Tagged: Music Novel

Retroactive Relativity

As we work on the middle book of our music trilogy, we need to refer to the other volumes from time to time, especially the first one. The bulk of the information flow is from the already-written books toward the in-progress book, but occasionally that gets swapped around. Which is the major advantage of working on a whole trilogy all at once — you can retrofit details that strengthen the thematic and plot links across the series.

An instance of that occurred recently in the Writing Cave. Naturally there’s plenty of pseudoscience in these books, but there’s some actual science as well. The other night, Kent came up with something of a you-got-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter moment regarding the pseudo and the legit science imagery. Although the idea arose while working on book two, the best place to incorporate it is in the first book. So we added a note about it for when we go back to do revisions and tweaks.

We love our surprises too much to spill details here, but Kent’s still sort of giddy about his brainwave, because (in our story universe, at least) it provides a solution to one of the major conundrums of modern physics. In lieu of a fictitious Nobel, he received an even greater honor — he got to write the sticky note for the project board!

A writing partner is someone who forgives you for getting peanut butter on their chocolate.

 

Lightly Carbonated Research

Oh, the things we will do for our art.

The main character in the Music Novel has numerous quirks and foibles, but part of his pre-show ritual ended up putting us in a bit of a spot.

He drinks Red Bull.

Spoiler alert: he doesn’t drink it for the taste.

Neither of us had ever had the stuff, but that never felt like a problem. The person we show consuming it is used to it, and, as mentioned, the taste isn’t the point for him. This makes it effortless to just not say anything about the qualities of Red Bull as a beverage.

Until.

The rest of the band consumes some of this iconic energy drink, for the first time. This event pushed us over the line, into a world where our ignorance of Red Bull’s particularities would become conspicuous. The cure for said ignorance? Why, Red Bull, of course.

We bought one can and split it. Everything about it was unexpected. Jen anticipated cola flavor, while Kent for some reason thought it would be like a frappuccino (it most certainly isn’t). Neither of us would have predicted the aroma. We toasted our protagonist, whose fault all this was after all, then stood in the kitchen sipping Red Bull and trading tasting notes like it was an expensive wine or an ancient cognac. (It most certainly isn’t.)

We don’t want to provide details here, because we apparently believe we can force you to read our books to find out what the stuff tastes like. As if millions of you don’t already know, and as if it’s not sold at every gas station in North America and beyond.

We will tell you this: it has a kick. Kent scoffed about that, being a champion coffee drinker of long standing, but half a can of Red Bull made him talk really really fast for the rest of the evening.

A writing partner is someone who’ll drink the rest of the Red Bull.

Singing For Our Supper

Something we enjoy here in the writing cave is looking for recurring patterns in what we write. There’s some stuff that we do on purpose to give our story worlds and plots a consistent flavor, and then there’s stuff we’ve noticed recurring in subtle ways even though we never had a meeting and decided it should be in there. We’re fascinated by this, because our stories are all very different yet contain these common threads.

Among the recurring elements in our work is original song lyrics. Not every book has them, but they’re not limited to just the Music Series. The trend began with our very first novel, Miss Brandymoon’s Device.

Writing lyrics is very different from writing prose. It can take as long to come up with a few stanzas as it does to write a couple of pages, for us at least. But it’s fun to shift gears, and it’s good exercise. Both of us have taken our turns as songsmith with great results. What we hadn’t done until this week? Collaborate directly on lyrics.

Crazy, right? We’ve been at this for nine books now, lots of which contain song lyrics, and our whole deal is collaboration. Yet all those lyrics had been written by Jen or by Kent. The new ones were the first time we teamed up to craft the words to a song.

What was different about this case was that we had more constraints to deal with. The words had to come from a certain album, and we’d already nailed down its themes and mood in considerable detail. These lyrics also had to catalyze some specific actions, almost instructing the characters to do a certain thing. Note, this perceived instruction is not at all the meaning intended by the singer. Jen tackled this job, but the phrases she found that fit the desired meanings all felt trite to her. So, over dinner out, she and Kent analyzed the situation, brainstormed imagery, and jotted down a few snippets. And when we got home, Jen cranked out exactly the lyrics we needed.

A writing partner is someone you can still find new ways to collaborate with.

A Lot of Balls in the Air

It’s hard to remember, but there was a time when we were only working on one book. Back in the prehistory of the Skelleyverse, Miss Brandymoon’s Device was our only project and we devoted all of our time to it. And it took forever to write. We were still learning how to organize our process, how to mesh our styles, how to create a coherent story with two headstrong people both trying to steer.

Through the years we got much more efficient. We also broadened our fictional ambitions. We added a second story universe. And then a third. Three seems to be a comfortable number for us. Our books come in trilogies, and once we put the Divided Man Series to bed, we started really fleshing out the ghost series that will come next.

Currently we are writing in the Music series, getting feedback on the Science series, and working on preproduction for the Ghost series. Our stories tend to be big and complex, and they benefit from being able to simmer for a long time. Every time we circle back and have a brainstorming discussion, new details emerge. It makes the story world and characters rich and full-bodied. It gives us time to get to know these people we’ll be spending a lot of time with, and it helps us spot plot holes.

A writing partner is someone who will help you with your juggling act.

Format Wars

The Music Novel is not a slender tome. It’s a beast, frankly. A big, complex story richly told.

Part of that richness is expressed in the complexity of the formatting. It’s a thing that we did with footnotes, but they’re not really being treated like footnotes so we had to get tricky with it. We’ve found it works well to provide it as a PDF, because that way we can be sure that the reader will see each “footnote” where it’s supposed to be.

To a great extent, writing is independent of the visual stylistic choices of fonts and layouts. The words are the words, regardless, and they should mean the same even if the letters look a little different. But, design is also communication. The choice of font really does affect how readers respond to the text. Reading comfort is part of that, but also the mood of the font, even if it’s not an especially funky font. Juxtaposition is a powerful way to link ideas. For instance, a footnote needs to be on the right page (even if you’re being too clever for your own good about what a footnote is for). Presentation matters as much with a novel as it does with a meal. Hence, our preference for PDF, which gives us lots of control over such things.

Well.

Our agent asked if we could provide it in Word format instead. Like, right away.

Okay, couple things there. We don’t use Word. We work mainly in Scrivener, but one of the very few things that application won’t let us do is set up footnotes on arbitrary pages. So for the Music Novel’s clever formatting stuff we used Pages, which is essentially Apple’s version of Word, and then exported to PDF.

Pages also allows us to export to Word format, so that was at least a start, but then the output had to be tweaked. Fancy fonts that embed just fine in a PDF and look the same everywhere were a big nope, so we had to change them to standard fonts. Page breaks didn’t fall at the same places, so things had to be checked and adjusted in (no shit) about 500 places.

So, it made for a late night with no actual writing progress to show for it. But the request wouldn’t have been made if there wasn’t a reason, so it was something we were happy to provide.

The ironic part of all of this is, messing with the formatting was supposed to be one of the problems that we could offload to the fine professionals at our publisher when we got one, but this sojourn into tweaking and fiddling about with such minutiae came up as part of our quest to get a publisher. At least we have each other, so we didn’t need to do it alone.

2019 Preview

Last week we recapped our 2018. Now it’s time to look ahead and see what the coming twelvemonth will hold in store.

Our top priority will be writing Sibling of Music Novel. The first round of outlining is essentially complete, which does not mean we are yet in possession of anything that resembles an outline. But it does mean we’ll be ready to begin the actual writing pretty soon. Hard to say how long that will take. Our past few projects have been all over the map. Hopefully we can be speedy this time!

After that, we have a couple of good candidates for our attention, depending on which story world we want to focus on. We can stay with the Music series and do an editing pass on Son of Music Novel, or we can pivot back to the Science series where there are two manuscripts that need such treatment.

Deciding which of those worthy endeavors gets our attention first will depend on how our near-future publishing strategy shapes up. 2018 was the year we got an agent, and 2019 will be the year that we adjust our routines accordingly.

And, that means as of now we don’t have an answer for “What book(s) will you release in the coming year?” Everything’s topsy-turvy! But we can say for sure that we’ll be sweating in the writing cave. (Not really, though, because it’s air conditioned.) We will let you know what’s coming just as soon as we find out ourselves. Watch this space for updates.

To sum up, we expect to be busy!

A toast: May this, the year two thousand nineteen, be generous and gentle to you and everyone you love.

2018 – The Year That Was

To the shock of both of us, last year’s forecast for 2018 was spot-on. We wanted to finish up the Science Novels, outline the middle Music Novel, and begin talking about the Ghost Novels, and that’s pretty much what we did. The one place we missed the mark was in predicting (or hoping) that the first Science Novel would be released in 2018. It wasn’t. But we have the best excuse! 2018 was the year we got an agent! And that put our self-publishing plans on hold while we talk to him and figure out what makes sense in this new landscape.

Here’s how we spent 2018 on the blog:

January and February were devoted to writing Grandson of Science Novel, whining about missing self-imposed deadlines and target word counts, a brief break to clean our desks, and an update to our chain story’s cast of characters.

In March we mused about whether a protagonist should learn of ALL of the villains evil doings (“No.”) And we had the joy of setting up new computers.

April brought several rounds of critique group advice, and we finally reached the end of the first draft of Grandson of Science Novel. Break out the champagne!

But don’t drink too much, because we still had some work to do before the Science Novels could all be considered Done Enough. We spent May plugging holes and strengthening descriptions. Oh, and we got a puppy.

On June 1 we declared ourselves done for realsies, and hit the ground running on that Music Novel outline.

July and August were devoted to brainstorming, outlining, and research for Sibling of Music Novel.

In September we pulled back from Music Novels and dove straight into the Science Novels again, reading through all three of them in preparation for edits and cover design.

The Science Novels remained our focus in October as we worked to get them ready for our beta readers. Plus we passed a major milestone: 1000 blog posts!

When the Science and Music Novels are done, our next project is going to involve ghosts. We spent November taking various road trips and using the time on the road to lay the groundwork for this whole new story universe. Plus we tossed some old audio equipment outside during a blizzard and took pictures of it. As you do.

Which brings us up to the present. December. We GOT AN AGENT! And since he’s going to be selling the first Music Novel for us, we really need to turn our attention back to that series and get the middle book done. We were a bit rusty when we sat down to our brainstorming, but with a little bit of WD-40 and a couple of jumper cables we’re now purring along like a vintage muscle car.

We hope your 2018 went well, and your 2019 goes even better. Happy New Year!

Exciting News! We Have an Agent!

* For Immediate Release *

Rune Skelley is thrilled to announce having inked a deal with Prentis Literary. Woo hoo! (Can you say “woo hoo” in a press release?)

Our writing journey is now officially leading toward hybrid publishing, after independently publishing three novels. We’re looking forward to learning many new things. We’re very fortunate for the opportunity to work with Trodayne Northern, who has been patient and helpful with us at each turn as we figure out how to be a client. As a bonus, he really gets our stuff.

What this means for our release schedule is not clear yet. Trodayne has taken on the Music Novels, and meanwhile we are thisclose to releasing the first of the Science Novels. Or, are we? The landscape has shifted, and we’ll need to figure out what path now makes the most sense. It’s a good problem to have!

Being coauthors has (hopefully) prepared us well for the collaborative relationship between author and agent.

Forecasting 2018 (In Which Jen Tries to Keep Her Expectations Realistic)

Dire warnings of Bomb Cyclones and blizzards have been echoing around the writing cave, and while we aren’t in the path of any of the really nasty stuff, we’ve been locked in a deep freeze since before Christmas and it’s showing no signs of lifting. Today’s high is supposed to be 7º!

Since the weather forecast blows (both literally and figuratively), let’s see if things look sunnier in the fiction mines.

Grandson of Science Novel is moseying along toward the finish line, and finishing it up is our first order of business. In her secret heart Jen is dying for a deadline, but she’s terrified of missing another one. For now we’re winging it without. She’ll probably declare a deadline when we’re close enough to the end to touch it, and claim that she’s had it in mind all along. And Kent will humor her.

Once Grandson is done, the whole Science Trilogy will be in the can. Our major goal for the year is to publish the first one. It’s been edited a couple of times already, but there are many steps before it will be ready for its debut, and those will eat up a lot more time than Jen expects them to.

While the Science Novels rest between edits, we will devote our time to outlining the novel we are currently calling Sibling of Music Novel. As you may recall, we have the Music Novel, and Son of, written in full, but now we’ve decided that Son is really the third book in the series and we need to plug that hole in the middle.

If, after polishing Science Novels and writing Music Novels, we have any extra time, we’ll get started on brainstorming our Ghost Series.

We currently have no release dates to announce, but when we do, you’ll be the first to know. Check this space for updates!

And Happy New Year to you!

Hit the Road, Jack

There’s a lot of music in our lives. We listen to it when we’re writing, editing, and plotting. Our sons are both omnivorous musicians, which means we’ve spent more than our fair share of time attending drum, guitar, bass, and piano lessons, marching band parades and football games, piano recitals, jazz band, concert band, symphonic band, and orchestra concerts, and battle of the bands. One son was in a metal band that had gigs at a local bar before he was 21, the other plays highly esoteric and experimental stuff, in addition to straight-up classical and jazz.

For as much as we like music, though, there unfortunately aren’t many local shows that interest us, which means that when there’s a band we want to see, we have to hit the road.

That’s just what we did earlier this week. We like to use the time in the car to brainstorm ideas, and this time we worked on fleshing out Sibling of Music Novel. It felt fitting to talk about music on the way to the concert, and on the way home we were flush with energy and insight. The drive was about six hours each way, so we had plenty of time to dig in on some details of world building and theme. Since this one is a sequel, you’d expect a lot of the world building to be done already, but we’re adding a new wrinkle which requires us to start from scratch for one of the settings. We’re talking “are the laws of physics the same here?” level stuff. There’s a lot to talk about.

Kent did all the driving, while Jen navigated, which is how we like to run things. It also means that it was up to Jen to take notes on our conversation. She used the voice recognition dealy on her phone, to quite amusing results. Our main character has a non-standard name, and in the notes it ended up being spelled at least four different ways. When we got to our hotel we had a good laugh over all the other kre8ive word choices as we transcribed the notes and expanded them.

We’ve been pretty deep into editing Elsewhere’s Twin, while also doing some writing on Grandson of Science Novel. It had been a long time since we devoted a lot of brainpower to plotting out a new story, and it felt really good. We came up with a lot of really fun stuff. Well, we think it’s fun. Our characters definitely won’t.

But back to the important thing, our concert experience: the venue was small and stuffy, there was unexpected moshing and crowd-surfing, the opening act was pretty good, and the headliners — Royal Blood — were phenomenal. We were only about 10 feet from the stage. We both got caught up totally in the music, which is just how it should be, and which is a feeling we want to be able to capture in our Music novels. The sweat, the flailing limbs, the thump and roar, the smell of the smoke machine, all of it will hopefully make it onto the page.

The evening was topped off with the surreal discovery that the building across the street from our hotel burned down while we were at the show. That unsettling feeling might make it into the novel, too, but mostly we want to just relive the excitement of a really good rock show.