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Category: Second book

Potato is eating The New Yorker

Published by Mary on March 18, 2019
Cat chewing on magazine

Here is Potato with the latest New Yorker, giving her opinion of the literary establishment. Unlike me, she and her sister consume magazines starting at the corners, leaving frilled and bitten edges like lettuce.

I incorporated my beta readers’ comments into book two. This has been a hard last bit. Snow stayed, hard-crusted on the ground—we still have icebergs of it dotted across my backyard. Winter also stayed, with short days, and Daylight Savings was just an insult. I am prone to seasonal affective depression, but usually not so bad as this year.

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Snow

Published by Mary on February 3, 2019
Snow in my backyard

I have a bit of a religion about snow.

Even when I moved to Seattle, years ago, snow was rarer here than in the Midwest. I wrote three short stories in a row about snow. I’ve written a couple of stories about (not quite) freezing to death in the snow since. The second book in the septet, The Deer Stalker, has a significant set of scenes set near Snoqualmie Pass, in the snow.

This year, my neighborhood has gotten nearly no snow.

But this evening, it’s snowing.

It had to wait to Imbolc, but it’s snowing.

The stuff in the air in the photo is flying snowflakes.

Final stretch

Published by Mary on December 24, 2018
Calendar showing days checked off

I’ve now written 24,000 words, give or take a hundred, in four weeks.

I feel the arc of the book bending to a close, though there’s still a lot of scenes to write. I’m not a tight outliner; I keep a flow chart and notes, but I try to give the characters free rein if they want to take another path.

We’ve turned the wheel of the year past winter solstice. Today is a brilliantly sunny day: time out of time, definitely a December day and yet all sun.

On track

Published by Mary on December 9, 2018
My computer

I wrote another 6,000 words this week. If that’s pretty much all I do, besides eat, sleep, and work my day job, I can hit my marks. At least, I have so far.

I did go to one holiday party. Don’t tell the writing gods I played hookey…

Beta readers

Published by Mary on December 5, 2018

Open book

I’m surprised and excited—all the people I asked to beta-read my second septet book agreed! I feel like a very lucky writer.

Now I have to finish a draft of the book. I hit my goal last week of 6,000 words. Now there’s this week, and then three more weeks to go.

Diving in

Published by Mary on November 29, 2018

Candles

This upcoming month is a make-it-or-break-it writing period. I have about 30,000 words to write to finish a draft of the second book, to meet the timeline I agreed on with my publisher.

For the last three weeks, I had to hold off daily writing, first for the retreat, then for deadlines at the day job.

But now I’m diving in again. Wish me luck.

Off the edge

Published by Mary on November 3, 2018

I’m about halfway through the septet’s book two, which has the working title The Deer-Slayer, and I’m about to throw my characters off the edge.

There’s a dictum in fiction that you have to get your characters in trouble as quickly as possible. That’s the inciting incident—something that disturbs the life of your protagonist so that person takes a different track. This disruption falls at or toward the beginning and starts the mechanism of the narrative.

But there’s also that point where a trouble brewing all through the story finally boils. This isn’t the climax, but rather where the rising action (in terms of the five-act structure—exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) kicks into gear.

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Hekate

Published by Mary on October 25, 2018

I have been dedicated to Hekate for more than fifteen years, and she is the guiding deity of my book series, Tales of the End Times. This is my Hekate altar, in the corner of my writing room. You can see at the right a set of Hekate cards that a witch friend of mine and I made for an event we put on, each card holding an epithet of the goddess. Hekate has dozens.

I just wrote a scene about the goddess for the second book of the series, in which a witch draws down as Hekate and prophesies for her coven. This vision came to my character Alyssa, and she describes it to Joanie and her friend Guy:

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