Cat was ordinary—until the day a blue bowl whirled her off to a magical medieval world…
Catriona, ex-librarian, dumped by her boyfriend, is just trying to restart her life when she gets sucked into and carried off by a blue pottery bowl. Suddenly thrown into a world where she can’t move for mysteries, how is this modern town girl going to cope alone in the woods with a comatose man and a muddy baby? And there’s that hint of something sinister…
That’s the book as it stands right now, and it’s still available as FREE EBOOK on Amazon and all your other favourite ebook sites! (At least it’d better be. On Amazon the book price sometimes snaps back to asking for money. If that’s the case, let me know and I’ll get them to fix it; but you can also go to Smashwords and download the free copy for your ereader – .mobi for Kindle, .epub for pretty much all other readers. Or contact me and I’ll send you a copy!)
And now for the big announcement:Seventh Son is getting a makeover! (The book, not the person – he’s fine as he is.) You see, in the ten years since I first published it – thirteen years since I wrote it – I’ve grown as a writer. And I’ve become an editor. So when I recently re-read the book with an editor’s eye, I realized that while I still really like the story, I could make it even better with a rewrite.
But don’t worry, the story itself won’t change! I’m just rewriting some of the language (giving it a stylistic edit, in editor’s terms). Sort of like those “digitally remastered” old movies – same movie, sharper image and brighter colours. And speaking of colours, I’m hoping to eventually put on a new cover, as well. While I love the covers that Steven Novak created for the series (he’s great, highly recommend), I want to change them to something that reflects the tone and genre of the books a little better. But when that happens I’ll let you know.
Meanwhile, I’m really enjoying hanging out with Cat and Guy and Bibby and all their friends again, right there at the beginning of their story. It was the blue bowl that started it all…
Life, the Universe, and Ten Years of Being an Author. Happy Birthday, Seventh Son!
“No,” said the expert, looking up from his close scrutiny of the issue. He raised the magnifying glass and peered through it at the spot on her chin. “No, you are not, are you.”
“On the other hand,” she said, trying not to feel like a lepidopterist’s specimen, “I’m also not very good at about a dozen other things. That ought to count for something, shouldn’t it?”
“Heddle,” she muttered. “Warp. Weft. Raddle. Warping board. Bobbin. Shuttle. Harness. Shed, reed, ratchet. Sett, castle, breast beam, cloth beam. Heddle, warp and weft.”
“Stop!” he shrieked. “Stop throwing curses at me! And put down that, that, that spell book!”
She glanced up at him with a mild, enquiring look, then closed the book in her lap with a finger pinched between its pages and turned it over to look at the spine.
In gold-imprinted letters it said THE BEGINNING WEAVER.
The world has become a bad place in the last few years. So many things are going wrong, so much strife, so much floods and fires and earthquakes and wars and rumours of wars.
But Story can set a counterpoint. Story allows us to escape the trap of perceived reality.
And that’s the key, isn’t it—perceived reality.
Story allows us to perceive a different reality. It lets us experience a different world, one in which plots resolve, problems come to a conclusion. Unlike the so-called real world, where everything is just a muddle, Story brings order to the world. As renowned folklorist Max Lüthi says*, the story world shows us not what could be, but what is.
Why do I tell Story? In order to create worlds and places for people to enter into, worlds of truth. Worlds of justice and joy. Worlds not without problems, but worlds where those problems can and will be resolved.
Story is not escapist in the sense of letting us run away from our problems. But is is escapist in the sense of setting us free from the confines of our perceived reality. It allows us to see the bigger picture, opens our eyes to what is actually there. Even when it is Story about ostensibly “unreal” things, about elves and fairies and little dwarfs under the mountain. Maybe especially then.
We need Story—the World needs Story. The world needs Story to make sense of itself, to keep from sinking into a morass of muddle and chaos.
And that is why I tell Story. Unabashedly and unapologetically, I tell stories of joy and pleasure and home and warmth and family, where tiny people live in tiny homes and big ones get whirled away into other worlds where they find belonging.
Because in entering into these worlds, entering into Story, we can step out of the bondage of perceived reality, and we can find what is really real.
The world needs Story. That is why.
[*Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature (Philadelphia: ISHI, 1982), p.89. I quoted the full piece in a post on my research blog some ten years ago, here.]
“So You Want to Write a Book?” is now available, all six parts in one document, on the website to download as .pdf (here) – just in case you want to save it to your computer, or print it out or something, and peruse or re-peruse it at your leisure.
[Cue sonorous voiceover] Previously on “So You Want to Write a Book?”: Part 1, How I got started; Part 2, Other Ways of Writing a Book; Part 3, WRITE THAT THING; Part 4, What next?; Part 5, Getting it out there. How I wrote my first book by just starting to write; how to plan a book step by step; how to actually write that book; how to edit it once it’s finished, and how to self-publish it.
Part 6: What Else? – Living the Writer’s Life
So perhaps, this whole thing of writing a whole, big, fat novel is overwhelming at this point. “I’d like to,” you say, “but right now all that stuff you talked about, with outlining and writing and editing and what-not, that’s just too much.” But this “writing” thing still tugs at you…
Or you’ve gone and self-published that book of yours, the one that you’ve been dreaming of all your life. But by now the euphoria has worn off, and you don’t have another idea for another book. So you pack away your notebook and pen, you unplug your laptop, and you think, “Maybe this was a one-off…”
But hold on!
There’s so much more to being a writer than “just” writing a book. Don’t get me wrong, writing a novel is fantastic. But it’s a big endeavour, like climbing a mountain. We don’t need to always be climbing mountains; going for a walk around the block is a perfectly valid use for our feet.
So what else could you do to live the Writer’s Life? There is lots you could do, of course, lots and lots. But let me just fish out two points, two that I’ve found valid and valuable: 1.) Small Steps, and 2.) Community.
Small Steps I’m not going to climb a mountain anytime soon—I’m not terribly athletically inclined. But every so often I go for very short walks on my street. And by “very short” I mean, literally, ten minutes. I set the timer on my phone for five minutes, walk out the door, and when the timer goes off I turn on my heel and walk home again. Ten minutes, but I’ve walked! Outside, in the fresh air! That’s a win. For me to do anything, it has to start with a ridiculously small step. And it works for writing, too. Sometimes I set out to write what I call a Fragment, literally just a few lines. I’ve done it by the clock (that ten minute thing again), or by “so many lines”. I’ve set myself projects where for one month I would “do some writing” every day; as long as I put a few “writerly” words on the page, it counts (other than grocery lists, I mean). I don’t do it all the time—I go through phases with it, like with everything else. But when I do do it I enjoy it. You might wonder what the point of that is—what’s a few lines, what’s a Fragment? You’ll never get a book out of doing that! How is that going to get you closer to your dream? What it does is it keeps my writing muscles honed. It keeps me thinking of words to describe what I see, in real life or in my head (not infrequently one leads to the other). It keeps me in the writing groove. Most of my Fragments aren’t that spectacular, but sometimes, the little sliver of fiction that comes out of it is amusing enough that I’ve posted it here, under the tag #FridayFragment. It’s a win!
And that brings me to my other point:
Community I enjoy sharing my #FridayFragments on this blog, because even those little slivers of fiction deserve an audience. And I love it when I get a reaction, when friends let me know they’ve responded to the little vignette I’ve drawn, when I get a (virtual) chuckle out of someone. When I’ve put my work out to my community. The Writer’s life, like so many other creative pursuits, is a lonely life—I sit here at my computer, tapping away at the keys, all by myself… But really, I’m tied into a Writers’ Community out there. And I highly, highly recommend that. Writers’ groups, conferences, critique partners, local or regional writer’s guilds or federations or whatever they’re called, even writing events like NaNoWriMo—without them, I wouldn’t be where I am as a writer. One of the few silver linings of the Pandemic (ugh!) is that a lot of events went online, and many of them retained at least an online aspect even now. So even if you don’t have any in-person writers’ groups close to where you are, or you can’t easily leave the house, chances are there’s some online event or group you could join and make friends with other writers. Having a community can be a tremendous boost to your writing. Knowing that my monthly Zoom group will start with a Round Robin where everyone answers the question “How’s your writing month been going?” gives me motivation to actually have “a writing month”, in other words, do at least a bit of writing work of some kind. NaNoWriMo wouldn’t be half as much fun without the community of all those other crazies who try this 50,000-words-in-a-month feat. And knowing that whatever I write, Louise Bates, my editor and critique partner extraordinaire, is waiting for it as eagerly as I am for her latest work, is a gift beyond value. Oh, and one more thing: what I enjoy so much about some of the groups I’ve been in is that there are so many different types of writers. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, novels, experienced, brand-new—if you write anything other than grocery lists you’re welcome (and probably even those, if you do them with purpose). So don’t be shy about what “level” you’re at. If you want to write you’re a writer. Go find your tribe.
And then go write that book, or that other book, or that other other book. Or those short stories or poems or essays or fairy tales that you’ve got bubbling up inside you.
[Cue sonorous voiceover] Previously on “So You Want to Write a Book?”: Part 1, How I got started; Part 2, Other Ways of Writing a Book; Part 3, WRITE THAT THING; Part 4: What next? How I wrote my first book by just starting to write; how to plan a book step by step; how to actually write that book; and how to edit it once it’s finished.
Part 5: Getting it out there – Self-publishing
So you finished your book (Congratulations once again!) and you’ve edited it to the best of your abilities into a lovely, shiny manuscript that you’re not ashamed to have seen by other people (even ones who are not your mother). Way to go!
Now you have a number of options: A) Put it back in the drawer and keep it there forever. (No, don’t! You’ve spent too much effort on it for that.) B) Shop it around to publishers and/or agents to get it traditionally published. I don’t have much experience with that process myself, so can’t tell you much about it, but there’s plenty of information on it on the interwebs. It’s a very good option indeed, but extremely difficult to be successful at (there are many, many more writers writing manuscripts than publishers are publishing on a yearly basis).
Up until the early 2000s, those two options were pretty much the only ones available (barring so-called “vanity publishers” who said they would “publish your book” for a fee, but really only charged you large sums of money for printing your book with not much other services and left you with boxes full of hardcover copies sitting in your garage). But then the landscape changed. Now, you have a third and very viable option for turning your manuscript into a real book: C) Self-publish it through an online bookstore.
Again, the internet is stuffed full of very good information about that process; go look it up, there are many people who have far better things to say about it than I do. But I’ll give you a brief overview of what it takes to self-publish your book and get it out there—or at least, how I do it; again, there are other options, and possibly even better ones. Ask Google, he knows.
How to Self-Publish Your Book 1.) Write the best manuscript you can. Spellcheck it. Spellcheck it again. (See Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series.) 2.) Get it professionally edited. This is optional, but if you want to sell your book to strangers you can’t really do without it. It will cost you money, and probably more than you expect, but it’s worth it. 3.) Write a back cover blurb (a short description of the book that goes on the back of the print copy and on the ebook vendors’ sales page). 4.) Get a book cover. It optional to get it done by a professional graphic artist, but again, if you want to sell, it’s highly recommended. However, there are cheaper options available such as ready-made covers, and Amazon has a free cover creator built into their self-publishing platform. With all of this, you get what you pay for: a professional designer can make your book look good, but a free, cheap, or homemade cover could do the job quite adequately if you just want the book for yourself and your friends. 5.) Make an account with the online self-publishing platform(s) of your choice. KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is for Kindle books and print books that are sold on Amazon. Smashwords is for all other ebook formats, and they distribute to other ebook vendors like iBooks, Kobo, Nook etc. (Those are the two I’ve dealt with, and they’re free to upload your book.) IngramSpark also does print-on-demand books (I think there might be a fee involved for setting up, and they’re based in the US, so not that useful for other countries including Canada); Draft2Digital is another ebook publisher that has recently merged with Smashwords. Those are just some options. 6.) Format your manuscript for ebook and print (the self-publishing platforms will tell you how). You’ll need to create a .pdf or .docx for the print version and a .doc or .epub for the ebook. 7.) Upload your manuscript. 8.) Enter all the relevant information the publishing platform asks for (tags, keywords, blurbs, pricing etc.). Again, they’ll tell you how. 9.) Hit “Publish”. 10.) YOU HAVE PUBLISHED A BOOK!!!
And that, technically, concludes our series “So You Want to Write a Book?”—because now, YOU HAVE ACTUALLY WRITTEN A BOOK! That’s fantastic, and I’m immensely proud of you. Next time we meet, let’s trade: I give you one of mine, you give me one of yours. And we’ll sign them for each other, because that’s what authors do!
But, actually, that brings me to one more chapter. Now that you’ve written this book… or actually, maybe you haven’t written the book quite yet, after all. Maybe you’re not quite there yet. Maybe you want to start being a writer, but writing a full-fledged novel isn’t quite in your wheelhouse, or it’s too overwhelming at this point. But you want to be a writer.
So what else could you be doing on the writing front? How can you live the writer’s life? Stay tuned…
[Cue sonorous voiceover] Previously on “So You Want to Write a Book?”: Part 1, How I got started; Part 2, Other Ways of Writing a Book; Part 3, WRITE THAT THING. How I wrote my first book by just starting to write; how to plan a book step by step; and how to actually write that book.
Part 4: What next? – Editing the Book
So you’ve gone and finished that book you’ve always been dreaming of. Wow! Hurrah! Congratulations! That is so awesome!
I mean all of what I just said. Having written a novel is a huge achievement, and you should be very proud of yourself. I am! (Proud of you, I mean. Although I’m also proud of myself for having done it, but that’s another point.) So, if nothing else, take some time to celebrate and pat yourself on the back (or on the shoulder, if, like me, you find that easier to reach).
However. (You knew there was a “However” coming, didn’t you?) What you’ve just written, while it is, in fact, a novel, is actually not entirely qualified to be inflicted on the public yet. (And not only because the public are Philistines and wouldn’t appreciate your genius.) What you have in your hands right now is a first draft.
As I said before, if all you wanted is to write that novel for the satisfaction of having written it, feel free to put it in your desk drawer or keep it in a lovely folder on your hard drive, where you can take it out once a year and gloat over it. That’s perfectly all right, and if that’s what you want to do, go for it. But if you would like to take it further, read on.
Wait, let me back up a bit: even if you do want to take your book further, stick it in your desk drawer. For a little while, at least—say, a month or two, if not longer.
You know how I said that when you’re in the thick of writing, you can’t trust your judgement as to the quality of your work? Putting the manuscript aside for a while helps to let the murk of your stirred-up imagination settle out a bit, and you gain some distance from your story. Then, when you come back to it, you can see it with a fresh eye.
So, after a month or four, take your novel back out of the drawer (or computer folder) and re-read it. One of the ways I like to do that is to convert the manuscript to an epub and put it on my ereader. I know writers who print out their story on paper to read it. The point of changing the format like this is to help your brain look at what you’ve written in a different way. You might even be able to make-believe that you’re looking at someone else’s writing, and decide if you like what they wrote.
For this process, let your inner editor back out of its cage; now it can come out to play and be as critical as it likes. You might want to run your manuscript through a spellchecker first, so the inner editor can’t be quite as mean as it would be otherwise. Let it do its job, just don’t let it bully you. Make sure to take note of everything that’s good about your novel—and I’m sure there will be plenty. But between you and your inner editor, you will probably find all kinds of mistakes and weird passages that you know you need to fix up.
So then you sit down and fix ‘em. And that is your second draft. If you’ve written your first draft with pen and paper, the second draft can be the point where you type that writing into the computer. You might find in your re-read that there are whole passages that need changing, or chapters that need rearranging, or scenes that need cutting. Change ‘em. Rearrange ‘em. Cut ‘em.
During this whole process, make sure you back up your stuff—save copies of what you’ve done. Each time you have a major version change, save it with a different file name, so you have backups of the various iterations.
Somewhere in there, after your second or third or fourth draft, you might be ready to show your writing to someone else. Find some beta readers (first readers)—trusted people who can read your story and give you an honest opinion on it. You’ll want someone who doesn’t just pat you on the back (if they can reach it), although that’s great too, but who will point out places where the story can be improved, without tearing it (and you) to pieces.
When you get feedback from your beta readers, you go back to your manuscript, and you implement the changes that have been suggested—or not. That’s the thing: you don’t have to accept people’s opinions on your story. It’s your story, you make the final decisions. Sometimes other people just don’t get what you’re trying to do, and it’s perfectly okay to say “Thanks, but no thanks!” to someone’s comment.
I’ve found, as a rule, that if one person comments on something needing to change, you acknowledge it and move on. If two people comment on the same issue, you sit up and take notice. If it’s three, it’s got to go. And I count myself as one of those people: not infrequently, I find places in my manuscript where I wonder if I need to change something, and then a beta reader comments on that very thing—so that’s two! It’s encouraging when that happens, because it means my own instincts about my writing are good, and I’ll change things accordingly.
So, now you’ve edited your novel again, incorporating the feedback from your beta readers and anything that you’ve seen yourself needs changing. That’s your third draft. Or maybe the fourth or fifth. You get the idea: edit, rinse, repeat.
Finally you’re satisfied that the novel is as good as you can possibly make it. Now you have a number of options, about which I’ll tell you when this is…
