Edits I’d Love to Make for When Stars Die

When a book is published, every author feels like he or she could have made that book better. Yet, by the time that book hits the shelves, it’s too late. Well, my book has a second chance, so I thought it’d be interesting to write a post on changes I’d like to make to When Stars Die, even though I know–or am hoping–my publisher, or whatever path I choose, will have edits for me. (Of course, I’d still like to make these edits regardless.)

1. I would like to edit some of the dialogue to make it richer and give the characters more unique voices than they already have.
2. I want to make Nathaniel’s–Amelia’s younger brother–character much stronger, primarily through dialogue, emotion, and action.
3. I want to sweeten the romance between Oliver and Amelia more. Though this is not something I originally wanted to do because I didn’t want the romance to be the focus, I don’t think it’d kill the book to add some nice sugar to it.
4. More back story for Amelia. I’d like to reveal bits and pieces of her life before Cathedral Reims. It won’t be too much, as she’ll have plenty of this in the third book, but it can serve to make her a richer character than she already is.
5. Darkness. The book is already dark enough, but perhaps adding a smidge more will add more literary depth to it. I’m a combo commercial-literary writer, so it makes sense to me. I already have a few ideas in mind, such as focusing more on Amelia’s psychological state. I want to show her instability more, because she isn’t stable when the book begins, which is obvious, of course.
6. My own experiences. I’ve gone through so many things this year, one of those things being a suicide watch at a mental hospital. I understand Amelia more now, and I feel like I can make her much richer by being able to use these experiences and feelings I’ve gained to add more to the situations she finds herself in. After all, I understand those situations now because I have been in them, when, before, I hadn’t been.
7. Beauty in darkness. There is a lot of darkness, but I’d like to show that beauty can exist in it, even if there are no lights.
8. More relevance on a certain character. Yeah, I want to shine a spotlight on a certain character a tad bit more. After all, she will be the protagonist for The Stars Are Infinite.
9. The trials at the beginning of the book Amelia goes through. I want to make these more symbolic, possibly a way of beating the Seven Deadly Sins out of the girls going through trials to become professed nuns.

Well, these are pretty much all of the changes I’d like to make. Hopefully you guys find this interesting. And hopefully if you’ve already bought the book and enjoyed it, you’ll snag a copy of the second edition!

Year in Review: 2013 Edition

This is Wind.

2013 started out with sort of a bang, but it’s overall been a fairly crap year for me, because I spent a lot more time being depressed than not, and have considered, on several occasions, ways to take my own life. Thankfully I didn’t, but as you all know from my last post, I’m still scared that I’m going to, once again, be caught up in those feelings, make an attempt, and have that attempt be successful. But there were moments of light and hope, and I’m going to share them with all of you.

1. The Roar of Love. I did not expect to be casted in this recital not only because I was an adult ballet dancer and too old for the company, but because I had not done ballet for half of the semester ever since ballet started in August (but EVERYONE can be in this recital, even the alumni who have not danced there in several years). I spent my time being depressed, missing a week because of said depression, missing another week, I think, and missing an entire month because of hospitalizations. But I was casted, and I was so happy that I cried, because one of my dreams was being en pointe and then performing in a recital en pointe. I also didn’t expect to get the roles that I did, and one of those roles was Wind, which involves a lot of bourrees and being en pointe for mostly every scene. It showed me that Mr. Ron, owner of the studio, had the confidence that I would be able to handle such a role in spite of being en pointe for half a year and missing an entire month and a half of pointe class.
2. When Stars Die. Okay, as you all know, I jumped headfirst into the querying process. It arguably makes me an amateur, but you know what? I knew the risks of going with a publisher who did not yet have a track record of publication; however, they did have authors. But I am no longer an amateur, and you can’t say that I am, not when AEC Stellar has proven to be a very smart, flexible company, with fantastic transparency. I feel like I could ask my publisher how many times he’s been to the bathroom in his life, and he’ll tell me (okay, maybe not that, but you get the point). I was thrilled to get the contract because it meant my dream was finally coming true, after 15 years of waiting for it to come to fruition. Now my dream is to be a bestseller, so that is what I’m striving for next. Of course, I know that one trilogy being published doesn’t guarantee other works will be taken on, as ALL writers are freelance, except for maybe those who self-publish, but having credentials under your belt makes the process a little bit easier.
3. Freelance Editing. It had been a while since I’d flexed my freelance muscles, but it was really nice to be able to edit a sample for someone who was impressed with what I did. That same someone also sent the sample off to a professional editor who works with the Big 5, and our comments roughly aligned, so it told me that I definitely had the skills necessary to be one. I was also able to edit two manuscripts this year for people. My first client wanted me to edit his again because he had a positive experience with me the first time, but I was, once again, struggling with depression and had to recommend someone else for him–but he was grateful. However, the experience with my last client was horrible, but I at least got my money, and I will write a blog post about that, mostly pointing to what clients looking for an editor should expect (and what you should and should not do when interacting with your editor). In conclusion, my last client was unable to handle my criticism, and I did apologize to him that he did not like my feedback.
4. Ballet Summer Intensive. I was both terrified and excited to take this intensive because I was finally starting the ‘Big Girl’ level, where you really start to begin to dance instead of just doing tiny, short exercises where you worked on mastering the technique of one or two moves. With Mrs. Renee Toole, it was fun and showed me that I had improved since taking juniors the year before–I had been taking the junior class during Roar because I had to since I had rehearsal right after, but the class still intimidated me every time I took it. With Mr. Ron, the class was tougher, and I royally screwed up on the across-the-floor exercise he gave us, but I practiced it and nailed it the next time we had to do it. I was also okay with his center work, but the intensive made me realize that I was indeed ready for the junior level.
5. Ballet Senior Class. For the longest time this semester I was terrified to take this class–the highest level–because I had no idea what to expect. But I finally decided to dive in headfirst with my junior buddies, and the class was not as bad as I thought it’d be. In fact, it was a million times easier than Mr. Viator’s junior classes, where he gives us ridiculously long exercises I have a hard time remembering. I’ve taken the senior class twice, and I am no longer scared to do so. In fact, I welcome it because I got tired of taking the Petite II class, which no longer offers anything to me any more, other than allowing me to work on technique. However, by the time you reach my level, a challenge class often improves you more than a lower class. So I will be taking it from now on and will take one senior and one junior class starting over the summer. I have no idea what the senior class will be like for Mr. Ron, as he primarily utilizes the Russian technique, something I am not used to, but I do welcome the challenge.
6. Pointe Work. I am so happy with how much I have improved with pointe work since beginning it a year and a half ago. I can now just about do everything en pointe, including Italian Fouettes. I can’t do regular fouettes just yet, which are included in the video at the end, but hopefully I can at least do a few by the end of the ballet year. Otherwise, I can do just about everything else,even though I have to work on cleaning up some of the technique, like the Italian ones. The funniest thing, however, is it has become a practical tradition for me to fall at least once when practicing a move before ballet class actually begins. And it happens every single class. But I don’t mind these falls because it means I am giving everything I’ve got, even though it’s often too much. But you at least learn your limits by doing it that way, and I am not afraid to fall. Not afraid at all. I am also not afraid of injuries, although I will be in a lot of pain if one happens. But, hey, injuries are part of any athletic endeavor.
7. The Stars Are Infinite. I am very, very pleased to have finally finished this novel after nine years of working on it. This novel has been such an arduous undertaking, the second most difficult novel I have ever worked on. And, no, When Stars Die was a relatively easy novel to write, to be honest. But I know some novels are going to be easier to write than others. However, TSAI was so difficult to work on because you want the second book in a series to outshine your first book, and I hope it will, because I REALLY considered the criticism of a 3 star reviewer who is looking forward to the sequel and has faith that it will be better. So I treated her as my number one fan in that moment when doing serious edits to TSAI. When Stars Die, even though it has only 33 reviews so far, has mostly received praise, and I think that by the time you receive the 30th review, you roughly know where your novel stands–at least I hope. I am waiting for the 70th review to do a signed giveaway of one of my paperback WSD copies. I do know books who have about 30 reviews and have low-average ratings. I consider average to be in the 3 star range, or the 3 point something range. But, yes, I REALLY hope the sequel outshines the first because a lot of new authors like me have a hard time trying to do that.
8. All Shattered Ones. This book, by far, is the most difficult to write because it stems from something very personal and deep inside of me, that being of depression and suicidal ideation. The basic premise is that a young boy struggling with chronic depression takes his own life, being urged by a haunting voice to do so. After taking his life, he wakes up in another world called Silvaria, a place for people who have lived painful lives, and need another chance in a place that is meant to be a paradise for them. In Silvaria, there are beings called Lightveils who help these people overcome their tragedies. They then help these people become Lightveils themselves so they can continue the cycle of helping those just like them. However, the voice still haunts Gene, and despite being in a promising place of paradise, the voice drives Gene to self-harm, worsens his depression, and makes him wish for a death that is impossible in a world where death does not exist. It originally started out as When Heaven Was Blue, the character having the same name. But Gene was saved from a suicide attempt by a puppeteer who took him to a place called Stolentime that would allow Gene to heal from his mental illness. He was stalked by the same haunting voice, but I didn’t like the set-up, even though I was slightly satisfied with the direction of the story. However, I do draw from bits and pieces of WHWB to form ASO, so ASO is the third draft.
9. Completing My Last Year as a Junior. I had to miss an entire year of school because of bipolar disorder so I could focus on getting better. Well, when I registered for the fall, I was feeling great; however, when the semester began, I was back to being depressed, so it was a very, very difficult struggle to get through the semester, and I had so many doubts that I would survive it because there were times where I felt like I needed to be hospitalized again. In fact, my therapist told me that if I continued to worsen, I would have to be so that I could be kept safe from myself. But that didn’t happen. I struggled through mid-terms, having several panic attacks and crying spells when studying for these, and flying through finals, when I finally found stability by the end of the semester. Now I am a senior in college, which I should have been a year ago, but I will hopefully graduate one of these days. So I survived despite the intense depression.

Well, this has been my year in review with my most memorable moments in spite of the dark times I dealt with. What are some of your most memorable moments from this year?

Merry Christmas, and let’s all make 2014 our best!

Our Slice of Heaven Among Mental Illness Hell

So lately I’ve been thinking about how to use Tumblr as a marketing platform to reach out to teen readers. Then I realized I don’t think that I can. Tumblr’s great to retreat to when I need more personal advice, but I don’t think it’s so great as a marketing platform for anyone. The people on there fit the ‘misery-loves-company’ phrase perfectly, and it honestly makes me very angry.

My therapist told me I should use the depressing parts in my novel to hook them, but honestly, having to do that makes me a little sick. These are the same people who will post triggering pictures in innocent tags (like ‘bipolar’ or ‘mental health’) with a complete disregard that those pictures will affect someone negatively, like me. I then realized these people are content with misery.

I get it. Mental illness sucks, but it angers me to no end when people don’t even try to find happiness. I remember speaking with one boy on Tumblr who absolutely refused to acknowledge that his parents were just trying to help him, who believed everyone hated him, and kept reminding me that he hated himself too. It made me angry because he came to me for advice and was throwing it all back in my face. You can freaking change your thinking, even though you can’t change the way you feel. You can work to find happiness, even when depressed. You can’t sit around waiting for something when a slice of heaven takes a battle to have. I understand depression makes you think and feel these things, but this is why you go to therapy and listen to your therapist’s advice when he/she tells you to separate yourself from your mental illness.

I have no sympathy for people who drown in negative thinking while actively refusing to do nothing about their thinking and insisting they can never be happy when they haven’t taken a single step toward working for that slice of heaven. People like that infuriate me because even while I was depressed I was fighting to get better through therapy, ballet, work, and medication. I didn’t lie down and die. There were days where I let myself drown in the feelings, where I wanted to die, but not once did I consider stopping my medications, no matter how much they weren’t working for me. Happiness was something I wanted, and I knew that for someone with a mental illness, obtaining it would not be easy.

Why do some mentally ill people not want to be happy? By actively refusing to take a single step toward happiness, people are essentially saying they’d rather drown in misery while making others miserable around them (and yes, we do need to be considerate of those around us, even when ill. Constant misery can make others miserable) rather than trying to find some way to be happy.

If you can’t take care of your emotional health first, don’t expect others to take care of it for you.

How Many Drafts Do I Write?

So I am very sick as I am writing this. Out of nowhere a cold decided to hit me in the face at work, and now I have chills, body aches (which fibro intensifies), a sore throat, and an aching head. But I’m determined to get this post out. I have no idea when I’ll slow down on the blogging. Probably once I run out of ideas or something. Or once I really hunker down with When Stars Die revisions.

In any case, I hate writing first drafts. Because I hate them, I just make the first draft a glorified detailed outline, writing whatever spews forth from my mind. I’ll put major revision notes in the margins, but I’ll just get the skeleton of the story down and reserve the second draft for putting some meat and skin on that skeleton.

Back in my younger years, I would have to do lots and lots of drafts because I was never satisfied with my writing, and for good reason: My gut was trying to tell me I just wasn’t mature enough, but I wanted to plow through to prove you don’t need age to have stellar writing. Well, generally you do. Even teens who become published have immature aspects in their novels, but they’re marketable enough that it doesn’t seem to matter.

When Stars Die took five drafts to get it to this point because I did start it as a fifteen-year-old. I suppose that isn’t a whole lot compared to how many it could have been, but I did shelve it for several years before finally deciding to bring it back out. I am on the seventh read-through of When Stars Die (the last two were proofreading, so no re-writes). Surprisingly I’m not tired of it yet.

When Stars Die is my first, truly complete novel (before AEC Stellar starts hacking it apart). My hope is that with Stolentime, I can revise on the second draft, have someone read it, and have the third draft be strong enough to send out and hopefully get contracted by AEC Stellar. Or another company is fine too. Whatever happens, right?

Truth is, now that I am more mature with my writing, I have no idea how many drafts Stolentime will have to go through. Of course I can improve with my writing; we can always improve with everything. But I’m hoping for three. Seriously. Fingers crossed.

So how many drafts do you average?

The Madness of Romance in Young Adult Novels

While When Stars Die may be a paranormal romance, romance overall isn’t my thing. I had to play up the romance in When Stars Die to elicit the appropriate responses for the ending, but the sequel, I can tell you right now, will not be packaged into a romance genre.

I wanted to do this post because the trend lately for a lot of young adult novels is to have the MC and the love interest fall in love fast. The argument is that it is too fast and therefore unrealistic. The MC and her LI kiss on page 50 and perhaps go all the way on page 100. They weren’t even best friends before. Heck, they were hardly friends.

I want to posit that it accurately reflects not only princess culture but teens in general. I know I fell in love fast as a teen. I’d fall in love with the guy within two weeks–or so what I thought was love. The guy would love me back–or so what he thought was love. I romanticized love because I’d see all these long-term couples and how happy they were, and I wanted to be among them. I wanted to be talked about the way they were talked about–how cute they looked, how strong their relationship was, how inseparable they were. So when I fell in love with the guy, I was really just falling in love with love.

Young adult novels are primarily in the first person perspective. As readers, we have to remember that the unreliable narrator is common in first person. So the MC is going to think she is in love, but she might not be. There are no external forces in first person perspective to step out and say, “She only thinks she is in love, but she is a careless teen just in love with the idea of love.” Sure, some teens may realize this at the end of the book, but most teens do not have relationship experience and an adult’s perspective to step back and say, “I was just in love with the idea of love, not with the person I was with.”

So to say that the teens in these books fall in love too fast is to forget that there are teens in real life who do fall in love too fast. They just don’t have the life experience to be able to see that they’re not really in love. Now some may already be in love at the beginning of the relationship, but often it is with their best friends–so I’m not trying to argue teens don’t know what love is, because some of them surely do.

All I know is I didn’t know what love was until I met my current fiancé.

My Defense of Self-Publishing

I’m going to come out as a hardcore proponent of self-publishing, so steel yourself for possible bias. You can read my post on my decision to self-publish here.

I’m going to admit I have never sent out a single query letter or manuscript. I have subbed short stories, and most magazines I never heard back from. I expect that, but I vow that my literary magazine never does that, no matter how many submissions we receive.

In any case, why am I going the self-publishing route when I’ve never given traditional a chance? Because I don’t need the validation of an agent or publisher. I really don’t. I don’t care how much experience they have. The books I write aren’t for them. They are for the readers who are interested in the type of material I write. As I’ve mentioned before, readers are the best gatekeepers of them all. Even in the traditional world they determine whether or not a book is worth keeping around.

I used to be so enamored with the traditional route before, so in awe of those who were honorable enough to have literary agents and contracts. I wanted to be among them. I wanted the prestige that came with professional validation. But then something changed. I saw my friends being shot down left and right by agents who enjoyed their work but didn’t think it’d sale. I understand all businesses take a risk and what will sell is just guesswork, but to query for a few years, only to be shot down again and again when you know your book has what it takes, I decided I no longer wanted any part of that world. I didn’t even want to try. Life is short. I want to take control of making my own dream come true because, honestly, I need to. I felt dispassionate about writing for some time because I knew publication was a distant dream. I’m depressed, I suffer with suicidal ideation, there is no reason to stick around when publication could take years.

I knew I needed to change something in my life to make me hang on.

By my nature I am a control freak to a certain extent. I am more than happy to accept criticism on my writing, especially if it makes it better, but I don’t want to have to argue with an editor to keep certain parts of my book alive. I don’t want to have to edit my book to make it fit purely for marketing or try to fit it within a specific word count. I’ll get rid of needless words and needless things, but I refuse to mold my story so that it fits within a word count they think won’t scare teen readers off.

I also want control of my own book covers. I frankly am appalled by many YA book covers, which mostly feature people who look too sultry and sexy and are obviously in mid-adult.

Sure, I’ll have to spend money, but if I were given an advance, I’d probably have to spend it anyway on marketing, so what’s the difference? With self-publishing, I’ll make 70% for each book. Even if I don’t make more than what I spent, I can always write another book and another and another. The good thing about e-publishing is Amazon isn’t going to penalize me if my book doesn’t sell a certain amount in a certain time. Just because it won’t sell now doesn’t mean it won’t sell later.

I also like that I get to create my own brand, that I can be independent, that I can stand on my own two feet. It’s marvelous knowing I’m taking control of this dream instead of working my ass off and waiting for someone else to choose when and where it happens.

I once held disdain for self-publishing. Self-publishing was for the fearful, the ones who couldn’t make it. Once you told me you were self-published, you lost credibility as a writer in my eyes. No more. I primarily read self-published now because these books are satiating the tastes traditional is not satisfying. I am so impressed that writers are taking control of their own dreams and knowing they need to produce quality work to make it. This opens up self-publishing as a viable option to anyone who has ever dreamt of getting published. This adds more prestige to this option too.

Do I wonder why some people still want to be traditionally published? A little bit, but then some people really need that validation. Some people are intimidated by marketing and may need a little bit of help, if the publisher offers at least that much. Some want to see their books in bookstores and not just online. Some prefer physical books over e-books. And there is nothing wrong with any of these things.

But I’m a huge proponent of self-publishing now, so this blog will barely touch on traditional publication as a means to get one’s book out there.