!!FINISHED!!

And that, my pretties, is what a completely edited and revised manuscript looks like. If you're thinking 'Er...it kinda looks like Hell': Why, yes, I do believe you're right. And so did I by the time I finished it (I tried taking a picture but...I believe some people under the age of eighteen read this blog, and I wouldn't want to traumatise them. Besides, I write fantasy, not horror). Many thanks to the amazing Furtive Scribbler's Club for their revision suggestions, especially Rachel, for being willing to have all my characters hate her forever more, in order to make the book better.

I pressed the send button on Friday evening and now it is with Yasmin, my agent. Fingers crossed that she likes it - then it will go to Annalie, my editor and we'll cross our fingers again, not just that she likes it, but also that she feels it is a complete book, so that my Two Book Series Plan can go ahead.

Anyway, after a glorious weekend of baking (mmmm, plum and pecan crumble) and reading (got through all Kelley Armstrong's The Summoning books and all Claudia Gray's Evernight books, plus half of Beautiful Creatures) I'm back hard at work today on what I hope will be the second book of the two book series - but which might actually end up being the second half of the book I just submitted, in which case, my ass needs to be in gear. Mrgh.

Did anyone fail to hear about the Clockwork Angel Giveaway? Go enter now! It ends this Thursday!

TEASER FRIDAY

First of all - did you enter the Clockwork Angel Giveaway yet? If not: go, go my child! Click here and comment, before it's too late and the bitter ashes of regret sting your tongue forever!

All right, now what was I going to post about today? Oh, right. I've seen this feature on a few blogs where authors post teasers from the book they're working on now, on the understanding that of course these fragments might not end up in the final version and it's all just for fun, etc. etc. If I knew who invented the meme I would give credit, but I don't so...sorry!

Anyway, here's a teaser, which is from the first page of FrostFire (which might not be called that much longer, but I need to talk to my editor about it). Let me know what you think.

In my dreams, the wolves come for me. I hear their voices, echoing from the far off mountains and frost bright stars. They sing of the hunt, and hot fresh blood spilled on snow, and the scent of fear on the wind. Their prey’s fear.

I am running. Always running. Shadowy fields blur past my eyes, the jagged skeletons of trees, frozen rivers, marked in stark black by the unforgiving light of the moon. My bare feet sink into the snow, and the cold burns them. Breath crystallises in the air before me, and my heartbeat throbs through my body. I can taste my own blood on my tongue.

But no matter how swiftly I flee, they are always just behind me.

CLOCKWORK ANGEL GIVEAWAY!

Hello, hello Dear Readers! Guess what I've got in my happy little hands right now? That's right, an advanced copy of Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel. Woohoo!

Right now I am greedily devouring the adventures of Will, Tessa and Jem (my editor has a crush on Will, but I'm Team Jem at this point. He reminds me of a blonde Kyoya Ootori from Ouran High School Host Club) but I'm well aware of the suffering of the rest of you Cassandra Clare fans out there, and I want to help!

So I'm going to give away my one and only copy of this Steampunk gem to one of you. That's right: Clockwork Angel is up for grabs. The competition starts now and will close Thursday the 2nd of September. I will send the book to the winner on Friday the 3rd. Which means, post willing, you could get your hands on this as early as the 4th, two days before the official release date in the UK.

The giveaway is open to everyone, whether you live in London or Uzbekistan, and to enter you need to do the following:

1) Leave a comment on THIS POST for 1 point.

2) Are you a blog follower? Leave a separate comment for 1 point. YouTube subscriber? If so you get another 1 point, but again, you need to leave a separate comment.

3) 1 point for linking back to this post on Twitter, Facebook or any other social networking site. I do need to see those links, my pretties and remember - SEPARATE COMMENTS FOR EACH ONE.

I will use a random number generator to pick the winner on the morning of Friday the 3rd and I will send the book to you the same day. No names out of hats this time. This is why it's very important you leave a separate comment for each point, or you won't be fairly represented in the draw.

The winner may also receive random extras: books, magnets, postcards, bookplates. Whatever I have on hand at the time. I'll surprise you (ooh, surprises!).

Happy commenting.

ETA: You guys! Stop being funny and interesting in your comments, dammit! If I reply I'll mess the random number generator thingie up! So I'm not ignoring you - but I *can't* reply in the comments. Curses! Email me if you have questions, okay?

ETA2: Someone's noted in the comment trail that they saw this in a bookshop yesterday. It's not officially released until next week and it's kind of naughty for any shops to stock it before then, but this does inevitably happen with books that are going to be bestsellers; the shops get impatient and put a few copies out early. I don't really see that it makes the giveaway any less valid though, just because Waterstone's are putting out early copies. Waterstone's are not giving away FREE early copies, after all.

HOW I PLOT

Recently the YA Rebels (whose vlogs I highly recommend for helpful hilarity) have been vlogging about plot and structure. I've enjoyed their videos, but no one's really touched on anything LIKE the method I use (and one of my favourite rebels, Leah Clifford, even stunned me by asking 'What is structure?').

It seems I am an unusually structure-focused writer. Not that I always called it that. For a long time I just talked about the 'shape' of a story. That's still how stories feel to me; like something solid, which has a shape, with bulgy bits and thin bits, that I need to sort of pat and squash into place. I can remember struggling with a scene for days, and then adding two or three lines to the beginning which changed the 'shape' of it for me, so that I was able to move forward.

While I was in the middle of writing Shadows on the Moon I read Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. I wasn't convinced by all of it, but one thing that did strike me was the way that Mr Vogler illustrated the three act structure. He used a diamond shape, which actually looks more like a four act structure to me. Not that I cared about 'acts'. What I cared about was the fact that I could see how my own story fitted onto that diagram.

There were, of course, four points on the diamond. Each point had a major event on it. The sides were filled in by the smaller events leading to each major event. I realised I could adapt the diamond shaped diagram to keep track of time elasping in my story world, how old my heroine was at each event, and to make sure that the pacing of the story was even, with a certain amount of smaller events building in momentum until a major event erupted, and then the drama flowed back down to smaller events again.

These plot diagrams aren't set in stone for me. For Shadows I think I drew out three our four of them. Working on FrostFire, I think I've already hit three. But this process of evolution itself is helpful.

I was going to take a picture of the last plot diagram for Shadows, but then I realised it was (as you would expect) basically the most spoilerific thing EVER. So I made up a plot diagram, which doesn't make that much sense, but which gives you an idea how I use one of these.


My real plot diagrams show a lot more detail. I draw them by hand, and use highlighters and lots of different coloured pens, and put arrows pointing from one event to another to show how they relate, as well as notes on how old the protagonist and other main characters are at each event and anything else significant (for example, if the location has changed).

I've never been able to use the index card method. I love the idea of having different cards that signify a certain subplot, but for me each event is such a tangle of different developing plots that I can't separate them out. And, as most writers would agree, synopses, while good for giving people a general idea how your story plays out, don't help much at all. But if you, like me, tend to have trouble with pacing and structure, the Diamond Plot Diagram might be for you.

Anyone else want to chip in here? How do you plot?

SHADOWS ON THE MOON ARCS

I had some really exciting news last week, but I kept it to myself because I wanted a little time to digest it. Back when my editor sent me a preliminary version of the Shadows on the Moon cover art (ssoooo pretty! Can't wait to share it with you guys), she also told me that they were going to be printing a small number of proof copies, otherwise known as Advanced Reader Copies, or ARCS, this September.

Now, for those of you who are scratching your heads over why this is exciting: let me 'splain.

In the US, pretty much every new book that comes out (especially in the YA field) will have thousands of ARCS printed as a matter of course. These get handed out like candy at book conventions (for example BEA), showered among book reviewing journals (like The Horn Book) and book bloggers (like The Story Siren), and sent to teachers and librarians. The author themselves might be given a up to a hundred copies to distribute to friends and family and for any publicity efforts of their own. Unless a book is 'embargoed' like the last Harry Potter books, or like Cassandra Clare's upcoming City of Fallen Angels, ARCS for it are everywhere.

Not so in the UK.

I've often seen mini (and not so mini) debates spring up about why the UK and US book blogging scenes are so different. There are very few blogs dedicated to reviewing only YA books in the UK, and even fewer young adults running their own blogs, while there is a vibrant and thriving young book reviewing community in the US. I believe the main reason for this is that hardly any YA books in the UK get an ARC printing before publication. I mean, hardly ANY. If UK bloggers do manage to get hold of an ARC of something, normally it's from a US publisher.

There are many reasons for this, including the fact that in the UK librarians don't get nearly the recognition or budgets they deserve (so no one bothers to try and woo them with ARCs) that most schools don't have their own libraries or a specialised children's librarian (so that what is a lucrative market in the US is more or less nonexistent in the UK, and again, publishers don't need to woo teachers and librarians), and that most YA books come out straight into paperback here anyway.

So take it from me that for a book being published in the UK in a paperback edition, as mine is, ARCS are rare and special. They only print a few - so few that I can expect to get maybe two or three copies, just as a courtesy - and these are distributed not to reviewing journals or bloggers or librarians but to 'movers and shakers' in the industry, foreign publishing companies, people who can create that all important 'buzz' that authors would chew their own arms off for. And because the smaller a print run is, the more expensive it is, taking this step is a Big Deal in terms of the publisher's investment in your book.

The Swan Kingdom didn't get an ARC run. Neither did Daughter of the Flames. That Shadows on the Moon is being treated differently says that my publisher has a lot of faith in it - that they believe in the story, and believe that getting the book out there really WILL create the all-important buzz.

Thinking about this makes me feel a little bit sick, a lot nervous, and very excited. I always knew in my heart of hearts that Shadows was a Big Deal for me as a writer - that it changed me and challenged me like nothing else I've ever written. Then it won the Sasakawa Prize before it was even finished, and I started to think that it might be a Big Deal in other ways, and for other people. I'm sending out daily prayers to the Writing Gods that I'm right, not just because, you know, it's nice to be able to eat, but also because I want to share this story. I want to invite people into the Moonlit Lands and show them my heroine, Suzume's world. I want them to love it - or even hate it - so long as it moves them.

Ah, well. Fingers crossed.

WORDLE

Wordle: Is a pretty darn good way to waste time for a writer! Anyway, this word cloud is from the synopsis for the first FrostFire book and gives you what I think is a really fascinating insight into the characters and plot.

The second one below is from the synopsis of the second book. Again, it rather eerily conveys the shape of the story and even some character developments. This gave me a shiver when I looked at it. Seriously.



HOW DID THE PROGRAMME KNOW TO PUT LUCA THERE??? Psychic computers - the zombies of the future.

Oh, well. Back to this interogation scene...

A WHOLE WORLD OF PAIN

In more ways than one.

I've just finished re-writing Chapter One (and a tiny bit of Chapter Two) from scratch. Which wasn't that painful, I must admit. I'm pretty happy with the new version. However, what IS painful is my neck. And my shoulder. And my back, generally.

This is because when I re-write I like to write on paper, but because my eyes are defective (seriously, I can't even hold a UK driving licence) I have to sort of crane over the page, leaning one elbow on the table, or wherever I'm working, to support my chin. And the inevitable result of this? PAAAAAAIN.

It took me a long time to realise that this method of writing was what caused my habitual back pain. I tried all kinds of cures, like taking glucosomine (is that how you spell it? Ah, whatever, my neck hurts), changing to an orthopedic mattress and giving up massive shoulder bags (how are you supposed to carry three books, a notepad, a diary and an appropriate number of pens in a tiny bag, dammit?) before I finally figured out that I was only crippled with the pain and forced to shuffle along like the Hunchback of Notre Damme after long writing sessions.

It was a blow, let me tell you. Writing on paper with a pencil has always been my favourite way, especially when drafting. I can produce words much faster that way, and I feel freer and happier about my work. When I was getting to the end of the first draft of Shadows, I was putting out 8,000 words per writing day in handwritten notes. I've never managed more than a couple of thousand per day when I was typing. But I couldn't live all hunched over and 'ow, ow, ow'ing every time I needed to reach for a pan on a high shelf, and needing to get people to haul me out of chairs because my back seized up if I sat down for more than ten minutes.

So with FrostFire, I switched to using a laptop for drafting, only scribbling occasional notes in my notebook, and making sure I did so in back-friendly position, even if it did mean writing much larger than I normally would. And sure enough, my words per day rate halfed. But since I write full-time now and I can work every day instead of just Wednesdays and Sundays, I found that I was quite happy to produce around 10-12,000 words per week. That adds up to quite a lot of words fairly quickly anyway. And I could, you know, sit in a chair or have a bath without sobbing in agony. Which was a plus.

When I came to revise, of course I needed to print out my manuscript to make my alterations in red pen. Pretty much every author you've ever heard of has to do this; it's like a strange need. Even my terribly professional editor has to work this way when she's line editing. I struggled and strove to keep my back happy as I marked up the pages and did fairly well, so long as I made myself keep shifting position and stretching as I went. You can read and stretch at the same time.

However, what you can't do is write and stretch/move at the same time. Not when you're scribbling furiously to get the ideas pinned down on that page before they slither away. And I *have* to use a pencil and paper when I'm re-writing. Don't ask me why this is. I just DO. It's the only way to break free of the lines you've already written; symbolically throw the printed pages in the bin and then start anew on college lined paper with a mechanical pencil. It's the way I'm made.

Apparently the other way I'm made is to suffer.

Look how much I love you, guys. I'm willing to live with so much pain, all for you. To write this book for you and make it awesome. I'm like some kind of Mother Theresa, only slightly less saintly and with better hair. I'm stunned by my own magnanimity here.

YOU BETTER GODDAMN WELL BUY THIS BOOK WHEN IT COMES OUT AR&&L£IJ*:PHLB(^%!@LJ?Blj!!!!!!!.RAWRRRR!!!!

Ahem.

I'm going to get a hot water bottle.