Hello, Livejournal Friends.

This will be our last livejournal post. 

Over the last year, the livejournal consistently became slower and slower to load for us.  As the main blog picked up speed, it became difficult keep up with two places.  Even though the main blog is mirrored on lj, it  means two sets of entries for the contests,   two sets of comments, and manually adjusting images in livejournal.  When we post something on the main blog, go in and adjust the images on lj, and then find a typo, we have to either log in to both places to manually fix the typo or fix it on the main blog and then log into livejournal to readjust the images.

The kids and Gordon can't comment on lj unless we turn on anonymous comments and when Gordon posts, livejournal can't differentiate between him and me and people get confused.

So, this lj is shut down as of now.  The new entries from the main blog will no longer be mirrored here.  If you comment here, we will not see it. 

The main blog is here: http://www.ilona-andrews.com/blog/

We hope that you will join us there. :)

The feed for the main blog is here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ilona-andrews-blog

Thanks to secritcrush we have a feed here http://syndicated.livejournal.com/ilonafeed/

and astres  has one here: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/ilonaandrewsfd/  :)

Muahahahahahahaha!  (Click to enlarge)

I R the Queen of Monkey socks.  The ball is in your court.

These things actually are much less complicated than they look.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

DeathWitch Alice, aka Kid 1, brought home the plague.  She was down for about a day.  This is my second day and my head is stuffed with cotton balls.  I know what needs to happen in the next scene. Wards, tracking, Piglet.  Got it.

I just can’t concentrate enough to write it down.

Kid 2 decided to drive me crazy.  First she forgot her helmet, then she was sent home from school, because she was crying about forgetting her helmet and the school nurse diagnosed her with pink eye.  Because her eyes were red from crying.  I can’t tell if it’s pink eye.  There is no crust, so if it is, it’s in a very early stage.  I’ve got her washing her eye with strong tea.  Usually takes it right out.

She wouldn’t have pink eye if she didn’t rub the cat on her face.

She just stole a handful of French Fries, got busted – I’m frying them as I type – and dramatically fell to the floor clutching French fries to her stomach.  10 to 1 there will grease stains on that T-shirt.

Gordon called the the funeral home today to ask how much their body freezers cost. I figured if I called with my accent, I’d be labeled as a Russian mafia person.  Mortuary freezers cost a lot.

The pit bull has not stopped barking.  At all.  Logic says that he must have some time when he is not barking but we must not be awake during that time.   The thing about bullbreeds is, they love people.  They love them and love them and love them.  They want to be with people all the time, preferably under their feet.  Just about the worst thing you can do to a bully, short of beating them, is to stick them in the back yard and never let them inside.

I wish they would just let their guy inside.  He would calm down in record time.

Monkey socks, almost done.  Pictures will be posted soon.  You know what that means?  It mean it’s almost time for a new pair of socks.  Yayz!  Sock therapy is the best.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

This is our first attempt at a quiz.    I’d love to know what you got in the comments.

The quiz works only on the main site.  LJ users please click here.

 

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

R writes:

I had a question about word counts. I’m trying to figure out what the proper format for a manuscript is and came across a snag. What would you consider to be an average word count for your books or at least a word count for a new author? The story I’m working on already hit 150,000 and it’s not even done, but I heard that if it’s too long then some editors automatically reject it.

Editors don’t typically automatically reject things on the basis of length alone.  Most often they reject them because writing isn’t quite there, or their line-up already has something similar, or the novel doesn’t fit with what they already publish.

A typical length for a UF is around 90,000-100,000 words.  It used to be typographic word count, but now more and more people just go with MS Word’s word count.

Unfortunately,  150,000 is what’s colloquially known among writers as BFB – Big F-ing Brick.  There are genres in which such length is acceptable.  Epic fantasies, for example, tend to be long.  Historic fiction, also – you could kill someone with  an early Sharon K. Penman’s book.  But if you’re writing a UF, a paranormal, a contemporary fantasy, ora  mystery, you have to prepare yourself to make some sacrifices.  You may be asked to split the novel in two.  You may be asked to cut.  Gordon and I had to chop off a quarter of the MAGIC BITES to make it fit into 90,000 limit.  It took hitting some bestseller lists before the word limit was relaxed.  That’s the good thing about having a little bit of sales – you get more leeway.

The question to ask yourself is , why is your book so long?  Are you meandering?  Is there a ten day trip in there that can be summarized in two sentences?  Do people have terribly important debates that add nothing to the plot?  Are you in love with a page-long description of an abandoned movie theater?

My advice would be to take a good hard look at the narrative and cut the fat.  Give your novel to someone who doesn’t feel obligated to pet you on the head.  Is he bored reading it?  Cut the boring parts.

But, if you are completely and definitely sure that your work must remain at the current length, then write the best query letter you can write and make sure your first chapter would knock the editor’s socks off.  They will take it from there.

M writes

I’m curious about how drafts work when you’re published. I know when you’re unpublished, the general rule of thumb is 3+ drafts before subbing it out. How many drafts do you guys generally go through before you hand the manuscript in? Also, do you do a lot of editing while you write or do you wait to make changes and corrections to the story during copy-edits?

As many as it takes.

The point of redrafting is to produce the best book possible.  If there is some kind of rule out there that tells you to rewrite an arbitrary number of times, that rule is stupid and should be kicked to the curb.  I’d like to meet the person who came up with that nonsense and pop him upside the head for driving future writers crazy.

The number of drafts doesn’t matter.  Only the end product does.  Some books take one draft, some take eight.

We do edit as we write.  Most of the editing comes in the form of adjusting the narrative.  For example,  we have an exploding corpse in Kate 5.  Gordon and I wrote the scene, but it felt off.  The scene would be better set during magic instead of tech, because magic would let us get creepier.  But as it was, the scene couldn’t have magic because magic fell that morning.  It took me a whole weekend to realize that I must split the scene off and move it to next day.  As a result, I had to go back, rename Chapter 4 as Chapter 5, move the front scene to the end of Chapter 3 and write an entirely new Chapter 4.

That’s normal, just as the cleaning as you go along is normal. I type with my key board in my lap because regular chairs kill my back and I typo a lot as I write.  (I do wish Liquid Binder would run the spellcheck all the time, but they don’t.  If I find software that let me do the same file management as the Binder but runs the spellcheck, I will pounce on it.)  I usually go back and clean what I wrote every day or two.  Plus, Gordon cleans it in rewrites.

To reiterate, focus on the book, not the rewrites. 

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

A. asks

Is Declan in the second book at all?

For a short while.  Since apparently we all are okay with the snippets, here you go:

“Wow.”  Gaston gaped at the two story mansion, situated on a perfectly manicured lawn.  “Wow.  Is that all one house?”

William grumbled.  Gaston never set foot out of the swamp.  The entire way through the Broken and the Weird, the kid would stare at things in amazement, get embarrassed, and then try to be smart ass about it.  It was getting old.

“Who lives here?”

“Earl Declan Camarine, Marshal of the Southern Provinces.”

“Are we going to get arrested?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

William growled at him.

A window on the second floor burst in an explosion of glittering shards.  A body hurled through it and a boy dropped into a half-crouch onto the balcony rail, his crazy brown hair standing straight up like hackles on a pissed off cat.  Wild yellow eyes stared at William from a narrow face.  The kid looked at least eight inches taller than he remembered.

“Jack!” Rose’s voice called.

Jack’s eyes flared with feral fire.  He hissed and leaped off the balcony, changing in mid-jump, shredding his clothes.  A spotted adolescent lynx landed into the green grass and took off at a dead run, heading toward the trees.

Wouldn’t be able to pull it off in the Edge, William reflected.  In the Edge, changing shapes took time, but in the Weird with magic full force, you could go furry with no pain on the fly.

“Jack!”  Rose ran out onto the balcony.  She wore a peach colored gown and her hair was up.  “Jack, wait!  Damn it.”

She saw them below.  Her eyes widened.

“I’m here to see Declan,” William told her.

Two minutes later he sat in Declan’s study.  He’d left Gaston with Rose who took him to the kitchen.  The kid ate like a horse.

Declan looked at him from behind the desk.  He hadn’t changed a bit: same hard eyes, same blond hair.  Except he was growing it out again.  He grew it long every few years to use as a power resource in case he had sacrifice a part of himself to magic.

Declan surveyed him.  “Doing well?”

“Yeah.”

“Looking kind of thin there.  My mother’s always looking for a new diet.  Maybe you can share some tips?”

William bared his teeth.  “Yeah.  Shouldn’t you be all fat by now?  Is that some flab on your sides?”

“Fuck you.”

They looked at each other.

“Two fucking years.”  Declan spread his hands.  “You were gone for two fucking years.  So.  What can the office of Marshall do for you?”

William unclenched his teeth.  It killed him to say it.  “I need help.”

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

A great article on e-piracy.  Also you can win free books.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

It’s raining again.  What a surprise.  I think I might faint from this surprise.  It’s not enough that we have four inch deep lake on our lawn, oh nooo, no, we need more rain.

It has come to my attention that tiny snippets of Kate 5 are driving people nuts.    I’m sorry about that.  Driving nuts wasn’t my intention.  I’m just working on the manuscript and I blog about what I work.

So.  We can declare a moratorium on Kate topics for a couple of months.

What would you guys like to talk about?  I still have some questions about the publishing and writing you guys left me, but I figured you were probably a bit sick of me talking shop.

I also tried to get Mark Del Franco to come over and talk about his book, but he won’t return my emails.  HI MARK!  If you’re reading this, come over to talk about your book!

So any particular topics you guys want to explore?  Do you want to have some light fiction running in small chunks on the blog?  Do you want to rid more about knitting?  (That sounded vaguely as a threat, hehehe.)  All suggestions are welcome.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

The neighbors, the ones who recently moved here from Atlanta, have finally brought in their pit bull.

My morning went like this:

Pit: New place new place new place.  I am tough!  I am so tough!  I’m the king of the new place.

Luka: Dog!  Dog next door!  Hey did you know there was a dog next door?

Pit: Aaaaaaaah!!!  There are dogs next door!

Luka: Dog, hey dog, can you hear me?  I can hear you!

Del: Omg Omg, so exciting :run in a circle:

Pit, freaking out: There are DOGS next door!  You don’t want any of this, dogs!

Me: Would all of you just shut up?  You two, come inside right now.

An hour later, after feedings:

Pit: New place new place new place. I am tough!  I am so tough!  I’m the king of the new place.

Luka: Dog!  Dog next door!  Hey did you know there was a dog next door?

I suspect they will all calm down about each other’s existence in a day or two, but meanwhile the poor pit is barking himself hoarse.

PS.  Gordon and I talked about it and we decided it would be best to disclose the breeds of our dogs upfront.  While it’s easy to lie and say they are mixed breeds or mutts, neither one of us feels comfortable deceiving prospective landlords.  What will be will be.  If it takes us longer to find a rental, so be it. 

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

Love the book.

Love, love, love.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there