Blogging, Case Files of Justis Fearsson, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part III — Reviews, Damn Reviews, and More Reviews

Continuing the “My Best Mistakes” series of blog posts . . . .

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Very early in my career, when my first book, Children of Amarid, was the only one I had out, I responded publicly to a online review from a less-than-delighted reader. Amazon was still a novelty (no pun intended) as was the notion of online reader reviews. (Hard to imagine, right? That the idea of readers offering reviews of the books they’d read should have been new and different and even a bit odd?) I don’t remember what the reader in question objected to about the book, nor do I remember what I said in my public response. The original book is out of print now — only the 2016 reissues are available on the site, so our exchange is lost to the ages. All I know is that someone criticized the book, I didn’t take the criticism well, and I took it upon myself to write a reply and post it to the Children of Amarid Amazon page.

But that’s not quite what this post is about.

SPELL BLIND, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Alan Pollack)Some years later, soon after the release of Spell Blind, the first book in The Case Files of Justis Fearsson, another Amazon reviewer panned the book because my book was “a blatant rip-off” of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, “a ludicrous case of copycatting.” For the record, I didn’t copy Dresden at all. I had only read the first two books of the series, and the “copycatting” the reviewer claimed I’d done amounted to using tropes of the genre, not elements of Butcher’s work. And so I responded to the review, wanting to set the record straight.

But that’s not quite what this post is about.

At this point, you might have sensed that I have a problem. There are writers out there, I know, who couldn’t care less about bad reviews of any sort. Clearly I am not one of them. It’s not that I’m thin-skinned. Well, not really. If people don’t like my books, so be it. I write for me, because I understand that we can never please every reader. Even if ninety-nine readers out of a hundred love our book, there will always be that one reader for whom something just doesn’t work — the characters or the setting or the magic or the prose. Something.

My problem, and I know I am not alone in this regard, is that I can get all those nice reviews, but the one on which I’ll fixate, the one I’ll remember, is the lone bad one. I think it’s tied to imposter syndrome, and to every other insecurity I have as a writer. And as I say, I know I’m not the only professional who is like this. Certainly, when I see a review that misrepresents my work, or impugns my professional integrity, I can’t help but obsess over it a little. That’s what happened with both of the examples I’ve already cited.

That’s what happened with another book in another series, which was reviewed in a fairly high profile publication. As it happens, this third review was mostly positive. The reviewer liked the book. But they also said something about the book, a mild criticism, that I felt was simply untrue. I didn’t respond publicly. I sent the author of the review a private message, thanking them for their kind words about the book, but pointing out that they had gotten it wrong in this one regard.

Why did I do this?

Because I’m an idiot. Because despite my protestations before, I AM thin-skinned about my books. I take editorial feedback really well, but I respond terribly to public criticisms that I feel are unjust or inaccurate. To my mind, reviewers — professional reviewers, those who merely comment on bookseller sites, and all in between — ought to keep in mind that their words can have an impact on people’s livelihoods. If they have legitimate criticisms, so be it. But they need to take care to get their facts straight. Okay, off my soap-box.

Where was I? Oh, right. I sent a private message to the reviewer. I never heard back from this person. But they reviewed my next book, and they took their revenge. Publicly. Brutally. Cruelly. Their review of that next book was one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me in my career. It was unfair. It was relentless. It misrepresented the book. The review left me heartbroken, because I loved the book. Still do. And I am certain this review came about as a direct result of that message I sent after the first review. It was my fault. True, the reviewer didn’t have to take their revenge in the way they did, but still, I should have known better.

Because writers are told again and again never to respond to reviews. Most people will tell writers that they shouldn’t even read their reviews. Clearly, I have struggled throughout my career to follow both these bits of advice. In fairness, I have finally gotten better about all of this. I do not respond to reviews anymore. I rarely read them. But as mistakes go, this was a big one, and it is one I’ve made too often.

Don’t do what I did. Write your book and move on to the next. Promote the hell out of every publication. Pay attention to your sales numbers. Don’t worry about your reviews. Don’t go to your Amazon pages and scroll through the ratings. If you have to read your journal reviews, so be it. Who am I to criticize? But don’t obsess over them. Don’t fixate on the negative phrases. And for God’s sake, don’t respond to them.

And if you can do all that, you’re a better person than I am.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Title IX, Soccer, and My Family

This past weekend, Nancy and I went up to Nashville to see the U.S. women’s national soccer team play Japan in a group stage match of the She Believes Cup. The tickets were a gift to us from our younger daughter, who knows how much we love soccer, who shares that passion with us, and who has, since she was tiny, loved, loved, loved the U.S. women’s team.

When our daughters were nine and five years old, we took them to Birmingham, Alabama to see the women’s team play a “friendly” against Brazil. The teams have been arch-rivals forever and no game between them is ever actually friendly, but we’ll leave that for another day. Both girls has already been following the U.S. team for a while. They idolized the stars on that team — Julie Foudy, Abby Wambach, and, of course, the incomparable Mia Hamm. In fact, both girls played youth-league soccer in their respective age groups, and both girls wore number 9, which was Hamm’s number. They would both continue to wear number 9 through middle school and high school.

That day in Birmingham, they were in for a treat. We’d told them they would be seeing the U.S. women’s team, but somehow they had convinced themselves and each other that we were going somewhere to watch them on a big screen, or something. Honestly, Nancy and I weren’t certain what they thought. But when we got to the stadium, and they saw their heroes right there! — On the pitch! In the flesh! — they kind of freaked out.

The women won that game against Brazil 5-1. Mia Hamm assisted on three of the goals (including two by Wambach) and scored one herself. The girls were in heaven.

I bring all of this up by way of getting to the main point, which is this: Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 turned fifty years old last year. Title IX is a broad, wide-ranging law that prevents sexual discrimination in any and all private and public educational institutions, at any level, that receive federal funds. The law is designed to prevent harassment and violence, as well as discrimination, and it provides for mechanisms to combat these things. But for much of its history, Title IX has been most well-known — and, at times, most controversial — for its impact on school athletics.

For the record, here are some things Title IX does NOT do. It doesn’t require that men and women’s sports in various schools be identical, or even that they have the exact same budgets. It doesn’t require that women have a football team if the men do, or anything of the sort. Rather, it demands proportional equity. If men playing football have access to state-of-the-art safety equipment, then women playing field hockey must have access to the same. If both men and women are playing soccer at a certain school, then yes, the teams should have access to equal facilities and equipment.

It is, contrary to what many critics have said over the years, a fantastic law, one that has empowered generations of girls and young women with athletic ambitions. Like the stars on the U.S. women’s soccer team, and the stars in the Women’s National Basketball Association, and female U.S. Olympians in just about any sport. And like my daughters.

My sister, Liz, whose birthday it is today, was always a terrific athlete. She LOVED baseball as a kid and still does to this day. By the time Title IX became law, she had graduated from high school. She missed out on playing organized sports during her school years, and she wasn’t allowed to play Little League. If she had been, she would have been a star player in our small town. Title IX changed not only the rules surrounding educational institutions, but also our culture at large.

My daughters grew up playing soccer and also swimming competitively. Erin played volleyball for a while in middle school. Both girls were accomplished athletes (something they got from their mother, not me). But more than that, thanks to their involvement in team sports, both girls grew more confident, more resilient, more community-minded. Athletics made them into their better selves.

Nancy and I grew up in the early years of Title IX, when schools across the country were scrambling to catch up with the requirements of the new law. Nancy probably would have been more active in team sports as a high-schooler had the law come along a few years earlier.

Which might have been why last year she presided, as acting president of her university, over a singular celebration of Title IX’s 50th anniversary. At the university athletic hall of fame induction ceremony, her school recognized women sports pioneers — women whose matriculation preceded the passage of Title IX, but who nevertheless fought for inclusion in university athletics. Many of them trained with the men’s teams in various sports, and organized unofficial competitions with like-minded women from other schools. They had no official statistics with which to establish their credentials for the school hall of fame, so Nancy and others at the school involved current undergraduates in an oral history project that was designed to enshrine the stories of these women in the annals of university lore. What a worthy endeavor.

Title IX has done wonders for our educational institutions in many ways — preventing discrimination, addressing incidents of harassment and assault that years ago would have gone unnoticed or unacknowledged. And yes, we need to make far more progress in this regard. But the law has had an impact.

And with regard to women’s sports, it has inspired and enabled and drawn national, even global, attention to the athletic achievements of so many deserving women. I know from personal experience that in households like ours across the country it has enriched the lives of young athletes and of the parents who cheer for them.

By the way, at this weekend’s tournament, we watched the U.S. beat Japan 1-0, in a hard-fought match. We also saw the first half of the Canada v. Brazil match, which Canada won 2-0.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part II — A Bad Contract Is Worse Than No Contract

Last week, I kicked off the latest Professional Wednesday blog post series, “My Best Mistakes,” with a humorous story about my behavior at a convention early in my career. I hope you enjoyed it.

This week, I turn to more serious matters, because the fact is certain mistakes can have serious consequences for our careers. Before I begin, let me reiterate something I wrote in last week’s post: Some of the stories I tell in this series of posts will include other people in the business and/or will touch upon published works of mine that I am still seeking to market. In the interest of discretion, I will be keeping some details purposefully vague.

The events I’m going to describe took place many years ago, as I was putting the finishing touches on one of my early epic fantasy series, and I was looking forward to my next project or projects. This is common for writers even today. We are often a book or two ahead of the publishing schedule, particularly if we publish traditionally. And so as we are waiting for the last book or two of a series to wend its/their way through the production process, we are usually turning to the new shiny. And this was especially the case back in the years I’m talking about here, when self-publishing was not yet a Thing, and big-house traditional publishing was excruciatingly slow.

I had recently met a small press publisher at a convention, and this person expressed interest in publishing my next work. This publisher was ambitious, articulate, charming, and seemed to know the business. Put another way, they talked a good game. They had some big name authors writing for them already and they made it very clear they wanted to add me to that mix. It was flattering really, and they probably knew it.

To that point in my career, I had only written for Tor Books. Tor was and is a great house. Their reputation is global, as is their marketing reach. They brought me out in hardcover with all of my early books, as they did almost all their writers. They put out a beautiful product, they took out big, glossy ads in Locus and the Science Fiction Chronicle. They hosted THE big party at WorldCon each year. There was, in short, a certain cachet that came with being a Tor author. And I liked that. On the other hand, even as my star was rising early in my career, I remained a small fish in the big pond that was Tor.

And so, being a relatively big fish in the pond of this small publisher had some appeal. Add to that the fact that this publisher offered to match or beat the numbers in my most recent contracts with Tor, which had been generous, and I was eager to give working with this person a try. Never mind that all of it sounded too good to be true. I wanted in.

I signed a contract for several books. And if the publisher needed a little extra time to come up with the promised advance . . . well, it was a small press after all. It was understandable, right?

No, not right. That was our first warning that all was not as it should be, although it shouldn’t have been.

So far, I have made it seem the only problem with the contract I signed was that the small press publisher couldn’t do all they promised financially. But there was more to this episode than that. The books I sold them weren’t ready either. The concept needed a ton of work, something I didn’t realize at the time, didn’t WANT to realize at the time. But it’s true. I would later publish a much-changed iteration of this concept with a different publisher, but back in the mid-2000s, when all of this took place, the books were a shadow of what they could and should have been. The publisher’s failure to see the flaws in the original concept should have been a warning as well.

All of that said, I eventually did get my initial advance, and I eventually turned in the first book. When I got it back from the publisher, who was now also my editor, the manuscript was very nearly unmarked. “Looks great. Found a few typos and phrases that don’t quite work. Get the revisions back to me as soon as possible.” That’s a paraphrasing of the feedback I received, but it’s an accurate one and it set off alarm bells in my mind. I knew the book needed more. I didn’t yet know how much work it needed, but I knew it wasn’t essentially publication-ready. As it turned out, this was another sign that my publisher’s resources — financial, yes, but also in terms of time and human resources — were spread way too thin.

Within eighteen months of my signing the contract, the small press was on the brink of bankruptcy. We managed to get back the rights to the series, but only because my agent and I acted quickly and decisively. The series could have gotten caught up in the bankruptcy proceedings and then we might never have been able to sell the later iteration of the books to a different publisher. The publishing company folded not too much later. As far as I know, the publisher/editor I worked with briefly is no longer connected to the publishing world.

So, what are the lessons here? Let me start by saying that the lesson is NOT to avoid working with small presses. I have worked with several in recent years and, with one other notable exception, have had great experiences. Small presses are, to my mind, the future of the industry and a wonderful option for writers of every experience level.

No, the lessons are these:

1) If the promises made to you by a publisher (or, for that matter, by an agent) sound too good, too optimistic, too perfect, take a long, close look at the contract and at all the information you can find about the enterprise. Talk to other authors who have worked with them. Learn all you can. We all like to be told what we want to hear. We all want to feel wanted by our publishers. But flattery and rosy scenarios are no substitute for solid information. Because the old adage holds true: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

2) Don’t rush into anything. Don’t rush to get that first contract signed, unless you’re truly confident you’re a good match for the publisher. Don’t rush to bring a book or series to press unless you’re certain it’s ready. Don’t hurry into any publishing arrangement because you need the money quickly. Actually, that’s probably good advice for any business venture in any field. But it’s particularly important when we’re peddling our intellectual and creative property. If we rush into selling, say, a car, we might not get as much as we should. But if we rush into a publishing contract we can lose access to our artistic creation. If my agent and I had waited another month or two, that’s what would have happened with this series of books. Better to be patient. Better to delay the realization of our ambitions than to destroy any chance of realizing them.

And 3) Beware, beware, beware. The vast majority of the people I know in the publishing industry — writers, editors, agents, publishers — are honest and hardworking. They are in the business because they’re passionate about books and stories, and they want to do good by the people with whom they work. But there are a few — yes, I could drop names; I won’t — who are in it to make a buck, and don’t care who they hurt along the way. There are others who through malign intent or sheer incompetence seem to turn to shit everything they touch. Before you sign to work with anyone, make certain you know what category they fall into.

Keep writing!

 

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Monday Musings: The Story of the Storyteller On My Desk

In May of 1994, Nancy and I took our first trip to New Mexico. (We have been back several times since, and we’re always looking forward to our next visit; it is one of our favorite places in the world.) By that time, we had been married for three years, and we had been talking about visiting the state since the beginning of our relationship. Early in that year, Nancy told me it was time to plan our visit, because she was ready to start a family, and, she said, “this time next year, I expect to be pregnant.”

Yes, ma’am. She was more than right, by the way. Our older daughter was born in May 1995.

At the time, I was still in the dreaming stage of my career. I had started work on the book that would become my first published novel, Children of Amarid, and an editor from Tor Books had expressed interest in the series. My agent at the time was negotiating terms with Tor, and already I was learning an early, nerve-wracking lesson about the slow pace of New York publishing. We had yet to sign a contract, and I despaired of ever doing so.

One of the many joys of visiting New Mexico is experiencing the artistry of the native peoples there. The various Pueblo communities produce their own styles of jewelry, pottery, wood carving, and other forms of visual art. During that first visit, I was drawn in particular to ceramic representations of the Storyteller, the embodiment of oral tradition, a symbol of shared history and community lore. Storyteller figures are typical rendered as open-mouthed (in the midst of relating some tale) with smaller figures — children, ostensibly — perched around and/or on them. The Storyteller can be of any gender. They can also take the form of an animal or bird, and they can support any number of smaller figures on their lap, their limbs, their shoulders.

I saw the figures as a symbol of my dream of being a professional writer, and I wanted desperately to find one to take home with me. Unfortunately, the figures are intricately crafted, and their price reflected that. I couldn’t find one that both spoke to me and was affordable.

As part of our visit to New Mexico that spring, Nancy and I made our way out to the Acoma Pueblo. Acoma is known as Sky City, because it is perched on a gorgeous, craggy mesa in the desert west of Albuquerque. It is one of the oldest communities in all of North America, and it is known for, among other things, its exquisite pottery. You can’t drive to the top of the mesa, but rather must park below and walk up. And you can’t just wander the community on your own. You can only access it by taking a tour.

The StorytellerDuring our tour, we encountered many people selling pottery in front of their homes. And at one table, a mother displayed her wares beside those of her young daughter. I think the girl must have been around 7 or 8, give or take a year, and she had made a few small bowls, seed pots, and dishes. And she had made a tiny storyteller. As one would expect, it was quite crude compared to those we had seen for sale back in Albuquerque (we hadn’t yet been to Santa Fe or Taos), but something about the figure spoke to me. Maybe is was just that the storyteller was so cute. Or maybe it was that the girl herself was so proud of it. Or maybe I saw in this child’s early effort to follow in her mother’s footsteps something akin to my dream of becoming a professional writer. Whatever the reason, I asked the girl how much it cost.

She looked at her mom, seeming surprised that she might actually sell something. Her mom said, “Five dollars.”

“I’ll take it.”

I handed the girl the money. She wrapped up the storyteller she’d made and gave it to me. And Nancy and I followed our tour to another part of Sky City.

Acoma Kiva, by David B. CoeThat was a magical day in many ways. Acoma was as beautiful as we had been told, the pale red stone of the Pueblo seeming to glow beneath a deep azure sky, wooden kiva ladders rising above their structures and reaching toward the clouds. At one point, I spotted a rainbow in the clouds overhead — there was no rain, just the prismatic color, which appeared for a moment and then vanished. I think I was the only one on the tour who saw it. I believed that, together, the rainbow and my little storyteller were omens, signs that my dream would, in fact, come to pass.

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Two months later, I got my first contract from Tor Books. Children of Amarid wasn’t published for another three years — that first book needed a lot of editorial work. But I was on my way.

Nearly twenty-nine years later, the storyteller I bought that day in Acoma still sits on my desk, right beside my computer screen. I look at it every day, and it still represents for me the dream that launched my career.

I wish you a wonderful week.

 

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part I

A new month, a new blog series. Not that I’m committing to doing a series every month. Really, I’m not . . . .

[Sigh] What have I done . . . ?

Over the course of my career, which has spanned more than twenty-five years, I have managed to accomplish a lot of things. But it has occurred to me that I have also made some pretty interesting mistakes. And maybe readers would learn something from hearing about a few of them. Certainly they might be entertained. And so, with this week’s post I kick off my “My Best Mistakes” series. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m going to start with a story a number of you might already know from one context or another. If you have seen me on panels or at readings, you might well have heard me tell it. If not, here you go. (And a note pertaining to this post and others to come — I will be telling stories that almost invariably include other people and/or published works of mine that I am still seeking to market. In the interest of discretion, some details of these mistake-stories will be kept purposefully vague. I hope you understand. If you don’t understand . . . well, I really don’t care.)

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Very early in my career — like, one book in — I attended a very large convention as a guest. It was by far the largest, best-attended con I’d been, too, and at first I was a bit star-struck by the whole thing. Unfortunately, that didn’t last. Read on.

One of my panels was on character-building. Or at least I think it was. Maybe it was on things that happen to us when we write. Or things we can talk about that will allow an impulsive, full-of-himself-young-writer-with-one-lonely-book-to-his-name to do stupid things. I was on the panel with three other authors. Two of them I didn’t know, though they seemed to be solid mid-list authors, each with several publishing credits. The third was a giant in the field. This writer also published with Tor, my publisher, and might well have been one of their three biggest names. I was nothing compared to this person. I was lint.

Somehow, the discussion turned to that wonderful creative moment when our characters begin to do things that we don’t expect, that we don’t necessarily plan. I have written and spoken about this quite a bit. To my mind, it is the moment when we discover that all the work we’ve done to create realistic characters has paid off. They are acting of their own volition in a sense, though of course we are still creating them. The creation is just happening deep in our hind-brains, making it SEEM that they are independent, sentient beings. That, at least is how I felt — and still feel — about it.

The big-name writer disagreed. This person responded to what I had said about this by telling me, in no uncertain terms, in front of a roomful of people, that if my characters were not doing exactly what I expected, I was doing it wrong. And be “it” this person meant “writing.”

“You are the god of your world,” this person said. “You control everything.” End of story. As it were.

The other two writers quickly dropped out of the conversation. They sat at the panel table, staring at their hands, keeping silent, and allowing this other idiot — ie. Me — to keep on arguing the point. Because they were very smart. Much smarter than me. I. Whatever.

Me? I just kept on arguing with the big name, the person who could crush me and my career like a bug if they chose to. Because I was right and this person was wrong. That’s what I thought. (Still do, honestly, but that’s beside the point.) Finally, in my growing frustration, I said (at volume, with heat) “If you write them like puppets, they’ll read like puppets!”

And then I realized what I’d done. Big name. Room full of people. Me saying, essentially, that this person wrote flat, boring, lifeless characters. Holy fuck.

As I have said before in other venues, in that instant the entirety of my tiny little career flashed across my eyes. I figured I was totally screwed. Worse, I had screwed myself.

Now, as it turned out, I was fine. The conversation shifted to another topic. I kept my voice down and my opinions blandly neutral for the rest of the panel. And afterward, I apologized profusely. The big name author was gracious, kind, generous, and forgiving.

I was fortunate. I also learned a valuable lesson. Panel discussions can grow heated; the best ones sometimes do. But even when they do, we must remain polite, and we must always refrain from making any of our statements sound personal or targeted. Because that’s the courteous thing to do. But also because we are always going to be on panels with a mix of people, some of them less experienced than we are (or at least equally lacking in experience) and some of them more experienced, with greater reach and a greater capacity to hinder our career advancement.

I got lucky that day. The person at whom I directed my statement understood I was speaking without thinking, in the heat of the moment. Other authors might not have been so understanding. I could have done real damage to my career.

So that is this week’s mistake. In future weeks, I will focus on different sorts of missteps — bad business decisions, bad reactions to reviews, etc. I hope you find the stories helpful.

In the meantime, as always, keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: Two Conversations With My Mom

Mom and meYesterday would have been my mother’s birthday — her 101st. I’ve written about her, and my dad, quit a bit in this space, though I haven’t written about my mother in a couple of years. She was smart and funny, classy and beautiful, quietly ambitious and deeply accomplished. She doted on her children and was, in turn, doted on by my father. She loved to travel and was passionate to the point of reverence about literature and the arts.

No one would ever accuse her of hands-off parenting. That wasn’t her thing. She was a constant and profound presence in the lives of my siblings and me. And yet, when I scour my mind for specific memories of her, I sometimes find them hard to gather. I’m not alone in this regard. My brother and I have discussed this at length and agree that she was, in a way, so constant, so engaged, that specifics give way to a sense of warm omnipresence.

But today, as I think of her, I find myself focusing on two phone conversations that took place rather late in her life and that have stuck with me over the years, for very, very different reasons.

The first took place when I was in graduate school. It was my second year — I’m sure of this, because I recall the project I was working on at the time. My mom loved that I was studying history, and I think she looked forward to me becoming a college professor. She never really approved of my decision to give up history for a career as a fantasy author, and she never saw any of my books in print, which I think would have won her over a bit. But I digress . . . .

She asked me about the project I was working on — a study of changing dynamics within the Democratic Party in the period between the landslide elections of 1964 (Lyndon Johnson) and 1972 (Richard Nixon) — and I told her about what I was learning, but also admitted there were elements of the story I was trying to tell that I had yet to figure out. She began to ask me questions, one after another, and eventually she pointed me to a crucial part of the narrative that I had been missing all along. I know — and knew then — it should have been obvious to me, but I think I was so immersed in the material, I just couldn’t see it.

But Mom did. She had such a nimble mind and was so good at synthesizing information and distilling it down to its most important elements. She was also a remarkable listener, and she liked nothing more than to speak with her children and help them deal with whatever was consuming them at the moment, whether it was a personal problem or an academic one. When I told her how helpful she’d been, and described for her how I could slot her insight into what I’d been writing, she was thrilled. I could hear her beaming. It was a wonderful moment.

Mom was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years later and was pounded by her chemotherapy treatments. Her cancer spread despite the drugs and at one point she needed to have brain surgery to remove a tumor. Not long after, early in 1995, mom slipped into dementia. Conversations with her became next to impossible. That brilliant mind lost its power, its coherence. It was truly tragic. We lost her long before she died.

Except I got her back for one last conversation — the most important I’d ever had up to that point in my life. In May of 1995, Nancy gave birth to our first daughter — after a labor that lasted some forty-two hours. Grueling for Nancy, exhausting for both of us. I called my parents to let them know, figuring I would just speak with my Dad. But Mom got on the phone, too. And for five glorious minutes, she was back. Fully. Miraculously, She asked all the right questions — “How is Nancy?” “What’s the baby’s name?” “Did everything go smoothly?” “Is the baby beautiful?” — and said all the right things, telling me how much she looked forward to meeting Alex, how happy she was for both Nancy and me. I think she even was cogent enough to ask who was taking care of our dog.

I hadn’t had a conversation like that with my mother in months, and the truth is, I never had another one like it. But in that moment, on the most important day of my life thus far, she was there for me. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me, since being there for my siblings and me was what she did best.

I miss her every day. I wish she had seen my books in print. I wish she’d had the opportunity to meet my girls — she would have adored them. I wish I could speak with her today, to get her input on plot lines and her opinions on the issues of the world. I wish I could hear her laugh and see her gorgeous smile. But I will content myself with my memories, and with that sense of loving omnipresence that suffuses all my thoughts of her.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

A Friday Milestone

We built our house in 1998. Or, to be more accurate, we paid other people to build our house in 1998. We took a pre-made design that we found in a book of house floor-plans, and with some help from a local architect, customized it to meet our needs. At the time, our older daughter was three and Nancy was pregnant with our younger daughter. We needed a kid-friendly home that would give the girls space to play, and us room to watch them but also cook dinner and such.

We moved in just before Thanksgiving, and the house we wound up with was even more wonderful than we had hoped. Sure, it has its quirks. All houses do. But this one has served us so well over the past twenty-four years (going on twenty-five). We raised our daughters here, pursued our careers here, build a family and home here. We have loved and grieved in this house, celebrated and brooded in this house, and everything else under the sun.

Our first Christmas in the house, my brothers and sister came with their families to visit us. An ice storm knocked out power the day before Christmas, and we didn’t get it back for two days. It was very cold, but we managed to have a good time.

As the girls grew older, our lives and needs changed, so back in 2011 we remodeled and refinanced, turning a back porch into a teen-friendly den, and redoing our kitchen (and incurring additional debt). We’ve cooked some amazing food in that new kitchen, but of course, we cooked some great food in the old one, too.

I bring all of this up because today we reached a milestone: We paid off the last of our mortgage. The house is fully ours, which is pretty cool. Just thought I’d share the moment.

Have a great weekend.

Bell Bridge Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Invasives, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday (On Thursday): About Deadlines

Yes, this is a Professional Wednesday post, going up on a Thursday morning. And it’s about dealing with deadlines and professional obligations, which should give you some hint as to where this essay is going . . . .

I apologize for not getting my Wednesday post up on Wednesday. I would say it won’t happen again, but that would be dishonest. It’s rather likely to happen again at some point. Read on . . . .

Deadlines and obligations are part of any profession, but they seem to loom larger in the literary world than in most others. We writers tend to work in isolation. We don’t go to offices to ply our trade. We have few meetings. We don’t wind up on committees or task forces or action groups or anything of the sort. We have, essentially, one professional duty: We are expected to turn shit in on time. That’s a slight oversimplification. Yes, we have to compose lovely prose. We have to construct narratives, develop characters, create settings, tease out themes and moods and emotions and the like.

But in presenting our work to the outside world, in moving from the creative process to the marketing of our work, our responsibilities come down, largely, to deadlines. Deadlines for submission, for revisions, for copyedits, for proofs. And I don’t mean to downplay the challenges deadlines can present. Being able to create on demand is THE defining attribute of a professional artist. We don’t wait for the muse. We don’t create when the mood strikes us. We produce regularly, and often we do so on someone else’s schedule.

I have been on both sides of deadlines: I have written to them, and I have imposed them on writers sending material to me for editing. And so, I feel confident in discussing how to manage them and how to handle the conversation when we know we’re going to miss them.

The Outlanders, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)The first deadline I missed was on my second novel, The Outlanders, the middle book of the LonTobyn Chronicles trilogy. And I had good excuses. Between the time I started writing the book, and the day the first draft of the manuscript was due to Tor, our first child was born, my mother died, my father died, and my siblings and I had to settle my father’s estate.

Being a first-time parent was glorious, but it consumed my days and disrupted my nights. Losing both my parents in quick succession was brutal, and the loss of my father hit me particularly hard. HIS father was still alive (my grandfather was over 100 at the time), and his mother had died in her nineties. We thought he would live forever. His death devastated us all.

With the deadline for The Outlanders approaching, I reached out to my editor at Tor Books and told him the book would be late. How late? I had no idea. I was stuck, an emotional wreck, and I didn’t know how to get unstuck. But I promised him I would get it done, if he could just be patient with me. He was, and I did.

That conversation was hard, but it was the right one to have. Looking back, however, I realize I should have initiated it months earlier. The first lesson of dealing with deadlines is this: As soon as we understand that we are going to miss a deadline, we need to alert our editors (and our agents, if we have representation). Missed deadlines impact our publishers as well as the other authors in the publishing queue with us and behind us. A deadline is an obligation with consequences beyond our own lives, and we owe it to the people doing business with us to be as honest and forward-looking as possible.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)Yes, sometimes we think we’re going to miss a deadline, and then we make it. And if we alert our publisher prematurely, we could lose our spot in the queue. So be it. That’s the price of acting professionally. When our older daughter first was diagnosed with cancer, I told my editor and my agent what had happened, and let them know I was probably going to be late with the novel I was writing. As it turned out, writing that book — Invasives, the second Radiants novel — was a wonderful escape, and I met my deadline. But I had given up my publishing spot and so the book was released later than I had hoped. It wasn’t that big a deal. As I say, the most important thing is be up front about the situation with those who need to know.

Sometimes, we fall behind on our writing not because of life events, but simply because we’re struggling with the story, with the writing itself. Again, communication is the key. In that case, we should reach out to our editor. Let them know we’re having trouble. It may be that a conversation with someone who knows the story, who understands what we’re trying to do with the characters, who might even have already published previous books in the series, will help us clarify our thinking and get us back on track and on schedule. At the very least, it will alert our editor to a potential problem with the upcoming deadline.

And sometimes we just bump up against the realities of the creative process: It doesn’t always conform to our scheduling and planning. Art can be messy and inefficient. In making our commitments, in accepting deadlines in the first place — and usually we have the opportunity to agree to a deadline or to ask for more (or less) time — we have to keep this reality in mind. We have to plan well. We have to avoid setting ourselves up for failure by agreeing to a more ambitious timeline than we are capable of meeting. Once we have have made our commitment, we have to budget our time and then stick to the calendar we’ve set.

In the end, there is really no secret or magic formula to any of this. We must be honest — with ourselves and with our colleagues. We have to do the work. And we have to anticipate problems before they arise.

Easy-peasy. Usually. Every once a while, missing a deadline can’t be helped. And then a Wednesday post goes up on a Thursday.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: What Matters? Part V — Frivolity and the Importance of Things That Don’t Matter

For all of January, I have been writing about “what matters” and what doesn’t. I’ve written about this in terms of our personal lives and our professional ones. And I fear I have left readers with the impression that, in my opinion, all they do should be geared toward those things we decide do matter, that when it comes to allocating our personal time, our emotional energy, our intellectual focus, “what matters?” should guide all of our choices.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“What matters?” is, I believe, a useful question to ask ourselves. I remember back when I was in college, sitting on the green of Brown’s campus, talking to a friend, and thinking to myself, “I really have a shit-ton of work to do. Should I be here, or should I be in the library?” And yes, there were times when I realized the conversation I was having didn’t rate in terms of importance. In those moments, I confessed to having a lot to do, and went off to my lonely carrel in the library. At other times, though, I recall answering that silent question differently, certain that the conversation I was having mattered more than work did at the given moment. The work would get done, I knew. My friend needed me. Or I needed them.

And in the same vein, I know beyond doubt that sometimes the things that matter are, in fact, the things of little or no importance. An oxymoron? Maybe. But you know I’m right.

Yes, family and friends matter. Work matters. We should make time for those pursuits that enrich our lives and feed our souls or our bodies: photography, music, gardening, knitting, exercising, hiking, birdwatching, reading, dancing, attending theater or movies or concerts. We all have our interests and passions.

But we can also find value and entertainment and even peace is less lofty activities. Sometimes what we need is an hour or two of mindless television, or a good game (baseball, football, basketball, soccer, hockey, whatever) to watch and cheer. Sometimes spending a half hour absorbed in a ridiculous video game is just the thing to clear our thoughts.

If we spend every minute of every day worrying about what matters and doing the things that are most important, we will burn ourselves out. At no time in the past several weeks, as I have written about the things that matter, have I meant to imply otherwise. As in all endeavors, we must find balance. I work daily. I devote time to my family, marriage, my parenting. I try to do the things I love, to make good use of as much of my time as I can. But I also know that some of that “good use” can be put to silly, meaningless stuff that I enjoy.

I have games on my phone that I play daily. (No, I won’t tell you which ones. That would be embarrassing . . . .) I listen to music, not because it enriches me (though it often does) but because it’s fun. Nancy and I have shows we love to watch, and yes, part of the joy lies in watching together. But part of the joy is also just losing ourselves in storylines that are amusing, or suspenseful, or exciting, or even trashy. (Looking at you, creators of The Crown . . . .) I love watching sports on television. Baseball, soccer, basketball — I can lose myself in a good game even if I don’t care too much about either team. I like watching golf, too, mostly because it takes me back to my youth, when I watched with my dad and he taught me all he knew about the game.

Early on in this series of posts, I wrote about managing our days, and looking for ways to maximize the time we spend on those things we deem important. I don’t mean to contradict that earlier post. I mean merely to counter it with a simple reality: We can’t allocate every moment to weighty endeavors. Life demands that we slow down now and then and give ourselves a break, whatever that might mean.

And so, as I wind down my series of “What matters?” posts, I urge you to ask the question when it seems appropriate, but also to give yourself a break now and again. Being directed is great. And on occasion, so is being frivolous. Because ultimately, what matters is that we’re well and whole.

Wishing you all the best, and a very fine week to come.

Baen Books, Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, Case Files of Justis Fearsson, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Invasives, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, The Chalice War, Thieftaker Chronicles, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday: The Twisted, Tortured Story of THE CHALICE WAR

The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. CoeMy “What matters?” series of posts will conclude next Monday, after a Monday Musings post this week that straddled the personal and professional a bit more than usual. In the meantime, I am using today’s Professional Wednesday post to begin pivoting toward the impending release of my new series, a contemporary urban fantasy that delves deeply into Celtic mythology. The series is called The Chalice War, and the first book is The Chalice War: Stone. It will be released within the next month or so, and will be followed soon after by the second book, The Chalice War: Cauldron, and the finale, The Chalice War: Sword.

In my experience, every new project has a story (no pun intended) and this one is no different. Back in the summer of 2009, I was in a bit of a career doldrums. Blood of the Southlands, my third epic fantasy series, was complete, and all but the third book had been released. The series had done well critically, but sales were a bit disappointing — a pattern I had encountered before and would again — and I was trying to figure out where to go next. I had pitched the first iteration of what would become the Thieftaker series to my agent, and she was trying to sell it to Tor Books. But, as always, the publishing world was moving at a snail’s pace, and I had nothing to do.

Within half a year, I would be working on the Robin Hood novelization and starting to convert Thieftaker from an epic fantasy to a historical urban fantasy. But for the moment, I was without a project.

And then an idea came to me — a sudden flash of insight into what would become a pivotal scene in Stone. I took the idea and ran with it. First, I read a ton of material on Celtic history and lore, taking copious notes and figuring out how I might create modern-day versions of the heroes and deities I was reading about. Then, my research complete (for the moment), I began to write the first draft of a contemporary urban fantasy.

I didn’t do much outlining, but rather allowed the novel to take me where it might. And boy did it take me to some interesting places. It started in an imagined bedroom community in northern Virginia, soon evolved into a cross-country trek on U.S. Interstate 40, and wound up on the Strip in Las Vegas. The Battle Furies — the Morrigan — showed up. Turns out, in addition to being goddesses who fed on strife and human suffering, who could turn themselves into a winged horse (Macha) and twin giant ravens (Badbh and Nemain), who drove armies to a killing frenzy and men to uncontrollable lust, they were also Vegas nightclub singers.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)I finished the book and showed it to my agent. She liked it a lot, but thought it needed work. She was right, of course. But by that time, I had signed the contracts for Robin Hood and the Thieftaker books. Not too long after, I finally sold the Fearsson series to Baen Books and so had that trilogy to get through.

But I never forgot my Celtic urban fantasy, or its heroes Marti and Kel. When I had some spare time, I went back and rewrote the book, incorporating revision notes from friends and from my agent with my own sense of what the book needed. I rewrote it a second time a couple of years later, and having some time, started work on a second volume, this one set in Australia (where my family and I lived in 2005-2006). I stalled out on that book about two-thirds of the way in, but I liked what I had. By then, though, I was deeply involved with the final Thieftaker books and the Fearsson series. And I was starting to have some ideas for what would become the Islevale trilogy.

The Celtic books languished in a virtual trunk, not forgotten, but ignored. I didn’t know how to end the second book. I knew the first book needed another rewrite. And I had no idea how to complete the trilogy.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)But I had been through this before. The first book in the Case Files of Justis Fearsson went through at least half a dozen iterations between the first draft, written in 2005, and its eventually publication in 2014. I first came up with the basic concept for Invasives, the second Radiants book, in 2009. It sat on my computer desktop for more than ten years before I actually used it.

I revised Stone yet again, and in so doing, came up with an idea of how to complete the second novel. I rewrote what I had written of that novel, and this time got past whatever had held me back and managed to complete it. And in finishing that volume, I came up with an approach for the third book. It was daring, and quite different from the first two books, but it worked. I set that one in Ireland, and also in the Underrealm.

Finally, in 2021, I had a conversation with Deb Dixon, my marvelous editor at Bell Bridge Books. She asked me what I was thinking of writing next, and I said, “Well, I have this series I’ve been working on — a contemporary urban fantasy steeped in Celtic mythology . . . .”

Her response: “Yes, please.”

The moral of the story should be clear: Never, ever, give up on a project. Sometimes we’re not ready to write the ideas we have. Sometimes our imagination outstrips our creative abilities. At other times, our careers take us in other directions, and we’re not yet ready to pursue projects that we know we want to write eventually. And at still other times, our ideas come to us piecemeal. We can’t see the entire work, but we know there is something there worth writing.

All three of these things were true for me. On some level I knew what I wanted to do with the Celtic books back when I wrote that first iteration of Stone. But I wasn’t yet a good enough writer to do justice to the idea. I had other projects that were more fully formed and that I needed to work on in the moment. And so I did. And the idea for the trilogy took time to percolate.

In the end, these are books I love, stories I’m proud to see come to fruition. I look forward to sharing them with all of you.

Keep writing!!

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