Author: Joely

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Last-Minute Christmas Shopping

Each year for our wedding anniversary (21 years on the 23rd), we go to Joplin, see a movie, visit my beloved sister, and top off the day with dinner at Mythos, my all-time favorite restaurant, while Papa from Mexico comes down to watch the monsters.

This year, we decided that instead of seeing a movie, we’d start–and finish–our Christmas shopping.  We’re always late (which is why I always take time off BEFORE Christmas, not after), but we’re later than ever this year.  I’d only bought 3 gifts, although I did have the monsters’ pictures taken months ago and planned to give several away for gifts (no frames yet).  We hadn’t even decided on what the monsters would be getting until the day or so before.

The main drag in Joplin is Rangeline and it was absolutely bumper to bumper all stinking day long.  If I had a dollar for each time we drove up and down Rangeline looking for a shop, I could retire from the Evil Day Job.  We both used to live in Joplin many years ago, and That Man often hits Joplin for his job, but we only rarely ever SHOP there.  We couldn’t remember exactly where the GameStop was, or how far down Best Buy is (down by the Mall, Lord help us).  Traffic is always horrendous but it was worse than ever on the last Saturday before Christmas.

In the end, we hit Wal-Mart twice, Best Buy, 2 game shops, 2 western-wear shops, and Walgreens, and only “almost” rear-ended someone 3 times.   All I have left to do this week are picture frames, two nephews’ gifts, and the clothing shopping for each monster (MIL always gives us money to buy clothes for the monsters–since I know their sizes–which I then wrap and take over Christmas Day so she can see what they got). 

I’d also like to get some hand-made gifts finished (hahaha, I know, I’m running out of time) and the monsters would like to make some kind of ornament again.  Last year we did salt-dough ornaments that they painted.  This year, I think we’ll do the cinnamon-glue ones.

No, we didn’t do cards.  I always mean to, but we’ve had so many card-tastrophes over the years, I’ve just given up.  My BIG chore for this week will be the post office on Monday to mail out the last of the ARCs!!

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A Box of Roses: Winner

The winner of the print copy of The Rose of Shanhasson is:  Raye!  Please e-mail me at joelysueburkhart AT gmail DOT com with your snail mail addy. 

Everyone else:  I have 4 remanining copies of the ARC version — which is basically the same book without Larissa’s fabulous quote on the cover.  If you’re interested in receiving a copy, please drop me an e-mail with your snail mail information and I’ll mail a copy to the first four people who contact me.    I’ll mail anywhere on the planet — although if I get a bunch of overseas entries I may have to spread them out a bit until after the holidays.

Thank you, everyone, for entering!

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Revision Hell: Trimming My Tells

We’ve all heard the prime directive:  show don’t tell.  Newbies discuss it endlessly on writing loops.  We have incredible quotes like:  “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass” from Anton Chekov.

Great.  But in the end, what does that really mean?

The way I look at it, I have certain traps I consistently fall into.  A laziness, something I always do a little too heavily, tells that betray the story as a first draft.  You will have other tells, other beloved darlings you must murder.

My biggest tell — without asking one of my editors to flay me publically — is repetition.  A little deliberate repetition can be powerful, sure, but typically I tell something, and then I show the exact same thing.  Obviously showing is stronger, and the repetition actually kills whatever power I managed to envoke. 

For instance, just last night I stumbled across the following:  She reacted immediately.  [telling]  She slammed her knee on his elbow and pinned his advancing arm beneath her weight. [showing]  Easy fix:  I deleted the first sentence entirely.

Another kind of repetition I tend to overdo:  Once, she’d believed.  She’d believed that love was the greatest gift of all.  I do this a lot with fragments for some reason.  This too is an easy fix:  Once, she’d believed that love was the greatest gift of all.  Cleaner, tighter, and not redundant.

Another tell I get away with in the first draft is telling my characters’ emotion instead of showing it.  As I go through Revision Hell, I look for these tells —  she felt [emotion]  — and then expand to include nonverbal communication or physical responses to show that emotion.  If she felt angry, maybe her temples throbbed and she tightened her jaws.  If she felt sick, her stomach churned.

One last tell I’m looking for:  she saw or she heard.  These can be distancing from the action and emotion of the scene.  If we’re in deep third, we don’t need to say: she saw the sword coming for her head.  We can simply say:  the sword sliced toward her head.  Similarly, she heard the white knife clash against her sword can be simplified to the white knife clashed against her sword.

Okay, back to Revision Hell for me.  Do you have a particular TELL that is too much TELLING?

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Dear Sir, I’m Yours Review

Dr. Connagher received 5 kisses from TwoLips Reviews!

Dear Sir, I’m Yours by Joely Sue Burkhart teased me from the beginning to the end. It showed me the most intimate parts of two very lovely individuals. Rae turned into a strong woman who learned how to ask for what she wanted in her man, while Conn integrated himself back into her life. Between the secondary characters and the cunning grandmother who put two and two together, I found myself deeply enthralled and laughing at the matchmaking attempt to bring two people together who needed a push.

Read the whole review here.  Thank you, Sin!

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Revision Hell: Lies My Characters Told Me

One thing I’m watching for as I wade through revisions is the Big Fat Lie.  Yes, even my most beloved na’lanna characters I’ve known for years have an appalling tendency to lie.  They will say things that don’t quite ring true, or do things which in hindsight make me scratch my head.

Okay, okay, I must be honest.  These lies my characters perpetrate are actually my own failing.  What happens is that I flinch.  There’s something the character really wants to say or do, but I’m too cowardly to let them have at it on the page.  OMG, what will people think?

And then boom, here come the lies.

If I’m writing the first draft, I can feel the anxiety begin in a particularly difficult scene.  I’ve finally learned to just get through it, whatever I have to do — even lie just a bit.  Maybe it’s not as edgy as Gregar really is.  Maybe it’s a little TSTL on Shannari’s part.  Maybe it’s too touchy feely for Rhaekhar.  But I get through it, because I know I can’t fix a blank page.

Now in revision, it’s a little easier to face the truth.  Maybe because the first battle of simply finishing the book has been won, and now I can gird up a different kind of loins for the emotional battle.  In fact, this is the opportunity for me to deliberately make myself more uncomfortable.  That’s when I know I’m really wringing the heart and tearing at the gut, which is the only kind of story that makes Gregar smile.

Make it worse.  Go for big, over the top, even shocking responses.  Don’t be safe.  Don’t take the first response — which is what I got in the first draft.  Don’t be a coward.  Don’t flinch from the truth, no matter how ugly and painful. 

At the end of the day, I may then choose to let a character tell a different kind of lie, because as Conn said in Dear Sir, I’m Yours:

Everybody lies, darlin’, even if only to themselves.

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A Box of Roses

Grinning from ear to ear.  It’s time for a giveaway!  If you’d like to win a print copy of The Rose of Shanhasson, simply comment on this entry through midnight CST Thursday, Dec. 17th.  I’ll announce a winner on Friday.  Anyone on the planet can enter, even if you’ve won something from me before.

The Rose of Shanhasson

The Rose of Shanhasson

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Working Vacation

Forgive a quick squee:  The Rose of Shanhasson is officially shipping!

I really need to get better at spreading my vacation out all year!  I’m officially off from the Evil Day Job tomorrow through Christmas Day, which seems obscene when I have so much work to do before the end of the year.  It’s a wonderful problem to have, don’t get me wrong.  Next year I’ll have 4 weeks of vacation plus 2 weeks of personal time to use up.

I’m always going to need days prior to Christmas — because I haven’t even started shopping yet — but there’s no reason I can’t plan a smarter approach to use some of these days for a writing vacation, too.  Last year I took 9 days in November to help with NaNoWriMo (which is why I was able to get over 60K in Nov), but my work load just didn’t cooperate this year.  The week I did take off for Thanksgiving was wholly dedicated to prepping for the big dinner, and then recovering from said dinner.

So I have off until Dec. 28th.  What am I going to do with myself?  Well, for starters, I’m going to work really hard on Return to Shanhasson revisions, try to write a short story, and then move on to Victor’s revision.  And if I get especially productive, I’ll pull out Deathright and prepare for drafting new words in January.

Oh, and of course, the Christmas shopping needs to be done.  *headdesk*  Don’t even ask me about cards.

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Revision Hell: Murdering a Character

Do you have a “stock” character in your story who is perilously close to becoming a cliche?  Someone you need for a plot convenience, or simply to show another facet of your protagonist?  Would it matter if you changed the character’s name or sex?  If you simply took the character out of the story, would it really leave a gaping hole, or could you pull the story tighter and really not miss him at all?

As I read through a story for revision, one of the things I’m considering are the side characters.  Are they really needed?  Do they have a goal?  Can I make everything worse for the protagonist by doing something more powerful with the side characters? 

If you have a weak character who’s not pulling his share of the story, here are a few ideas to consider that might help.

Combine characters.  Sometimes you can take several side characters with very minor roles and meld them into one larger character who has several facets and purposes, making them more interesting.  For example, I cut Rhaekhar’s mother out and combined her role as “supporter” into Alea’s character.  This was challenging, because Alea really didn’t like Shannari, my protagonist, at all.  The complexity made Alea’s character richer and tightened the story considerably.

Give the character a stronger goal.  Remember, every character is the star of HIS own story.  He should have a purpose, and if it’s counter to the protagonist’s, even better.  If you have a character who doesn’t really have any goals above “make the plot convenient” or “help the protagonist be the hero” then sit down and do some work. 

  • Consider writing a few scenes in the character’s POV, even if you don’t intend to use his POV in the final story.
  • Get into his head by writing in first person, maybe some key backstory.  How did this character come to be here, for this story? 
  • Give him some contradictions.  If he’s brave, what is he afraid of?  If he’s kind, when would he be mean?
  • Give him something to do that deliberately makes the situation worse for the protagonist.

Rebuild the Character from Scratch.  This one is super hard for me, but sometimes it’s necessary.  I have to envision killing the character, literally, murdering him or her.  Otherwise, I keep doing the same thing that led me into the wrong path in the first place.  I did this once and it was gut-wrenchingly hard.  I murdered Shannari, the protagonist in the Shanhasson series.  I killed her in my mind so I could start all over again, even though I’d already written about 1000 pages in the series.  Only when the old character was dead and buried in my mind, could I start with a new protagonist worthy of carrying the load of the Story I envisioned.

I have a character in Return to Shanhasson who needs some work.  Jorah, the golden Blood, has become a weak character.  You know you have a problem when his only distinguishing characteristic is his size, and I don’t mean how tall he is. 

In this case, I think I’m going back to the original first draft of book two to get an element for Jorah to build upon.  In a very old draft of then titled “Khul’s Beloved,” Jorah did something very graphic that made a stark impression on Shannari.  That scene needs to come back.  If nothing else, it will make him very memorable!

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My First Booksigning

Today, we drove an hour and a half north, back to our hometown, Osceola, MO.  I haven’t been home much at all since I left for college.  For years, we lived in TX, NE, and MN, and I just didn’t keep in touch with very many people at all.  Once both That Man’s and my parents moved out of Osceola, we only made occasional drives around the square to see what had changed (very little), or to put flowers on Grandma’s grave, but we never really stopped and visited.

I think it was very fitting to experience this first where I grew up, especially in the library, where I read books by the shelf after school.  Where I quietly wrote my first stories in elementary school.  Where my teachers were so supportive and encouraging.  Mrs. Lightle made me write my own version of Beowulf my senior year and first instilled a love for poetry in my heart.  When I came home from college over spring break my freshman year, pretty sure I wasn’t going back because I couldn’t understand Calculus II, Mr. Kauffman gave me every teacher’s manual he still had so I could work through examples and figure out how to keep my head afloat.  I went on to be a mathematics major and even got my MS, but if he hadn’t let me come out to his house and given me his pep talk, I might not have made it.

Oh, and don’t even get me started about my family and friends, many of whom I haven’t seen in years.  Literally, my cousin who stopped by — I don’t think I’ve seen him for twenty years or more.  One of my best friends from high school came by — I hadn’t seen her since graduation.  The librarians I grew up with had retired, but both of them came in especially to see us.

We didn’t sell a ton of books, but we sold several, to very good homes, the library gained some donations, and more importantly, I connected with friends and family I hadn’t seen in an eternity.

It was a lovely day.  A huge thank you to Tish at the St. Clair Co. Library for organizing the event, and to everyone who stopped by to say hello.