Decanuary

Welcome, Skirmishers!

You probably didn’t even notice that I never sent a December Skirmish, so I consider myself off the hook. Last month, I surfed a monster wave of work + Christmas + California travel (there weren’t as many 70-degree days as you might think) + birthday plans for a certain awesome 2-year-old, so the Skirmish never came to be. It’s what you call LIFE.

But now that the holidays have tucked themselves (exhausted) into bed, I’m back—full of January energy and optimism, even if the weather in northern Idaho remains the color of mucus. Let’s go!

In this Skirmish

✈️ Travel Update: When an MG Author Gets a Romantasy Thriller - I met Nova McBee!

✍️ Writing Update: Back to Revisions - Get beta readers.

🍿 What I’m Watching - Three popcorn flicks and one CREEPY true crime thriller.

📚 What I’m Reading - Trying not to cry during Hamnet.

When an MG Author Gets a Romantasy Thriller

Highlight from December: I was finally able to meet the lovely Nova McBee in person at a Pacific Northwest authors’ Christmas party in Seattle!

I admit, I was loathe to leave my husband and toddler during Christmas (it was my first night away from Ben since we got married…I am NOT used to traveling without him), but my husband urged me to go, and I’m so glad I did. My friend Christine Cohen invited me to ride along with her, so we hopped in her trusty car and braved the raging rain and blinding mist and 80-mph traffic of Snoqualmie Pass—and made it to Seattle.

Nova and her party were both a delight. I met so many inspiring authors, from #NYT bestselling author Marissa Meyer to young, bright-eyed self-publishers barely out of college. It was an invigorating, highly interesting event. So much talent, so many personalities, so many different roads to publishing, so many wildly unique genres, so much perseverance and discipline (and food and wine)—all in one room.

Highlight of the evening: the book exchange! We all (blindly) swapped books, which meant adult thriller writers ended up with sweet middle grade fiction, while YA romantasy writers found themselves with feel-good women’s fiction. It was great fun, and I’m already looking forward to next year.

Writing Update: Back to Revisions

Here goes nothing! After about a six-month break, I’m diving back into my tropical swashbuckling adventure novel with some major rewrites.

This revision (#5, for those counting) feels particularly risky because I still haven’t received notes from my editor at Canon Press—primarily because said editor left the company last summer, and my manuscript found itself on the desks of people too busy to read it.

Will Canon hire another editor? Yes. Maybe. Who knows. Can’t wait.

In lieu of formal notes, I’m taking the feedback from four different beta readers and I’m radically changing the story execution. Plot remains the same, but I’m deleting two delightful yet extraneous characters, cutting about 30K words, and otherwise altering the book to make it classic upper middle grade in case I need to shop it around traditional publishers who don’t know me and don’t usually let authors play around with genres as much as Canon does. It’s a terrifying prospect, but also exciting. I’ll let you know how it goes.

What I’ve learned in this limbo period:

1) Get beta readers! Choose carefully. Choose readers who tick as many of these boxes as possible: they know the industry, know your market, understand how people work in real life, are well-read, aren’t too difficult to please, and will share honest reactions. If you fail to choose carefully, and you get a beta reader who hates your book and insults it with nuclear gusto, then choose their feedback carefully. Don’t blindly accept every slap in the face, but don’t reject their disgust out of hand just because it was rudely put.

2) Know your market, and be able to write for it. Be able to write classic middle grade, or classic YA, etc. If you want to blend MG and with YA romantasy and adult thriller, then…you pretty much need to be Stephen King or you’ll never get away with it. Have the discipline to whip your novel into market shape!

3) Sometimes you need 6 months to kill your darlings. I don’t think I could have deleted these two extraneous characters last summer. Not by myself. Perhaps if my editor or mentor had told me to, then I’d have had the confidence to do it, but on my own, I needed half a year to gain the necessary objectivity. Let’s do this.

What I’m Watching

Ben and I watched a number of popcorn flicks or what I also call “airplane movies,” because this is the kind (and quality) of movie I prefer to watch on flights: nothing too intense or intelligent where I’m miffed at airline attendants for interrupting me with “we’ve begun our initial descent…” announcements. And for what I needed them to be, these movies were perfect.

Angel Has Fallen - Secret Service agent Gerard Butler is falsely accused of trying to assassinate the president and has to clear his name while on the run. Lots of explosions. Act III too long. Still fun.

Greenland - Another Gerard Butler action thriller where a planet-killing comet is heading towards earth (sounds dumb) but the story is held together by characters that feel more real and relatable than in many action flicks. Ready to watch the sequel!

Twisters - My favorite of the three, probably because I’ve secretly wanted to be a storm chaser and also because Glen Powell plays the most masculine character I’ve watched in a long time. He’s full of bravura and self-important swagger a the beginning, but proves that he’s got real, solid courage underneath. The romance was cute and could have been a bit stronger, but still. I enjoyed this a lot.

The Good Nurse - NOT a popcorn movie. This gloomy but gripping true story was hard to watch and impossible to turn off. Can you imagine an ICU nurse quietly killing up to 400 people across 9 hospitals without getting caught? Jessica Chastaine and Eddie Redmayne were both Oscar-worthy. Unforgettable. (Next time you’re hospitalized, double check your IV bag.)

What I’m Reading

Hamnet - I picked this up on a long layover in the Seattle airport because I’d forgotten all my Pratchetts at home. Wow. If Annie Dillard wrote a novel, it might be Hamnet. Maggie O’Farrell’s story about what might have inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet is melancholy, insightful, beautiful, hollow, and more than a little mad at Heaven for allowing bad things to happen, but the writing is pure free verse poetry in the most gorgeous way. Lots to get excited about here. P.S. Don’t read it if you hate crying at books. Hamnet’s death is absolutely heart-breaking. (The prelude TELLS you that he dies, so no, I didn’t just spoil it for you.)

Sam Miracle 2 (reread) - I reread The Song of Glory and Ghost and enjoyed it even more than I did the first time. ND Wilson is THE author I turn to for muscular MG fiction. His prose is electrifying, his characters are brilliantly crafted, and his stories make you want to love your family and do something with your life. Can’t go wrong with his books.

That’s all for now! See you in December...if I’m not drowning in stocking stuffers and travel plans.

Cheers,
Gwen