Life is getting exciting here but a little baffling at the same time.

Last March, and I may have blogged about this, I went to the Jambalaya Jubilee conference in Houma, LA. It’s a small conference held in a public library, and this was the second time I went.

This year I pitched Sword & Illusion to agent Cherry Weiner. She told me it was too long and I should cut about 29,000 words. (Yikes!) When that was done, I was to email her.

Well, Monday I did just that. I had spent hours cutting words from my book. I cut out several characters and, for a lot of writerly reasons, ignored that Attack of the Queen had ever been written. Ms. Weiner told me to “think series,” which was something I already was, and again, for those writerly reasons, I’ve chosen to make Sword & Illusion the first book of the series.

It will mean that the story that was told in Attack will move to later in the series and possibly will change appearance. I have promised my best friend (and inspiration for Adazzra) that eventually she will get her husband and children back. At this point, I’m not sure how that will all happen, however.

When I was first writing the book – We’ve been calling it S&I at home, but that’s going to be confusing because all of the books will be Sword & something beginning with I – I had seen it as the second book, so deciding to make it the first one meant that a lot of things changed, and everything was possible.

I was assuming Attack would be the second book, now titled Sword & Inferno, but events in Illusion make it necessary to deal with some things before I can get to Adazzra’s world and save it from the Vlaad.

My husband and I went through a list of I words to come up with some other titles. He doesn’t think Sword & Immunocytochemistries is a good title. However, right now I think book two will be Sword & Infidel due to how Illusion ended.

Now I’m faced with writing a book I have no plot for yet. I think this must be what successful writers face. I have never written a book that I didn’t have a story in mind for before I ever sat down.

However, it occurred to me this morning that people like Rachel Caine, Jim Butcher and Alyssa Day, who have long series of books with the same characters or related ones, probably don’t know all their plots before they begin. Heck, my friend Jo also pitched to Cherry at the conference and had synopses for three books requested and she had only written one and a half. She didn’t even know the plot of book three.

But she does now.

So, if I’m going to be a successful fantasy author, I need to be ready to figure out a plot from the ground up.

I’m excited but scared, too.

I’ve been working on Sword & Illusion for a long time. I remember being at RWA Nationals in Atlanta in 2006 while my husband read the first draft. He said “Three or four hundred more pages and you’ll have it.

I thought he was joking.

Well, here it is, five years later, and the book has been “finished” for over a year. Finished means I added, cut, added some more, cut the story in HALF and tied up those ends and declared it DONE!

It ended up being about 134,000 words.

Which, as it turns out, is too long for any agent to even look at.

I sent query after query after query to agent after agent after agent, and the ones that got responses were generally form letters. No one bothered to tell me that it was too long.

I figured, you know, epic fantasy novels tend to be long. Look at Tolkien, Jordan, even Rowling. I’m not comparing myself to them except that they wrote long books and so do I.

It would have been nice if someone had just mentioned in their rejection, “Hey, I’m rejecting you not based on the story, which I won’t even read, but because it’s too stinkin’ long.”

I would have gotten that.

In March, I pitched my story to an agent face to face and I KNEW it was the length that kept her from asking even for a chapter. She said I had to cut it down to 105,000 words at most.

Okay, so here I am, over a year later, 56 pages from the end of the book and I realize I still need to cut FIFTY SIX pages (by word count). For a moment, I wondered if I could end the book right there and call it good.

I’m re-reading every sentence and trying to figure out how to cut a word here or there and I still need to cut 14,000. I’m now back to the beginning thinking about cutting whole scenes, but even then it’s 1,000 words here, 1,200 there.

I know this story is good. I KNOW it.

On the other hand, I’m editing a book for the small epublisher I work for that should never have been accepted in this form. The characters’ motivations don’t make sense, they jump to conclusions on the faintest evidence and assume everyone agrees, the heroine gets injured over and over (even getting a concussion and nearly dying) but she’s never seen a doctor. I have talked to the acquisitions editor I’m working with and I understand what happened here, but I don’t think it is fair that this book is under contract, and no one will even give my book a chance!

I dream of seeing my books on a store shelf one day, and every day that I still have to cut words is another day I won’t see that dream fulfilled.

It kinda ticks me off, but there’s nothing I can do but plod forward, praying I’m not cutting the heart out of this book.

Do you know about Rebecca Black? She is this young girl whose mother paid $4,000 to a vanity video/music producer so Rebecca could record and make a video for this song called “Friday.”

You can’t see the video anymore on YouTube, but it went viral because a lot of people think it’s the worst song ever and it got millions of hits with people going to see if they agreed. The song was even featured on Glee which blew me away.

My family was talking about this and I said, “Oh, yeah, cuz she’s getting rich off this. Crying all the way to the bank.” The single was released and according to Wikipedia sold 40,000 copies.

Then my husband asked a very interesting question. He asked how I would feel if Fabric of Faith (my inspirational romance which was published in 2004 and is still available although I haven’t seen any royalties for four or five years) sold a million copies because people thought it was the worst book ever written?

Well, at first I wanted to say, “Sure, cool, fine.” However, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it’s not better the way things are now.

I mean, I want a publishing career, not just one bestseller. I want fans who wait breathlessly for my next book. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but if my book was a bestseller because people thought it was so terrible, wouldn’t that ruin my chances to actually sell something else?

I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to risk it.

I don’t think I would.

But the checks would still cash, right?

I have been thrilled to see how the people at my husband’s work respect him and come to him for advice and trust him with responsibility. I was there when he was in graduate school and for years he had no self-esteem and thought he’d never get anywhere in his chosen career. It’s been a long journey to get here but it’s paid off for him.

He says the only reason that people come to him for advice and think he knows what he’s doing is because he’s “old” now (late 40s) and has gray hair (or late least more than he used to).

An interesting thing happened to me at the last HeartLA meeting. As most of my friend know, I have no problem speaking in front of people. In fact, I love doing it, so when our vice president/program director said they needed someone to speak at the June meeting, I said I would and I asked what they wanted me to speak on.

Suddenly, everyone in the group started talking about self-editing and grammar and asking me questions about the book I edited for Crescent Moon Press and asking if I would talk about that.

I said I would, but the thing that surprised me was that all these women were asking my advice and help. One of them even asked if I would look at her book and help her with the editing. Actually, she had asked my daughter of Paperbacks and Frosting fame if she’d “review” her book and I pointed out that she’s reading published books, as it’s a review site not a critique place.

She said she really needed someone to “critique” her book although that wasn’t the word she used. I told her I’d read it.

She acted as though I’d offered her a publishing contract. “You’d really do that for me?”

I told her of course I would and we agreed that she’d send me the first few chapters as that would make her less uneasy about someone else reading it.

I came home thinking how odd it was that all these people look to me for advice and help when my last book came out SEVEN years ago.

Then I realized what it was.

I am older than most of them and I have gray hair!

Maybe they see me as the wise old woman of the group.

Or maybe I’m just the most talkative one (and I am one of the Rowdy Girls – some uncharitable people say I’m the instigator of the Rowdy Girls) and so I offer a lot of opinions and that give the illusion that I know a lot.

Maybe I shouldn’t color my hair after all.

Since the RWA National Conference, I have believed that I was a hardcore pantser – someone who gets a story idea and dives, blindly, into the mist and trusts that the story will present itself. In workshops at the conference, I heard other hardcore pantsers talk about their writing process. Several of them are multipublished and even bestsellers.

I even went to a workshop in which the presenter had the participants evaluate themselves and I came up 100% pantser.

I went home convinced that God was bashing me over the head with a two by four (which He does often because I’m so thick headed) to tell me that He wants me to be a writer. The picture on the misselette the Sunday after the conference, in the church in Orlando, Mary, Queen of the Universe, was of “Jesus, the Storyteller.”

I decided to attack my writing as a true pantser – no planning – just writing.

I haven’t finished anything since then. I’ve started several books and they have all stalled.

So, I’ve decided that I need to figure out how to plot and I’m stumped. I get so caught up in the rules, and forms to fill out and things like the Three Act Structure and Goal, Motivation and Conflict, that I freeze.

I know I need to have guideposts or something. Something to shoot for or head for when I’m writing, but as a pantser, I don’t always know where I’m going until I get there.

If any of you are panters who are reformed or who have advice on how to keep the mist from overwhelming me, please help me figure out how not to get lost.

I have two book ideas (okay I have a ton but this post is about two in particular) that kinda play off a “superhero” idea.

One that’s on the back burner for the time being is a YA about a high school girl whose mother marries the headmaster of a superhero high school, and therefore, she is enrolled there. I did for a NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago.

Question: Would you prefer to read such a story that ends with her finding out that she actually does have super powers or one that ends with her figuring out how to fit in and see herself as powerful without super powers?

On a similar vein, I’m working on what I hope will be the first of a series of urban fantasy/romances about Storm Wizards – people who have the ability to control the weather. My heroine, at this point in my rough draft, has little power and thus works as a trainer. A Storm Wizard she trained, and loved romantically, has apparently gone rogue and has created a line of hurricanes that threaten the Gulf Coast.

Question: Would you be happier, without knowing the rest of the plot, to find out that she actually does have more power than she thought or would you be okay with her not having much?

My husband firmly believes that in both cases my heroines should find out they have more stronger powers “because that’s what we all want” but I’m leaning more toward my heroines becoming more satisfied with who they are and finding happiness without the powers.

What do you think?

This weekend was one I look forward to every year, even if part of the time it’s with trepidation.

The Heart of Louisiana Chapter of Romance Writers of America held their fourth annual Readers’ Luncheon, Fall in Love with Romance on Saturday, 6 Nov. S

Sherrilyn Kenyon was our main speaker.

She gave a wonderful, inspiring, touching speech. She spoke about writing because she was tormented in school for wearing hand-me-downs from her brothers. She wrote because she could take revenge on her tormentors.

I think what touched me most was how she talked about reading being her escape and how she read big name authors, the ones you know, but then she praised authors you’ve never heard of and how she read those, too, and some of them she reads over and over.

I think, as a struggling author, I dream, like many of us, of someday making it big and being a name everyone’s heard of. But yesterday I started seeing a light I hadn’t seen before. Maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re a name people know, as long as your book touches someone.

This year has been one of God reminding me in many different and small ways that writing is what I’m called to do and I need to do it regardless of how much “fame” I get.

Here was Sherrilyn Kenyon, an author who inspires such devotion in her fans that people came to Baton Rouge from as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada, and Los Angeles to see her. She talked about how she still gets asked if she’s published anything, so apparently she’s not “a household name.” Even my father-in-law who was taking pictures asked my daughter who the red haired woman was that everyone wanted their pictures taken with! And he came to the luncheon and had her book on his chair!

Anyway, she talked about how “those simple little Harlequins” got her through dark times in her life, and how we should never dismiss them as silly little books.

I have about seven “silly little books” I’ve started, but I put them aside to work on my fantasy novels. I made a decision last week to work on polishing/finishing at least three of them that are either done or very close to it and getting them out there.

Maybe I don’t need to be a big name that everyone in RWA knows, but if my books can help someone through a dark time. Maybe that’s enough.

Oh, and here I am, as hostess/announcer for the luncheon. This is a job I do every year, along with helping to plan it, which is why I said trepidation earlier.

And for fun, here’s me hugging Sherrilyn after her talk. I think I more or less ambushed her.

And my daughter with her.

I’m a pantser and today I’m fighting with my process.

I learned in Orlando that one of the problems I’ve been having with my writing is that I have been trying to fight my own process. I am a pantser to the tips of my toes, but I am finding out that I have to figure some things out to continue working.

I don’t want to. I want to play and just write whatever I want, but my story isn’t coming together that way.

And. frankly, I’m struggling. I have an idea where the story is going but it’s hard for me to figure out where to start. I’m working on an urban fantasy, so I have a contemporary heroine and a fantasy hero, not to mention a villain and Hurricane Katrina. I have two threads that start out and then weave together. So I have to figure if I start with the hero, the heroine or the villain.

It’s a little frustrating because I need to do a little plotting to figure this all out and it’s against my natural process. I’m actually procrastinating a little because I hate plotting!!

Anyway, I gotta get this book finished before March, so I have to get going.

Are you a plotter or a pantser and if you’re a pantser, do you have any advise??

Okay, not totally terrible, but I went down to the Dolphin lobby early because I wanted to meet people, find someone to chat with, you know, hang with lovely romance writers.

Well, it turns out that if you have a computer in front of you and your fingers are flying across the keys, people “think” you’re working and they leave you alone. I was sitting on a sofa at the back of a conversational grouping of seats. A woman sat down in a chair next to the sofa, but oa the other end. I smiled but she was on the phone and I just went back to my book. Then, kinda big name author (whose name will be redacted because I’m not stupid and I won’t burn bridges) came by. She and the other woman commented on how impressed they were that I was working, then they proceeded to have what sounded like a fun conversation together. Now and then I would look up – I had told them I was spending more time watching people go by than actually writing – and glance their way, but while one or the other of them would look at me, I wasn’t actually included in the conversation.

Then more big names came by to speak to the big name near me. They all hugged. And squealed. And Ooohed and Aaahed over each other’s clothes.

And they all got introduced to the woman that first sat down.

But not to me, since no one had actually asked me anything.

I began to wonder if this was going to be a boring, lonely conference. My roommate, as I think I mentioned, isn’t a romance reader or writer, but she is a writer and she is interested in meeting and networking, but I wanted to meet and chat with other romance people.

Later, however, I went to the room where the Literacy signing was going to take place to volunteer to help set up.

I walked back and forth and around a literal Disney sized ballroom for two hours, including putting RITA finalist flags at the spaces for about 50 authors (out of 500). The authors were seated alphabetically by last name (Duh) but the list of finalists was alphabetical by FIRST name, so I went from the As to the Ws then back to the Fs and then to the Ms and so forth for probably an hour!

I was tired and about 1.5 hours before the signing, I went back to my room to relax.

Then I went to the signing. I had a list in my head of authors I know personally that I wanted to see and my ego was stroked big time!!

Terri Brisbin sat next to me at a book signing at New Jersey Romance Writers in 2004 and she was SO nice to me, a new, unknown epubbed author (back before Kindle told everyone was ebooks are), and she jumped up when she saw my name tag and was thrilled to see me.

Ditto Alyssa Day from whom I’d taken a Chick Lit writing online class when she was writing as Alesia Holiday and Jax Abbott. She also sent my daughter a copy of her second Jax Abbott book.

Anyway, it ended up being great for my ego.

Me: I’m thinking about making my hero a veterinarian.

Beloved: You know, veterinary school is very hard to get into.

Me: That’s one of the joys of being a writer. I can just say it’s so and it’s so. No tests, no grades, no hassle!