Things I Already Know People Won’t Like About Firebrand

About half-way through the first round of edits on Firebrand, and then the Beta Crew can take delivery of it and I’ll kick it out of my head until it comes back red-pencilled. As is usual at this stage, I’m noticing things people won’t like about it and thinking ‘Well, I like it’.

Thing the First: First person, present tense. I like first person, present tense, and the book showed up that way. I know a lot of people don’t get on with that, and that’s entirely fair enough – there are things that kick me out of books I’d otherwise enjoy too. I mean, I’m sure I’d enjoy Sarah Caudwell’s books if it wasn’t that they’re so arch that if you had four of them in one place you’d have the makings of an aqueduct.

Thing the Second: No hero POV. I am totally unapologetic about this. One, it would have been a pain in the behind to engineer, because of the aforementioned first person, present tense, and second, I know lots of people say they love hero POV in romances, but personally, I can think of a grand total of three books where I would have missed the hero’s POV terribly if it wasn’t around and one where I thought ‘If I had any idea what the hero was thinking, I might like him better’ and they’re all by Joanna Bourne, so make of that what you will.

In particular, I detest the obligatory scene where the hero muses on the heroine’s… assets. Look, I get that part of the fantasy that romances hand out is the fantasy of being desired. I really do. But if I’ve been in the heroine’s head worrying with her about whether mysterious villains will spoil her beloved sister’s debut, or how she can keep her business afloat, or what the hell is going on with all the werewolves that suddenly seem to be part of her social group, and I get dragged out of that so that I can be informed that the hero thinks she has a nice arse… well, it reminds me of every single time I’ve been having a conversation with friends and it’s derailed onto ‘so-and-so, I would’, or ‘so-and-so, hasn’t she let herself go lately’. The fantasy of being desired is great! The fantasy of being constantly reminded that, as Kate Harding says, any time a woman shows her face or opens her mouth in public, whatever point she wanted to make stands to be delayed by a referendum on her fuckability, not so much, and too many hero POV scenes fall, for me, on the wrong side of that line.

Thing the Third: It’s vaguely inspired by, of all things, Charlotte Bronte’s juvenilia, which is, with all due respect, not the shiniest selling point in the world.

Do I care? No. All I can do is make it the best book of its kind that I can, and not worry too much about people for whom that kind of book will never be the right kind of book.

In other news, my husband and I are off to a steampunk festival in a couple of weeks, and when I reacted to the possibility of attending a ‘Writing Steampunk’ workshop with ‘Hell no, I’d just have wall-to-wall panic attacks’ he just calmly said ‘Don’t do that, then’. Which is one of the many, many reasons I love him.

Steampunk Is Not The New Paranormal

Really interesting article from Heather Massey here: Why Has Paranormal Romance Taken Off, but Not Steampunk Romance?

Personally, I think the problems come down to:

A) People on the covers of steampunk novels have an embarrassing tendency to look like LARPers. I don’t know why this is, particularly as there are far more vampire LARPs than steampunk LARPs out there, but it’s so.

B) I realise I am being a giant howling hypocrite for saying this because I have yet to write a book that doesn’t try to inhabit several genres at once, but steampunk tends to branch off unexpectedly into other genres, and it’s entirely reasonable for people to not want Unexpected! Other! Genre! in their romance. I mean, people keep recommending Meljean Brooks’ books to me and I’m sure I’d love them if it wasn’t that the first one has zombies in, and zombies are one of my ‘Nope. Don’t want to read this’ hard limits, along with heroines who whine about their weight all the time and clichéfied descriptions of Mystic Fantasy Not-Quite-China.

I was going to say that adventures with clockwork and airships are less familiar than adventures with vampires and werewolves, and therefore require more effort and more ‘what’s going on here, then?’ anxiety from the reader, but I’ve read enough paranormals with a glossary at the front that I don’t think that holds true. In fact, one of the things that seems to make a paranormal series really stick with readers is worldbuilding.

Anyway! Go read Heather Massey’s article, it’s well worth it.

Writing

So, the process of planing and sandpapering Firebrand into shape is ongoing, and it’s making me think about how much easier writing was when I had no clue at all what I was doing.

I mean, when I started out it was just a matter of getting some words on a page. What do the characters do? Okay, write that down. Sorted. You pile the words up and there they are. No worrying about structure, or pacing, or imagery, or whether having two characters in the same book who are short gruff brunettes will be needlessly confusing for people and it might be an idea if one of them was a tall gruff brunette instead and the other one’s hair turned mouse-coloured.

I can remember when I wasn’t bothered about keeping track of when the viewpoint shifted. I can remember the exact point when writing sex scenes got complicated, because it was right around the time I started having sex. And if I come back and read this post in a few years’ time, I’ll bet there are several things about the books I’m writing now that make me cover my eyes on a re-read and think ‘why didn’t I see what was wrong there and fix it?’

Writing: the more you do of it, the more complicated it starts looking. It’s like you start out building what you think is an heaped-earth pyramid, and the next thing you know you’re the architect in charge of some large civic building that’s mostly made of glass.

And also, you’re responsible for making sure the civic building’s lifts run on time and keeping the loos unblocked.

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In other news, WordPress keeps suggesting new tags to me whenever I publish a post. Generally they’re inappropriate but I can sort of see where WordPress is coming from – ‘first draft’, for example, got a suggestion of ‘baseball’ – but there’s a substantial minority population of ‘Really, WordPress, you’re just guessing, aren’t you?’ such as ‘vacation’ or ‘beauty’. I’m now wondering whether it’s going to pick up on ‘pyramid’ and suggest ‘earth mysteries’ or on ‘unblocked loo’ and suggest God knows what.

EDITED TO ADD: I’ve now seen their suggestions, and they were: the ever-hopeful ‘vacation’ and ‘travel’ (WordPress, I am not going to blog about my holidays. I very seldom go on holiday, due to my default response to any suggested holiday being ‘But I couldn’t possibly leave the cats’), the perfectly serviceable ‘literature’ and ‘writing’, and the completely inapposite ‘gaming’ and ‘anime’. If you have any suggestion for what prompted those I’d love to hear it: my best guess is that anime often involves short gruff brunettes.

First draft!

First draft of the steampunk thing is finished, at just over 100 000 words!

Next comes getting it to a state where I’m prepared to let anyone else read it…

That 7×7 meme from everywhere

1. Go to page 7 (or 77) of your current WIP.
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written.

Since I have two WIPs, you get both.

Heavy Ice:

Kallisty felt triumph lance up through her all the way from the crux of her saddle to the back of her throat, fierce and savage like desire. “I claim this salvage under Ordnance in the name of the Hawkwoods,” she said. “Witnessed by Ushantih Khan and – hey, does that crazy cult of yours let you witness things under Ordnance, Besnik?”

“It’s not a cult, and you know I’m not allowed to swear oaths, and you’ll be sorry when the Prophet comes back,” said Besnik with a stolid lack of offence.

“Who else is a citizen?”

Firebrand:

“Do you truly want to know why I came here, your Grace of Coranza?” I snarl at him. “Do you? Or have you made your mind up for yourself, and you won’t hear a word I have to say?”

He takes a step back to give himself room to make a stiff-backed bow to me. Not mockingly, as Zashera would do it. As if he and I were at a parlay, trying to prevent a battle that we both knew was coming. “Speak. I’ll listen.”

Dear Amazon

This is an open letter to Amazon, with regard to their UK Kindle Store.

Dear Amazon:

I love the Kindle. I love the convenience of being able to buy books and have them delivered immediately. I love being able to read three-volume Victorian novels without also getting an arm and shoulder workout. But the experience of browsing books in the Kindle Store from my Kindle itself needs some serious work.

If I know what I’m looking for, fine, I can search and I generally find that author’s work. Admittedly I often also find other stuff I don’t want – I was particularly bemused that you recommended me an e-pamphlet called something not a million miles from ‘INTROVERTS DIE ALONE: LEARN TO BE A GODDAM SALESMAN ALREADY’ by the author of ‘BUSINESS SECRETS OF THE CELEBRITY DEAD’ when I was searching for Susan Cain’s The Quiet. But in general, the search facility works fine.

It’s the ‘Browse: Books’ that’s totally b0rked.

Amazon, I do not always know exactly what I want. Sometimes I am in the mood for a historical biography. Sometimes I want a contemporary romance. Sometimes I want to flick through a particular category and see what’s available. And you are making it pointlessly hard for me to do so, because your curating skills suck.

If I go and look in ‘Science Fiction’, I want to find science fiction, and yet two of the first five books you offer me are fantasy instead. And I don’t mean the ‘Hmmmm…. well, I don’t actually know what’s going on with this society and whether it’s meant to be futuristic or parallel-world or a secondary creation’ kind of fantasy that could perfectly reasonably reside within SF, I mean the ‘warring royal house, assassins and swords, and if this had been written ten years ago it’d probably have an elf in’ kind. I look in ‘Fantasy’ and find paranormal romance.

And the thing is, I can quite see why a writer of paranormal romance would list her stuff in ‘Fantasy’ instead, because the ‘Romance’ section is quite seriously broken. There are 65,616 books listed in Romance today. If I hit ‘view subcategory’ I see that there are 15,705 contemporary romances available, 9483 historicals, and 52,182 ‘Fantasy, Futuristic and Ghost’.

Is this because four fantasy, futuristic or ghost romances sell for every contemporary? No, it’s not. It’s because that section contains a vast number of romances that don’t belong there. Of the first five romances listed in that section, none of them are fantasy or futuristic, though I wouldn’t swear to the absence of ghosts.

For someone who’s thinking about publishing a steampunk romance some time soon and would like fans of steampunk romance to be able to find it, this is, as you might imagine, frustrating.

Hard to navigate as the fiction shelves are, they’re at least better than the nonfiction. I’ve given up trying to find anything in nonfiction. If I’m near my computer, I’ll go and browse the Amazon site on there instead: if I’m not, I’ll read one of the many classics I’ve got loaded up from Project Gutenberg. Amazon, this is not a win for you. Your profit margins rely on my impulse purchases, and I’m not making impulse purchases because I can’t find what I want.

The problem with nonfiction is twofold. Firstly, there’s a lot of stuff that’s just pointlessly misplaced: historical-set mysteries in ‘Historical’, for example.

Secondly, the books I want to find are crowded out – in every category – by books that I am never going to buy and that you’re wasting my time by constantly shoving under my nose. If I’m in Waterstones and happen to want a misery memoir, I can go to wherever they’re keeping the misery memoirs these days. I don’t find them piled in huge stacks underfoot throughout the shop. But that’s what it’s like trying to shop on Amazon. Historical? Biography? Self Help and How To? Everywhere you look, there are the dreaded titles and subtitles, spilling off the title line like the shape of a frowning mouth. Tales of hardship. True life stories. Shocking stories. White covers with scribbly fonts and bruised childish faces. Are there little models out there whose whole careers are based on ‘Now look at the camera and pretend Mummy’s been in a car accident?’

Obviously a lot of people like these books, Amazon. If they’re giving people who have been through wrenching life experiences the strength to carry on, then they’re doing some good in the world. But could you please make it possible for those of us who don’t want to buy them to find something we do want?

To do you justice, ‘Business and Finance’ and ‘Politics and Current Affairs’ seem to mostly contain business and finance, and politics and current affairs respectively. Nice going, Amazon. Care to roll that out to the rest of the site?

Yours hopefully

Ankaret Wells

P.S: A lot of people are going to say that this problem is down to there being too many self-published books on Amazon, and that if Amazon acted as a gatekeeper, it’d all be a lot better. I do think that Amazon could do better at stopping the stolen works and the content-free, cribbed-straight-from-the-Web ‘factual’ ebooks, and that the Kindle Store would be a better place if it did. But I want to be able to read self-published books by Melanie Clegg and other authors who are selling a product just as good as anything from the big publishers, and I’m pretty grateful to the Kindle Store for giving me the chance to do that. Shutting the door on self-publishers isn’t the answer. Making it possible for your readers to find what they’re looking for is.

Plot early, plot often

In the ‘good news’ category: the steampunk thing, now tentatively entitled ‘Firebrand’, is chugging closer to being finished in first draft. So then it’ll be time for the second draft and then to send it off to the various people who have very kindly offered (and in Jasmine’s case, been begged) to beta-read it, and then there will be another round of changes based on that. On telly and in the Sims, people just wave their arms in the air and declaim that they’ve finished a book, and soon afterwards and effortlessly, the book is on the shelves. Sadly, this isn’t even the case with self-publishing: there are even more hoops to jump through, I’m sure, if you go the traditional route.

Also under ‘good news’, I think a major rewrite can save Heavy Ice. The bad news, of course, is that it’s going to mean a major rewrite. Again. Believe me, I am completely aware of the irony of having slogged away for two years on Heavy Ice only to have the steampunk thing spool out of me and get within a novella’s length of the same word count in a couple of months. I’ve really needed the break and the perspective that writing the steampunk thing has given me, and hopefully when I go back to Heavy Ice it’ll be in a spirit of ‘Now I know where this is going!’ rather than ‘I am in a maze of twisty, turny passages, all alike’.

The lesson I take away from this is that I write a hell of a lot faster when I’ve got a plot laid out in front of me and don’t have to feel my way forward and trust that I’ll have a good idea that will lead to a finished plot. Unfortunately, I find plotting in advance difficult, since when I start out on a book I don’t know the characters yet, and therefore I don’t know what they’re going to do. The reason this didn’t happen with Firebrand is that, er, it came out of a story I’d been telling myself to amuse myself while sitting in dentists’ waiting rooms or trying to get to sleep. I do this all the time, and I always have, but generally the stories in my head are too weird / embarrassing / full of inexplicable subplots because they’ve been going on since 1993 to see the light of day. And the reason I’m finding it easier to plot out Heavy Ice now is that I know what Kallisty would do in almost any given situation.

It would have been a lot easier if I’d done this in 2010, rather than assuming that I could do exactly the same thing I’d done with Requite books one and two and it would all be fine. Particularly since it wasn’t all fine while I was writing books one and two: it got stuck for a colossally long time on the Awful Corridor Scene which is now chapter four of The Hawkwood War, and I’m not even going to go into the number of iterations the Cold-Crystal Plot went through before arriving in its present form and I’m still not sure it adds much to the book besides giving Innes a reason to get into fights with people. But the thing is, if you’d said to me plot in advance then I’d have just pointed to the number of times I’d tried to plot a novel in advance and ended up with something that hadn’t turned into anything I was capable of writing (well, there was that one time it turned into a D&D campaign instead) and I’d have ignored you.

So. Writing. I know it’s a cliché to say that it’s always a learning process. But sometimes, it really, really is.