Tara Maya's Tales

It's tricky to find excerpts from Blood I can share with you that don't contain too many spoilers! This is a nice scene for October, since the autumn pixies show up to pester Dindi.... "The slender girls wore crunchy skirts of fall leaves..." (Art by Anne Stokes ) At night’s tail, just before dawn, pixies jumped up and down on Dindi’s head until she had a headache, and kept jumping, until she woke up to shoo them off. “You have got to be kidding me,” she groaned. “What is wrong with you fae? Have you never heard of sleep ?”   She rubbed her eyes, fighting déjà vu. Hadn’t she just been poked awake by pixies a few hours ago?  Once again finger-sized pixies thronged around her sleeping mat, but this time instead of flori, they were all foli, autumnal pixies, mostly Orange, Yellow and Red. The slender girls wore crunchy skirts of fall leaves, and the boys caps and shields made from acorn tops and walnut shells. Kinnaras, bird-winged sprites, feathere...

I haven't settled on how many books should be in the Dindi series yet. As I've said, the story arc is plotted, and much of it is written, but how much is "much"? Stories are fractal. I can always work in new complications. When I broke the megabook into a series, for some reason, it would not work as a trilogy. I decided it had to be seven books, although I knew a septet would require quite a lot of additional writing. At that time, I was writing full time. Now that my writing time is more constrained, I've considered this question again. I still can't seem to work the story into a trilogy, unfortunately. I wanted the number of books in the series to fit the "color magic" in the story. So the seven book series would have looked like this: Book 1: Yellow Book 2: Green Book 3: Purple Book 4: Blue Book 5: Orange Book 6: Red Book 7: Black I could, however, divide the series into only four books, highlighting the conflicts between colors: Book 1: Yellow/B...

I have loathed my wip. Last year, when I'd been working on it for a while, and agents had been rejecting it right and left, I revised and revised until the words just melted into one molten mass of Sucks Rocks. Every revision seemed to drag it further into the abyss of Suckiness. Now, returning to it after ten months hiatus for a fresh look, I was mildly surprised upon reading it. I enjoyed reading it. Hey! My wip improved while I wasn't looking! How did that happen? Were the revisions worth it? Yes and no. In some ways, I think the original story as I conceived it -- all one book -- was solid. It was 180,000 words, however. Way too long to have a chance at publication. The excess might have been all fat, but I didn't (and still don't) think so. It had to be that long because of the number of characters, the amount of world building, and the number of plotlines. In early revisions, I cut it down to 140,000 words, and frankly, eviscerated it. There's a reason fanta...

In my previous post, I expressed concern about certain scenes in my book and several people provoked synaptic activity in my brain with their thoughtful questions. (Prodding with a stick also works.) Essentially, whether the scene involves sex or abortion, is it necessary to the novel? Does the book fall apart without it? The answer, for most of the scenes, is no. The first book could survive without those scenes, which all occur in the storylines of supporting characters. However, since I'm writing a series, I'm trying to follow the principle of Begin As You Mean To Go On. Later in the series, my hero and heroine will have several steamy encounters. Later in the series, a character will be brutally and explicitly tortured. Later in the series, there will be war, famine, rape and genocide. Later in the series there are also some foreys into weird literary techniques like second-person scenes. (These are few in number; please don't run). And philosophy. Not much. Hidden, h...

Do you ever re-write the same scene from the PoV of more than one character? Do you include the variation in the novel, or just use it for reference? I do both. A lot of my stories play with Point of View. Not everyone in my world sees things the same way -- literally, because depending on their powers, they can see some forms of magic (some Chromas) but not others. So as I comb over my new version of Chapter One, I am examining the meeting between my main character, Dindi, and the arch-nemesis of the whole series, Lady Death. A bit of my dialogue is overblown and melodramatic, and I don't want that. Plus, Lady Death knows a great many things Dindi would like to know, but  Lady Death has no intention of revealing them. Accidently, however, Death does let slip out a few clues to her plans -- and her vulnerabilities. I have to make sure the secrets and slip-ups make sense from Death's perspective. So I am re-writing the meeting scene from Death's PoV. (In Death's PoV, she...

1.) Have I ruined the book trying to improve it? 2.) Is meeting Death incarnate and recieving a Magic McGruffin actually more cliche than what I had before? 3.) Are Books 1 & 2 the weakest in the series, and if so, why would anyone want to read the rest of the series? Is the tone consistant across the series? 4.) Am I handling the hero's story all wrong? Is he drool-worthy? 5.) Should I keep in the explicit lovemaking scene or tame it down? 6) Does my plot make sense or is it completely nonsensical? 7) Is it okay that the book ends on a cliff-hanger -- with the heroine's magic unrevealed and the question of what to do with the Magic MacGruffin unresolved?

I know. I said no more rewrites of Book 1. I promised I would go on with the rest of the series. And if this series is no good -- then let it be. Start something new. But I'm not rewriting for the sake of rewriting. Or just because I'm depressed my full was returned with a polite "it's not there yet." Well, okay maybe it is in response to the agent's commens on the full, and to the advice I garnered from the Secret Agent Contest, and from meditating on High Concept. If I didn't have respect for those two agents, I wouldn't take their advice, but I do respect their opinion, so I'm taking a hard look at my story. Mostly, however, it's because I have a great idea how the book can be improved which is still in keeping with my original vision for the story. In fact, I think it captures the heart and soul of the story even better . Yet, I am still trying to rewrite cautiously. There's always the temptation to rewrite to the point one is writin...