Fare Thee Well, Across the Board!

If my previous post sounded a little final, well, that's because I actually thought it was gonna be my last post and only realized after writing it that there was another month left to 2023 (I've been very discombobulated this year). I'm of course bummed about the blog coming to an end, but also I'm glad we were able to give it a proper send-off. Also, eight years, the amount of time I've been writing here, is a looooong while to be doing anything. Other than living in my Jersey City apartment and owning my cat, I haven't stuck with any one thing for this long consistently.

Since I already waxed philosophical last month, I figured I'd use this final post to give a summary of where I'm at, writing-wise, and what's coming up next.

A bunch of my writer friends were making graphics to show off their published output for 2023, and of course I couldn't resist jumping on the brag train...

I find it pretty funny that they're all short stories pictured here, since I still consider myself a novelist, and still say I can't write short stories, only mini novels. The novel I was supposed to publish this year, Flynn Nightsider and the Ire of Inferno, hasn't materialized yet for a number of reasons... okay mainly one reason, which is burnout. I also have half a dozen novel-length manuscripts in the aether... maybe my agent will be able to find a home for one, or maybe I'll publish one myself after I wrap up the Flynn Nightsider series. I don't know. A few years ago, I wanted nothing more than to see my books in print, even if it meant putting in the work to print them myself. Now, I'm a little more neutral about it. Having the book be finished was the goal... I care less about whether it's out there or not. Or maybe that's the burnout talking.

Anyway, here's what I've definitely got coming up in 2024:

Flynn Nightsider and the Ire of Inferno, the third and final Flynn Nightsider book... I mean it this time! I'm gonna release this one at Gen Con in August if it's the last thing I do!!!!! I already have a full outline and the first few chapters written... just need to shake the cobwebs out of my head and finish the damn thing.

Brave New Girls: Chronicles of Curious Girls who Create. Yes, we're back with an EIGHTH anthology,
which feels wild because the whole project kicked off after a beer-fueled Facebook rant between me and Paige Daniels, which led to the crowdfunding campaign for what was meant to be a single book, which has apparently turned into a series... hey, as long as people keep askin' for 'em, we'll keep makin' 'em! Submissions are currently open, by the way! We'll be releasing the anthology in July 2024.

Magic Under the Big Top, a circus-themed anthology I'm editing for indie author collective Snowy Wings Publishing. This one's taking longer than expected to come together because we're all busy, busy indie authors with a gazillion irons in the fire... I just finished my own contribution, like, yesterday (that's not even an exaggeration). But I'm okay with the long timeline, since I know it'll be amazing when it finally comes out... sometime in 2024.

Phenomenons: The Wind and Fire, the third installment in Crazy 8 Press's superhero shared-world anthology, edited by Michael Jan Friedman. We just hit our Kickstarter goal, which means this book is definitely happening! My salt-wielding teen heroine Sarcastic Fringehead will be returning for another adventure! What's it about? Not entirely sure yet, though I think I'll pick up some threads from my last story, "Above the Salt", in Phenomenons: Season of Darkness... 

Eliminate the Impossible, an anthology of Sherlock Holmes reimaginings with Derek Tyler Attico, Christopher D. Abbott, and Keith R.A. DeCandido. We'll be indie publishing this just-for-funsies project, with a cover by yours truly! Who will my Holmes be? Undecided... But I'd better figure it out soon, because we're aiming to release it around Christmas 2024.

Combat Monsters, a World War II secret history anthology edited by Henry Herz, in which I'll have a short story. The theme is: What if monsters and mythical creatures had taken part in major World War II battles? This was new territory for me, and writing my story took a lot more effort than I expected. But I turned in my draft earlier this year, and I'm excited to see it out in the world sometime in 2024!

That's it for now (wait that's already 6 things GAH!). There may be one or two other short things that materialize over the course of next year... Also, at some point, I've gotta return to the Fated Stars series... we'll see...

Anyway, farewell, Across the Board! You can find me writing at The Workprint, and, of course, posting on the socials, mainly Facebook and Instagram (and occasionally, for some reason, Twitter-now-X).

Reminder to Self: Fun Things Are Meant to be Fun

Not gonna lie, I've been in a bit of a funk lately. And by "lately" I mean "since, like, May?" For various reasons... okay, mostly because I overcommitted myself AGAIN... I've plateaued on all my passion activities. Plateaued? More like flatlined.

First, I burned out HARD on writing. My original plan for 2023 was to whip out Flynn Nightsider and the Ire of Inferno in the spring, between editing Brave New Girls stories, and have it out in time for Gen Con in August. Hey, I'd done just that the year before with the second book in the series, Flynn Nightsider and the Shards of Shadow. All I had to do was follow the same timeline as 2022! Easy peasy!

All right, so I also committed to composing a few short stories for various anthologies, but those were little projects. I could just slot them in and still knock out my novel.

Except my brain had other ideas. After constructing an outline I was happy with, I dove head-first into the manuscript and... made it to about Chapter Three before my mind went splat. I'd just stare at the open document and tumbleweeds would blow through my skull. I still managed to hit my short story deadlines—hey, I made a commitment! — but other than that, I just couldn't bring myself to be productive. I ended up rewatching Star Treks Voyager AND Deep Space Nine, then binging a bunch of trash I can't even remember.

Well, this kind of thing has happened before, and I found refuge in my other activities. Activities that I took up to get away from writing. Activities that I was okay with being mediocre at because they were just meant to be an escape.

But a funny thing happens after you've been doing things for a while... you lose perspective. 

Choir was out for the summer, but I was hitting the circus studios whenever I could. And I. Was. Flatlining. Trapeze tricks I'd been working on for a million years weren't getting any better, and in fact some were getting worse (I spent so long trying to clean up my layout that I lost my go-to trick, the split, which I first nailed in 2019). Over on aerial silks, it hit me that moves I was struggling with two years ago (hello, inverted climbs) were still a hot mess that felt nearly impossible. Meanwhile, I watched classmates that had started around the same time as me become more and more advanced.

A big reason for this was that said classmates dedicate a lot more time to what is, for them, a passion. Meanwhile, my training schedule became super sparse thanks to summer travel (turns out you can't reeeeeeally gain strength by climbing a thing once every other week). 

Suffice it to say, I was felt like a loser by the end of summer. And I was determined to get myself back on track after Labor Day.

AND THEN THE PLAGUE HIT. No, not that plague, though I almost wish it had been because it'd be easier to gain sympathy. But it turns out a run-of-the-mill not-pandemic-y virus can still knock you flat (it's hard to do anything when you cough every other breath). That meant goodbye, most of September (also, that's why I missed my last post).

So here I am, up and about again but even further behind, and really feeling like a loser. I finally managed to buckle down and work on some short stories, at least, but Ire of Inferno remains barely written. Current plan: To use NaNoWriMo to kick it into action. But first, must finish short story...

Meanwhile, my physical stamina is at zero, which is a problem when you've signed up for an aerial performance workshop. It means I get winded really easily, and I can't actually manage to string together the moves I want for my piece. Then I get to watch my classmates be awesome while pouting over what I hot mess I am.

Whine, whine, whine, poor me.

Well, wallowing won't do me any good. So instead, I keep reminding myself how all these things I've been feeling like a loser over are meant to be FUN. I started writing stories because it was FUN. I started climbing fabric and swinging from the sky because it was FUN. And it wasn't supposed to matter how "good" I was at any of it.

Sometimes, I wish 2011 Mary were here to remind me that she only wanted to finish a manuscript, never mind if anyone read it.

2019 Mary isn't that far behind, yet apparently I've still forgotten how she was thrilled that she was even allowed onto a flying trapeze, or could climb two feet off the ground unassisted. 

I think it's a natural inclination, especially if you grew up in one of those over-achiever-y households, to think that you must be constantly improving on all things, or else you're falling behind. But that doesn't have to be true... some things are meant to be fun for their own sakes. And hey, what's wrong with a plateau? They can be rather nice!

I'm gonna keep telling myself that while I continue struggling at all the things. At least choir's back in session, and I'm still a decent sight reader.

Gen Con 2023: A Lookback

Hey everyone! Mary here, still somehow recovering from Gen Con even though it's been a week since the almighty gaming convention. Brave New Girls co-editor Paige Daniels and I have been doing this con every year since 2015 (except for 2020, of course), and our shtick has evolved quite a bit since then. 

For instance, it took three years for us to figure out that we should brand ourselves as something... enter The Sci-Fi Gals (kind of by accident... in 2017, we realized we were the only table that had only sci-fi on it, whereas most people around us had fantasy). So in 2018, we showed up with a "Sci-Fi Gals" sign to give our booth cohesion. In 2021, we realized that our big "Sci-Fi Gals" sign, which featured four Brave New Girls covers and a cartoon robot, made it look like we only had children's books (when all of Paige's books are actually aimed a grown-up audience and rife with f-bombs). So last year, I printed a second sign with all our grown-up titles and a more serious sci-fi-looking background. 

This year, a new thing we tried was bringing a tall collapsible bookshelf to stand behind our table, giving us more space to display our ever-growing collection of books (we seriously have so many now, some things have to go spine up to make room... interestingly, that doesn't stop people from noticing them; in fact, several make a point of pulling out the spine-up ones to see the covers). It definitely helped in terms of expanding our display space.

Another thing I've been doing with my series is having little signs displaying the discounted price for buying multiple books (for instance, the Jane Colt trilogy is $15 for one book, but $35 for the set). We kind of accidentally A/B tested this because Paige didn't have an equivalent deal for her Non-Compliance trilogy. The result? She sold out of Book 1 but was left with a bunch of sequels. I sold out of trilogy sets before I sold out of standalone Book 1s (which I'd brought more of than the sequels). 

Since Paige sold out of Book 1 halfway through Sunday, with a whole afternoon of shopping left, she steeply discounted her sequels, the pitch being that you could get them directly from the table (and get them signed) for cheaper than they'd be on Amazon, then go home and order Book 1 to complete your set. She didn't think she'd get any takers, yet 3 people ended up walking away with the sequel sets.

I remember back when I only had the first 2 books of Jane Colt, it was tough getting anyone to pick up Book 2, even as part of a two-book deal. But it was easier to sell 3-book sets once the trilogy was complete. Which makes sense as a buyer... either you just want to dip your toe in with Book 1, or you want the whole thing. I wouldn't want to risk buying an unfinished series either. Which is why I wasn't too concerned when no one really picked up Starswept's sequel when I only had Books 1 and 2 out. Once I had my trilogy sets though? People began scooping up the whole collection.

It's impossible to predict what people will want year to year, though. Last year, copies of my cryptid tale, Found Footage, kept walking off the table. This year, I literally sold two. No one even wanted a closer look at them. Maybe cryptids aren't trendy anymore?

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Another new thing we did this year was printing short stories as mini books, between 50 and 100 pages long, and selling them as $7 for 1, $12 for 2, or $15 for 3. Lo and behold, people were happy with these low-commitment impulse buys and they walked off the table (I sold out of 2 of my titles).

And lastly, we did a new "mystery book" thing this year because we have so many titles between us (I think it's literally like 30 now), some people just can't decide. Plus, this is a gaming convention, and a little risk is fun. All our paperbacks are $15, and all our hardbacks are $20, so we set it up so that you pay $15 to roll a D20, with each number corresponding to a book. Most are paperbacks, but the higher numbers (16-19) are hardbacks. Nat 20 gets you a whole trilogy. We didn't get a ton of takers (I think maybe 6 over the whole weekend), but those who did do it had fun.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll try new things next year as well. I was very happy with how Gen Con went overall this year... it was our best yet for sales. That could be because it was the most populous Gen Con ever (they sold out of 4-day badges and Saturday badges), but I like to think it's at least partly because we've gotten better at running our table.

In Praise of Filler Episodes

Hey everyone! Mary here, writing from green, green Vermont, where I am decidedly NOT getting any work done on my novel... I don't know why I always kid myself into thinking I'll get some writing done (beyond blog posts) on vacations. For whatever reason, I've fallen absurdly far behind on my work in progress, and I'm struggling with motivation. I think I'm a little burned out... it's happened before. Hopefully, it'll resolve itself soon.

So what have I been doing instead? Well, lately, I've been watching a lot of Star Trek. As in I rewatched the entirety of Voyager and am pretty far through my rewatch of Deep Space Nine. The current Trek kick started with the third season if Picard, which brought back the Next Generation crew for one last grand adventure, and also introduced a new character who (spoiler alert) turns out to be Jean-Luc Picard's son.

After action and twists galore, show builds up to a big final father-son scene where Picard has to convince his son to come back to the light side... basically, the ending of Return of the Jedi, except with the generational roles reversed. Despite the two actors emoting their hearts out and all the dramatic background nonsense a prestige show can give, the scene... didn't really hit for me. And after watching the finale, all I wanted was to go back and nostalgia-watch the Next Generation and the other shows from that era (I spot-watched a few old Next Generation faves before moving onto my Voyager and Deep Space Nine rewatches). Despite connections to the classic characters, none of the new characters from Picard really got me to care for them the way I'd cared about the casts of those older shows.

And I realized the reason was because Picard, like most shows in the streaming era, is designed for breakneck pacing and "mind-blowing" twists, to generate shock and buzz and, therefore, attention, views, and whatever metrics the execs want to present to investors. There are much, much fewer episodes, and each one is in service to a larger story arc. There are certainly shows that benefit from this "leaner" style of TV (Severance comes to mind), and the older shows definitely put out some stinkers while trying to fill a 26-episode season.

Yet while watching the Next Generation-era shows, especially when I was picking and choosing old favorites (before I realized that resistance was futile and just did a straight-up rewatch), I found myself gravitating toward the "filler" episodes... the self-contained, sometimes low-stakes tales that aren't "necessary" for any larger story arcs. And I noticed that even episodes that were part of a larger story arc (particularly on Deep Space Nine) often contained a character-centric B story that was light on plot but added to the characters' personal lives.

The result of all these "filler" episodes and scenes was that we got a chance to get to know these characters as people, not just players in a twisty-turny-attention-grabby plot. And that's what makes them linger, like old friends, in one's memory, and makes you invested in seeing what happens to them next. It gives a chance for their personalities to shine through, and make them seem more human.

Because none of us have a single, straightforward plot to our lives. I doubt even the most focused person in the world follows just one mission every waking moment. Yet we've been trained that characters in a "tightly" written story should do just that, and any "filler" in between ought to be cut. Something is definitely lost when that happens, though, something that makes it hard to feel invested in a fictional character.

Elsewhere in the Trek world, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks have returned to the episodic format of yore, complete with filler galore. And they have been very well received by fans (personally, Lower Decks is my favorite of the New Treks.) I think as time goes by, these are the shows that will remain with fans... at conventions this year, I've seen plenty of Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks cosplay, but none for Picard (though, of course, Next Generation cosplayers will always be populous). 

I know I've been guilty of trying to make my stories "lean," perhaps at the expense of some characters and world building. Maybe it's time to try pulling back a bit, and every so often, letting characters just be.

A Little Experiment

Hey everyone! Mary here, just back from Awesome Con and already packing for Origins (oof, back-to-back cons are always rough for me...). My brain isn't in the right place to write anything thoughtful, so I'm just gonna tell y'all about a little con experiment I've been trying.

At this point in my writing life, I've been in quite a few anthologies. As I wrote about previously, I like to use these anthos as a low-commitment way to experiment with new genres. I've also gotten to a point where it's no longer feasible to tote all these anthologies around to conventions, mostly because, sadly, not every Mary has a bottomless carpetbag. 

So back in January, after exhibiting at MAGFest, I got the idea to reprint some of my older stories, whose rights had reverted, as standalone baby books. I'd previously printed a short story of mine, "The Adventure of the Silicon Beeches," as a baby book because the anthology it was meant to be a part of never came together, and I'd noticed it tended to randomly sell itself at cons. As in, I'd have it on the table, but I wouldn't really pitch it, and some people would scoop it up anyway because it seemed fun and low commitment (I was originally selling it for $5 a pop; I've since had to bump that up thanks to inflation).

I originally wanted to print these stories literally as pamphlets, hoping to keep 'em cheap, but all the printing companies I looked at required minimum orders of a few hundred for the per-unit cost to make sense. I only wanted to print, like, 20 of each at a time, so back to Amazon KDP it was.

I did the covers and formatting myself, thanks to Canva and Microsoft Word (it helped that I already had a template from "Silicon Beeches), so the total cost of producing these baby books was maybe $2 each for the stock art on the covers. Chucked 'em onto Amazon and voila! "The False Nightingale," "The Last Gunslinger," "The Messenger," and "Haven," all originally published in themed anthologies (Magic at Midnight, Thrilling Adventure Yarns, Keep Faith, and Pangaea III) now stand by themselves.

Okay, so there was a middle step before voila. I disclosed on the copyright pages that these stories had originally been parts of anthologies, and either because of that or because of some algorithm, the Mighty 'Zon requested paperwork proving that the rights had been reverted. I suppose that's kinda encouraging? Make sure y'all have contracts, folks!

I took said baby books, each between 50-100 pages long, to Awesome Con and stuck 'em on the end of the table. Again, I didn't really pitch them, just said "here are short reads for if you're looking for something quick." And they did surprisingly well! The con overall was pretty much a dud for sales (might've been the placement of my table, since there wasn't even much foot traffic), but the "littles," as I've taken to calling them (thanks to Paige Daniels, who's reprinting some of her short stories as well), over performed considering I didn't even know how to talk about them other than "here, they're short." People tended to just pick them up, read the back, and buy them if it appealed to them, no hemming and hawing with the usual "do I have enough space for this" or "but I've spent so much money already."

So I guess the conclusion I can draw is that little, cheap, low commitment short stories lend themselves well to impulse buys. And it's a nice way to add more options to the table in a year where I've fallen way behind on my novels...

Solarpunk meets treasure hunts in "The Lost Lab," my latest Brave New Girls story!

Hey everyone! Mary here, coming out of my cave after sending the latest BRAVE NEW GIRLS manuscript off to formatting. Whew, how is it already the end of May??

For those of you who don't know, BRAVE NEW GIRLS is a young adult sci-fi anthology series about girls in STEM, edited by Paige Daniels and myself. Proceeds from sales benefit the Society of Women Engineers. This year's anthology, TALES OF GIRLS WHO ENGINEER AND EXPLORE, will be our seventh (!!).

This year, my own contribution is a solarpunk adventure called "The Lost Lab," about two teens searching for a rare plant. I'll admit it took a while for me to get going with this one. Co-editor Paige Daniels and I decided late last year that we wanted a solarpunk cover for this year's anthology, mostly because we hadn't done one before and thought it would be fun. And while all the BRAVE NEW GIRLS short story collections span multiple sci-fi subgenres, we wanted to make sure at least some matched the cover vibes, so we both opted to write solarpunk tales. I, for one, had never written solarpunk before, so of course I had to give it a try.

What is solarpunk anyway? It's a subgenre of sci-fi that imagines a world where technology and nature live in harmony. As such, it tends to lean utopian. Think high-tech cities powered by clean energy and covered in roof and wall gardens. 

The first concept I had for my short story was that it would be about a girl living in a solarpunk future who has a mechanical arm, and whose family is going broke paying it off (hey, just because society has stopped destroying the ozone doesn't mean medical debt disappeared). So she needs a get-rich-quick scheme, and my first idea was that she'd need to win a science fair of some sort.

But thanks to my procrastinating, I didn't end up writing my own story for this anthology until after we'd accepted submissions, and quite a few of the stories we selected were about science fairs / competitions. Okay, I thought, scratch that. How about a heist? Except we'd also accepted some of those too.

That's when it hit me: treasure hunt! Something Indiana Jones-y, except futuristic, and without the colonial overtones. 

So in "The Lost Lab," the girl, Amara, and her partner-in-crime, Ravi, discover the long-lost lab of an eccentric scientist who died two hundred years earlier, and who was rumored to have bioengineered a superfood. Of course, said scientist booby-trapped her lab to prevent anyone from stealing her work. And it turns out they aren't the only ones after it...

Though it took a while for the idea to come together (I confess, I used ChatGPT for brainstorming, though it seemed weirdly fixated on Amara's arm...), once it did, the actual writing process went smoothly (No, I didn't let ChatGPT produce any actual sentences for the story. Mostly because they would have sucked, and I would've had to rewrite them all anyway.)

Here's the illustration, drawn by the amazing Adriano Moraes:

Oops, I'm a Short Story Writer

 Hey everyone! Mary here, still slightly crisped from a long weekend in the Dominican Republic last week (that sun is strong, and there's nowhere to hide if you're doing outdoorsy things!). Despite that vacation and a one to Vermont a few weeks before, I've been pretty productive lately. Just not in the way I expected.

I still consider myself a novelist. Short stories aren't my forte, I say. My brush is to big for small canvasses that require a finer touch. And yet I keep figuring out how to angle that big ole brush in a way that works in miniature (Okay, so my idea of a short story is 10,000 words... hey, you're talking to a gal who struggles to keep her novels under 100,000!). 

And suddenly I looked up, and pretty much all of my latest and upcoming projects are short stories for anthologies. Oh, I still have novels too... in fact, I have no fewer than five completed but unpublished manuscripts waiting in the wings and two indie series I intend to finish. But I have no control over the former (unless I decide to go indie with one) and too much control over the latter (which means I keep procrastinating to hit short story deadlines).

Even though I don't consider short stories to be my primary medium, I love writing them. The smaller format let me explore and experiment without committing to a whole novel. And in some cases, an anthology's theme provides an interesting challenge.

Anyway, here's what's coming up:

"Broken Wings," a dieselpunk fantasy about a former ace pilot plucked out of jail to compete for a ruthless warlord in an international competition, for the annual Origins anthology, Games Around the World (ed. Aaron Rosenberg)... first dieselpunk!

"The Four Opera Singers of the Apocalypse," about exactly what the title implies, for The Four ??? of the Apocalypse (ed. Keith DeCandido & Wrenn Simms), coming... whenever Keith and Wrenn say so (but soon, I think!)... I was about to say this was my first absurdist story, but then I remembered that I killed Glenn

"The Lost Lab," a solarpunk adventure about two teens who break into an abandoned lab seeking a rare bioengineered plant, in Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls who Engineer and Explore (ed. myself and Paige Daniels)... first solarpunk!

An untitled YA rom com, about a girl who swaps places with a classmate so she can attend a prestigious circus camp, for Magic Under the Big Top, a circus-themed anthology I'm putting together for Snowy Wings Publishing... first rom com (once I write it)!

A noir-ish 1960s/70s-set short story for an anthology that I'm not sure I can talk about yet, but will be shouting about once its Kickstarter goes live! It won't be my first noir, but it'll be my first noir with an SFF bent... first atompunk, maybe??

An alternate/secret history short story for another anthology I'm not sure I can talk about yet... first time writing this genre to!

 All right, gotta go... looks like I've got homework...

Stuck on a WIP? Give it time

Hey everyone! Mary here, procrastinating on writing one thing by writing another. Back in January, I rattled off a few projects I was in various stages of, including some where I was like "I don't know where I'm going with this." One of them was for a YA dark academia novel (basically, a magic prep school murder mystery), working title Gifted and Talented, that I'd outlined, started writing, then promptly began changing my mind about... while I was writing. 

"Well, this is an unsalvageable mess," I kept thinking to myself, as I jotted down the millionth note in my "revisions to make later" file. After all, thanks to all the mind-changing I did, there were gaping plot holes and continuity errors that would surely require me to delete the whole damn thing and start over. Yet I was determined to plow ahead and just finish the friggin' manuscript. For me, a bad draft is better than no draft at all. So by the end of November 2022, I had a complete, if incoherent, novel.

Back in January, my conclusion was that this manuscript, which I'd originally promised to send my agent in "early 2023," was is such rough point that my only plan was to revisit it "at some point." Possibly this year. Or not... the thing was such a disaster, I couldn't bring myself to even consider cracking it open.

Meanwhile, as you may recall, I miraculously pumped out a second novel, working title Phantom/Fantastic, in about two weeks. This one was in much better shape. As in, the plot made sense (partially because it was just more straightforward). So I sent it off to beta readers in December, and the plan was to spend January plotting yet another novel (the conclusion to my Flynn Nightsider trilogy), reading Brave New Girls submissions, and faffing around with my hobbies (I got to sing the Fellowship of the Rings soundtrack in Radio City Music Hall!). 

Then the Presidents' Day long weekend came up, and I'd set it aside to work on a book. In my head, it was going to be Phantom/Fantastic, so I could clean it up and send it to my agent for consideration. One problem: my beta readers were busy too and hadn't gotten around to critiquing it yet.

Faced with a three-day weekend that I'd purposely cleared of plans for writing purposes (and because after running around for months, I just needed some time to chill), I did what at the time felt unthinkable: I cracked open the giant ball of mess that was the Gifted and Talented manuscript. Y'know, the one with plot holes and continuity errors and revision notes that said demanding yet unhelpful things like "need more character interactions."

Reader, I was terrified. I didn't want to face the enormity of the task that would be making this book coherent. But finally, I opened the damn file and started reading.

And it was... okay??? Sure, there were continuity errors, but they could be scrubbed by just editing a few sentences? And the plot holes only needed a paragraph here or there rewritten to be plugged???

I knew from past experience that my first drafts are seldom as horrendous as I feel like they are while actually writing them (this is why composing first drafts is my least favorite part of the writing process... I much prefer outlining, then revising, and I'm not even kidding when I say I wish an AI could write my first drafts for me). I thought it'd be worse this time, though, because I'd changed my mind so much.

But the perspective of time showed me that while there were indeed lots of changes that needed to be made, they weren't nearly as impossible as they'd felt when I'd set the thing down two and a half months earlier. And so I settled down to tackle them. And, after a few weeks, arrived at a draft I was comfortable sharing with my agent (Whether he likes it or not is another matter... hey, at least it's coherent. I think).

I know it's been said a million times before, but sometimes we have to repeat things to ourselves and trust that we were right the last time. So I'll say it again: If you're stuck on a work-in-progress, the best thing to do sometimes is let it sit for a spell.

I Tried Again to Write with AI. It Went Better This Time.

Hey everyone! Mary here, and you might recall that last time I was on here, I was lamenting that, in a fit of writer's block, I tried to get the machines to write my book for me, and it didn't go well. Basically, I was totally blocked on a book, and I tried to get ChatGPT to generate some plot ideas and an intro paragraph and... yeah. It was terrible. 

Well, since then, I've gotten write's block again (hooray!). This time, it was on my Brave New Girls short story, which I almost considered not writing altogether, that's how blocked I was (hey, I can just edit the thing, right?). I had the bones for a plot there, I was just completely blanking on details (it probably didn't help that I was doing this amid a whirlwind of other activities too). 

So, once again in desperation, I turned to ChatGPT. Hey, they say the machines are coming for my job? Fine, machine, you do the work.

But since I had the bones of a plot already — girl in a solarpunk future enters a centuries-old lab full of booby traps to retrieve a rare plant developed by a long-dead eccentric scientist — I was actually able to get something out of the AI this time.

First, the simple stuff. What the hell is this girl named? Usually, I scan baby name lists. This time, I described the character and asked ChatGPT to give me a bunch of names. Who knows if the description did anything, but after hitting "regenerate" a few times, I settled on Amara. Maybe this is just a lazier version of browsing Behind the Name.

Then, it got a little more complicated. What makes this plant special? What's a plot twist I could throw in? Who's her partner in this adventure, since I didn't want her talking to herself the whole time?

This is where the machine fell apart, though it was rather amusing seeing the cockamamie ideas it came up with (Amara has a mechanical arm, and the machine was REALLY obsessed with it... half the plots it generated had something to do with the arm, like the plant being somehow connected, or her partner really wanting to study it, or... it was weird). 

But amid the trash I was able to pick out a few things that worked. Who is her partner? Oh, ChatGPT gave me a lot of wackadoodle suggestions, but I liked the one where it was a kid who got in trouble for studying illegal plants. How does she meet him? Amid other things, ChatGPT suggested a hackathon. Perfect. And as a not-hackathoner, I asked it to give me some ideas for what could actually be going on at this event. What makes the plant special? ChatGPT kept insisting it was sentient, but finally I came up with a reason all on my own by rejecting all the machine's idea (it's a superfood, essentially, that could put Big Agriculture out of business). What about a twist? Okay, that one I was on my own for. 

These are all questions I would probably have typed, in some form or another, into a search engine before. Which is what AI will probably wind up being used for a lot, plus generating copy (which, mind you, is different from writing... think about all those functional words that litter your surroundings that say things like "scan here to access our resources" or whatever, or boring filler articles for "content marketing" that say exactly nothing).

I've heard it said that copy-generating AIs can be thought of like calculators. You still have to do the real math, with the fancy formulas and whatnot, but the machine can crunch the numbers for you (maybe that's why super high-level math doesn't have numbers at all).

An AI by design can't come up with original ideas. It can only regurgitate what's out there, and sometimes that can be helpful. And when it's not, well, it's good for a laugh.

I tried to get an AI to write my book. It didn't go well.

Sometimes, I feel like an AI. Taking inputs from the world around you and regurgitating what you think your audience wants to see and hear - that's, like, every day at my corporate day job. Especially since I work in marketing. I can't tell you the amount of buzzword-laden nonsense I've had to pump out.

So far from being afraid of being replaced by an AI, I say, let the machines have that crap. I don't wanna do it anyway.

Something else I don't really like doing is writing first drafts. Nothing scares me more than a blank page, and often, I wish I could just do the outlining / plotting part and then have someone - or something - else write the first draft for me. Then I'd rewrite it all in revisions, which, unlike a lot of writers, I actually like doing more than writing the first draft. It's like, give me something to work with, you know?

I've spent the past month or so trying to come up with a plot for the third and final book in my Flynn Nightsider dark fantasy series, and I've spent the bulk of it completely, utterly, thoroughly stuck. Turns out, it's hard to end a saga you started working on 11 years ago when you've changed your mind about the whole series' arc and purposely wrote yourself into a hole after Book 2 because it was the most interesting ending you could think of. 

While I was banging my head against the proverbial wall trying to figure out this damn book, I kept seeing article after article after article about how good ChatGPT, the AI text generator, is getting, and how it's going to replace us.

Okay, fine, I thought. I can't seem to get this book written anyway. Let's see what the machine can do.

I started by feeding it the most basic information about where I left off with Flynn: that he's a teenaged boy looking to take down an immortal wizard of sorts (since I didn't know if I could train the AI to learn all my little world-building details, I left it at that). Then I told it a few other details, told it that I needed a plot twist, and let it come up with a synopsis then write the first few paragraphs of the story in the style of a young adult novel.

Yeah, here's what I got:

I stand before the towering castle gates, my heart pounding with fear and determination. I know that inside lies Zoltar the Eternal, the immortal wizard who started the war and took my family from me. But I also know that I am the only one who can stop him and put an end to his evil plans. I've heard stories of his immense power and his ability to manipulate death and souls. I take a deep breath and steel myself for what's to come. I am ready to face Zoltar and bring an end to this war, no matter what the cost.

I push open the heavy castle doors and step inside. The grand hall is empty, but I can feel eyes on me, watching my every move. I call out "Zoltar! I've come to stop you and put an end to your evil plans!" My voice echoes through the hall, but there is no response. I start to walk deeper into the castle, my hand on the hilt of my sword, ready for any attack. Suddenly, a voice booms out "You are brave, young one, but you are also foolish." I turn to see Zoltar standing at the end of the hall, a smirk on his face. "You think you can defeat me? I have been alive for centuries and have defeated greater warriors than you." I take a deep breath and reply "Maybe so, but I have something you don't, a reason to fight. I will stop you, for my family and for the people of this land."

ZOLTAR. THE. ETERNAL.

Yeah, halfway through laughing my head off, I told it to introduce a female character (a stand-in for Aurelia) just to see what would happen. Here we go...

I square my shoulders and prepare for battle, but then I hear a voice behind me. "Wait, Flynn! You can't fight him alone!" I turn to see a young woman, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her eyes fierce with determination. "I'm here to help you," she says. "My name is Lila, and I'm a powerful sorcerer. Together, we can defeat Zoltar and end this war." I nod, grateful for the unexpected help. "Thank you, Lila," I say. "I'm ready when you are." Lila nods and we both start to walk towards Zoltar, ready to face him together.

"I have my own reasons for wanting to defeat Zoltar," Lila said, as we approached the immortal wizard. "My family was also taken by this war, and I won't rest until justice is served." I nod, understanding her pain and determination. "But that's not all," she continued. "I've been studying the ancient texts and I discovered that Zoltar is not just a tyrant, he is also the key to unlocking a greater evil that threatens to destroy the world. We have to stop him, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of all humanity." I look at Lila, impressed by her knowledge and determination. "Then we'll do this together," I said, gripping my sword tighter. "We'll stop Zoltar and save the world."

Wow. Such compelling writing. I told it to continue and describe the characters:

As we stood before Zoltar, I took a moment to take in my surroundings. The castle was grand and imposing, but it was also dark and foreboding. Zoltar himself was a tall, thin figure, with long white hair and piercing blue eyes. He wore a long black robe and held a staff that seemed to glow with an otherworldly light. I couldn't help but feel a shiver run down my spine as I looked at him. I may have been a young man, with a strong build and short brown hair, but I knew that I couldn't take him on alone. I was grateful to have Lila by my side, her small frame belied her powerful abilities as a sorcerer. Together, we would defeat Zoltar and bring an end to his reign of terror.

Without hesitation, Lila and I charged towards Zoltar, ready to engage in battle. Zoltar sneered at us and raised his staff, unleashing a powerful blast of energy. Lila quickly conjured a shield to protect us and I lunged forward with my sword. Zoltar was fast and powerful, but we were determined and fought with all our might. We exchanged blows and spells, each one trying to gain the upper hand. The battle was intense and it seemed as if it would never end, but we kept fighting, knowing that the fate of the world rested on our shoulders.

Still literally LOLing, I told it to introduce a plot twist:

Just as we thought we had the upper hand, Zoltar revealed his true intentions. "You fools!" he exclaimed. "You think you can defeat me? I am just a pawn in this game, a tool for the true enemy." With these words, he disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving us confused and bewildered. Lila and I looked at each other, trying to process this revelation. "What does he mean?" Lila asked, her voice filled with uncertainty. "I don't know," I replied, "but we have to find out. We have to discover who the true enemy is and stop them before it's too late." With renewed determination, we set off on a new quest, not knowing what challenges and twists lay ahead.

Riveting fiction, right?? Wellp, this exercise was useful in one way: I'm 125% sure that whatever I come up with will be better than the tale of ZOLTAR THE ETERNAL.

Just for fun, I also told the AI to give me a title and back cover blurb. Who wouldn't read this masterpiece???

Are you ready for an epic adventure filled with action, mystery, and betrayal? "The Immortal's Gambit" takes you on a journey with Flynn, a young warrior who joins the army to seek revenge for the loss of his family. But as he rises through the ranks, he discovers that the war is not what it seems and the immortal wizard who started it holds the key to a greater evil that threatens to destroy the world. Together with a powerful sorcerer, Lila, Flynn embarks on a quest to uncover the truth and stop the true enemy before it's too late. Get ready for a thrilling ride filled with magic, battles, and unexpected twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't miss "The Immortal's Gambit" a tale of war, betrayal and redemption.

Hello, 2023! Here's what I've got planned for you!

Happy New Year, everyone! Mary here, and like many writers around this time, I'm looking ahead to whatprojects I've got planned for the next 12 months or so. The writing / publishing world is a weird one in that, unless you're 100% indie, there's so much you can't really plan for (and even for indie projects, you're still dependent on others... editors, artists, distributors...). But here's what I've got going on... though you know what they say about best laid plans...

Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Engineer and Explore

We'll be back in July with a new volume of Brave New Girls - our seventh! Submissions are still open, by the way, so if you've got an idea for a story about a STEM-savvy teen girl, check out our guidelines here. Like with all previous volumes, proceeds will be donated to the Society of Women Engineers scholarship fund. Who will this year's Brave New Girls be? What kinds of adventures will they go on? I can't wait to read the submissions and find out myself ;-). I'm also planning to contribute a short story (which I need to get going on...) - a solarpunk tale, mostly because I like to challenge myself to write in new genres/sub-genres, and I haven't done solarpunk before.

"The Woman from Wuchu," in Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022/23

The latest volume of the Thrilling Adventure Yarns anthology series from Crazy 8 Press (edited by Bob Greenberger) was supposed to come out in 2022 but is now looking more like February 2023 (hey, delays happen!). My contribution is a noir short story about a mysterious woman in Chinatown who's willing to do whatever it takes to solve the murder of a sex worker, written as a tribute to midcentury noir films with my own twist. It's been finished for a while now, just waiting on a release date!

"Above the Salt," in Phenomenons: Seasons of Darkness

The second volume of the Phenomenons superhero shared-world anthology series from Crazy 8 Press (edited by Michael Jan Friedman) is also scheduled for a Februrary-ish release date. My character Sarcastic Fringehead, a teen girl with the power to control salt, returns in a few crossover adventures with other Phenomenons, and my story follows her efforts to find her friend after he's kidnapped in the middle of a school talent show. This one's also finished and just waiting for release.

Flynn Nightsider and the Ire of Inferno (Flynn Nightsider, #3)

Did I just drop a title reveal there? I think I did! Anyway, the grand plan for 2023 is to finally wrap up the Flynn Nightsider trilogy I first started writing in the summer of 2012... ten and a half years ago (crumbles into dust). I've already claimed August on Crazy 8 Press' release calendar (we're an indie author collective, so we set our own schedules). Will it happen? Well, Shards of Shadow (Book 2) miraculously did, so I still have hope... even though I kind of wrote myself into a hole with that one... oh, how's the manuscript going? I ain't started...

"The Four Opera Singers of the Apocalypse," in The Four ??? of the Apocalypse

Oh, this one's been written since summer of 2021, and the Kickstarter for the anthology has been funded since around then too. When is it coming out? Ask Keith ;-)

Magic Under the Big Top

I don't think I've talked about this one publicly yet, so, surprise! I'm editing a collection of circus stories for Snowy Wings Publishing (also an indie author collective). There's no set release date yet, as it'll depend on contributing authors' own schedules. I've booked the cover artist who did two of Snowy Wings' other anthologies, Magic at Midnight and Sing, Goddess!, and should have something to share in the summer! Of course I'm also planning to contribute a story, and in the spirit of "let's try a different genre," I'm thinking of doing a contemporary rom com set at a circus camp. Whether that happens will depend on The Muses...

Confessions of Former Teen Heroes

Another project I haven't talked about publicly before! This one's the most up in the air since there are a lot of dependencies, but basically, Kevin Dilmore and I got to chatting on Twitter about what happens to YA heroes who save the world at, like 16, and thought it'd make a fun anthology theme. The title isn't necessarily final, by the way - it's just what we've been calling it. At some point, we're going to run a Kickstarter for the whole thing... At the moment, we're still in the planning phases, and aiming for a Summer 2024 release through Crazy 8 Press.

Another anthology project I don't know if I'm allowed to announce yet

Basically I was invited to participate in an anthology project that we're supposed to be Kickstarting in the summer, but I don't know what I'm allowed to say about it yet, so that's all I can give ya ;-). 

Fated Stars #2

Ok, now we're getting into the super speculative part of the list. At some point after I finish the Flynn Nightsider trilogy, I'm going to finally get cracking on the sequel to Windborn, the first book in a planned 5-part YA fantasy epic, which I first started working on in 2014 and finally released in 2020 with Snowy Wings Publishing (yikes, what even is time). I actually already have the whole thing outlined, plus a cover image. Now, I just have to write the damn thing (and settle on a title). Maybe this will be my NaNoWriMo project...

Phantom / Fantastic

For those of you who've been following my social medias, you might've heard me talking about "the shower thought book". Basically, I took a shower on November 23 and got what I thought was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! idea. Is it actually brilliant? Who knows, but it got me excited (it's a YA fantasy set at a steampunk circus). On November 28, after finishing my NaNo manuscript, I started fleshing it out. By December 12, I had a 75,000-word manuscript. I sent it off to beta readers shortly before Christmas. I'm actually planning to let this leapfrog the manuscript I originally promised my agent (more on that in a sec) and send it to him after incorporating their comments... here's hoping he finds the idea as brilliant as I do (after a WTF moment, I'm sure lol). Anyway that pic isn't meant to be a real cover... I just made it for fun in Canva when I was bored one day.

Gifted & Talented

This is the manuscript I was originally supposed to send my agent in early 2023. Sometime in 2022, I pitched him the idea for what was then my "next" book - a YA murder mystery set at a prep school for the supernaturally gifted - and he liked it. In August I said I would work on it in the fall and have it for him in a few months. Well, I wrote the book as planned, but as happens sometimes, it didn't exactly go as planned. Mostly because I kept changing my mind in the middle of writing and making notes to go back and revise earlier chapters for continuity... anyway, at some point in 2023, I'm actually going to do that. And then see if he's still interested in it (assuming it's coherent). P.S. That cover is also a mock one I made in Canva while bored.

Untitled Circus Fantasy Project

For those of you who've been following my socials... remember how I wrote a circus fantasy book and even commissioned some character art (to the left, done by Niru Sky Art) for it just for fun? I started writing this manuscript in fall of 2020 and finished it in late spring 2021. It's been treading water ever since, mostly because neither I nor my agent can decide what to do with it. Oh, it went through some rounds of revisions, which is part of the reason behind the delay. But it's also been a lot of "hmm, what now?" I wrote it as YA, but at about 140,000 words it's too long for that market, in this economy at least (hey, Children of Blood & Bone was about that long, so I had reason to hope!). And the way it's composed, I can't just chop it up into shorter books (I tried... another reason for the delay). Could we pitch it to the adult market? Never say never, but given some of the feedback received on previous manuscripts of mine, probably not (my voice is just too YA). So... I don't know what's going on with this one lol. Hopefully by the end of 2023, I'll at least have decided whether to let it continue treading water in hopes of a traditional deal or if I should just take it back and indie publish the thing.

Project Sherlock

Another unsold manuscript, which died in submissions to editors. I'm mostly including it here to remind myself that it exists. It's a re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes as an AI girl in a Star Trek-y space-faring future. The character has made some (non-canon??) appearances in a few short stories of mine already, and people seem to like the concept, so maybe I'll indie publish this one too. Someday.

Whatever Crazy 8 Press asks me to write next

We've got a few anthology ideas in the pipeline over at Crazy 8 Press, which I won't disclose just yet, and I plan to contribute to whichever one(s) become reality, so I'm on deck for whatever short stories are coming next!

So basically, the Grand Plan for 2023 is to release a few short stories I've already finished, release the next Brave New Girls, complete the Flynn Nightsider trilogy, work on the two anthologies I'm editing (and possibly release one, depending on how things go), get cracking on the next Fated Star book, and maybe, maybe, maybe, decide to publish the start of what could be an all-new indie series (the circus one? Sherlock?), which I originally forbade myself from doing while I still had a gazillion sequels in the pipeline.

Let's see how many of these plans actually pan out... Happy 2023, y'all!

Some books just want to be written

Happy December, everyone! For those who participated in National Novel Writing Month, officially or unofficially, congrats on no longer having to think about your unfinished manuscript every damn day. I have a feeling most of y'all are taking a well deserved break and don't want to think about writing until after the holidays.

Unless you're me.

So I'm not a traditional NaNo-er. I think I might have used the website, like, once or twice. But I do use it as motivation and a self-imposed deadline. Sometimes, the challenge is for me to write the first half of a novel since, as a regular writer of 100k-word tomes, the NaNo goal of 50k is just that. Sometimes, the challenge is to finish revising something. This year, it was to complete a manuscript I started in September.

It was a tall order, since I had a lot going on in November between performing in an aerial recital and traveling to Tucson for a convention... and getting knocked flat by con crud for a solid week. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, but I picked up steam toward the latter half of the month. Oh, the manuscript was a struggle bus for sure, but by golly I was going to get to that last chapter.

Then on Wednesday, November 23, around 1:20pm, something happened that nearly derailed it: I got home from a noon kickboxing class, hopped into the shower, and got a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea for a new book.

Okay, so it's not really that brilliant. But it is exciting.

Even though all I had was a concept, I was so excited, I immediately hopped onto Facebook chat and started going on about it to some writer friends. And as I was going on, ideas started tumbling out unprompted (thank you, very patient friends, for putting up with the torrent). I so, so wanted to just start clattering away at this shiny new project right away.

But I was one week away from my goal. I had a whole plan to reach it if I wrote a chapter a day, two on weekends, for my existing work-in-progress. And this was a literal shower thought... it seemed silly to throw aside months of work for something that might not pan out to anything.

So I made myself a deal: I would wait a week. Finish November and my existing manuscript. Then, if the idea still seemed as brilliant as it did in the shower, I'd write it.

Thanksgiving weekend rolled around and I ended up writing way, way faster than I anticipated. I finished the manuscript early, on Sunday. I thought I'd need a few days to recover from the mad dash to the finish line.

On Monday, the shower thought book kept banging at my skull, until finally I created a Scrivener file and started typing out the ideas.

On Tuesday, a whole outline and first chapter poured out.

It's now Monday again, exactly one week since I started brainstorming, 12 days since the fateful shower thought occurred. I have 21,500 words in the new manuscript - 9 out of 28 planned chapters. I never write this fast... Usually, it takes me weeks, if not months, to even figure out my outline. But this book just wants to be written.

Will this keep up? Who knows. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and go, "Well, that idea was silly. I should set it aside for a bit." But for now, I'm enjoying the ride.

What's the book, about? Still not ready to talk about it publicly (mostly because I'm afraid I'll decide suddenly that I hate it) but I'll give you a hint...

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Back-Jacket Hack Job: Flynn Nightsider and the Shards of Shadow

Hey everyone! Mary here with a Back-Jacket Hack Job! Been a while since I did one of these. Basically, for those who are unfamiliar, a Back-Jacket Hack Job is where we absolutely butcher the back cover description of a book. I have a habit of picking on my own books, and this time is no different. Back in 2018, shortly before I released my YA dark fantasy, Flynn Nightsider and the Edge of Evil, I made a hack job of its book description. Now, I've released the sequel, Flynn Nightsider and the Shards of Shadow, so here we go!

~~~

FLYNN NIGHTSIDER AND THE SHARDS OF SHADOW

Poor, poor Flynn Nightsider. Like most teenaged protagonists of YA fantasy novels, he just wanted to save the world against impossible odds. But his author was mean to him and that didn't happen (if it had, this sequel wouldn't exist). So despite spending about 400 pages fighting supernatural beasts and evil government agents in a dystopian world ruled by totalitarian wizards, he's still got more work to do.

So, where did we leave off? Actually, I can't really spell it out here without spoiling Book 1. Let's just say that after Flynn joined the rebellion to restore freedom and all that, things didn't exactly go as planned. But being a good little YA hero, he's going to try again to save the world. Except it's harder this time because bad things happened at the end of Book 1. Oh, and the rebellion's MVP, teenaged monster slayer Aurelia "the Firedragon" Sun, is pissed off at him because some of those bad things were kind of his fault. 

Aurelia, who is decidedly not a good little YA heroine, has a few secrets, by the way. Also, don't expect to find her in the middle of some gooey love triangle. She'd jump out of my computer and slice me in half if I tried to write her into one.

Anyway, there's a big bad villain chasing Flynn, Aurelia, and the rest of our scrappy band of rebels, but again, I can't tell you who it is without spoiling Book 1. What can I tell you about this book? Basically nothing, except that there's more monster fighting and more running from evil government agents. 

And the few of you who actually read it might just reach through time and space and smack me upside the head when you get to the end.

~~~

Book 1 of the series, Flynn Nightsider and the Edge of Evil, is on sale for $0.99 on all e-book platforms through September 5! And in case you want to check out its sequel, here's the link to Flynn Nightsider and the Shards of Shadow!