Tag Archives: Thieftaker

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Monday Musings: “What’s Next?” Well, How About Some Big News?

“When I ask ‘What’s Next?’ it means I’m ready to move on to other things. So, what’s next?” — Jed Barlet, THE WEST WING

Yeah, I will seek out almost any excuse to quote from The West Wing, it being my favorite television series of all time. But as it happens, this is a question that’s been on my mind for a while now. In the show, “What’s next?” was more than a change of topic or a jump to the next agenda item. It was also used to turn the page after a setback, to refocus the staff after a triumph, even to look for a new beginning after tragedy.

As is the case with so much that happens in the course of the show’s seven seasons, the quote has long had great significance for me, and this is especially true now.

I know better than to think I can “turn the page” or “move on” from the past year. And even if I could, I’m not certain I would. But I am ready to restart my life, to venture back out into the professional and personal world, to find a new routine that makes room for all the emotional complexity of the new reality my family and I face.

In some ways, I have already started this process. I finished a book a few weeks ago, one I started back in January. It was sort of a work-for-hire, tie-in book, but it was fun to write. The plotting and character work proved absorbing, and because I started it later than I intended, the deadline kept me focused, motivated, and, yes, just a little manic. If it seems like I am avoiding telling you anything specific about the book itself, that’s because I am. Sorry. For now, I can’t really talk about it. When I can, you will all be among the first to know.

I have also written a novella for a new shared-world anthology that will be released this summer by Zombies Need Brains. And, as some of you have seen, I am again accepting clients for my freelance editing business. At the end of this month, I will attend ConCarolinas, my first convention since DragonCon last September. Baby steps. But steps forward, which is the point.

Today, I can also share some news about What’s Next that I think will please a good many of you.

First a little background.

Many of you will have seen my blog post about the trip Nancy and I recently took to Italy. If you haven’t, you should check it out. For the photos, if nothing else. While we were in Venice, I fell in love with the city’s narrow lanes, ancient bridges, and gorgeous architecture. It is, visually speaking, the loveliest city I’ve ever seen. And there are no cars — all travel within the city is by boat, by foot, or by bicycle. Walking the streets was like a journey back in time.

Street sign in Venice: "Rio Terra Dei Assassini"
Street sign in Venice: “Rio Terra Dei Assassini,” which means, basically, “Street-That-Used-To-Be-A-Canal Of The Murderers.”

We took tours of the Doge’s Palace and Saint Mark’s Basilica (both were spectacular), and one of our tour guides mentioned that while Venice is a very safe city today, once upon a time it was anything but. And as proof of this, she said, we should pay attention to some of the street names. “Street of the Dead,” “Lane of the Murderers,” “Street of the Head” (that’s not a typo), and more.

And, of course, this set my writer brain in motion. One thing led to another, and I can tell you now that I am beginning work on a new Thieftaker universe series set in 18th century Venice. I don’t know yet if it will be a spin-off or will feature Ethan throughout. I don’t even know how I am going to get Ethan to Venice, though I have some ideas about that. But I have already commenced my research for the books and I am totally jazzed. One publisher has already expressed interest in seeing a series proposal, so that’s good as well.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)What about the rest of my life? What’s next in other realms?

Well, we’re about to start doing some work on the house — I won’t say it’s overdue, but it comes at a good time. We have more travel planned for later in the year and several weddings to attend this summer and fall. We’ll see Erin. We’ll see other family and many friends. I’ll be at DragonCon late this summer. And we’ll continue to heal, even as we also look for ways to honor Alex’s memory and celebrate her life.

I look forward to crossing paths with many of you in the months to come. We have some catching up to do.

Have a great week.

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Professional Wednesday: The Last Book of a Series

The Chalice War: Sword, by David B. CoeA week and a half from today, on Friday, August 4, The Chalice War: Sword, the final book in my Celtic urban fantasy trilogy, will be released by Bell Bridge Books. (The first two books, The Chalice War: Stone and The Chalice War: Cauldron, are already out and available. If you haven’t already gotten them, please consider doing so. And if you have read them, please consider leaving reviews at your favorite book sites.)

I won’t bother telling you that I’m excited for this release (though I really am). The fact is, I get excited for every new release (but especially this one — really!). Even after so many published books (Sword will be my 30th) the thrill remains much the same. And there is something extra special about the concluding book in a series. A couple of weeks ago, near the end of my “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings” feature, I wrote about the things we want to accomplish with the final chapters of our novels, including bringing our story to a satisfying and thrilling culmination, completing our character arcs, and tying up our remaining loose ends. We want to do this with any novel, but to state the obvious, it is absolutely crucial to nail the ending of a final book in a series.

The Chalice War: Stone, by David B. CoeThe premise of The Chalice War trilogy is fairly simple. The four treasures of the Sidhe — the Stone of Fal, the Spear of Lugh, the Daghda’s Cauldron, and the Sword of Nuadu — are chalices of magic. As long as they remain in this world, the Above, the Sidhe sorcerers living in our midst can continue to protect our world. But the Fomhoire, masters of the demon Underrealm, seek to take the chalices from our world into the Below, and if they succeed, magic will cease to exist in our world and demons will overrun the face of the earth.

The first two books are set entirely in the Above — our world — where Sidhe sorcerers do battle with Fomhoire demons to protect two of the chalices (the titles give away which ones). But I wanted to do something different with the third book. And honestly, for a long time, I didn’t know what exactly that would look like.

The Chalice War: Cauldron, by David B. CoeYou see, I wrote the first iteration of book one, Stone, more than a decade ago, when I was in a lull in my career and was looking for something to write for the fun of it. I loved that first draft, but it needed work, and around the time I finished it, I signed my first Thieftaker contract, putting an end to the aforementioned lull. I started work on the second book, Cauldron, about seven years ago, hit a wall, put it away, came back to it four years later and finished it. Now, usually when I write a series, I know as I begin book one how the last book will end. Not with this series, because when I wrote that first book, I was playing around. I had no idea what it would become. So even after I finished the second book, I still wasn’t sure what to do with the series, because I had no idea how to write the third book without making it simply a repeat of one of the first two.

Except that’s not quite true. Early in the series, I reveal that the Fomhoire have already succeeded in stealing one of the chalices. The Sword of Nuadu is already in the Underrealm; the future of our world is poised on the edge of a blade. So, naturally, book 3 had to be about a journey into the Underrealm, the demon world, to steal back the lost sword.

But the idea of this intimidated me. I had no idea what the demon realm was like. I had no idea how to write such a book. So, I put books 1 and 2 back in a drawer, and I wrote the Radiants books, which was fun and great. I LOVE those books.

But the Chalice books haunted me. And the challenges of that third book called to me. I needed to create the demon realm, making it believable and tangible and rich and compelling, but also menacing enough to carry its share of the plot. I needed to have an exciting, engaging second plot line set in our world so that the characters who don’t go to the Below are still busy with Important Stuff. And, as mentioned earlier, I needed to nail the ending, to hit all the right emotional notes while tying off every one of my plot threads from the three books.

No pressure.

The fact is, not knowing what to write is an impediment to starting a project. But perceiving challenges? Seeing in a potential novel tasks that are going to force me to grow as a storyteller? That right there is incentive. And once I started working on the third novel, once I overcame that sense of intimidation, the book flowed quite easily. The result, in my biased opinion, is a strong, successful conclusion to what I believe is one of my best series yet. I hope you agree.

I posted a teaser last Friday, and will post another one this Friday. I hope you enjoy all three books. Thank you, as always, for your support of my work!

Keep writing!!The Chalice War trilogy, by David B. Coe

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Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, part II — Narrative Structure

Last week, I began a new Professional Wednesday feature called “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings,” in which I plan to write about the various parts of story writing. In last week’s post, I focused on openings, on how to approach the beginning of a novel or short story.

This week, I take on middles, and I imagine this will be the first of a couple of essays on the subject. Because let’s be honest: By far the biggest chunk of what we write is the “middle.” Even if we take the first two or three chapters as the opening, and the last two or three as the ending, that still leaves the vast majority of our novel occupying the middle. So any discussion of how to handle that middle is going to have to touch on several topics. And today, I am beginning with a general overview — the 10,000 foot view, if you will.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)First, though, it occurs to me that in writing about openings last week, I left out one crucial, but easy-to-describe story element: “the inciting event.” The inciting event of your narrative is, quite simply, the thing that jump-starts your story, that takes the characters you have introduced in your opening lines from a place of relative stasis to a place of flux, of change, of tension and conflict and, perhaps, danger. It is the commencement of the narrative path that will carry your characters through the rest of the story. In his description of the Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell referred to the inciting event as the “Call to Adventure.” If you’re looking for examples, think of the arrival of the first letter from Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, or the appearance of Gandalf at Bilbo Baggins’s door in The Hobbit. In pretty much all the Thieftaker books and stories, it is the arrival of whoever Ethan’s new client will be for that episode.

Your inciting event can be anything. Whatever launches your narrative, taking your lead character from a place of balance and peace to one of conflict and tension. And really, that’s it. We can make it more complicated, but it doesn’t need to be.

This description of the inciting event allows me to segue into a broader discussion of story structure, since any formula for narrative will include the inciting event. The most common storytelling model — the one that comes up most when I have conversations with fellow writers — is the three-act structure. This is a fairly simple and helpful framework by which to organize our narrative. Act One is the “Setup” and includes an introduction to our characters and setting, as well as the inciting event and an early climax. Act Two is called “Confrontation.” Here our story takes off, with ever-increasing action and tension, a series of obstacles placed in the path of our heroes, a midway-point plot-twist, and ultimately a crisis that precipitates a second story climax. Act Three, “Resolution,” features our story’s resolving climax, a diminution of action, and finally a denouement that resolves outstanding issues, eases tension, and, in most cases, leaves our characters changed, but at relative peace. You can Google “Three Act Structure” and find essays about this approach as well as visual representations of the structure. I should add as well, that there is also a five-act structure that I find less compelling and useful than this one.

Okay, confession time.

When I write, I never think in terms of “Acts” and I don’t graph out my chapters to make certain I am following the schematic one sees in the results of the aforementioned Google search. It’s not that I find fault with the three-act structure, or try to avoid it in any way. To the contrary. I expect that I use it in every project; if you were to superimpose one of those graphics onto the narrative structure of any of my novels, you would probably find that I write in three acts all the time, following the model quite closely.

What I said was, I don’t THINK in terms of “Acts.” I never have. Not even with my earliest novels. I believe by that point I had already thoroughly internalized the three-act structure, having been exposed to it in novels, movies, television shows, theater, etc. for pretty much my entire life. Writing in that form came as second nature.

Now, that is not to say that those who do organize their novels and stories using the three-act structure have somehow failed to internalize it as I did. Not in the least. The model is so prevalent that I think all of us have it ingrained to some degree, even those who don’t create stories for a living. This is why two writers, one who outlines and one who writes without any narrative plotting written down ahead of time, can both come up with tales that closely follow this structure. As with a written outline, I think of the three-act structure as a narrative tool, something some writers use to organize their thoughts ahead of time. I outline by chapter. Sometimes. I also write without an outline. Sometimes.

And without actually visualizing my story as a three-act graphic, I almost always write in three acts. So why don’t I think in those terms as I’m writing or even outlining? I suppose I am leery of imposing any predetermined structure on my story planning. Even if I wind up following the structure, I want it to happen organically, without the sort of premeditation that might convince me to plot according to pattern rather than according to the exigencies of my story, my characters, my creative vision.

Where does this leave our conversation, and what does it mean for whatever advice I might offer in this first post about story middles?

First, pay attention to the structure of movies and television shows you watch and books you read or listen to. The best learning tools at your disposal are the narratives crafted by creators you enjoy and respect.

Second, even if you don’t plot strictly according to the three-act structure, be aware of the rough pattern illustrated in those visual representations. You want to have an inciting event, a huge twist near the middle, and a deep crisis for your protagonist near the climax. You want your narrative tension to climb until your final climax. And you want there to be resolution at the end.

Third, write your story. Just write it. Get it down on paper (or phosphors). Don’t obsess over structure and whether you have every plot point in the right place. Write it. Finish it. And then, if the structure needs adjustment, handle that in revisions. Your story need not conform to anyone else’s concept of what “narrative” should look like. Write it as you imagine it. And if you decide to “fix” things later, make sure you do so in service to the story YOU want to tell, not the structure someone else says is “correct.”

Keep writing.

Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Invasives, The Chalice War, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Another Letter To My Younger Self

Dear Younger Me,

Yes, it’s me again — Middle Aged David. Upper Middle Aged David, actually. I know I wrote to you earlier this week. I remember doing so. I’m not so far gone quite yet. But I thought you might benefit from a second letter focused on the professional side of things. As I told you on Monday, we did wind up having a career in writing, just as we dreamed when we were a kid. And, also as I told you, our professional life hasn’t followed precisely the path we envisioned. That’s fine. We’ve had a good ride so far. But there’s stuff you should know, stuff I wish I had known.

I suppose all of it can be summed up in two words — and I hate to resort to cliché, in a writing post no less, but it really is true. Shit happens. It does, it does, it does. And it has happened to us. More than once.

The biggest mistake I made — we made — early on was assuming our career trajectory would be linear, a progression toward greater and greater success, higher and higher advances, bigger and better sales numbers. That may be true for a select few, but for most writers a career follows a meandering, uncertain path. Some books and series are more successful than others — commercially and critically. I call that early expectation of ever-improving circumstance our biggest mistake not because it somehow led to a disappointing outcome for one project or another, but because it caused me — us — so much pain. When our career hit that first speed bump, I took it personally. I felt I had failed, and also that the industry had failed me. I was confused and angry and sad and, most of all, terrified at the thought that this first disappointment would mean the end of our professional journey. I didn’t yet understand the nature of a creative life.

And so I say to you, Younger Me, learn resilience. Grieve for those lofty unmet ambitions, but then move on and try again. Learn moderation. Don’t let commercial and critical success carry you too high, and don’t let poor results drive you too low. Success will follow failure, which will follow success, and so on. If you can — and I know it’s so, so hard — learn to let go of expectation entirely. We don’t know which books will soar and which will flop. We love them all, which is why we go to the extreme trouble of writing them in the first place. And finally, learn contentment. Love the stories you create on their own terms. Find success in the completion of a good tale, in the realization of an artistic vision.

Take every promise made to you by an editor and publisher with a grain of salt. It’s not that they don’t mean what they say. Okay, SOME of them don’t mean what they say. But mostly, they simply can’t anticipate all that might happen. Producing a book is no small feat. A thousand things can go wrong. Editors and publishers often tell us, as if gospel, that a certain thing is going to happen on a given date. And that is, at the moment, their best guess of what will happen. Pencil in the date. Don’t commit it to ink. Because, as we have established, shit happens.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)All those great ideas you have for jacket art? They’re not as great as you think they are. Seriously. We are a writer. And we’re very, very good at that. We are NOT a graphic artist. We are NOT a marketing expert. I remember when the first Thieftaker novel went into production, I had what I thought was SUCH a wonderful idea for the jacket art. A can’t miss idea. PERFECT for the book. It wasn’t any of those things. The moment I saw Chris McGrath’s image for the book, which WAS brilliant and wonderful and perfect, I understood that no one should ever put me — us — in charge of selecting jacket art.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)On the other hand, do trust in your story ideas. All of them. Even the old ones that haven’t yet gone anywhere. At some point, you’ll have an idea for a story about three kids living in the subway tunnels beneath New York City. And you won’t have any idea what to do with it. You’ll give up on it. Don’t. It will become Invasives. At another time, you’ll write a story about two women interacting with Celtic deities and trying to protect an ancient, transcendently powerful magical artifact. That one, too, will seem to languish. Trust the story. That book just came out. It’s called The Chalice War: Stone. Believe in your vision.

If a publisher promises more than you think they can deliver, under terms that seem way too good to be believed, be skeptical. Very, very skeptical. Chances are, they CAN’T deliver. Chances are those terms can’t be met. We’ve been burned a couple of times. ’Nough said.

Over the past twenty-five-plus years, I have tried to thank Nancy every single day for making our career possible. And I’ll continue to thank her. But I might have missed a few days. Fill in the gaps, will you?

Most of all, keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll do the same. No, we haven’t gotten all we wanted, we haven’t achieved every goal. But we’re doing okay, and as much fun as you’ve been having early in our career, I’m having even more now. It keeps getting better.

And yes, the rumors are true. We’re editing now, and we like it. The dark side really is more powerful . . . .

Best wishes,

Older David

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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!!

Bell Bridge Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Invasives, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, The Chalice War, Thieftaker Chronicles, Time's Demon, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Professional Wednesday: Planning For Next Year — Try Something New!

The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. CoeAs you know, early in 2023 I will be coming out with a new urban fantasy series that is steeped in Celtic mythology. Before working on this series, I hadn’t known much about Celtic lore. But I did my research, learned all I could, and then started to imagine ways in which I might blend those Celtic traditions with my vision for the stories I wanted to write. I tried to be respectful of traditions that are not my own, while also having fun and writing something I hoped would be fun for my readers.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)Two years ago at this time, I was revising Radiants and starting to organize my plans for Invasives, the second book in the sequence. I had never written a supernatural thriller before, but I had the idea and wanted to give it a go.

Two years before that I had just released the second Islevale book and was working on Time’s Demon, the second book in the trilogy. These were my first forays into writing time travel and while I knew there were tremendous pitfalls to writing in that particular subgenre, I wanted to give it a try. Plotting a time travel series is probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever attempted as a professional writer; I doubt I will ever try it again, but I’m glad I did it once.

TIME'S DEMON, by D.B. Jackson (Art by Jan Weßbecher)Around that same time, I was also reading submissions for the Temporally Deactivated anthology, my first co-editing venture. Last year I opened my freelance editing business, and a year ago at this time, I was editing a manuscript for a client.

Back in 2015-2016, again at this time of year, I was working on the Author’s Edit of the LonTobyn Chronicle, my first series. Up until then, I had never re-released any of my old work, but I had the rights back, and I knew I could improve the books with a deep edit of the original manuscripts.

Yes, there is a point to all of this.

Temporally Deactivated, edited by David B. Coe and Joshua B. PalmatierLast week, I wrote about planning out my professional activities for the coming year. This week, I want to discuss a different element of professional planning. My point in starting off with a list of those projects from past years is that just about every year, I try to take on a new challenge, something I’ve never attempted before. I didn’t start off doing this consciously — I didn’t say to myself, “I’m going to start doing something new each year, just to shake things up.” It just sort of happened.

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)As it turns out, these new challenges have brought me to a place where I can say, in all candor, that I have never been happier in my work than I am now. Each time I try something new, I reinvigorate myself as a creator. I force myself out of the tried-and-true, the comfortable. With each of the new projects I mentioned above I had a moment of doubt. I wondered if I was capable of accomplishing what I set out to do. Now, I’m a pretty confident guy when it comes to my writing chops and my ability to help others improve their writing, so those doubts didn’t last long. But they were there each time.

Indeed, part of the joy of taking on the projects lay in pushing myself, in overcoming the doubts and getting the work done. As I’ve written before, writing is hard in any number of ways. We help ourselves when we can self-define our successes, rather than relying on a fickle, difficult marketplace to define them for us. Each of the aforementioned projects boosted my sense of self worth.

The Loyalist Witch, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)But those new challenges did more than that. They kept my professional routine fresh. I am a creature of habit. I try to write/edit/work every day, so in a general sense, my work days and work weeks don’t change all that much. By varying the content of my job — by writing new kinds of stories and expanding my professional portfolio to include editing as well as writing — I made the routine feel new and shiny and exciting. And at the same time, these new projects made it possible to return to some old favorites, notably the Thieftaker series, with renewed enthusiasm.

I also made myself better at my craft and deepened my understanding of and appreciation for the nuances of storytelling. I learned a ton by revising my first books. I saw old mistakes that I was still making, and also gained a fresh appreciation for the ways I had improved as a writer. Writing time travel strengthened my plotting by forcing me to look for the loose ends that might have escaped my notice had my characters not possessed the ability to go back in time and undo my choices! Editing has taught me a ton about my own writing by showing me, in unfamiliar narrative contexts, what story elements work best (and worst).

My point is this: As you begin to plan your professional activities and ambitions for 2023, try to put in your calendar something new and different. It is fine to set as a goal the completion of that novel you’ve been working on for a long time, or the publication of a series you’ve had written for a little while now but haven’t yet sent out into the world. Those are laudable aims, and I wish you every success with them.

But maybe you’ve never tried writing short fiction, or you’ve written stories but never submitted any of them. Maybe you’ve written fantasy but never tried science fiction, or thrillers, or romance. Set as a goal for 2023 taking on one of those new tasks. Allow yourself to accomplish something unfamiliar. At the very least, doing so will force you to grow as an artist, which is always a good thing. And perhaps you will discover a previously unexplored talent and passion for something you hadn’t even considered trying.

Best of luck, and keep writing!

Blogging, Case Files of Justis Fearsson, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, Thieftaker Chronicles, Time's Children, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Most Important Lessons — Dealing With the Slog, part I

Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming…

Yes, I am a Pixar fan. Sue me. My kids were the perfect age for the magical first generation of Pixar movies — Toy Story (1 and 2); Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars (the first one) — and Nancy and I loved them, too.

But Dory’s little don’t-give-up song is more than cute and annoyingly catchy. It also offers a valuable lesson every writer should take to heart.

Today, I continue my “Most Important Lessons” feature, which I began a couple of months ago. In this installment I intend to give a few pointers about what we can do to keep ourselves moving forward in the middle of the slog that is novel-writing.

Because here’s the thing: We writers love to talk about the big events in our professional lives. We shout from the hilltops when we sign a contract or have a new book come out or complete a manuscript. Those are the golden moments, the ones we live for and love to celebrate. But, of course, those moments make up a teeny-tiny fragment of our professional lives. The achievements themselves are significant and worth marking, but they are fleeting and painfully brief. The vast majority of our time is spent working toward those milestones — slogging through the initial drafts of our books and stories, revising and reworking the manuscripts, marketing ourselves and our writing, developing new ideas, or maybe worrying about when we might have a new idea that’s worth a damn.

Of all of these, the first one — slogging through the initial draft of our manuscripts — might be the most difficult. I think it’s safe to say that’s the place where most nascent careers founder. And so that’s where I’m going to focus today.

How do we keep going? How do we avoid becoming one of those aspiring writers who has started ten books but finished none of them, or has started one passion project but stalled at about the 60% mark and cannot move forward from there?

Here are some strategies I have used over the years.

1. Set and internalize your own deadlines. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been very fortunate throughout my career, and have sold several series to publishers large and small. That means I have often written to deadlines imposed upon me by my editors. But most writers in today’s market, even established professionals, have to write the first book in a series before they can sell the project, and so I have also written a lot of books that had no deadline, at least no official one (including Thieftaker, Spell Blind, Time’s Children, Radiants, and the first two books of the new Celtic urban fantasy I’m working on). The deadlines for those books are ones I gave myself. And I can tell you that writing to an external deadline is much easier than writing to a self-imposed one. When we miss an external deadline, we risk angering our editor, giving up our place in the publishing schedule, and even endangering our contract. When we miss a self-imposed deadline, there are essentially no consequences.

And so, we need to internalize our deadlines, to make them feel as real and absolute as the external ones. For me, the best way to do that is to map out my project schedule for an entire calendar year. “Jan. 1-April 15, work on Novel X. April 16-May 31, work on editing projects 1 and 2. June 1-September 15, work on Novel Y. Etc.” This way, missing that first deadline has the potential to set back my entire year. Suddenly, missing my own deadline puts something I care about at risk. These are still all artificial deadlines with artificial consequences, but the more I put at stake with each deadline, the more likely I am to take them seriously, which is the point.

2. Keep your deadlines realistic and achievable. Yeah, I know. That hypothetical calendar in the paragraph above includes two novels, each of which I’m writing in about 3 1/2 months. For me, at this stage of my career, that is realistic and achievable. I’ve been doing this for 27 years. I’ve written a lot of books and a lot of stories. You should not necessarily expect the same of yourself. When I first started, I took a good deal longer to complete each novel. When you make your deadlines, you need to be realistic about what you can get done, and you need to set your timetable accordingly. When we set deadlines that are unachievable, we set ourselves up for failure. The purpose of deadlines is to keep us on task and on schedule. The moment we miss our first deadline, that purpose is blown. We become discouraged. Our projects languish. Before we know it, our next deadline is shot as well, and suddenly we’re back where we don’t want to be, struggling to complete the novel we’ve already been working on for too long. So be realistic (and that includes factoring in travel, family and work obligations, and anything else that might slow you down). Set yourself up for success.

3. If necessary, divide large tasks into smaller, discreet, manageable ones. For some writers, the very notion of writing a novel can be intimidating. For these folks, nothing is scarier than typing “Chapter One” on a page. I get that. To this day, I am somewhat daunted each time I begin a new book. It’s a bit like painting the entire interior of our house. That seems like too huge a job to take on. But when we look at the big project as a series of more limited tasks, we remove some of that pressure. “I might be thinking of painting the entire house, but for now I’m just going to paint this room.”

I approach writing books the same way. I don’t fixate on the big project. I think in terms of chapters. How does the book start? What comes next? What do I need to do after that? And so on. I don’t tend to set deadlines for each chapter, because I write my chapters in one or two days. But again, that is something I can do now that I couldn’t have imagined when I began my career. So by all means, if it feels like it would be helpful, establish a schedule for your writing on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Set realistic, achievable deadlines for their completion and stick to the timetable.

This is already a long post, so I’m going to stop here for this week. Next week, dealing with the curse of the 60% stall!!

Until then . . .

Just keep writing
Just keep writing
Just keep writing…

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Invasives, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing

Professional Wednesday: I’m Stuck

My muse, on the other hand, is a peripatetic tramp who can’t be counted on to show up at any given time on any given day. If I had to wait for that bastard to show in order to write something, I’d still be working on my first novel.

I feel stuck. Have for a while now. It’s nothing too alarming; I’ve been here before. But it is frustrating, and I am ready — past ready — to be, well, unstuck.

I’ve been doing a lot of editing recently, and I enjoy that. It keeps my mind busy. It forces me to think creatively, to consider my craft while also making certain to respect the vision and voice of my client. But it’s not the same as writing.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)And when it comes to writing, I am in something of a rut. The last novel-length piece I wrote beginning to end was Invasives, the second Radiants book, which I completed (the first draft at least) eleven months ago. Eleven months!

I’ve written some short fiction since then. A Thieftaker story, a story for the Silence in the City anthology. I had to revise and polish Invasives, and I have done work on the new Celtic series I’ve recently sold. But the first two of those books were already written. I’ve been revising those, too. I’ve started book 3, but only just.

Noir, edited by David B. Coe and John Zakour, an anthology from Zombies Need BrainsMostly, as I say, I’ve been editing. My work. Other people’s work. The Noir anthology. I’ve been plenty busy, but I have not been as productive creatively as I would like. And I wonder if this is because of all the emotional pressure we (my family and I) have been under over the past year-plus.

Recently, I wrote a couple of what you might call audition chapters for a project I cannot talk about. (There was actually an NDA. I really can’t talk about it.) And I enjoyed that process. I had a tight deadline, a quick turnaround from when I got the information on what I needed to write to when the chapters were due. I met the deadline with ease, and was pleased with the results.

As I say, I’ve been here before. I’m not worried that I’ll never write again. At least not too worried.

I wonder, though, if there is a lesson in that experience with the sample chapters. Maybe what I need is a deadline, one that’s hard and fast and not too far away. Maybe I need that sort of kick in the pants to get going again. I’ve long said that when I go too long without writing, I get cranky.

Well, I’m cranky.

I don’t know if I’ll get the gig I auditioned for. I’m certainly not counting on it. But if I don’t, I need to make myself work on something else. According to the contract, that third Celtic book isn’t due for a long time, but I am thinking I should start writing it now. And I should set a hard deadline for myself, well before the actual due date. I have lots of editing projects looming, so I can easily justify forcing myself to write the book now and quickly.

I don’t know. I need to do something.

Creativity is a strange beast. Often it’s thought of as something that comes to us in sudden sparks of inspiration. It can’t be forced, we’re told. But when it strikes, the feeling is euphoric. And some of that is true some of the time.

Inspiration can be abrupt and unexpected, and those moments can be euphoria-inducing. The thing is though, if we want to make our living as creatives, we can’t afford to wait for the muse, or whatever, to strike. We have mortgages to pay, groceries to buy, bills arriving in the mail each day. This is our job, damnit!

Which means creativity can be forced. Most times it has to be forced. I write pretty much every day. My muse, on the other hand, is a peripatetic tramp who can’t be counted on to show up at any given time on any given day. If I had to wait for that bastard to show in order to write something, I’d still be working on my first novel.

What does this have to do with me being stuck? Honestly, I’m not certain; I’m working this out as I go. But I think the answer is this: Being stuck is as much a part of making a living as a creator as being inspired. It’s the back half of that shining coin. Fields need to lay fallow for a time before they can be productive again. Writers (and other artists) sometimes need to go through periods of creative dormancy before we can dive back into the projects we want to complete.

This is not an excuse. As I said earlier, I’m cranky. I want to be writing again. But I have also learned over the years that beating myself up because I’ve been unproductive accomplishes nothing. On some level, I believe, the creative brain knows what it needs. Just as a body can crave different sorts of food to meet nutritional needs, the artistic mind can seek out times of rest and times of activity.

I have been in the former for long enough, thank you very much. I am ready for the latter.

Keep writing!

Belle Books, Blogging, Blood of the Southlands, Case Files of Justis Fearsson, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Falstaff Books, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing

Monday Musings: About That Professional News I Mentioned Two Months Ago…

Screen shot of Facebook postNearly two months ago, early in the new year, I posted on social media that I had some exciting professional news I couldn’t share quite yet. I was thrilled, and wanted to let people know. But I also didn’t want to say anything before all the details had been settled. So I posted my little teaser, forgetting the one immutable rule of the publishing business: Things always happen slower than one thinks they will.

Well, I can finally make the announcement official. I have signed and sent the contracts, and they are (or soon will be) back in the hands of my publisher.

I have signed a contract for a new trilogy with Belle Books.

What kind of trilogy?

I’ll tell you, but first some brief background. (Sue me: I’m a writer, so I always build suspense, and I’m a historian, so I always fill in backstory . . .)

A little more than a decade ago, in the summer of 2011, I found myself with nothing to write. We (my agent and I) had sold the Thieftaker books to Tor, and had turned in the first volume, but was waiting on revision notes. The year before I’d finished my Blood of the Southlands series and had also published the Robin Hood novelization. We were shopping the Justis Fearsson series, but sensed that the first book needed more work. And, frankly, I was not yet in a state of mind to tackle another rewrite on that front.

And so, with nothing else to do, I started something new. When I named the file folder on my computer desktop, I just called it “NewUF” (new urban fantasy). The book remained untitled for a long time.

The scene I first envisioned (not the first scene in the story) centered around a woman who wakes up from a night she can barely remember with a wound she feels but can’t see. She stumbles to the shower, but the pain only increases. At last she finds herself picking at skin that looks normal but feels rough and scarred. And suddenly blood is cascading down her side. She doesn’t know or remember why.

A little weird, right? Ideas come in all shapes and sizes. Some books take form clearly and sequentially. Some introduce themselves piecemeal, like a jigsaw puzzle. I didn’t know what to make of the scene I’d imagined, but working backward from it I filled out the character of this woman, I sculpted her world, which is basically our world with a magical twist, and I built other characters around her.

The result was a contemporary urban fantasy steeped in Celtic mythology: two women, a Sidhe sorcerer and her human conduit, fighting off shapeshifting Fomhoire demons and their allies from the Underrealm, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

It sounds grim, and it also sounds a bit like other books we’ve seen before. It’s neither. Yes, there is some serious shit going down throughout the book, but there is also humor and there are lots of unexpected twists in both the magical underpinnings of the story and the narrative itself.

I wrote the book in about three months. And then I set it aside. I had final edits to do on Thieftaker and I needed to get started on Thieves’ Quarry, the second book in that series. I loved this other book I’d written, but I knew it was part of a larger project, and I didn’t know yet what to do with the next books in the sequence.

Thieftaker and its sequel did well. We sold the Fearsson series. And abruptly, I had more than enough work to keep me busy for a few years. But I certainly never forgot about my Celtic series, and a few years later, when I pulled the book out of the proverbial drawer, I reworked it, taking into account my agent’s editorial comments from that first draft, and all that I had learned since while writing the Thieftaker and Fearsson books. A couple of years after that, I took it out again and edited it some more. And finding myself once more with a bit of time, I started work on the second volume.

This second book built on what I’d done in book one, but the plot stalled at the 2/3 mark (as books often do) and, with other work to get done — now on the Islevale series — I put it away again.

And on it went. I returned to these books again and again, polishing book one to a high shine, eventually completing and then polishing book two, and finally developing an idea for the third book in the trilogy. By then we’d reached the middle of 2021. I was working on the Radiants series with an incredible publisher and editor, and I decided it was finally time to bring these books out of the drawer they’d been in and present them for possible publication. Which brings us to this post.

We don’t always know what will happen with the stories and books we write. The first book in this new Celtic urban fantasy has, at this point, been through five or six iterations and countless edits. It wasn’t ready in 2011. Not even close. But I believed in the idea, and I knew that with work I could make it into a publishable novel.

Sure, I have other books and stories that have never gone anywhere and probably won’t. I also have ideas like this one that are still awaiting their time.

Never give up on a story you love. Maybe it’s not ready yet. Maybe you haven’t figured out how to end it or where to take subsequent volumes. Maybe you’re not sure what it needs, but you know it needs something. Stick with it. Work on other things as well. Sometimes we need to confront stubborn ideas and stories head on. Sometimes we need to set them aside and let them percolate while we write other characters in other worlds.

I don’t yet know what to call this new series. When I know, you’ll know. The first book is titled Stone Bound. I expect it will be out later in 2022 or early in 2023. The second book is called The Demon Cauldron.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Monday Musings: How I Started Writing — A Case Study of Dubious Worth, Epilogue

This week I conclude my series of posts on how I came to be a professional writer. You can read the previous posts before moving on with this one. We’ll wait. [Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV]

There! Now you’re all caught up. Feel better?

I’m calling this an Epilogue, because it seems foolish to go through every step of my career, when much of it has been fairly public and thus easy to trace through my publications, reviews of my work, con appearances, social media and the like, and my own blog posts about various experiences. Far more valuable, I believe, will be a discussion of a few key points about what I have learned in my twenty-five-plus years as a professional.

I’ll start with this. Recently, while giving a talk to the Apex Writer’s Group, I was asked what I know now about writing that I wish I had known from the start. My answer: I wish I had known then that career trajectories are not linear, they are not smooth, they are not simple. I have said a thousand and one times that writing is hard. A couple of weeks ago I went on a little rant about how we writers should handle adversity without just giving up on the whole thing. But the fact is, I have contemplated quitting more than once. My career followed a nice, upward trajectory for a time, but then, due both to circumstances beyond my control, and to poor decisions I made myself, my march toward bigger and better things halted, stumbled, took a few steps back. My sales numbers dipped. I reinvented myself. Things improved, but then more events I could not control (and a few I could) knocked me back again. Things seemed to be righting themselves and then they fell apart once more, this time through no fault of my own.

Yes, this is vague. Some of the stories that have impacted my career are not mine to tell. Others are, but they involve me casting light on questionable behavior and choices by others and I won’t go there. Another lesson: This — fantasy, writing, publishing — is a relatively small community and we need to be careful about the stories we tell, the actions of others we expose, the decisions we question publicly.

And really, the specifics are beside the point. Because what I’m talking about — the unpredictability of one’s writing fate — is something nearly all writers experience. I know precious few authors whose careers have followed a smooth, ever-rising trajectory. Most of us are knocked on our butts again and again and again.

What separates the professionals who enjoy long careers from those who don’t is the willingness of the former to get up off their rear ends each time they’re knocked down. As I said, I have contemplated giving up multiple times. But I never did quit.

The Thieftaker Chronicles, by D.B. JacksonI am not the most talented writer I know. Not by a long shot. I am good. I believe that. My character work is strong. My world building is imaginative. My prose is clean and tight and it flows nicely. I write convincing, effective dialogue and I have a fine eye for detail. My plotting and pacing, which were once just okay, have gotten stronger over the years. I think writing the Thieftaker books — being forced to blend my fictional plots with real historical events — forced me to improve, and that improvement has shown up in the narratives of the Islevale and Radiants books.

But there are plenty of other writers who do all those things as well as I do if not better. I have been helped throughout my career, though, by a few other qualities. I am disciplined and productive. I work every weekday and at least one day on weekends. I consistently hit my word counts and meet my project goals. I never miss a deadline. I have developed a thick skin — mostly — and have learned not to take to heart criticism and rejections and bad reviews. (Mostly.) I am resilient. And, with effort and practice, I have learned to take to heart the advice I often give to self-define success.

I’m writing and editing for small presses now. I don’t know when or if I’ll go back to the bigger ones. I love my current publishers, and see little need to switch back to the high pressure relationships I once had with big-name houses. I’m writing books I love, and that is, I believe, a key to being successful as I define the word. I don’t expect any one project to make me a ton of money, and that’s okay. I’m happier in my career right now than I have ever been. Partly this is due to my enjoyment of my relatively new career as an editor. This year will see the release of my fourth co-edited anthology with Zombies Need Brains. And I will also continue to expand my freelance editing business. At this point, I expect I’ll spend more time in 2022 editing than writing.

This is not at all where I envisioned myself when I started my career. Back then, I was filled with dreams of bestselling books and a shelf (or two) filled with World Fantasy Awards. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But I did hope my commercial performance, which has always been a bit disappointing, would match my critical success, which has always been a point of pride. The fact is, though, the business today is greatly changed from where it was when I began. Back then no one had ever heard of e-books. I built myself a web page when my first book came out, and just having a web page conveyed more legitimacy than the publication itself. Seriously.

“I have a book out!”

“Meh.”

“I have a web page!”

“Oooooooh! You have a web page!!”

It is a changed world, and it is also now a much harder market. An ever-growing universe of authors are seeking the attention of a fairly static universe of readers, meaning sales for each writer are harder to come by. Advances are smaller if they’re offered at all. Many authors are working harder and harder just to maintain a level of income that is, nevertheless, lower than it used to be. Commercial success means something different now than it did when I began. I count as a triumph the mere fact that I continue to get writing contracts.

I once thought I would reach a point where I stopped worrying that my career would tank, forcing me to give it up as a full time profession. I was disabused of that notion early on by a writer who was very successful and who told me, “Oh, you never stop worrying.” And it’s true. I have been able to continue writing full-time because my partner in love and life has a good job that provides not just the bulk of our income, but also our health care and retirement funds.

The hard truth is, on some level my mother was right when she and I had our big fight about whether I should teach history or write fantasy. As a history professor I would have made a decent living. I would have had job security, retirement accounts, health benefits. And yes, that would have been success as defined a certain way.

But I believe I also would have been miserable.

Again, I find myself struck by my good fortune. Throughout my professional life, I have had the luxury of pursuing a career I love and choosing to define my success not just in terms of earnings, but also in terms of joy. It’s a cliché, but there is no way to put a price tag — or a royalty statement — on that.

Have a great week.