THE FAERIE WAR Cover Reveal

It's plug time! Not for me, though. It's for fellow author Rachel Morgan. Today she's revealing the cover for the third book in her Creepy Hollow series, The Faerie War. I'm halfway through the first book in the series, The Faerie Guardian. I'd hoped to have a review with this, in fact, but work keeps getting in the way. Let me just say I'm really enjoying it so far: plenty of action with likable, endearing characters. If you haven't checked it out yet, you must.

Anyway, without further ado:

The fate of the faerie world is in her hands...

Title: The Faerie War

Series: Creepy Hollow, Book Three

Author: Rachel Morgan

Cover Designer: Morgan Media

Publication Date: Oct 2013

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IWSG: The Fall Will Kill You

There’s a famous scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where the title characters are trapped on a mountain ridge and a posse of hired guns is chasing them down. Sundance is prepared to fight them off, a fight they’ll likely lose, but Butch sees a way out: jump into the river at the bottom of the ravine. Sundance refuses. After a hilarious back and forth, Sundance admits that he can’t swim. Despite the desperation of their situation, Butch cracks up, not because Sundance can’t swim, but because he’s worried about the wrong thing. “The fall will probably kill you,” he says.

I’m posting this as part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, hopefully they welcome new members. Anyway, it’s been three months, give or take, since I released my novel, The Wind Maiden. I had no marketing plan, kind of on purpose, and kind of not, because I wouldn’t know what I was doing anyway. Well, anyone who’s published a book – or put their artwork on display, or released a CD, or in any way put their creativity on display for the would to see – understands the sheer terror involved giving it to the world. You also know it’s a thrilling kind of terror, like jumping out of an airplane.* Also like skydiving, the terror fades once you commit. Staring out the side of an airplane at 13,000 feet can get the hardest of hearts jittering, but once you’re tumbling through the air like a load of laundry, there’s not much point in being afraid.

 

My personal anxiety was simple: what if everyone hates it? I know it’s good, or good enough to be published, at least. I also know it’s not perfect, and good or not, everyone has different tastes. I braced my for the bad reviews. Everyone gets them, even the great ones like Neil Gaimen and Michael Chabon, and I’m not near their territory - not yet, anyway. So bad reviews are the price of doing business, and I was prepared for them. But there was one problem:

I was worried about the wrong thing.

I haven’t gotten any bad reviews yet because I basically haven’t gotten any reviews at all. I’ve sold some books, even to people I don’t know, but so far I have no idea if any of those people have even read it, or if they tried to and gave up, or heck, even if they liked it. I should have expected it: I read a lot, but before I saw things from the author’s perspective, even I never reviewed things, so I’m definitely not taking it personally.

On the other, I really need feedback. I was worried about bad reviews, now I’d kill for one,** This is my first book. I’ve gotten positive comments (and some critiques) form people I know personally, but the readers that don’t know me from Adam, they’ll tell me exactly how they feel, good or bad. And that’s what I want to know.

I’ve just got to figure out how to find them.

 

*With a parachute. I rather not experience the thrill of jumping without one.

**Metaphorically.

Writing Out the Storm

 

I remember reading an article years ago by one of the creators/producers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They had wanted to expand on the renewed interest created by The Next Generation with a second spin-off, this one not in a starship exploring the galaxy, but rather “boldly staying put” in a space station, where people of different backgrounds (and species) struggled to get along with each other. It was the perfect setting for conflict: an isolated outpost perpetually on the brink of war populated with characters with private agendas and serious trust issues. The only prerequisite: it had to stay true to Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future.

The problem? In Roddenberry’s future, humanity has finally overcome it’s darker side. Intellectual disagreements still exist, but otherwise everyone gets along. There is no hate, duplicity, greed, or power struggles.

In other words: no conflict.

That’s great for humanity, but full of suck for anyone trying to tell any kind of story. Stories need conflict. Conflict is the heart of drama (and comedy, for that matter). The producers of DS9 circumvented Roddenberry’s rule by simply populating the show with aliens. Humans may be evolved, but the Ferengi, Bajorans, and Cardassians are still flawed, dark, and hopelessly interesting.

So where do we get our conflict, and what do we do with it once we have it? It helps if you keep it as real as possible, even when dealing with fantasy and science fiction. Sure, we all agree Sharknados are, as the kids say, made out of awesome, but how many times is the average person going to encounter Great Whites falling out of the sky?* Well, that’s the easy part: pick up a paper, look out your window, hell, just talk to anyone about anything. In this flawed, un-evolved, decidedly non-Roddenberry world of ours, conflict is everywhere. Whatever you want, you got it, from minor blow-ups to calculating deceptions to life-or-death struggles. Take your pick. The trick is what to do with that conflict.

 

“Hey, I’m going to be late, there’s a Sharknado…Yeah, again…”

This May, I published my first novel. In it, the main character, Thea, is about to win a 2500 meter race at a track meet. Just before she can reach the finish line, the city is hit by a bombing raid. Bombs go off, and lives are lost. It was a scene I wrote literally eight years earlier, and one I hadn’t given much thought to afterward because it worked.

About a month earlier, however, something very similar happened in Boston, a race ending in violent tragedy. Suddenly the problems of a figment of my imagination didn’t seem worth much. I considered dropping the scene, though it was a pivotal part of the story. I considered postponing what I had put off far too long already. After talking it over with people close to me, I decided go ahead with it. I tweaked the scene and its aftermath to give it a little more weight, but otherwise I kept it as is. So far, I haven’t had any negative reactions to it.

That’s the double edge sword of conflict: we want it to be as real as possible, but for those who have gone through it, it might be too real. Our stories need conflict, or to put it another way: our job as writers is to kick the shit out of our characters (literally or figuratively). We put as much crap in our characters’ way as we can; the value of the story is seeing them climb their way out.

It would be nice if we lived in a future where everyone was nice to each other and bad things just didn’t happen. Until that happens, though, we need stories dripping with conflict to encourage us, to remind us that we can climb out of the crap that life gives us. And personally, I’ll take our messy world of conflict over a sterile utopia. It may be flawed, but that’s what makes it beautiful.

Although a holodeck would be awesome…

* Two or three at best