Heroes ‘Til Curfew: Cover Art and Latest Info on the Sequel to Hush Money

Ok, that was the longest title ever.

I’m sure that there are some of you out there who fondly remember a time when I had planned this book to be a fall release, with yet another book out before the end of the year. Let’s all get that laugh over with. Life just happened all over me this fall, and I’m still trying to recover.

Work on Heroes is back on in earnest now, in a way that makes me feel like I’ve got a bit of my mojo back. At least enough to go to Robin and say: these are some things I know happen, these are some themes in story, etc. (Incidentally, I think the fact that I discuss themes with Robin, as well as characters, events, and set-pieces, might be why she’s able to come up with things that work so well. Or it could be just because she’s awesomesauce.)

So I have a cover. Here it is:

Cover Art by Robin Ludwig

I’ll give you a moment.

…

Do you love it?

Ok, so when can we expect the rest of it? Right now I’m saying January 2011. I hope you’ll all run right out and start up some best of 2011 lists as soon as you read it. ETA Release info: Since this post gets a bunch of hits from people searching for release info, I wanted to say that Heroes ‘Til Curfew still isn’t finished (*cringe* sorry!), and I don’t have a release date right now. I’ve added a line at the top of the sidebar with it’s status for your quick reference, and recommend signing up for the newsletter. I so much want to thank everyone for your patience and support.

I know that’s a while yet, although, trust me, it doesn’t seem like so very long from my perspective. I do, however, have a beginning. Imogen Rose was kind enough to include the first scene of Heroes ‘Til Curfew at the end of her latest release, Quantum. That “sneak peek” excerpt is just under two thousand words.

One thing I’ll tell you about the new story: it does not pick up right after Hush Money. A little bit of time passes between the two stories. For those of you who may now be going–

But wait! What happened when Joss got home? What did her dad say?

Hey, no one wanted to know that more than I did. I’m currently working on a short story which will serve as a sort of epilogue to Hush Money. Right now, what I have is being told from Dylan’s perspective. And all I can say is, “Poor Dylan.” Heroes ‘Til Curfew is my number one priority, but I hope to get back to the epilogue while Heroes makes the rounds with the beta and proof readers. I think it would be lovely if I could have that out for you around Christmastime.

As of right now, I intend for that story to be a freebie, a gift to readers who enjoyed Hush Money enough to sign up for a newsletter that will alert them to new releases and events in the Talent Chronicles series. Anyone who signs up for the newsletter now will receive information on how to download the new story as soon as it becomes available. (And anyone who doesn’t want to receive emails about new releases will be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Did you know that Hush Money has now sold over 2500 copies, here in its fourth month of release? This blows my mind. That’s thanks to a lot of people who have written reviews, tweeted, and even hand-sold copies of the book to their friends, for which I am so grateful. And that’s a lot of people who will need to know about that sequel! If you’d like to offer help or ideas, please feel free.

Meanwhile, I gotta go write the damn thing.

ETA for PS: If any of you wants to borrow this cover image for the purpose of generating interest in the series and otherwise having something to blog about, please feel free.

Wanna Nano Buddy?

Yeah, I did it. I went and signed up all fresh and new this morning. Here’s my profile, if you think you might like to buddy me. It’s a little slap-dash. I have no idea what years I’ve tried to do Nano before, but I can tell you that I’ve never finished. I think I’ve had two accounts, the second one because I couldn’t get back into the first one for my second year because of all the website problems. This year, though, I’ve put all the past behind me, all the hiding behind a handle, afraid to tell anyone that I write, and I’m there with my real name. So there. [self-directed “so there”]

I’m working on Heroes ‘Til Curfew. I know that, technically, it’s supposed to be something fresh and new. I had hoped to have HTC out in beta and be able to possibly start the rough of the third book for Nano. Well, there’s a dream that’s long behind me as I fall further and further behind. I really feel like I need something to get me going right now. And trust me, I’ve got at least 50, 000 new words left to write in this draft.

I’m not sure how I’ll do with the goal. I’ve never finished. Nano is a difficult concept for me. The idea of waiting to start something until a set date, setting that date around one of the busiest and most stressful parts of the year, and then all that just writing whatever to get words out, the frantic output to be fixed later–that’s not really how I work at all. So I may end up plodding along at my own pace and being behind, but I think it will be nice just to be part of Nano fever, because just the energy that surrounds it is sometimes helpful–if you don’t let it stress you out and drive you mad.

Anyway, if you’re doing Nano this year, feel free to add me.

I’m feeling really reflective today, and I was just thinking about what I said above, about how I had been hiding behind internet handles and how I avoided telling any one in real life that I was a writer. It’s been really interesting, and very nice, to be able to do this with a shiny book in my hands and my name on the cover. People in my life have been very kind, supportive, and downright enthusiastic. But I’m not sure what it would have been like without that shiny book, and I wonder if I ever would have done it.

A lot of Hush Money is about fear. I know I said this in an interview somewhere, that one of the movie lines that repeated in my head while I was writing, and continues to live there when I think about the story, is from Pump Up The Volume. It’s the part at the parent meeting when Paige Woodward, the girl who blew up her kitchen, takes the stage and passionately tells the crowd how she’s just been going through the motions of being perfect. “We are all really scared to be who we really are.”

And didn’t think too much, until I started to out myself as a writer, how much of Joss’s secrecy was actually mine.

I got another bit of fan mail this morning, from someone who hasn’t quite reached the end of the story, but wanted to tell me how much I made her feel like she was there, in school, living this life. (As a writer, I should have better words for what those messages mean to me.) Looking forward to her finishing the book, wondering how she would feel at the end of it, I started thinking about the ending of the book myself, and how I lived it.

Writing that ending was very exciting. There was a sense of Oh my God, this is finally over. That feeling of exhilaration was both Joss’s, having just come through the other side of this battle and solved this big problem that had been hanging over her, as well as mine, having come through it with her, and also having come to the end of a struggle of my own. I felt like I had conquered something too. As I was typing her thoughts, I was thinking, this is starting to sound like the end of an after school special.

And then I decided that was just fine.

Blueprint Series Part 3: LOCK

If you’ve just arrived, I’m doing this series explaining the story blueprint I use. I’ve got a link to the file on my download page–see tab above. Click here for Part 1.

So today we’re working on your big ol’ story climax.

Step 3: LOCK

LOCK- Lead, Objective, Conflict, Knock-out

1. What do you know about the climax of the story?
2. How does the ending deliver a knock-out experience?
3. How does the ending solve the story problem?
4. How are the hero and heroine the catalyst for solving the story problem?

That nifty acronym is one I got out of a book called Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. The most important thing I got out of this book was the idea of knowing what the ending is going be, how the story problem will be solved, how the protagonist is going to be the one to solve it. Yeah, I know, more obvious. What I really needed, however, was the knock to the head that said: a kick-ass ending would be really good here.

So, much like GMC (see previous post), LOCK is a whole sotory concept with a similar structure. You have:

A Lead (character)

who has an Objective (goal)

who meets with a Conflict

an delivers a Knock-Out win at the end.

Now, this concept helped me a lot because I had been, to that point, very linear in my thinking. I had some vague idea of what the ending would be, or at least some of what it would have to entail, but I never knew how exactly it would come about. So in a sense I was never really writing towards it. And that caused me problems.

So that’s why we’re here at this stage in the process. Because once I have a Goal that’s Motivated, and I know what’s going to provide my character(s) with Conflict, I want to go right to thinking about how they’re going to solve it. How is my team going to provide Big Bad with the smack-down he so richly deserves. I’ll admit that I’m still not great at knowing the details, and sometimes my notes are: There’s a fight, they win, bad guy is arrested–or whatever the ending is. Some of the specifics will always be saved for the end.

The important thing to me is knowing that the ending in my head has something to do with may goal at the beginning, and that it will happen as a result of my characters actions and what they have learned over the course of the story, and not as the result of some deus ex machina BS. It could also be that my ending has little to do with the beginning goal, but in that case, this is the time to be thinking about the goal changes and plot twists that will get me from A to B.

If my heroine is obviously the main character and she’s the one who’s got the issue with the villain, I certainly don’t want to plan an ending in which she sits idly by and watches the hero mop the floor with him. L-A-M-E. If they’re going to be working together, thinking about the ending at this stage allows me to think about how I’m going to work their tag-team on the villain, and what I’m going to have to set up in advance in order to make that satisfying.

Yesterday’s post was pretty long, so I’m ending here today and we’ll continue Monday with thinking about your Story World.

Grade A Top Choice Meat

No, Glen, not a hot waitress, not a flight attendent.

Today I’ve been thinking about choices characters make.

I’m currently planning through a story I refer to as TC.  On another day I’ll probably tell you some of the recent breakthroughs I’ve had on it.  I’ve got characters, I’ve got a loosely outlined plot, I’ve got the major scenes and why they happen.  Yesterday I did some work on making sure the ending was a follow-through from the beginning, rather than just something I threw on, you know, at the end.  That was more an exercise in working through the story as a whole.

This morning I started thinking about the ending itself.  I had in mind a fight between the hero and an old foe from his past.  And the old foe brings some friends along which up the stakes and makes the threat larger than just to the hero and heroine.

In my head it’s always been: Naturally, this, that, and the other thing happens.  The hero and heroine work together to save the day, get over their interpersonal issues, and live happily ever after.

No, wait.

Naturally?

Is that what I want to read?  What naturally happens?  If I already know what’s going to happen because it’s the natural and expected conclusion to what I set up–what’s the point of reading it?

So today I’m working on choices.  Choices that are difficult to make.  Choices that involve sacrifice and risk.  Choices that are effectively motivated by who the characters are and what they’ve done so far in the story.

It sounds obvious when you say it–ever notice that lots of things do?

Kettle and I tend to do a lot of choose your own adventure.  Meaning we get to a point where we have different options, different ways we could write a scene or different paths characters could take and we tend to give multiple choice options to each other: what do you think should happen next?

It occurs to me that we should make an effort more often to have the character ponder these decisions.  That we should work on making these choices more important, more difficult.

And that we should also continue making the effort to think of what _could_ happen next and find something interesting, rather than thinking in terms of what makes the most sense.  Because sometimes what makes the most sense also made the most sense in the last six books you read and is not the most interesting thing to read again.

I guess my thought for the day is that a lot of writing seems very straightforward and innate, but crafting a good story is…um…another story.