression and also a symbol of greatness and human spirit.

But while it's all those things, it's also just a wall.

That's what holding my contract felt like. It's a real book contract. With legalese wherein Tessa Gratton becomes "Author" and I'm a party to the agreement and there are things like granting of rights and premiums and publisher's share and competitive works clauses and options and reserved rights. There are parts I needed to clarify with my agent, parts that made total sense, and parts that totally blew my mind because I'd just never thought about them before. It took me an hour to read through all eleven pages. It represents the next two years, and in many ways, it represents everything that will happen to my career for the rest of my life. It's a symbol of everything I've been working toward for five years. It's the literal manifestation of my dreams.

But it's also just paper. And its only that because I printed out four copies to send back to RHCB. It came to me in my email. As an attachment. Just internet vapors.

And that signature that I scrawled on the right line four times just now? It's my name in ink. I sign my name all the time.

A mundane task.

Mundane.

Is that why my hands were shaking?

Yesterday when I saw you, my first thought was you look beautiful.

But I didn't say anything because we were hugging you outside the sanctuary moments before your mom's memorial service began. I should have, and I regretted not telling you because some quick voice hissed in my imagination that maybe it wasn't appropriate.

You wore black slacks and a black shirt, with you mom's cerulean vest flowing from shoulder to calf. Her crystal sparkled at your ears and circled your neck, throwing rainbow flecks of light around you like an aura.

You smiled.

When you spoke in front of us, you still smiled. You told us about your memories and your regrets, about your love. And there in the center, you shone, Star. You were bright and vibrant and everything you want yourself to be.

***

There is a woman I know, who I met more than a decade ago. She has spiky silver hair and the widest grin I've ever seen. She's always been a caretaker. And a magician.

Over the past three years I've watched her sacrifice herself again and again because she was called to care for her parents. A mother with Alzheimer's, a father with Parkinson's, and her in the middle giving up home and career and every waking moment to them. Only in her dreams did she recognize herself, only in moments grasped at between breaths.

I've seen her lose everything, and find the place at the bottom of the world where real love resides. I've seen her gain everything, too. In stripping herself down she discovered her core - rediscovered again and again because it was too easy to forget among the long, rule-laden days, the repetition and stress. The headaches, the trauma, the tears.

There was fear, anger, and pain: her choice was to hide or to embrace.

She didn't have the luxury of making the choice once. She had to make it every single day. Every time she looked in the mirror.

***

I am humbled.

***

She learned to be selfish. To carve out time to take care of herself. She didn't lose herself in the negative, in the struggles, nor in the magical moments, in the work, in the changes.

She didn't lose herself. She was strong. She is strong. Yesterday she grinned and smiled and clapped her hands while she sang. She laughed. She celebrated.

***

It isn't over. You know you can't put down this burden. You're honored by it even when you hate it, and you've taught yourself to become stronger every time you make that choice between hiding and embracing. It is the epicenter of courage.

You're living there. Alive there.

***

This:

Yesterday, I saw you and the first thing I thought was she's beautiful.

This week at merry_fates we're bravely (masochistically) posting excerpts from novels we wrote in high school.

I posted the first chapter of Part Two of SHADOW KIN, the first book in an Epic! Fantasy! Trilogy! that would sweep the world and bring me fangirls. And for your reading pleasure, I annotated it. It was hard to push POST thanks to massive waves of embarrassment giving me hot flashes. Join us in making fun of it if you like. There's a lot to laugh at.

But seriously, this exercise has reminded me of a couple of things.

When I was 17 I loved this book so much. It was my soul and other dramatic things, (and yeah, I know what it says about my soul that the book I wrote to display it was mostly about enucleation*). I was immersed in this book, completely drowning in it. I wrote it in tiny little moments between all the hundreds of other things I was doing senior year. (If I'm never that busy again in my life, I'll be so happy.)

I had no perspective. I didn't need it! I felt the book instead of thinking it. I didn't worry about the rules of writing or precise characterization (I barely knew what characterization was). I didn't analyze it for emotional arcs, for pacing, or anything. I just wrote it. It was RAW.

And that isn't a bad thing. We should be emotionally engaged in what we're writing. I'm glad that when I was starting out all I did was write the story the way I wanted it to be, melodrama, purple prose, and all. Doing that is what taught me to love to write.

If I didn't have that experience of completely loving every moment of the writing process... how could I have gotten through the novels I've written since? The rejection letters? The waiting? I remember getting my first rejection letter for Shadow Kin. It was one of those "this is nice but not for our house" kind of rejections, and I was vaguely disappointed, but otherwise didn't really care. It hadn't been about publication** for me, but about telling this story that was inside me, putting down what these characters do (and every single thing they wear), their heartaches and love.

As I've focused more and more on the business side of writing, on the writing-as-career, on consciously improving as quickly as possible in as little time, I have to admit that some of that raw love has fallen away. My love of writing is so complicated now. It permeates everything I do, and can grab me up and nail me bloodily to the keyboard sometimes, but I also recognize what's happening. I can rein it in, I can channel it so that it doesn't spill all over everything. I can retain some perspective.

Kind of like I've been married to my writing for 12 years, and we're finally hitting our stride together.

While writing Shadow Kin I don't remember ever deleting more than a few sentences at a time. I had no ability to judge if a scene was working or not, and certainly not the skill to see that I went wrong 10k ago. And I had nothing like the balls it takes to actually delete those words and never expect to look at them again. (Or, say 40k in one fell swoop.)

I'm a better writer now. That's not in question. Everything about what I do is better, and reading through the excerpt I just cringe and make myself laugh instead of curling up in a ball of shame. ;)

And it makes me wonder what I'll think of what I'm currently writing in 12 more years? What will I think of Blood Magic? What will I think of Apples? Hopefully I'll recognize just as easily how I've grown as a writer, and hopefully I won't totally hate it.

Somehow, though, I suspect I will.



* I just learned this word ENUCLEATION on Criminal Minds last week. Until then I had no idea there was one single, glorious word to describe the act of removing eyes from the socket intact. It is also a verb: enucleate. GOD BLESS ENGLISH. ALSO: don't google it unless you want to see images. Sorry about that, spark_force.

** And holy hell am I glad it wasn't published. Clearly it wasn't good enough... but just thinking about it could give a girl nightmares.

- I was up at dawn and outside, walking Grendel and brainstorming. Nobody else was awake in the whole town, and I had the sky to myself.

- I read an ARC of THE SECRET YEAR by Jennifer Hubbard because I'm interviewing her when the book officially comes out in Janurary. I am still thrilled with getting ARCs in the mail.

- I wrote in the morning with coffee, and again in the evening with tea.

- Saw a creepy, neat movie: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, which although I'm not sure I need to see again, was one of the best book-to-movie adaptations I've ever seen. It was exactly the book; they just extended the metaphor deeper into Max's imagination.

- Ate the BEST STEAK OF MY LIFE. Srsly. Filet of Bison at Ted's Montana Grill. (*vegetarians stop reading*) It was medium rare, bright red, tender, juicy, and just a tad bit sweet. YUH-UM. chernobylred, it was worth EVERY PENNY. I ordered a bottle of wine for the table, an Oberon Cab Sav 2003, and it was perfect. Dry, thick. *happy sigh*

- nataliesee gave me beautiful earrings in exactly the color I've been looking for.

- My parents gave me the Oxfod English Dictionary CD-ROM. I'll be in my bunk.

Inspired by m_stiefvater recently amusing herself (and us) by looking through some of her oldest manuscripts, we, the Merry Sisters of Fate, have decided to use our common prompt week to celebrate something very, very special.

HOW MUCH OUR WRITING USED TO SUCK

Check us out! Brenna looking all alien and gorgeous, Maggie with that awesome 16 year old angst and totally geeky bagpipes, and me doing what I do best: wearing weird clothes (before a drama performance of Midsummer Night's Dream. I was Helena).




Writing is a learning process. Every time you write you get better... which means if you're doing it right, you're always improving. I don't think any of us can be considered master's of writing, but we've definitely moved into the journeyman phase of our careers. To keep us humble (ok, to keep Maggie and I humble) we're going to reveal stories or novel-excerpts that we wrote when we were in high school (or at least that age, for those of us who were home-schooled*), at the very beginnings of our apprenticeships.

Monday, Brenna will post, Wednesday me, and Friday Maggie, as is usual. Feel free to make fun of us, but take heart that we really worked hard to get where we are now. :D

And the following week, (Nov. 16-20) we'll be taking off completely in order to work on a Sekrit Projekt*** as well as various NaNo novels and editing and marketing and pr and raking our back yards (that might just be me).

STAY TUNED! It's sure to be hilarious. And I'm slightly terrified.


*That would be both of my fellow sisters. No wonder they're so weird.**

** I'm totally kidding. We all know Brenna's weird because she's a changeling and is still trying to figure out how to pretend she's human.

*** No I'm not going to tell you.

Awesome Thing One: The LINGER cover. Isn't it lovely? Matches the first so well, and also automatically bring to mind the warmer spring, but loss as well. <3

And here's the first paragraphs of LINGER:

• grace •

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl who was becoming one.

Just a few months ago, it was Sam who was the mythical creature. His was the disease we couldn’t cure. His was the good-bye that meant the most. He had the body that was a mystery, too strange and wonderful and terrifying to comprehend.

But now it is spring. With the heat, the remaining wolves will soon be falling out of their wolf pelts and back into their human bodies. Sam stays Sam, and Cole stays Cole, and it’s only me who’s not firmly in my own skin.

Having read the whole book in its entirety, I can say it isn't about what you think it's about, and it only gets better.

Awesome Thing Two: The HILARIOUS John Green on NaNoWriMo.



NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month where a bunch of crazy people sign up to write 50k in 30 days. I am doing it with Book Two (which I'm unoffically calling Crow Magic), but I didn't sign up since I'm expecting Blood Magic revision notes AT ANY MOMENT. That said, I'm on day 4, and have 5,755 words. Today's goal is a mere 6,668. I'm hoping to power through and build up some safety words.

Should-Have-Been Awesome Thing: Anniversary of Obama's election to office.

Last year today, I worked the polls. I'd spent 8 months being excited and blissful and terrified, volunteering and writing essays about my personal emotional journey in step with the election season (yes, they're all in my blog archives). I was so happy with the results, unbelieving yet also awash with all that jazzy community regard, love, and of course, hope.

It's been quite a year for me, personally. The highest of highs, balanced with a few extreme lows. Pretty much exactly what a year should be. I'm headed exactly where I want to be going. I wanted to be thrilled a year later, too, with the way our country is headed. And for the most part, I've been content. I know change takes a long time, and I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. He's got a few years (hopefully eight) and the place our country was after the previous administration is a mire that even the most radically pro-active president would have a hard time dragging us out of. There are so many little positive signs

This morning, though, as I read about the wave of anti-gay referendums, I feel exactly the way I did so many mornings pre-Obama. It was silly to expect it, I know, but I didn't want to feel this sinking hurt and painful disappointment again. The right to love shouldn't be based on a popular vote.

Today, a year after I breathed hope like it had transformed into golden oxygen, I'm having a difficult time seeing it anywhere at all.

But Mr. President, I'm looking for it.

This was the perfect Halloween weekend!

We had a surprise visit from nataliesee's little brother Adam, who lives in Seattle and like most young gay boys has been having a Very Hard Time. So we flew him out spur of the moment to join in our Halloween festivities. Three days of perfect autumn weather, Adam, lazing around watching TV, and dancing our bums off at a party = the ideal weekend.

In the category of More Real Author Firsts: On Friday I interrupted our lazing in order to run downtown and have coffee with soniag, one of my fellow Elevensies (meet us all at 2011debuts!). For a little over an hour, we sat at the bar at The Bourgeois Pig chatting about ourselves, our books, and our roads to publication. It was kind of like a blind internet date - thank god we had a few avenues for conversation! I'm delighted to report that I didn't need to worry. It was fun, Sonia was cool, and I'm really looking forward to her book, THE REVENANT, which is a historical set at an Indian Boarding School in Oklahoma.

Saturday, there was bacon and home-made scones, and more lazing. We watched the original X-MEN movie to get in character before costuming up for Le Dance Partay!

Since the idea of going to the trouble to do Adam up as Nightcrawler was intimidating for all of us, we went with a different blue! It was hilarious and fun to dress somebody ELSE up in Mistress Azure.



Adam also confirmed for us that wearing a tight bodice is exactly what wearing properly fitted body armor feels like. Um, yay?

We were joined at the party by Cyclops and Jean. (The always sexy onecrane and otterdancing. They even painted little Xes on their uniforms! I couldn't even be bothered to get a decent cigar!)


I was totally thwarted by my hair (which I'm sure NEVER happens to the REAL Wolverine). This is the good side.


However, it led to much scowling and being In Character. That is... until Sexy/Back came on at the party and I was out there shaking my tush. Lost me all my Wolverine cred, no doubt. Hugh Jackman dancing to Justin = big fat YES. Wolverine? Um... I can't see it. (Actually, I can, and it's beautiful.)

SADLY the evening ended with a very unhappy migraine attacking Rogue. No doubt when I stole one of her gloves and forced her to suck other people's energy away. That always gives her a headache.

We rounded out the weekend with a gorgeous Sunday downtown (and delicious breakfast at Miltons), followed by an afternoon of writing! That's right, all three of us hunkered down in the sun room and started our first day of NaNo. Adam got about 1100 words before we had to leave for the airport (sniff), Natalie wrote maybe 400, and I ended at -835. That's right... in the negatives. Oops. #nanofail.

Happily, Adam is returning for Christmas! By then, we should all have finished a novel. LOL.

Now I'm going to do some secretarial work (since that's what I get paid for) and fantasize about my next scene, which involves a dilapidated tile silo.

I am not in the mood to be cohesive, other than a general Halloween theme:

- Because I will not be in the office tomorrow, I promised to wear some sort of disguise today. Voila. I am in disguise. Sort of.

- This week, because it is Halloween, I wrote a theme-story for merry_fates, called The Summer Ends in Slaughter. It's about kissing during the three-day killing festival of old Samhain. (Ok, not really. It's about courage and tradition. But there is a tad bit of kissing. And horse skulls.) My favorite line is "The dead must eat this winter, too."

A lot of my favorite stories are the ones I've written for or around Halloween. "Horseman's Love" and "Dumb Supper" come to mind. It's because I write best in the winter, when everything is dead. Here in Kansas, the summer is thick. Literally and figuratively. There isn't room for me when the trees are full of huge green leaves, when the grass grows inches every day, and when the air chokes me with the weight of water.

In the winter, everything is dead, and I have plenty of space to be alive and let my imagination roar. Die, world, DIE!!!!!!! So that I may rise! Bwahahahahahahahahaha!

*ahem*

- I am going to be Wolverine for Halloween. Yes, there will be pictures. How could I not do it when I realized that I have the hair, the cigar, the dog tags, the tee shirt, and the BAD ATTITUDE.

... that is all.

So I'm officially an author. Look! I have proof!

My own Blue Fairy, nataliesee, made the business cards for me last week just in time for me to take some with me to my very first author talk.

I was invited by bountifulpots to the Kansas City Unconvention for BookCrossing. I'd vaguely heard of the group and agreed in a fit of official glee, not really knowing what I might have been getting in to.

Turns out, BookCrossing is awesome. The main purpose is this: buy a book, read it, and then release it back into the wild with a little sticker or ID number written in the front cover. The next person who finds the book is encouraged to go to the website and enter the number, and when they've read it, release it again.

Ad infinitum.

I adore this idea. When I was little, a book was this magical thing that popped into existence and then lived with me inside my imagination. That's all. I never thought about how it was created. Eventually I became interested in the writing part, and learned all about how a book goes from concept in a writer's mind, to hard copy in a reader's hands.

But even then, that was the end of the story for me. The book's physical life ends, belonging to a person, and only living on in the ways the characters live on in the imagination.

With BookCrossing... books have lives of their own, beyond the buyer's hands, beyond my hands and my shelf. Its home isn't a library or static location - it travels the world. Like a virus. A book virus. Suddenly the post-production life of the book is a dynamic, living thing with a history and a future. Isn't that thrilling?

There are more than 800,000 people around the world registered as Book Crossers, catching and releasing all kinds of books, spreading the wealth, and tracking the lives of their books.

I got to talk to about 25 of them this past Saturday, and it was a blast. As first talks go, they were so so nice to me. I had been prepared for an hour (gasp!) of talking and hopefully good Q&A - and of course, none of them were teens, which is the target audience for my writing. But it turned out not to matter, because they were all avid readers who believe in books as much as I do. They laughed at me (when I wanted them to, thank God), and asked great questions about publishing, writing, and even blogging. I told my "Journey to Publication" story, which is luckily filled with highs and lows, weddings in England, and the beaches of Florida.

Of course, one of the convention-goers had to point out that maybe I should, you know, mention what my book is about and maybe even its title. Thanks, apocalypticbob! Clearly I have some things I need to add into my book talk. Practice makes perfect!

Not only did the KC BookCrossing Unconvention let me pop that particular cherry easily and painlessly, but they gave me stuff! I left with four books to read and release. One of which is an old Victoria Holt that I haven't read since I was probably 9 or 10. Delicious!

So, thanks to all of you who were there. To everyone who wasn't, you should really check out this BookCrossing thing. It's keen.


***edited to add*** The logo on my business card was designed by the same awesome guy CK who did my website: ckladesign.

I've never had one of my novels reviewed. It's one of those things that will happen soon (in the geological sense), and I've been trying to prepare myself. Generally, I'm great at dealing with criticism - but reviews aren't the same as crits.

Like, when I totally pan a movie it isn't about me saying, "Hey guys, you asked my opinion and here are the ways I think you could make it better." No. It's about me laughing at what a crap job I think the final product is. There's no going back and fixing, no revising. Crit = opinion about ongoing project. Review = opinion about something that is totally out of my control.

I hate that. The lack of control thing.

Some bad reviews are so ludicrous that while they're memorable, they're easy to NOT take seriously. (See Maggie's "dog secks" review for proof of this.) Some are mean, or flippant, but some are thoughtful even when they're negative, and possibly also true. Or at least there's that little voice in your head telling you they just might be right and why didn't you see it or think to change it?

So I've been thinking about how I review things, how I make judgements about a work of art for various reasons. Last night, I was feeling melancholy so I put in one of my comfort movies: Kenneth Branagh's HAMLET. I watch it when I'm needing some beauty and tragedy. I just choose a scene and start. Sometimes I skip around depending on what I'm in the mood for. As I watched Hamlet say "time is out of joint" I realized that here was a perfect example, right in front of me, of how sometimes we hate things because WE'RE WEIRD, not because they're in any way bad.

Take Kenneth Branagh. There are a million and ten reasons to love his Hamlet. And I do. For this post, though, I'm going to be EXTREMELY shallow in order to highlight my point. So just look at him. SEXY. And when he speaks those words (I'm thinking in particular of the longing in, "what a piece of work is man" and the despair in "I loved Ophelia!") I want to die a little from nerdy, passionate bliss.

But. And of course there's a but. I have a hard time watching his Henry V. Not because it isn't brilliant. Not because he isn't amazing and all the other actors, set designers, etc weren't also amazing. I can listen to it, and his delivery of all the lines is stellar. I just can't watch it.

Same with many of Branagh's other roles. Some make me cringe for no apparent reason, other's I'm cheering for even though the rest of the movie totally blows.

Why?!?

The answer came to me one day when I was watching the totally rocking movie Dead Again. Branagh plays two characters in two different times.

1)

2)

I love love love the past life Branagh. I hate hate hate the modern day Branagh.

Going back and forth as the movie does, I realized the answer. ( Answer and image-heavy proof back here! )

In a perfect coincidence, the Kansas City Renaissance Festival ended the same weekend I came down with the harrowing disease of the novelist:

BOOK BRAIN!

That's right, no matter what I'm doing (or trying to do) every five minutes (give or take) my brain turns back around to The Novel. No, not the one I'm going to be revising as soon as I get my letter from my editor, but the new one. The draft.

I'm dizzy with it. Distractible.

For the past few weeks I've been reading source material for the novel, brainstorming, looking on the internet for inspiring pictures (and, ok, LJ icons), imagining what I'll say to interviewers when they ask me about the theme, reading poetry for appropriate epigraphs, writing various first lines, and listening to Lady Gaga*.

The purpose of all that is to create a miasma of book ingredients in my imagination, all swirling around in there while I sleep and eat and read. I've written a few mini-character sketches, some cherry opening lines. Little things.

And then, Saturday morning at approximately 8:47am, my book exploded in my brain. The first three chapters rolled out with such clarity that I nearly cried for being in the car on my way to the festival instead of anywhere near my computer. Plot! Voice! Internal conflict!

Now, that's just the beginning. And I know the beginning can (and will) change, but it's momentum and the excitement I need to carry me through the sticky openings.

Of course, I'm going to get my Blood Magic edits ANY DAY NOW. At which point Book Two will go on hold. But at least I'll have a chunk of beginning to come back to between editing rounds.

Book brain!




* Gaga has nothing to do with my book... I just can't stop listening to her. Because dude. Did you see her performance at the MTV music awards? Google it. Srsly.

- Yesterday afternoon I did something I've never done before. I wrote the first chapter of Book Two (you know, that book that's the other half of "Blood Magic in a two-book deal"). Which means... I was writing words I was being paid to write. Ok, sure, so I won't actually see any money for Book Two for months. If not years. But STILL. I'm writing a contracted book. Which is really kind of freaky. Putting down that first line was stressful, even knowing that it could change a billion times.

So, here's to writing words I'm being paid to write. :)

- A couple of weeks ago, wyckedgood suggested in a chat that the Merry Fates draw Tarot cards some time for the common prompt we do once a month. I mentioned it to Brenna and Maggie, and they agreed, so voila! nataliesee drew three cards for us: The Devil, The King of Pentacles, and the Queen of Cups. My story went up yesterday, and I really like it. Which isn't always something I can say about the stories I write for merry_fates. This one is really a ME story. The best part is that I think I did it well: the feedback I'm getting suggests that readers got exactly what I was trying to say. Which REALLY doesn't always happen.

The Devils of Our Better Selves

- BAD ART: Tuesday night we went to see a local production of Macbeth. And I just have to say: if Macbeth is a crazy d-bag in act one, the tragedy doesn't work. The director sucked all the subtlety out of the play. Everyone was always yelling and carrying on, leaping about and staggering... it was awful. AWFUL. I mean, really, the "tomorrow and tomorrow" speech is ironic because of the meta-narrative, not because Macbeth is a crazy d-bag. Plus it's wildly insulting to make the Weird Sisters crazy gypsies. Also, Lady Macbeth is ambitious, not a crazy bitch with ZERO character consistency. If she's ranting and raving in act one... again, where's the tragedy in her ranting and raving in act five? AND it only works to make Macduff lose his cool so he can "feel like a man" if everybody else in the whole play hasn't been losing it ever five minutes. PS: Your sword shouldn't hang straight down between your legs and bounce around like a stiff, overlong third leg while you stagger around lamenting the loss of your pretty ones. If you know what I mean.

- GOOD ART: And speaking of subtle: Criminal Minds is the Best. Show. Ever. The character consistency from season to season! I love you.I love that you remember that Garcia counsels victims' families, even though it hasn't come up for two years. I love that you let Morgan be smart even when he's being dumb, and don't forget his massive character flaws! I love that on My Show, the team reacts differently to the same things, and the same way to different things. I loved when Hotch, Rossi, and Prentiss walked away from the final gunning-down, because their job was done and they wouldn't participate in that violent moment, but that Morgan HAD TO WATCH. I love Garcia telling Morgan she loves him, before reminding him that he's spiraling down a bad ethical path, and I love that Morgan can say he loves her back - and they don't mean sex, just... respect and friendship. Because they're grown ups.

To everyone who wants to learn to write subtly evolving, consistent characters: why aren't you watching this show?!?!

Plus, look how pretty they are! (I'll end on that shallow note. Heh.)

With the wig, I'm Sleeping Beauty/Princess Aurora:






Without it, I'm Ursula, the evil Sea Witch:

No, seriously.

It's August 7th, and Natalie and I are at home, chilling. I'm writing when the phone rings. I don't answer the phone, so she does... and brings it to me. "Here," she says, eyes gleaming.

I take it, wondering if it's my bank or something. But no. It's L'Agent. "Tessa? Hi, how are you?"

Me: "I'm good."

L'Agent: "You're about to be better."

We had an offer. A really good one. The kind that I could have accepted gleefully. But L'Agent says she's going to notify the other editors to drum up more interest and offers. That's when the word "auction" is first uttered.

I pass through the weekend in a fit of paranoid bliss. Which I'm sure was interesting to watch. On Monday, I talk to L'Agent again and she updates me on the different places interested in maybe offering. All I really hear is "multiple houses" and that she's setting a deadline of Tuesday, August 18th at 5pm for all initial offers. She'll call me right after.

Me: "Um, I'm flying to England on that Thursday morning."

L'Agent: "Well..... we'll manage. Somehow."

Fast forward a week. A harrowing, impossible week. At the close, we have two really awesome offers, and the next step is me talking to the editors on the phone. L'Agent tries getting in contact with everyone to schedule a time, and by Wednesday night when Natalie and I were driving into KC with our dog to get him settled I didn't have anything nailed down. *stress*

But after some brief phone tag, L'Agent and I talk. I have a phone meeting the next morning at 8:30 with Editors #1, and at 9:30 with Editor #2.

And of course, I'm leaving my parents' house at 10am to drive to the airport for my international flight.

I barely sleep. Mom is up early to make blueberry waffles, which I can barely eat because I'm a bundle of anxiety. At 8:25 I retire upstairs for some privacy... only to realize my cell phone gets no reception.

*panic*

I end up outside in the driveway where I finally have three bars. It's a couple minutes after time, and I think I might puke. I've got my notebook and pen, my phone... and my parents dog wandering around. (I'm getting slightly nauseated just thinking about it again!)

The phone rings.

And wow, I have to say, it was amazing. We talked for about 40 minutes, and when I was done, my most clear thought was my career will be safe in their hands. What a happy place to end up! And I had 15 minutes to chill (ha!) before the next call.

I managed to find a more comfortable spot to sit and wait. I didn't manage to calm down before the second call came in. While I talked, Natalie started sneaking around taking pictures of me. Hiding behind the car and all that. This second conversation was only about 20 or 25 minutes. It felt even faster. When it was over, I had no coherent thoughts. Just *GLEE*

I went inside, almost passed out, babbled at my mom and Natalie, then called m_stiefvater to scream "GAHHH!"..... and we packed into the car and fled to the airport.

The amazing thing is that I knew what my decision was then. I knew. In my gut, which is terrifying to me, since I tend to put more emphasis on my rational self. It wasn't rational, it was all instinct and emotion and... it still felt so absolutely right.

But of course, it doesn't work that way in this kind of situation. From the Kansas City airport, I called L'Agent and told her about the phone calls. She was going to talk to the editors again, and keep doing what she does: negotiate. Hopefully I'd have internet in England and be able to communicate that way... if not, I could manage to find a way to call. This is a picture of me on the phone with her at the airport. Do you SEE the yellow bruising around my eyes? SO STRESSED.


You can probably imagine that it wasn't easy to relax into the airplane. I had no contact with L'Agent or internets for about 24 hours. It was harrowing. At least I had this whole other country to distract me.

I needed it, too, because the rest of the process dragged out for the whole week. More information kept coming in, L'Agent and I went back and forth every day, emailing about what I needed and what she wanted from the deal, all kinds of things that would have been so much easier to talk about on the phone... Meanwhile, I'm running around with Natalie, her sister and brother-in-law (now), my parents through , Cornwall, Glastonbury and Avebury... until finally everything was as final as it could be, and I had to pronounce the Final Decision.

It was Thursday, August 28th, and I was at a fancy wedding. Here's Natalie's post about the wedding itself.

The ceremony was at 4pm, and the first thing I did when it was over was accept the gin and tonic my Dad handed me. There were the usual wedding things: pictures, socializing, laughter. The reception began, and was lovely. There was champagne and wine, delicious food, speeches, and more laughter.

Then it was 9pm. I couldn't put it off any longer, so I went up to Natalie's Dad's room and begged to use his international cell phone. I called L'Agent.... and got her voicemail. I promised to call back in twenty minutes.

*panic*

But when I called back, she answered on the first ring, totally waiting for me. I was yelling, thanks to the pounding ABBA from the reception downstairs, possibly incoherent thanks to tiredness, alcohol, and stress... but L'Agent was fabulous, we chatted for a couple of minutes, solidifying everything.

The decision was made.

I went downstairs and danced my ass off.

The moral of the story: if you want your book to go to auction, plan to be out of the country. The universe likes it better that way.

"Tessa Gratton's debut BLOOD MAGIC, about two teens who meet in a cemetery and plunge into a dangerous world of dark magic, first love, and the deadly secrets that hide in blood, to Suzy Capozzi at Random House Children's, at auction, in a very good deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in summer 2011, by Laura Rennert of Andrea Brown Literary Agency (world)."

SEE?

( Publishers Weekly screencap behind here! )


That's me and my official book deal, right there in Publishers Weekly!

Later there will be links, and I will tell you the harrowing story of my auction (which ended WHILE I WAS AT A WEDDING IN ENGLAND. But for now, WOO!

These are the actual directions we used to find Cromlech Bodowyr on the Isle of Anglesey on our fifth and final day in Wales:

"West on A4080 through Brynsiencyn. After steep bend to left, take the first right. Continue to crossroads and go through. 1/2 mile to where the grass grows in the road. Just past some kennels is a lay by with a metal gate."

The truly amazing thing is that we found it.



Both of us were laughing the whole time once we got onto the island and veered off onto the small roads. At least we had a map, and it was a small island so eventually we'd find the ocean and be able to follow it around back to the bridge if we got totally lost. Plus, I have a rocking sense of direction and very rarely lose North on my internal compass.

( Nothing to worry about, right? )

A Prose Poem in Tweets:

tessagratton: ....my kitchen was just on fire.

tessagratton: Please don't go off, Mr. Smoke Alarm. The fire's gone, I swear.

tessagratton: I walked into the kitchen to the sound of my tea pot boiling. Smoke puffed around like some oil was burning off the stove.

tessagratton: Orange tongues of flame grasped at the tea kettle. I stood there for about 5 seconds just staring, thinking... "is...that...FIRE?"

tessagratton: It was, indeed, fire.

tessagratton: Next thought, "I should... do something."

tessagratton: I had no clue what started the fire. So no water. Instead I grabbed a tea towel, lifted up the kettle and batted out the flames.

tessagratton: Like they do in the movies.

tessagratton: Everyone survived, including tea pot and tea towel. Goblin the cat is tearing up from the smoke. All windows open, fan on.

tessagratton: I think I'll have a diet coke instead of tea this evening.

I was minding my own business, skimming LJ, when I saw a post from another writer mentioning that today is the ten year anniversary of finishing her first novel.

*blink*

It's mine, too! Not to the day - I've actually missed that by a few months, and I don't even know the exact date. But I do know that I finished my first complete novel sometime in May 1999. It was almost 200,000 words and, despite being about a half-faerie sorceress who steals other people's eyeballs in order to see for herself, was remarkably autobiographical.

I revised it, wrote a query letter, and sent it out into the world for instant fame and success. Got a few very nice responses along the lines of "dark and sexy, but not for me" (to which I shall be forever grateful). I wrote a sequel and part of the final book of the trilogy... and then got sucked into college life and thinking I was going to be a political activist or something. I didn't finish another novel until after graduate school when I realized I still didn't want to do anything as much as I wanted to write. Then, beginning in 2005, I stepped onto this path with every ounce of willpower I could find.

And I've made it, by most standards. Ten years after finishing that first novel I've not only finished a half-dozen more, but I'm working with an amazing agent and have things going on that are so awesome I can't talk about them. Like, real, professional secrets that I couldn't have properly imagined when I finished that first book, Shadow Kin my senior year of high school.

But that isn't how I know I'm a writer.

When I was little, my mom signed me up for piano lessons. It was important to her that her kids learn to play an instrument, and she thought the piano was a great stepping off place. My lessons weren't just about playing music; they included theory and history. But I hated it. Every moment of it. (In retrospect, I'm so glad I was forced to do it - not only did it work my brain differently and teach me another language, but it helped me learn to love music and to appreciate people who can make it. Thanks, Mom!)

Sitting down to practice every day after school was the worst. My own little hell. I tried to like it better by getting sheet music for songs I liked (I had the whole score for "The Little Mermaid"), but it didn't really help. Even though I had a desire to be good at music, I didn't practice. It was pure suffering. I felt uncoordinated and dumb when I couldn't get something correct, and the triumphs of memorizing a great piece and performing it at a recital (as in that picture) didn't last into the next day when I'd have to sit on the bench and sweat for the next piece.

Clearly, I was not a piano player. Nor ever meant to be.

This is what makes me a writer: I love to practice.

In fact, practicing might be the best part. When I get to start something new, to brainstorm all over the place, fling ideas down, toy with style and tone. Experimentation! It's liberating and a thrill every time.

Even when I'm angsting about the process or whining that my patterns are binding and I want to break out - I love it. Even when I'm sick to my stomach from the stress of waiting to hear back from an agent or editor - I love it. Even when I can't sleep at night because I had a great idea that won't quit racing through my imagination - I love it. When I delete and rewrite and delete and rewrite and delete again - I love it.

Because what I'm doing is practicing. Getting better. Improving myself with every word of concentrated effort.

Before merry_fates existed, I wrote short stories every month and posted them in my own journal. For my own edification. To share my work. To entertain. To practice. And that was one of the main tenets when Maggie, Brenna and I decided to form our group: writing a short story every week would be enforced practicing. It would be so hard, challenging, and some days would feel impossible, but all three of us were incredibly excited about it. Because we love to practice.

Just like every relationship, mine with my writing is full of ups and downs. Bliss and awkward silences. But I love it. Even when I hate it, I love it.

That paradox right there is what makes me a writer.