K.C.Warwick

I'm still here and still writing. I'm currently working on 'Prove A Villain' to get it ready to send out somewhere. I must update my GLBT Bookshelf page too. If only the day had more hours in it... I bet I'd still be struggling to do everything.

I've just sent a short story off to Torquere. It's a follow-up to my sip 'The Right Kind of Help', so I hope they take it. I've also sent some free fiction to 'Turn of the Screw'. I quite like the characters I've created for this - they deserve a novel. Maybe when I've got time I'll write it, but I must finish the sequel to 'One Elf' first.

I've finally got the magazine off to the printers, so now I can promote my new story! At least, it was new a week or so ago.
 

THE RIGHT KIND OF HELP

Rowan is a well-intentioned young enchanter who could do great things, if only he could get his spells to come out straight. His bad luck also means that his protector and traveling companion -- Valiance, a devastatingly handsome elf -- can't bear his company or his incompetence. When Rowan arrives at the castle he's supposed to aid and finds it missing, he knows he needs help. He's alone save for Valiance; but is the cynical elf going to be willing to lend him a hand... or anything else that Rowan needs?

 

Buy it here!

Here's the start of the story. (I seem to have got two LJcuts somehow!)
 

( Read a sample! )

 

( Read a bit here! )</div>

My 'Post an entry'page keeps defaulting to HTML, with errors on the page so that the little tags to turn it back to RTF disappear. The only way to get back to RTF is to close down LJ, clear my cache and open up again. Then, as soon as I try to go somewhere else to copy an URL, it defaults back to HTMl again! If I ever manage to crack this, I'll post about my newly released story...

I sent a query letter to Cheyenne about 'Prove A Villain' and got a very nice e-mail back from Mark Probst. He said that the idea sounded like the kind of thing that they might be interested in, but that he would not have time to read anything new until next year, and that I was welcome to re-query then. So... I think I might just sit on the manuscript until then. It seems to me that Cheyenne are going to be the people for historical m/m, if they keep going as they are. They already have good authors on their list, and their covers are way better than anything else I've seen! This is the book that I've really slaved over, and I want it to go to someone good.

Against  this, I'm not getting any younger (!), and I might wait all that time and then find they don't want it. Cheyenne are still a new company, so maybe I ought to try one of the non-specialist but longer established publishers. And maybe they won't want it either.

Next year isn't all that far away. I could get someone else to read it in the meantime, which I probably ought to do anyway, and then have a final read-through and edit. Yes, I'm going to do that - I think.

    

If you want a good selection of gay books all in one place, then take a  look at GLBT Bookshelf.  You can find it at http://www.glbtbookshelf.com

(It took me all blessed night to get that banner to display!!)
     

I'm still trying to finish my GLBT Bookshelf pages. I've done all the basics - successfully, I trust, thanks to The Guide - but now I need to put in some pictures to make it a bit less dull. Book covers were OK because I learnt how to hot-link them (and at last I know what that means!) but now I need to embed some. I've got Picassa and I've worked out how to do it, but I keep getting the 'Upload failed' message. I suspect this might be because of my pathetic dial-up connection. I really am going to have to change to broadband soon.

The Bookshelf pages seem to have taken almost as long as writing a story, but I hope it's going to be worth it in the end. I have so little time to spend at the computer anyway that it's quite difficult to decide what to spend it on. Still, I have done some free fiction for Turn of the Screw, so I'm not doing too badly.

Well, I got The Guide and managed to download it - my poor dial-up connection protesting mightily as I did so. Then, following instructions, I made myself a book page for 'Straw Into Gold', linked it to my home page, made a link to Torquere so that people can buy it. So far, so good. Listed it in the fantasy category. Thought to myself 'I must make my text the same colour as everyone else's'. Couldn't do it. It just wouldn't go the same colour blue. After about ten minutes, I realised that the blue indicated a LINK. If I made my text into a LINK, it would be the same colour...

Must try harder.

I decided to post my bio on my GLBT Bookshelf page, spent ages doing it, and was very pleased with myself. Then today I got a really sweet e-mail from Mel Keegan saying that I had in fact pasted the bio into the tutorial page somehow (!!!) and he had rescued it and put it in the right place! I thought I'd got past the 'complete dumbo' stage with computers, but obviously I haven't. That poor guy must be ruing the day he invited idiots like me to join in.

Well, I've plucked up courage to register with GLBT Bookshelf, which is here http://bookworld.editme.com/Home in case you don't know about it. (I hope this is going to automatically become a link as they have promised me!) It seems like a good idea to me, because I don't have much of a clue about publicity, so getting it done for me definitely appeals. I don't mind paying a bit each month for this, since the results will almost certainly be far better than I would achieve on my own. The only thing that worries me is coping with the technology - note how I appear to have cocked-up my 'post an entry' page somehow! As soon as I have a bit of time (ha!)I'll try and do something with my page.

I've finished the sequel to 'The Right Kind of Help', though I need to go through and edit it severely, because it was written in a series of fifteen minute sessions. I'm quite pleased with it. Once the edits are done for TRKOH, I'll see if Torquere want it. I hope so, because it won't make sense without the first story!
So now I must get back to 'Prove A Villain', which is almost ready to go out and look for a home. I had some last-minute nerves about the beginning - does it get going quickly enough? - but I think having cut a great many words out of the first chapter, it probably does. Anyway, I'll have a think about it.
I've also almost finished watching 'Prince Caspian', which is another thing that had to be done in short bursts, but I'll post about that when it's done. So far, not very impressed.

Torquere are taking my short story 'The Right Kind of Help', which is great, because I'm halfway through the sequel. I think there might be a third one too...The story is supposed to be humorous, and I'm always a bit worried in case people don't share my sense of humor and are left thinking 'What the hell is going on here?' I know that at least two people like 'One Elf Too Many', which is some comfort. It will be interesting to see how that does when it comes out as an e-book. While it's on 'Turn of The Screw' I don't know how many people are actually reading it. Still, it was nice being featured author for May - it gave me illusions of fame.

I took a few days off from Prove A Villain (as I'm now trying to call it) to write a short story, which I hope TQ will take. I've had the first line in my head for a long while, but finally decided to do something about the rest. It's one of those 'stronger partner protecting the weaker' tales, as mine so often are. I wonder if this is because all my adult life I've had to be the stronger one, and that's really not what I want -- it wasn't what I signed up for. Maybe one of the reasons I write is to supply the deficiencies of real life? I remember when I was a child being very disappointed that there were no fauns and hobbits and magical creatures. Now it's the heroes and big strong sensitive men I miss...

I'm now on the final read through and edit of 'True Minds', and trying to decide who to send it to. I'm going to read through Zathyn's notes again too and make sure I've covered all the points. As regards the title, I think it's going to be 'Prove A Villain', which is what I was going to call the sequel (ha!). This is a quote from Richard III and comes into the story. I think it suggests something of the murder mystery element, and also the archaic language might suggest that it is historical. Or not. Anyway, I haven't come up with anything better yet.

I've been asked to be featured author next month on Turn of the Screw, which is really exciting. I sat down to write some bonus fiction to go on the website, wrote nearly a thousand words in the first flush of enthusiasm(when I should have been doing other things), opened the file tonight and it has disappeared - all but the first couple of paragraphs!! I must have clicked No instead of Yes when I saved. Is this a judgment on me? And why is it so difficult to remember what you wrote a couple of hours before?

I've just finished the edits for 'One Elf Too Many', quite a few of which were formatting mistakes. When I started submitting stories for publication, I read a couple of websites on how to lay out your manuscript etc, and carefully followed their directions. As I've had stuff accepted and edited, I've gradually thrown out pretty well everything I was told to do, except putting in double dashes ( a concept which is still alien to me!) and now I'm back more or less where I was when I began.
In the days of typewriters, all you had to do was double-space and leave a margin all round. Nowadays, if you believe what you're told, you're supposed to think about non-proportional fonts and other erudite concepts. Maybe this is true if you're submitting hard copy to a print publisher, but it seems to me that all the e-publishers have their own ways of doing things, so all you can do is take a good look at their guidelines and follow these. I suppose you can also study how they present their published manuscripts, in terms of where the dashes go and whether they prefer *** to * * * * *.  I'm rambling a bit here, but what I think I'm trying to say is that I've lost my feeling of hushed respect for the websites which lay down the law.
And now back to 'True Minds'...

I'm trying to think of another title for 'True Minds Meeting' - never really liked that. Reading through Josh Lanyon's 'A Dangerous Thing' again, there's a bit where Jake asks Adrien how the book's going and says 'What's it called, Death For A Ducat?' When 'True Minds' was trying to be a straight book, I was going to call it 'Dead For A Ducat', but I decided too many people wouldn't know what a ducat was. I hate thinking of titles. Unless they come to me straight away - usually before the story is written - I always find them very hard work.

The first chapter of 'One Elf Too Many' is up on the 'Turn of the Screw' website, which you can find here: www.aturnofthescrew.com/index.html
I'm really quite thrilled about this! It's always difficult to know how people are going to react to humour, but I hope folks will find the story at least mildly amusing. It's quite different from anything I've had published before, though I've been writing humour for many years in That Other World. I used to write and produce a Christmas revue every year and I wrote two or three comedies, which were all received well. I like making people laugh, and my serious stuff usually has some humour in it too. I'll be interested to see whether I get any comments.

I've just done the first set of edits for 'One Elf' and made a feeble attempt at writing the blurb. Why is this so much more difficult than writing the novel?
Meanwhile, I've cut more than 10,000 words from 'True Minds', but it could still do with losing a bit more. My computer has developed a weird habit of taking a section of manuscript and replacing all the proper names either with 'I' or with one of the character names. How does it do this? I don't even know how to do it myself. I hate it when machines try to take over.

Found a quote in 'Man, oh Man': Most contemporary readers aren't going to enjoy something structured along the lines of 'Vanity Fair'.  I think this could be where I'm going wrong. The trouble is, most of what I read in my formative years was structured along those lines - in fact, Vanity Fair is one of my favourite books! I think I need to read a few more modern novels and allow myself to be influenced by those. That's my excuse for having read 'The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks' three times, and all the Adrien English series in the last week. I like 'Yellow Socks' best, but I love Lanyon's writing style, although it wouldn't do for Elizabethan England.

I'm still culling away at the word count, second time through now and a thousand more words to go. I'll try to cut more than this if possible, because some of the word count will go back in when I try to build up the relationships. Also I should be getting the edits for 'One Elf Too Many' soon, so I must be poised to leap into action on this. If only Real Life wouldn't keep getting in the way.