Look who’s coming to the Tri -Cities next week! Cavalcade of Authors is bringing Dia Calhoun, Patrick Carmen, Suzanne Selfors and other outstanding authors to the Red Lion hotel in Pasco. For once, we don’t have to travel to Seattle or Portland for an author event! Thanks to Michelle Lane for brainstorming this event!

And if that isn’t enough, Cavalcade is followed by RadCon the fantastic fantasy/Sci-Fi convention. Check out the site for the preview of authors–there are too many to mention. Who will wear the fairy wings this year? Will there be a Steampunk element?

So, Tri-Cities, dust off the red carpet; the authors are coming!!

Tomorrow, very early,  I board a plane to NY. Now this may not seem like a big deal to most, but it’s one more step towards  a goal I’ve been pursuing for a long time. I’ll meet  my new editor, Howard Reeves, at Abrams/Amulet,  attend the SCBWI conference and have dinner with the amazing Jessica Bian and her Ted.  

So intrepid writer friends, I’ll be keeping you posted on visitng a NY publishing house (this is big news for us West coasties), meeting with my editor for the first time,( and hoping I don’t say anything too goofy), and I’ll  be taking notes on the latest publishing buzz at the conference. Of course, I’ll have to take notes on a few good restaurants too. Did you know it’s open table week in NY? Nom!

Do you think three pairs of shoes are enough?

A photo of some of the pirate-wrtiers at Chelan Middle School after the Map Your Way into Story workshop. I’m hiding in the middle. Watch for their maps and stories here.

So what do editorial comments look like? First round. Lots of work to do.

Admit it. You love having the last word, especially if it is the perfect exit line. How many of us turn to the last page of a book and read that final sentence before we should? Here’s the goal. Write one last line a day, a last line that could end a short story or a novel. Happily ever after does not count. Check them out on Twitter @maureenmcquerry.

Nancy@1stsentence will be tweeting first lines. Try your own story using both the first sentence of the day and the last.

To start us off, J.D. Salinger, “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

The next ones have to be original.

Each year Dick Staub of The Kindlings hosts  a Christmas show Hales Brewery in Seattle with writers, artists and muscians. This year I was privildged to be a featured guest, read some of my recent poems and reflect briefly about my mother’s recent death at the beginning of Advent.

Ripped from the Wall Street Journal. Know which author writes on colored 3×5’s from Office Max, who writes in bed, who writes at 4 A.M? Maybe you’re not so strange after all.

One of the joys of writing is doing research for the weird, quirky bits needed to fill out a story. So, in support of my current project Goblin Girl, I’ve been wandering the late 1800’s and came across this kerosene masterpiece.

The ornate brass SEARCH LIGHT Bicycle Lamp
manufactured by The Bridgeport Brass Company.
Louis Hornberger’s Pat. No. D28,080, Dec. 21, 1897

I want one!

 It was right out of an Agatha Christie novel–10 anonymous guests invited by a generous host, a chalet in the mountains, good food…you get the idea. But, we did not disappear one by one. The weekend was a Kindling’s Hearth retreat and full to overflowing with great discussions.

One of the most intriguing questions came from a side conversation:  Is computer game narrative the next genre? Can a player be transformed through the storyline of a game in the same way a reader is transformed through a novel? Transformation requires immersion and identification. It asks that a character grow and change by the end of the story.

Are there any games where you see this happening?

I love my critique group. This week’s question: I need some advice on plotting out the storyline. I’ve gone looking for facts and ideas that might give the character a place to go, but how do you plot a story? The advice was so varied and  helpful I thought I’d share it.

The beginning must make the audience ask questions that are answered by the story’s ending–that means identifying the character’s core need . The story itself comes from the charcters’ needs and their journey to get those needs met. 

Action  – make sure you have something that sets the story in motion…something that significantly affects the main characters (they drive the plot, after all).

Background – provide the reader with background/justification, but only as needed.
 Conflict (internal, external or both) – this comes directly out of the characters’ needs and drives the entire plot.  When the story slows down too much, add something that steps up the conflict, or add a complication.

Some people use a step chart or oultine of major scenes; others use a stoyboard approach. Either way, it is helpful to think in scenes keeping in mind that extra scenes can be added or deleted as the story emerges. And for me the story always emerges as I write no matter how much plotting is done beforehand. Another friend describes this as the process of excavation, digging down through layers to let the story out.

 This little guy and his brother appear to be orphans about 8 weeks old. After several attempts he took an almond out of my hand. We found the two of them tottering around our tree crying pitifully–maybe there will be a squirrel in my next book. What would Beatrix Potter do?

If you’re writing fiction you will hear, sooner rather than later, a lot of advice about beginnings.  It will make you tremble. It is enough to keep even the bravest writer from every touching  finger to key.  You will read features like Poets and Writers “Page One” with anxiety rather than delight as the worry worm niggles its way into your mind. You will be told that agents and editors read only the first page, maybe only the first papragraph. The balance of your writing career hangs on those first few lines.

Michael Stearns at Upstart Crow Literary   has posted a netcast on Great Beginnings that Break Rules. Maybe it will kill the worm. Beginnings are important, but there is no one right beginning for every book.  Authors have led me into great stories in many different ways.

Let me nominate an old favorite, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy…”

Feel free to share some others.

is goodYou will read

With all the hubbub about beginnings

When I told members of my writing group that the new novel I’m writing, the one they’ll be commenting on,  is Steampunk, I was met with blank stares. So what is Steampunk?

Think The League of Extraordinainry Gentlemen, think Golden Compass, Victorian Industrial Revolution or Dystopian with a touch of steam, craftsmanship, fantastical machines and wonder. A visual is always helpful. I think of Sherlock Holmes’s cape swirling  into the London fog. Check out  the CGSociety’s lovely art challenge Steampunk Myths and Legends . Click on the winners link to soak up some steampunk atmosphere.

And if you find yourself needing more, there’s Steampunk Magazine.

Off to polish my brass goggles.

 or

So, the husband just returned from three weeks in Mongolia. Meanwhile the daughter

and parrot are settling into Columbia, MO and the son is in Israel, last known location the shore of Galilee.

I’m on the front porch writing.

It looks like my first round of edits will arrive just when I start to teach classes. Isn’t that the way things work? Nothing happening. Then everything all at once! In life we can’t control the pace at which the plot advances; in writing we can.

Pacing is how fast the story carries you along, and there is no one right pace for every story. Fast- paced stories are not always better. Different stories need different pacing. A slower pace can let the reader become immersed in another time, another place. Stephen King in his book On Writing says that he likes “a slower pace and a bigger, higher build.”

The trick is finding the pace that holds your reader captivated. It means combining action and dialogue with description and reflection, which tend to slow the narrative down. Readers need a balance in a story just as they do in their lives.

Different audiences need different rhythms too. In middle-grade and YA novels pacing and voice are two of the most important considerations. Books can be long, think H.P. and George RR Martin, but they have to be paced so that there is always something going on. Longer books just mean that we get to spend more time with the characters immersed in their worlds. Let’s see if I can pull it off when the Wolfproof Trilogy become two books rather than three.