News

I reread yesterday’s post and realized I forgot a few things.
First, the way I wrote the blog it looks like the Merry series is also at Penguin/Putnam with Anita, which is not true. Merry is at Random House. Like having your kids go to different colleges, sometimes with sport’s schedules that conflict.
Second, I’m finished with the first draft of A LICK OF FROST. That doesn’t mean it’s done. I took my own advice on my first draft. The advice I give beginning writers is not to get bogged down in the first draft. The example I usually give is from my own first book, NIGHTSEER. There was a moment when I had to get her undressed for the night, and I had no idea what a society equivalent to about 1300 to 1400s would wear under their clothes. But I was smart. Instead of running off to the library and researching 14th century underwear I just typed, “NOTES; WHAT DOES 14TH CENTURY UNDERWEAR LOOK LIKE,” and kept writing.
My early second drafts were almost entirely just filling in the holes of research questions. The third draft was when the actually polishing of the writing began. Now, that predicates on the idea that the writer has done enough preliminary research that it’s just minor stuff that needs to be rechecked. I’d researched weapons, religion, folklore, blacksmith, but had forgotten to research clothes and what people ate and how they cooked it. Small stuff. I’d also been making notes for this world since late high school. It really was my first dream.
In A LICK OF FROST what I made notes for was, names of characters and physical descriptions, especially of eyes. When I first created my version of the sidhe, the high court of faerie, I had this neat idea. I read one account of a man who had met one of the sidhe. He described her as beautiful, then said she had three eyes. Now I’d read all sorts of true accounts of people that had interacted with the fey. I studied reports of people from the 1700s and before, and after, that said they’d been abducted not by aliens, but by fairies. They do not describe anyone as beautiful that has three eyes, or any extra bits. That is like considered a sign of being ‘evil’. So, how to reconcile beauty with three eyes?
I walked around for a day or so, trying to decide what it meant. I passed a news stand and saw a cat magazine. It had a gorgeous cat on the cover with a closeup showing it’s eyes. Eyes that had three distinct rings of color in it’s iris. I knew what I thought the man had meant when he said the beautiful woman had three eyes.
So I gave most of the sidhe multi-colored irises. Great idea, very visual. Problem, it’s sometimes hard enough to remember who has gray eyes, or brown, or blue, but then also to remember who has three rings of different shades of blue, and who has grey rings, or which of them has eyes that are just green. It makes a small problem that most writers have with a large cast of characters even harder. Yes, yes, if I would just keep that running list of physically characteristics on file, I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I’ve been meaning to do that for years. I just never quite do it.
So, FROST, is full of notes saying something along the line, “What color are his eyes?” New character names. I am dyslexic. It went recognized for years. Only when my daughter was diagnosed did it come out. It made so much sense. I can’t spell because the blasted letters in the middle don’t stay still. They will actually switch on me. Not every day, not every hour, just periodically. It means that Gaelic is a very difficult language for me to make certain I’ve got my middle vowels correct. In fact, there are one or two of the names that are not spelled correctly because the day my editor asked me to check I switched letters. I didn’t know I was dyslexic, so I didn’t know I did it. You can’t fix something you don’t know you do.
So, now I’ve taken to making notes; and saying name of person, give their title or job, or whatever. I’ll look up the names later, and have someone who is not dyslexic make certain I haven’t switched the middle of the word around. I have two college degrees and I’ve been a professional writer for over a decade, and no one figured this out. But hey, I know now.
So, on Monday afternoon I will begin the second draft of FROST. It will be simply filling in the notes. The third draft will be fixing things I know need fixing. Interestingly enough by freeing myself up to not have to polish as I go, I’ve kept a running list of the places I wasn’t sure of, things that worked, but could be better. Things that didn’t work, but I wasn’t sure what to do at the time. As long as the point or event doesn’t change the main plot you can make a note and fix it later. Fiction is great, you can always rewrite.