So it turns out I’m quite good at giving away books.  Conjuring Raine was downloaded 5700 times, not record breaking by any stretch, but still, a nice number.  At one point Sophie and I were sitting here talking, and every couple of minutes she would say, “check it!” and I would hit refresh and a few more books would have flown out through the ethers and into someone’s ereader somewhere.  It was kind of cool to try to imagine these people, strangers out in the world thinking, hmmm, vampires and conjure magic and abolitionists, that sounds fun….

HI ALL YOU PEOPLE!!!  (I’m shouting so all y’all can all hear me.)  SO NICE TO MEET YOU!!!!  I HOPE YOU LIKE MY BOOK!!!!!!!!!!  REVIEWS ROCK!!!

This whole thing has been so much fun, actually, that I’m rushing to get another book out.  I’m cooking up cover art, connecting with copy editors, but then I thought I ought to go through one more developmental edit on this manuscript (NOT, obviously, the painful wip that slowly, slowly accrues terrible words over in the sidebar, the nightmare book—terribly named because it’s becoming MY nightmare book) so I contacted a bunch of those folks and then agonized over who to choose….

…and then I have this dream last night—and I should mention that the kids and I have been writing down dreams for the past few weeks and talking them over, sleepily, in the morning, as I’ve been hip deep in dream books and sleep books and the like and they’re always curious about what I’m up to—anyway, so I have this dream last night that a cat is licking/washing a ball point pen.  Silly little dream.  Until I remembered that one of the editors I had contacted is named Cat, and then, duh, she’s obviously the one to clean up my writing then, eh?  (Washing a pen, get it? get it?)  I love that.

Here’s the thing: there is a surprising charge and alive-ness that seems to come with Creating Stuff for people who seem to actually want it.  The idea that there are all these people out there who are into my books—not the freebie folk, so much, because they’re taking a risk on a pretty cover, and not much of a risk, since it’s free, more I mean the people who liked Toby enough to then go buy a copy of Raine, and vice versa, or the people who left lovely reviews, or who wrote to me to tell me how much they liked my books, and when was the next one coming out.  I mean…WOW.  It’s a totally different animal to create under these conditions than to write when one (me) is fairly certain that no one gives a shit.

Truly, there is a huge amount of stubborn Fuck You that has to accompany writing novel after novel for no one…which has been my situation for years as my novels went through the query process, then went to my then-agent and to editors (who passed), and then more recently back into querying (when agent and I parted ways), and that all added up to a shit ton of years and writing and novels with no READERS.

I loved the part in Steve Martin’s memoir about his time doing stand-up where he described failing at it, FOR YEARS, no one getting his work, him not getting his work, his agent not getting his work.  And Steve’s response?  Switching to touring full-time.  Steve says, “I resigned from television writing against the advice of my agent…who said plainly, “Stick to writing.” Which was a polite way of saying that my performing was headed nowhere. I took this warning with a strange delight. It was, in a way, the necessary ingredient in any young career, like when Al Jolson was told in The Jazz Singer, “Jolie, you’ll never become a sing-gah!” ”
(Martin, Steve (2007-11-20). Born Standing Up (Kindle Locations 1228-1231). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition. )

There is artistic strength, perhaps, that comes from such a moment.  I mean, you have to have the tenacity to keep at it, and if no one is listening, you start to say what you really want to say, because, why the hell not?  You take risks.  You buckle down.  You do that shit anyway because you just have to.  Maybe you hunch a little and growl at passers by.  But the people who stay with it when there is no positive feedback coming in from anywhere, well, we’re either crazy or stupid or on to something.  Possibly all three at once.

But I reckon this other kind of space, this bubbly, energized stated of believing there is an audience of however many dozens, even, dare I think it, hundreds, of people who want to read my books (giddy! bouncy!)…instead of trying to produce under a pile of bricks while people shout at me to give up, it’s like writing on freaking Happy Gas!  Maybe I’m in danger of floating away!  Of pandering to the market, maybe?  What other dangers…swelled up fat head?  That’s a fun one.  Believing my own hype?  Oh, that I could have hype! Of my very own!  How fast, I wonder, might I rocket from one position (bricks) to the other (swelled), and back again if I let myself go?  If past emotional flexibility is any indication, I’d estimate the entire circuit can be made in .004 seconds.  Look for a crash any millisecond now.  Got my handy bottle of Fuck You ready for it….

my favorite beverage

Meanwhile the wip is a pain in my ass and I’m busy polishing and shining another novel for your perusal.  Watch this space for a new book, hopefully by the Summer Solstice (depending on how much more work I feel I need to do once I get the manuscript back from Ms. Cat), all about the haunted and talented children of fallen angels….

AND it’s the first day of SPRING.  Woo hoo!

So, in honor of Raine and of spring, here is a repost (although I couldn’t help but add some things) of some behind-the-scenes of the writing of Raine and all the research I did on slavery and swamps….

….All along, my guy character was an abolitionist.  I’m not sure where this came from, maybe from growing up in the South?  Maybe from the episodes of Highlander where Duncan is an abolitionist, haha?  Duncan always made it look so good to save people, sigh.  Anyway, for research, I began reading a tremendous amount of material about slavery, both the legal slavery from a century ago, and the non-legal, but wide-spread, slavery that goes on now, under the name human trafficking. In the process, I found several amazing archives of slave narratives, that is, stories and books written by people who were slaves when it was legal in this country, for example, here and here.  I also read several expose-style books about the modern stuff.  One riveting one was A Crime So Monstrous.

This stuff is shattering to read.  For a long while there I didn’t think I could write anything about it—maybe not write anything at all, ever again—because I didn’t want to belittle any of these people’s experiences.   Eventually I set out to try to describe a little of what goes on, with zero milking drama from it for entertainment purposes.  I hope I succeeded.  Much of what I read, particularly the historical stuff, did not make it to the final novel.  Of course, large sections were left out, for example, when I cut several flash back sequences that described more about plantation life.  Maybe I’ll use that material in some other book.

In the end, however, what got me out of the despair-at-humanity that reading these accounts threw me into was realizing that it wasn’t the horrors that people do to each other, but that  there were always other people willing to put their lives on the line to stand against it.  This is astonishing.  It may be a tiny percentage, but it’s there.

I’m telling you, you want some gratitude for your life, read some slave narratives.  Stops whining in its tracks.

Another thing I researched was the Great Dismal Swamp, particularly the history of the canal, one long story of greed and land-rape.  Truly disgusting stuff, starting with George Washington who was the first white guy to survey it back in the day seeing only resources he could mine for profit—the world as it relates to himself.  GROSS.

On a more positive note, I exchanged some wonderfully informative emails with several people who were experts on the flat-bottomed, double-ended, boats, called batteaux, that were used to pole materials up and down the canal until the steamboats got going towards the end of the 1800s.  Fascinating!

I also spent a lot of time on Google Maps, looking at San Fransisco and the Tenderloin.  How did writers do anything before the internet???

And finally, here is Joshua stealing Raine from the hospital.  At least, in my mind it is.

Actually, it’s a still from the unaired pilot for a vampire show that later became “Moonlight.”  A show that I enjoyed, although it was, imo, fundamentally flawed.  In the picture, he’s a vampire, saving this little girl from his murderous vampire ex-wife, and I loved that idea, a vampire saving a child.  Also, in that moment, the actor has such a mixture of determination and suffering on his face, even self-revulsion.  And I loved how the little girl is clinging to him, even though he is a monster.  This image really stayed with me, morphing into my own characters.  That’s the way it is with writers.  We see bits here, images, moments, snips of dialogue, story turns…and then we steal them.

Ultimately, the question I asked myself was:  What would one version of my personal, perfect vampire story be?  Conjuring Raine was the answer.

If you haven’t read it now is the time to get a copy.  Did I mention that it is free??