If y’all follow more writers besides me, you’ve probably seen posts going around about the Writing Process Blog Tour, in which various writers discuss what they’re working on and how they do it. They tag the writer who talked them into it, and find other writers to participate! What’s in it for you? Getting to follow links and discover new writers.
In my case, I got tagged by Catherine Lundoff, who’s 
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Let’s get down to it, shall we?
What Am I Working On?
Priority one: Victory of the Hawk, book 3 of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy. This will conclude my immediate obligations with Carina Press and free me up for more of my indie work.
Namely, finishing the edits for Bone Walker as well as the shorter pieces I promised my long-waiting Kickstarter backers!
After that? What’s most likely to pop off the queue will be Queen of Souls, my other currently finished manuscript, at least in rough draft form.
How Does My Work Differ From Others Of Its Genre?
My fantasy, currently represented by the Rebels of Adalonia books, is significantly less grim and gritty than a lot of the better-known and better-selling epic fantasy works these days. Which is not to say I don’t have violence or dark themes, or that I hold back from killing off characters as appropriate. Valor of the Healer and Vengeance of the Hunter–especially Vengeance, as y’all will see when it ships on the 28th–both have their share of violence and darkness. But I don’t do gratuitous darkness.
Stylistically, I hearken more back to the stuff I read when I was younger. So if you liked Esther Friesner’s early fantasy novels, or Tanya Huff’s, or Doranna Durgin’s, you might like mine.
In my urban fantasy, likewise, I’m a lot lighter-hearted than a lot of the grim grim grimmity grim OHNOEZ WE MUST SAVE THE WORLD novels out there. And if your tastes in urban fantasy slant more towards paranormal romance, you should also be aware that while I do have romantic subplots, I don’t base them on how enthusiastic the characters’ hormones get about each other. I do slow builds on romances, and if I have any on-camera sex at all, it will serve a very specific character development need. It won’t be there just out of obligation to have my characters shag. Also, I’m very likely to cut a discreet fade to black rather than spelling out the details for you.
See, ’cause here’s the thing–unlike a lot of readers, I don’t tend to put myself into the position of the heroine in whatever book I might be reading. Rather, I envision her as this awesome person whose adventure I’m following. If you’re an awesome person I know in real life, this doesn’t mean I want to actually watch you shag, you know? Same thing if you’re an awesome fictional person I’m reading about.
I feel the same way about the characters I’m writing. To be perfectly honest, the vast majority of sex scenes bore me to tears, and they’d bore me to write, too. And writing something that bores me is the last thing I want to do to a reader. I’d much rather write the things that excite me, and by extension, hopefully, excite you too.
Why Do I Write What I Do?
I often hear it said that a writer should write the things she wants to read. This applies to me, pretty much.
I write casts of characters that tend to slant heavily to having women in positions of power, because that’s what I want to see in the things I read. I write women who hold magical power, women who hold political power, and sometimes both at once. And I write casts that will have multiple female characters in play, which may in fact seem female-heavy to some readers–but I see a lot of LACK of representation of female characters elsewhere, and dammit, I want to do something about that.
Likewise, I’ll often have queer characters present in my cast. Because again, representation matters.
How Does Your Writing Process Work?
Basically, after finishing a few novels, I’ve come to realize that my writing process is pretty much “let the characters roleplay the story out in my head and transcribe what happens”.
I’ll have a rough idea of where I need to go, mind you. I’ll often take some rough outline notes, or notes on characters’ starting motivations. I definitely find sketching out a timeline of events to be useful.
But a good bit of this note taking actually happens throughout the writing of a book for me. I’ll write a few chapters, take more notes, write a few more chapters, lather, rinse, repeat. So far this seems to more or less work.
The tricky part? Doing this under deadline. I’m hoping to get faster as I get more books under my belt!
I write in Microsoft Word–specifically, Mac Office 2008. And for the longest time I was using old-school Courier New formatting, but I’ve started switching over to Times New Roman, trying to get used to following Carina Press’ style guides. I’m likely to keep the Times New Roman for working on my other stuff, too, since I just like the look of that better. What’s really tough, though? Breaking myself of the habit of indenting my paragraphs with tabs!
About the only other tool of note for me is Excel, which I use for word count spreadsheets. The vast majority of my notes are taken in nothing more complicated than TextEdit. Some day eventually I may explore something fancy like Scrivener, but honestly, simplicity seems to work for me here.
And that’s my process! If any of my fellow writers out there would like to be tagged, sing out and I’ll update this post!
ETA #1: First tag request is in! Folks, I commend to your attention Alex Conall, who lives here on Dreamwidth, here for zir official site, and right over here on Facebook. Genderqueer poet and artist and writer! (Speaking of how representation matters.)
ETA #2: Second tag request! This one goes to my pal M.M. Justus, who’s written time-travel SF with romantic elements, some historical, and even straight-up contemporary. Stick around because I’ll be featuring her on Boosting the Signal too!
