On Contracts, Proposals, and Bouncing Back

We’ve just accepted a contract for two more contemporary thrillers—sequels to THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT. The new books will be published in 2009 and 2010.

This means that in addition to the Sebastian St. Cyr series, I’ll also be writing a contemporary thriller series featuring the characters from ARCHANGEL: October Guinness, a reluctant remote viewer dragged back into the Navy, and Jax Alexander, a cynical CIA type. At this stage, it’s a series still in search of a name. That’s the problem with duel heroes—one can’t simply call the series by the hero’s name.

While I haven’t blogged about it, the road to this new contract has been rocky. I originally planned the second book in the series to be THE BERMUDA EFFECT. I did tons of research on Cuba and South America and the Bay of Pigs and Iran-Contra. I liked the story so much I wrote beyond the necessary 35 pages/3-5 first chapters to the first turning point—nearly 100 pages. In other words, I invested a lot of time in that proposal, which I sent in last spring. After sitting on it forever, the publishers turned the proposal down in mid-August.

Yes, it can happen. I’ve seen it happen to two writers I know—multipublished, highly successful writers of established series. Which is why smart writers don’t continue working on a proposal until after they’ve heard back from their editors. I didn’t make that mistake, but I did make the mistake of spending too much time researching the book, I wrote too long of a proposal, and I plotted the book out in far more detail than was necessary at that stage. All mistakes I will never make again.

Having the proposal rejected meant I had to come up with a new idea, research it, and write the new proposal, all the while rushing to get SERPENTS in on deadline. Which is why my life has been very hectic, why I am now behind on my writing schedule, and why I am taking a much-needed break this Christmas.

The second book will now be called THE DEADLIGHT CONNECTION. I had originally planned this to be Book Four in the series (yeah, I was doing the alphabet thing with the titles, but that will now have to go away). DEADLIGHT is a neat idea involving Nazi subs and Russians and terrorists, and my publishers are very excited about it. The third book will, if all goes well, be set in Morocco (with Casablanca in the title, naturally).

Having the original thriller proposal rejected and thus having to invest another six weeks frantically coming up with a new proposal means the next ten months will be pretty tense, with two books to write in a scarily short span of time. Right now, I’m working on the proposal for the fifth Sebastian St. Cyr book. And I’m going to be careful not to overdo it!

FInished!

I sent the final draft of WHERE SERPENTS SLEEP off to my editor yesterday. I'm so busy at the moment with Dani home for her fall break and pumpkins to carve and this six hour workshop looming on Friday that it was a couple of hours before it hit me: I'm finished!

Until I get the workshop out of they way, I'm not even going to think about my next project, which is the proposal for the fifth Sebastian St. Cyr book. At the moment, all I have is vague swirls--an ancient crypt, William Franklin (Ben's Loyalist son), and a heartbreaking secret from the past. It's my Rule of Three: the best book ideas are really an intersection of THREE ideas.

Pantsers, Planners, and the Box Myth

Sphinx Ink has an interesting response to my question, How Do Pantsers Write a Book Proposal? It seems that after she mused on the subject, author Tim Hallinan—a pantser--contacted her by email.

According to Hallinan, he writes the first 10,000 words of his manuscript, brain storms possible developments and plot points both by himself and with friends, writes it all up into a short synopsis and sends it off.

You know what? That’s actually not all that different from my approach. I suspect the main difference is that I take the time to think those developments and plot points through a bit more carefully, write it all down, and then use those brainstorming sessions as a guide when I sit down to finish my novel. Hallinan basically ignores his synopsis and sets off on a journey of exploration. Some of those ideas he uses, some he doesn’t.

There seems to be this myth that pantsers write character-driven books while those who preplan their books create plot-driven stories that become—to use Tim Hallinan’s unflattering description—“a box to squeeze characters into.” No, no, no, no!!!

When I sit down to preplan my books, I don’t build a plot and then stick my characters into it. I ask, What would X do next? How would Y react to that? What is he thinking and feeling at this point? What’s the worse thing that could happen to X? (“Put your hero up a tree and throw rocks at him.”) My plots are very complicated with lots of twists and I like being able to shift things around at the planning stage rather than after I’ve invested months writing scenes that then need to be changed. It’s why the more books I’ve written, the more I’ve tended to preplan. I’m a basically lazy person. I don’t like wasting time and effort, and I don’t like tying myself in knots with rewrites. I also have this thing about control.

I understand that for pantsers, preplanning takes out all the fun. For me, it takes out a lot of the frustration and anxiety and severely reduces rewriting. It’s a trade off I’m willing to make, and can make, since I still enjoy the process of fleshing out the scenes I’ve envisioned.

How much do I preplan? That varies. Sometimes I’ll write down snippets of dialogue if they come to me. But mainly I focus on the conflict in a scene, and the outcome. When I was writing my medieval, THE LAST KNIGHT, for instance, I had a segment where the hero is thrown into prison and the heroine is locked up by her uncle. In my outline I had written, “They escape.” When I finally got to that point in the book, I looked at those two words and thought, “Yeah, right! HOW do they escape?” That was not preplanned. That was a fun, rollercoaster exploration that was actually four escapes—the heroine escaped from her room, then freed the hero, then together they escaped from the castle, and then the next morning they escaped from the walled city. Was it plot-driven? Yes, in the sense that I knew they had to escape (or the story would have ended). But it was also character driven, and character revealing. My heroine was the kind of woman who was risking her life to save her brother; of course she wasn’t going to simply sit in her tower room and say, “Pass the embroidery thread.”

There are also times when I’ll reach a scene and realize it’s wrong, that a character wouldn’t do what I’d envisioned. What I don’t do is squeeze my character into my preconceived plan. I change the plan. In MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONS, I was halfway through when I decided I needed to change the murderer. I’m a big girl. I can handle that.

But I also don’t allow my characters or my imagination to lead me astray. I keep a fairly firm hand on the reins, always conscious of where I’m going. That’s a personality thing, though, and has nothing to do with whether I write plot-driven or character-driven. I mean, I used to write historical ROMANCES, remember? No genre is more character driven than that!