Grammar and Usage Peeves

As I was typing today, my fingers accidentally stuck an apostrophe in a plural word. I caught it instantly, breathing hard. It is one of my pet peeves. I'm starting to see it everywhere, as in, The Markowski's went to the store or Stock up on the advantage's of insurance. Aarrgh.

Apostrophes are used for contractions:

it is = it's
is not = isn't

Apostrophes are used for some possessives:

Mary's ball, The Fratellis' horses, the nation's president, the Markowskis' house or George Markowski's house

Apostrophes are not used for possessive pronouns:

his horse, her horse, its mother

And apostrophes are certainly not used for plurals.

Here's a usage blooper I caught in a news article the other day:
It doesn’t take a musical scholar to deduct all of this wasn't as 'artistically significant' as what came after.

Ouch! We deduct charitable donations from our income taxes, or deduct the cost of goods sold from the sales price to calculate our profits, but we deduce conclusions from evidence using our reasoning processes.


Here are a few more things I'm seeing everywhere lately.


troop: Since when did troop come to mean an individual soldier? Troop is a collective noun. Like Girl Scout troop. If you say "five troops were injured in Afghanistan today," that's really more than five individuals.

I think perhaps our news people are shying away from soldier. Or is it that they're trying to be gender inclusive? Well, soldier or sailor can be either. How odd would it be if we said, "George is an army troop"? But that's what we're implying when we talk talk about troops as individuals.

momentos: No such word! Keepsakes have to do with memory. Thus even if they are fleeting keepsakes, they are mementos.

graduate high school: Graduate is not a transitive verb. It does not take a direct object. Thus one "graduates from high school."

decimated: I'm thinking that people are confusing decimate with devastate, as in this quote from CNN: "Australia's raging wildfires have decimated massive spans of land."

Decimate actually implies a much sparer kind of destruction. OK, we don't have to limit its use to exact 1 in 10 destruction as its origins specify. To decimate derived from the Roman custom of killing one in ten rebels in the army. But decimate certainly implies a more selective destruction.


I'll bet the rest of you have some pet peeves, too. Let's air them out!
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Reprints

Just saw something very cool today - a 14th printing copy of Transformation. This is very cool, even in the day of better technology so that publishers can reprint in smaller, more $-efficient quantities.

So, here are some questions I'm often asked:

How can you tell what printing?

Is a 14th printing the same as a 14th edition?

If one of your books is only in 2nd printing, does that mean it's less popular than a book in its 14th printing?




How can you tell what printing?


For some books you can't tell by looking at the book. But for many books, including mine, you can look at the copyright page in the front of the book. Look at the list of numbers in reverse order. Something like this

20 19 18 17 16 15 14

Look at the last number, and it will tell you which printing. This list says 14th.

Is a 14th printing the same as a 14th edition?


Nope. An edition is a typeset version of the text. So a new edition is something that requires re-typesetting. That is, the text is revised in some way, such as the "2010 edition of Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door, or the text is typeset for a different format, eg. a mass-market-paperback edition or a trade paperback edition." A reprint is just a new batch of the same book, and usually does not include any revision of the book's text. It just signifies that the publisher is getting low on the book in the warehouse and needs to print up some more to keep in on the market. A 14th edition would have been revised at least 14 times, and I've not touched the text of Transformation since it was published.


If one of your books is only in 2nd printing, does that mean it's less popular than a book in its 14th printing?


No. If an author's books do well, then chances are that the first printing of subsequent books are larger than the first printing of previous books. So it might take longer to empty the warehouse and get to that second (or later) printing. Breath and Bone reprinted within a month of its initial release - which is great.

My current tally on the rai-kirah books (which have been out longest):

Transformation 14
Revelation 11
Restoration 8

Some others: Son of Avonar - 7th, Breath and Bone - 2nd.

All of my books, have gone to multiple printings, which is very gratifying. It shows that my publisher has faith that readers will continue to buy my books and tell other people about them.

Thanks, all of you!

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The Right Ordering of Endings

Having so recently emerged from the boiling kettle of devising an ending for this book, I thought it might be well to speak to some ending considerations.

I think of endings as a ziggurat - a stepped pyramid. Once the rising action of the climax begins, there is no going back down to the beginning level. Of course, there may be several parts to an ending, and you can have a short breathing space between them, but you don't want to let down and rest, as you might with story arcs earlier in the book. And the level step, or breathing space, should be short, compared to the elevation gain with each piece of the climax. Never let yourself lose the elevation gain.

Once you've reached the summit--the final battle, the climactic confrontation, the split, the bomb, the rescue, the cataclysm, the unveiling, the kiss, whatever it might be--it's time for a brief denouement. Contrary to popular misconception, the denouement is not the climax itself, but the winding up of threads, the actual resolution that follows upon the climactic events of the story. It is what you find on that summit, not the climbing action of getting there. And you notice that the actual area at the summit is much smaller than the base of the pyramid, and much smaller than the combined effort of getting to such a height. The harmonious shape of the ziggurat demands it.

So what are my rules of thumb wrt endings that my recent efforts (and six chapters in two weeks is definitely an effort for me!) recalled to me?




1. Don't introduce something new - a new power, an artifact we haven't seen, or a new character who is the exact locksmith needed to work things out. It's too convenient. It smacks of deus ex machina - and readers will throw the book across the room. You might get away with such a thing earlier in the story (though you shouldn't) but never, never at the end. Many people consider this a common flaw of fantastic literature - "oh, the author can make anything happen at the end, magic, reconfiguring the tachyon particles, or whatever. It's just too easy." I believe you have to make the rules of your magic or science or culture or alternate reality so clear that your climactic events can most definitely lead to failure. DOn't let it be easy.

2. Use people and events from earlier in the story to bind the whole thing together. If your story starts with a book (like Valen's book of maps in Flesh and Spirit) think carefully about what part the book plays in the climax. If you need an unlocking spell, make sure we know they exist in this magic system. If a dead body turns up, make sure your readers know the significance of that person (hmmm...oops...a matter for revision) and can feel the emotions you want to drive the conflict and climax.

If you are lacking the particular whizbo, person, or talent you need to feed the action, go back and put it (or him or her) in earlier - but seamlessly please. Don't hang a bright red arrow pointing to the golden ball that's just the right shape to plug the dike! The ball needs to serve a function in the earlier part of the story, too.

3. If you find yourself explaining too much, stop. Remember those short steps on the ziggurat? If you make one step horribly wider than the others, you've thrown off the balance. So look at what you're trying to explain and figure out how to salt in the explanations earlier, so that the reader will say, "Ah, yes. Wow! Of course!" as she is swept to the ending.

4. Be meticulous about your characters' decisions that lead them into and get them out of the climactic events. Explore all options. Why did he choose just the right path that would get him out of a jam? Let the climactic events flow naturally out of the building tension of the story, and your characters' dramatic reversals - maybe the thing they said they would never do - build upon the trail of evidence you've laid.

5. Did you tie off enough threads? Endings should not be a checkoff list, but don't leave the reader hanging with the big stuff. You want to leave readers with the feeling that life goes on, but you want to satisfy their most urgent questions. "Well did Gerick stay in Avonar or go back to where he had been living?" "Did Valen ever get a chance to have that great party he kept hankering after for a THOUSAND PAGES?" "Did Seyonne get it back?" (Well you have to leave some questions open...)

6. If there is to be a sequel, did you leave the right threads open? Is there a spooky undertone to the denouement? Check out the ending of The Soul Weaver (D'Arnath Book 3). At one time, it was the third of three books. When I discovered the "story arc" of Daughter of Ancients, I went back and modified the denouement. I'll bet you can pick out the pieces I slipped in.

Once you've completed those last chapters, reread your first chapter. Consider balance and symmetry. What were your hero's emotions, expectations, and opinions. How have they changed?

Consider the mood. Did you start off writing a farce and end up in a deadly, gripping battle for survival? Is your reader going to be confused that you started off a bedroom farce and ended up with a serial rapist threatening your heroine?

Or if your opening posed a mystery that turned out to be much wider and deeper than the original question, did you set the spooky music playing early on? Yeah. I think so. Cool!


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Titles Redux

This title search was truly difficult. I made word lists. I brainstormed combinations. I searched language dictionaries and pulled out my trusty thesaurus. The problem was, of course, that I was trying to think while madly producing words to reach the end. Until early last week, I could not have told you what the blasted stories are truly about.

First iteration - a set of Latin titles. I wanted to introduce a Renaissance feel to the names. The books are set in a world on the brink of an explosion of scientific advancement. I came up with Latin titles I loved for the second and third books, but I couldn't find one I liked for the book I was working on. A little survey on my Warrior of Two Souls Forum bore out my editor's conclusion - the only title that had come to mind-and wasn't in current use!-would not mean anything to readers who hadn't come across the term somewhere else. It could actually lead to the wrong conclusion. Bummed. (I still love Ars Maledicta, my planned title for Book 2, though!)


But as I neared the end of the book, it suddenly dawned on me that everything in this book...and the series...had to do with seeing. Both physical and metaphorical. Seeing into secrets. Seeing through deceptions. Seeing into hearts and souls. Seeing through lenses - spyglasses, prisms, spectacles. Looking through a device and seeing something wholly unpredictable. There is even a scientific demonstration of "the nature of light" in the book (based in part on a historical demonstration of Isaac Newton's). And this started me thinking about optical devices.

Second iteration - Despite what I said in the earlier post about shying away from objects in titles, I realized that "seeing devices" could represent the "scientific side" of the Sabrian world. But if I were to go in that direction, I wanted to juxtapose a word that would convey "magic" or the "spiritual" side of the world, referencing the balance and harmony of the two sides (or lack thereof! Picture evil grin here.)

After much whirling, I came up with "The Adept's Lens," adept being the reference to magic. But I didn't like the specificity. This story isn't about one person or one instrument, and certainly not about one person's instrument.

I finished the book at 1am last Wednesday. And Thursday I woke up with the titles. And they are...

The Spirit Lens

The Soul Mirror

The Daemon Prism

This story is about seeing. Each title is an object, but each is also a metaphor for seeing, so you can expect that each part of the each title has multiple references. And to impart a slight flavor of the Renaissance, instead of a series title, each will be appended with

a novel of the Collegia Magica

I am happy. My editor is happy. The marketing folks are happy. So far, so good.

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Done!

The new book is packaged and sent off to New York!

Is it finished? No. Lots of work still to do.

Is the story complete? Probably so. All the elements are there and set down in a reasonable ordering.

So why the vast quiet of the past two weeks?

The ending kept slipping farther away. With a multi-layered story such as I like to write, the writer ends up with LOTS of threads to tie off - or deliberately NOT tie off. I had three main pieces in mind for the ending.
1. A big BAD
2. A big GOOD, involving self-realization one of the main characters
3. A big, dark REVELATION to carry us into the next story

I accomplished them all, but it will take another post to explain why that took six chapters and twenty days!

Right now I want to celebrate and get the cobwebs out of house and head.

More soon!

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Science and Magic

One of the "themes" of my world in the new book is that of science overtaking magic. As I've been working on the grand finale - getting there S L O W L Y - I've had the need for some examples of the scientific revolution. The opening half of the seventeenth century is truly remarkable. Astronomy, physics, mathematics, optics...one discovery following on another...one theory proven, one debunked, ideas... I don't know that I ever appreciated it before. One guy figures out how to create a vacuum. Seems small, and yet, people hadn't really believed there COULD be such a thing as a vacuum. Another person figures out how to generate static electricity, not knowing exactly what it was. Another person realizes that balls rolling downhill accelerate at a uniform rate that can be calculated. One person starts thinking systematically and realizes the liver couldn't really produce enough blood as people had thought...and so develops the theory of the circulation of the blood...and does everything he can to find out if it's true. These things seem so simple and obvious now, but were like magic then. They required leaps of understanding.

And the most amazing thing to me...

...was the people who did this. It's easy to picture scientists who make marvelous discoveries as dedicated, focused nerdy people. But you look at the people who caused this great revolution and they are all writers, translators, clergymen, physicians, musicians, or any number of other things. Some made their own instruments. The guy who invented the barometer built telescopes and taught mathematics. And Isaac Newton...did everything from running the English Mint (and doing all sorts of things to reform the currency and punish counterfeiters) to laying the foundation of physics and calculus, to writing religious and philosophical works, corresponding and collaborating with other scientists and mathematicians, writing books, teaching, etc. etc. We really do stand on the shoulders of giants. As they did, too, of course, as much of what they started with came from Aristotle and all those others who asked questions and formulated some kind of answer.

Makes me feel like a real intellectual wimp! Read more of this post!

Genres and Sub-genres

For you aspiring writers: Here is an interesting post from agent Lucienne Diver about fantasy/sf and romance subgenres.

And, it's good info. Not just because she lists me alongside George RR Martin. Read more of this post!

Cover Input

I don't want to design my book covers. I love writing, but I just don't have the visual skills to design covers or the marketing skills to know what sells (lots of writers who do design their own covers don't know this part either, I fear!)

That being said, I DO want to have a say in my covers. I know what I don't like. And I certainly know what fits the book - even if it doesn't represent the exact image I had in my mind.

Take the Restoration cover, done by the marvelous Matt Stawicki. The characters look nothing like the images of Seyonne and Aleksander that live in my head, but when I pulled that cover out of the envelope, I went, "Wow!" It is gorgeous. It will draw a reader's eye and make readers wonder about the book - which is the entire reason for cover art, of course. The Stawicki Revelation cover was actually more beautiful than I had envisioned the ice palace in Kir'Vagonoth. I also love the Luis Royo covers for the Lighthouse books, but, sorry folks, he isn't quite Valen and the beauifully rendered masks are wrong - they should be vertical half masks. But I think the covers are gorgeous and feel very fortunate.

So the time has come (already?) and my editor, bless her, is asking for my ideas for what should be on the cover of the [as yet untitled] new book.

Probably not an action scene. They are not "stylish" for trade paperback originals. So, there's more thinking to do. I've got three investigators, a burning ship, ghosts, horribly-- Well I can't tell all, can I? I need to send them several ideas to explore - and pages for my editor to read, but they're not ready yet...yoiks.

And then there is the matter of cover copy - the ubiquitous back cover blurb that may be even more important than the cover, and is likely the second thing a prospective reader looks at. I don't get to write it, but thanks to some cooperative behavior (I think!) I get to make suggestions. Hooray. This part has to be done accurately, as far as I'm concerned. No revelation of secrets. No cliches. Vivid words. OK, I tend to get too wordy, but at least I get to contribute. I was really happy with the Lighthouse cover copy.

Something else to be working on in the next week or so.
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What's in a Title?

So my editor wants to talk about titles for the new series. Titles are sometimes easy - Transformation, Song of the Beast, Flesh and Spirit. They can bubble up early out of the story, sometimes before I know what they really mean - The Soul Weaver, Daughter of Ancients.

Some titles are just hard - Son of Avonar. That one took me a while because I had to step back and see that the core of the story, the prime motivator, the piece that changed EVERYthing, was the "son" in question, even though the protagonist and narrator was Seri. His fate was the driver and the Bridge was the arc that spanned the four books.

Out of my ten books, only two titles have changed since the book went under contract. They happen to be two of my favorite titles. They are...



Revelation - changed from the original because my UK publisher feared the original title evoked the "horror" genre rather than fantasy. He was right. I searched for the right -tion word for weeks.

Breath and Bone - changed because my first pass was too close to another book being released from Roc in 2008. I was so unhappy, until I happened to use the phrase breath and bone one day in the text and I knew it was perfect.

Both of the new titles were infinitely better than the originals.

So my editor didn't say exactly why marketing doesn't care for Unholy Alliance, but I suspect because there are about five hundred titles (search Amazon!) that incorporate the phrase - and most of them are history or psychology. Fortunately, I am not wedded to this particular title - I had to call the book something when I was proposing it. And because of my previous experience with the changes, I'm hoping that I can come up with something I like much better.

There are so many words out there that apply to this story - and lots of them are SO cliched in fantasy titles. Blood is significant - but I don't want people to think vampires or urban fantasy. Shades, shadows, ghosts, spectres...getting into horror territory...and triteness. If I get too far into the secret agent aspect, I'll have people thinking "thriller" and risk losing the fantasy association. Tough.

What do you think are words that are overused in fantasy titles?
I'll keep you posted. Read more of this post!

Concert Celebration

Just caught the Lincoln Memorial pre-inaugural concert on the HBO website. It was great fun. My favorite part?

I think it was Herbie Hancock, Sheryl Crow, and Will.I.Am singing Bob Marley's One Love. Some of the other combinations of singers were great, too. If you missed it (we were at a birthday party, and we don't get HBO anyway) you might be able to catch a rebroadcast on the HBO website. We routed it through our TV and stereo, so we got good sound. Enjoy! Celebrate! Read more of this post!

Getting Published

Just got an email from a reader/aspiring writer asking some fundamental questions about this writing business. As she said, there is so much information on the internet, she doesn't know where to start. So let's cover a few of Cindey's questions:

What's the best thing to do in order to get published?

Write great stories. This is not facetious. Many people can think of a great story. But to write one, you have to learn the craft of writing: how to write dialogue, how to write great openings, how to vary your sentence structure, how to avoid common pitfalls like "telling" instead of revealing character and plot through action and dialogue. There's a long list. Reading good stories, reading articles or blogs about writing, going to workshops, getting together with other aspiring writers and learning together, and writing, writing, writing - those are all good ways to learn the craft (reading and writing being the most important!)

I read somewhere that getting an agent could help better than not having one.

This is an age-old argument. A first time author can sell novel length work without an agent, but it is hard, and in today's tightening publishing market, it's probably going to get harder. Yes, "selling" your work to an agent is just as hard as selling your work to a publisher, but you will probably want an agent to negotiate a contract offer for you anyway. And if you can't interest an agent in your work, you'll have difficulty interesting a publisher. Opinions do vary on this. I actually got an editor interested first and then submitted through an agent. I was glad I had her to help me through it. You don't need an agent for short stories, just a source of markets (see ralan.com for an example) and a lot of stamps, envelopes, and cover letters. (Learn how to write a professional cover letter.)

I also read that I could send in a proposal first & not have the book written just yet. Then if there was interest in the book, the publisher would then want the book written.


This can work for non-fiction. You can structure a book proposal by writing a chapter-by-chapter outline and a query letter, explaining your qualifications for writing the book. You would also need to write the first few chapters to include in your proposal. There are many good descriptions of non-fiction book proposals out there. Look at books like Writers' Market or How to Get Happily Published, or the websites of reputable writers and agents. (See Pub Rants link in the margin.)

For fiction and a first time writer, a book proposal is not going to fly. Editors want to see not only that you can write, but that you can finish a whole book. Ideas, sad to say, really are a dime a dozen. Once you've been published you may be able to sell books on proposal, but not (OK, never say never) as a first time writer.

Where do you start?

Write the book. Revise it. Revise it again, until it is the best it can be.

Once you think your book is ready (and this means you've had serious writers and readers - not just your friends - read it and give you feedback) start looking at Preditors and Editors, and Writer Beware to learn about the pitfalls waiting for naive writers. (I've got links in the margin here.) Read the articles in Writers' Market and do research at places like Agent Query (link in the margin, too.) Find some online communities for writers - Absolute Write, Making Light, and the sff.net forums. And I highly recommend agent Kristin Nelson's well-written blog Pub Rants. Read her archives about what agents look at, what makes them stop reading, how to write queries, and so forth.

Hope this helps, Cindey, and all of you! Read more of this post!

Happy New Year!

Can't quite believe it's been a year since I started up this blog - until I look at my calendar and realize I've got about six weeks until this book is due to my editor. Nope, it's not done yet. But we had a lovely holiday, with the entire immediate family here at the house - and my mom, too, and visits from a niece and her kids. Safe travels for all. All good. But December evaporated and here I am trying to marshal my brains and pages for the final assault...

Task 1 - remember what the heck I'm doing here. It feels like time for a complete read of What's Happened So Far. Why? Partly because I want to make sure I'm steeped in the story before I move into the final chapters. Partly because I've got some timing changes to make. And partly because I've some clarifications to weave in and I might as well do it now as later.

Timing: On the last day I got substantial work done before Christmas, I decided I had made my timeframe too short. My heroes were running out of time - which is always a good thing for tension - but in this case the work they have to do just can't be squeezed in before their "drop dead date." [Just a euphemism. Uh-huh.] I don't have a "magical cheat" in place to speed up their traveling. If they are going to visit Michel de Vernase's home, and still return to Merona before the grand finale of this story, I've got to build in travel time. So annoying.

Changes to weave in: a little more precise magic (now that I understand it), some peculiarities of Portier's past (not all of which are alliterative!), and some cultural details like the Cult of the Reborn and the differences between spectres (the energies left behind by a dead person), ghosts (souls that cannot cross the Veil), and engasi (those actually returned from the dead).

This kind of reread and revise takes much long than I'd like. I've done only about three chapters a day, which means I'm about 2/3 of the way so far after five days. (My active writing is currently at Chapter 26.) But I am finding, as always in revision, that the later chapters are smoother and need less attention, so maybe I have a hope of finishing up the reread quickly. Meanwhile I'd really like to get Chapter 26 finished for the critique group tomorrow. Yoiks - I don't like to think how few group meetings are left before MY deadline.

More on this tomorrow!
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