Book Bonus: Tidbit: Kelly meets a tutor at Mechany's

To get back on schedule, and also to help me during packing and moving, the Publishing News post will be next Friday, not this one.

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The protagonist of Into the Tides, Kelly, is a tone-deaf woman who inherited music magic (called a music Power). Because of her tone deafness, when her Power emerged at puberty, she couldn't use it; after a few years of trying to help her themselves, her family sent her to a special boarding school that helps youngsters who have problems with their magic.

Kelly, age 17, starts her first year at Mechany's. At the end of the first week, the students without mentors are interviewed by tutor-researchers (most of whom are grad students), who in exchange for the opportunity to study abnormal magic development will offer one-on-one additional tutoring to students. During Kelly's session, twenty-seven researchers looking for "projects" interview the thirty-eight new students.

"I have a learning disability in magic. I'm a little... dysfunctional."

The woman in the lab coat nodded encouragingly, looking more comfortable in the narrow classroom desks than I felt. This was her natural environment, after all: observing students. Then again, she couldn't be more than twenty. She was probably a student herself half the time. "My notes show you have a music Power," she commented.

I nodded. "Fourth class, if I'm like my dad. I want to do what he does, one day--go to clinics and sing away pain from the patients."

She scratched a note on her paper. "Admirable. It's a good use for music magic. So what sort of problems do you notice with your magic?"

Beside us, a twelve-year-old appeared a foot above the ground, upside down, and plummeted to the floor, feet barely missing my head. I jumped up with a little shriek.

"Sorry," he said, and sat up and waved at a guy in a lab coat on the other side of the room. "Every time I sneeze," he called. "Although only sometimes upside down."

I sat down, watching him jog back to the researcher. He definitely had a tutor--the researcher watched every step avidly, the eager light in his eyes full of acquisitive joy.

My partner's lips pursed. "Probably got the kid to do that on purpose," she muttered to me. "He's such a show off. And travel Powers always get the most attention in terms of a thesis. But who's it gonna help?"

I folded my hands in my lap. "My dad had a rock band for a while," I said. "He's really good. If he wasn't Powered, he'd probably have become a star. We've been trying for years, but even he can't get my magic to work right."

Her attention came back to me. "So it's a resilient problem."

I nodded.

A girl about fifteen or so jumped up, whapping at her desk with a heavy-looking yellow-and-black blanket. She'd carried it in with her despite the 80-degree weather, and at the time I'd thought the black patches were some strange dyework.

The room was otherwise quiet while she put out of the flames with a few well-placed blows, everyone watching. Finally, the man in a lab coat who'd prudently backed a few feet away walked over to stare at the smudges. "These desks are supposed to be pretty much fireproof," he commented with an even tone. "I think you warped it."

She sighed, flopping down into the seat and rubbing at the smudge with a corner of the blanket. "Sorry."

He smiled and clapped her shoulder. "Not at all."

I cleared my throat, and my partner reluctantly tore her eyes from the scene to look back at me. The bite of plastic pinching my fingers told me I was fiddling with the fish bracelet around my wrist, so I stopped. "Once, when I was fourteen, I tried to hum my brother's headache away, only I ended up making him fall asleep instead, and he didn't wake up for almost twelve hours."

Her polite smile drooped a little. "Um. Anything else?"

"Well, when Mom was editing a book, I tried singing her a song to help her focus. After about three minutes she said she really had to pee, and she couldn't concentrate for most of the night."

"That's, uh, interesting." Her gaze slid down to her clipboard. "What, exactly, do you know about your problem?"

I was fidgeting with my bracelet again. "I'm tone deaf."

"Tone deaf."

"Yeah." Lacing my hands together so I'd keep them still, I stared at her, hoping.

She didn't look back up at me. "A tone-deaf music Power. And you've had no unusual, special abilities manifest? Just ordinary things?"

I shook my head. "Usually I can't get my magic to work at all. But nothing a normal music Power couldn't do."

"Well, it's sort of an obvious problem. Easy to identify. And fourth class is... I mean, it's nice. Not the strongest level of magic, though."

The plastic fish on my bracelet seemed to swim around in my vision, and not by any magic or trick of the light. I squeezed my eyes and willed them to stay dry.

A woman on the side of the room shouted in surprise, and a young girl apologized.

"The school is really very good at addressing cases like yours," my partner said. "I just don't think you'd need me. You understand, right?"

I nodded. Again.

The sound of heels on linoleum told me she was standing up. "I really think you'll be fine," she added. "They're professionals, the regular teachers. Really good at what they do. And it's such an obvious problem, I'm sure there's an obvious solution. They'll have you good to go in a year, I bet. Maybe two."

Her heels clicked away, and I heard her mutter something about a blind illusion Power and smells.

None of the other researchers stopped by my desk. Not that year. Not the next. And not the year after that, either, even though I still hadn't managed to make my magic work.

My magic was broken, but not broken enough.

----

Tone-deaf Kelly has long considered her inborn music magic to be useless. But after a disaster drowns the American South in magic, including her whole family except her twin brother, she discovers her “useless” magic lets her hear the voices of those lost. Now, with the help of her twin and her handsome, green-eyed neighbor Derik, she’ll face magic itself to save them–only the attempt may cost her everyone she has left.

Available now on:Smashwords
Barnes and Noble
Amazon.com
Kobo 
iTunes

The Joys and Sorrows of Moving

This weekend I boxed up my tea. I'm moving this week and next weekend, you see--will soon be much closer to work.

All this? Now in boxes. And half belongs
to my roommate. Goodbye, fair beverage.

It's a lovely place, and I can't wait to be in it. We'll have a turquoise accent wall! (This happens to be one of my favorite colors, which is why I am so unaccountably excited about it.)

On the other hand, I must bid farewell to my roommate's boxes of tea, because she is moving to another state, and naturally taking her tea with her. This is a bit sad, but the grief is much alleviated because it means I'll room on the shelves to purchase new teas.*

And I'll have a lovely new apartment in which to drink them. Plus, I'll be saving so much on gas I should be able to afford buying them. Okay, maybe not right away, but you know. Soon.

But I had no tea to drink this weekend, because it is in boxes, and not in my mugs or teapots.

Cannot wait to get into work, where I keep my reserve stash.

*(Wait, I should also feel sorrow over one of my best friends moving away? Yeah, I guess I'm a bit sad for that, too. But we both have phones and computers, and if we can stay friends through a roulette of different jobs, rival colleges, separate classes in high school, all the craziness of middle school, and most of elementary school... Let's just say there are already plans in the works to keep in touch. The tea, however, cannot call, and I might be scared if it tries to start a Google hangout with me.)

Worlding Building with off-the-wall logic

No purpose whatsoever beyond that it's a pretty picture.

Look! Clouds in a keyhole building!

Okay, random picture aside. Let's talk "skants."

In Star Trek, The Next Generation, new uniforms were introduced. These included the traditional pant uniform and the dress-like uniform.

The dress-style uniform, which could be worn with or without pants, was available to both genders--according to Star Trek lore, this is a logical extension of total equality of the sexes, allowing all genders to choose whichever uniform pleased them most.

Skants: this Starfleet
uniform style is available
to both genders.
View more here.

Besides being a nice piece of geeky trivia, this is also an example of a exercise to develop a story world, especially when setting books in a later date of an old world. Following the logical trains of events in the first book can lead to some interesting cultural developments.

Did your hero save the world via bombing the evil aliens out of the sky? Maybe her descendants have a fear of the sky. They come up with an official position: the Sky Watcher. A dozen generations later, the Sky Watchers have become fully ceremonial positions, because nothing has come out of the sky. A few more generations, and the senate is debating cutting their funding. They end up underfunded and gain a reputation as lay-abouts, the few people who take the job being those few dreamers who spend too much time with old legends. Then, of course, here comes the evil aliens' descendants, and only your new hero, a young Sky Watcher with little funding and less training is qualified to make contact and stop another invasion... if only someone would listen to him.

What about cultural shifts? In the first series, the Bakers' Guild bribes the senators, and bakers receive first dibs on wheat, before individual families. That makes wheat prices artificially high, which is what drives your original hero to her destined journey to stop the alien invaders, because it'll pay enough to feed her family. Two decades after the world is saved, people revolt against the starvation, electing new senators and forming a new political party. This political party, which prioritizes feeding everyone, does so by taxing and by cutting funding to another area: disaster relief and Sky Watching.

Thus, by the time the aliens return, there are no longer sufficient mechanisms in place to handle the disasters. Natural disasters leave little rebuilding in their wake, and many cities have been lost to various storms, quakes, and landslides. So the hero has grown up in a post-disaster slum, and has a great ability to MacGuyver anything... but absolutely no idea of how to act properly around high-class individuals, such as the senators he's trying to convince to prepare for a new invasion and/or peace-making mission.

You can stretch your logic and your creative thinking all you want, as long as you can back it up. It's part of why I love world-building.

What's a cultural or plot point you've come across that builds off a series set further back in the timeline of the same world?

Creating Timelines for Tides

You may have noticed the official calendar for the Tides world on my website.

Did you know it wasn't my first calendar?

The official calendar had me actually putting events into a real calendar and checking time zones to make sure nothing important was being overlapped, and there were no 36-hour days or anything.

The original calendar sketch was a rough estimate on a Google+ Presentation, something to give me a vague idea of what times I was working with. It actually ended up being fairly close to the final calendar. Here's the beta version:

BETA version. The link has the official calendar!

Why sketch out a timeline of not just the events in the book, but also Kelly's life?

Because it gave me a better idea of who she was, and what she was dealing with as she grew. 

In case you were wondering, Kelly and Trax are Virgos, born September 7. Oh, and they're the rat in the Chinese Zodiac.

Tea Review: Lapsang Souchong

Lapsang Souchong Reviewed by: Rebekkah
Type of tea Black, loose-leaf	Flavor aspects smokey, natural
Where I got it  The Tea and Spice Exchange	Cost $5.49/oz
How I brewed it 1.5 tsp at 190F in a 16-oz pot for 3 minutes	Rebrewing notes First rebrew is good. I still got the full smokey flavor and the rich taste of the tea. However, the second rebrew was a bit weaker. I'd suggest your third pot be brewed with hotter water and for a tad longer, and I wouldn't expect to get much more 2 rebrews with these leaves.
Review This tea was recommended by an online tea group; I was looking for the best teas for reading different types of fantasy, and this came up as the favorite of several people for urban fantasy. Therefore, when I was at the tea store I had to pick up a packet to try. It's smokey, and when I say that, I mean it very much feels like drinking the essence of campfire (hickory wood, I think). It's a black tea, and if you were to add a drop of liquid smoke to black tea, you might end up with a flavor much like this. In this case, though, the flavor comes naturally from how the tea is prepared (the leaves have been actually smoked). It's a traditional Chinese tea. I find the taste pleasant and very unique. If you're looking for something off-beat, I'd suggest giving this tea a try. Still trying to figure out if it's the novelty that I find so appealing, or the flavor itself, but I do quite enjoy it. The brand is a good, respectable-quality loose-leaf tea; my taste buds tell me it's worth the price, and if you prepare it as I did, it has a very nice, mellow black tea flavor under the smoky taste. However, if BBQ isn't your thing, and you're not a fan of the taste of smoked foods, you should pass on this one. Note that if you don't usually make black tea with water hotter than 195F, ignore the instructions on the packet. It has you using tablespoons of tea instead of teaspoons and at a hotter water than most black tea, but I suggest following your usual method of black tea preparation--turns out fine, plenty strong, and not over or underbrewed. Image from Tea and Spice Exchange-- I suggest ordering by the ounce to try before you commit to a larger quantity; they let you do that here. Also, the spice blends are excellent, too.

Publishing Industry News

Today's Publishing news and industry blogs post covers 6/14-7/4.


Publishing News

Apple has come to the decision that battling the DOJ in the price-fixing lawsuit is a lost cause, and instead of appealing again, agrees to settle instead of undergoing a damages trial, pending an actual loss of the appeal, of course. (Publisher Weekly's article) Meanwhile, publishers contend that Judge Cote's final injunctions on Apple hobble the return to the agency model they'd rather use, when the settlements they'd taken had been with the understanding that they would be allowed to return to agency models (negotiated separately) once their own settlements took their course.

Angry Robots Books closes its YA and Mystery book imprints.

Crown Publishing (Penguin Random House affiliate) begins offering ARCs directly to bloggers.

In (slightly related to publishing news) the court case in which a company asks for the right to knowingly tell lies as part of political campaigns, the Supreme Court rules that the company may challenge the constitutionality of the law prohibiting campaign lying without being prosecuted. Note: The Supreme Court has not ruled that lying in campaigns is okay. This ruling is a statement that the threat of enforcement of a law counts as a limitation of speech; thus, if an unjust law is passed, challenging it should not bring punishment or threat of punishment before the challenge was resolved (the law upheld or repealed). So threatening to sue in order to stop someone from doing something is a form of restricting them.

The Appeals court confirms that Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain.

In the Open Road vs HarperCollins battle of the digital rights to Julie of the Wolves, HarperCollins sets a proposal to sue for $1.1 million, which Open Road blasts as excessive.

The US publishing industry earned $27.01 billion last year, as determined by the American Association of Publishers. (The numbers do not seem to include self-publishing.)

And Amazon has launched a smartphone.

Hachette Australia mourns the loss of its CEO.


Industry Blogs

Querytracker's Publishing Pulse for 6/20.

Also on Querytracker, Jane Lebak talks about giving your characters potatoes. Metaphorically, that is--as seeding things into them and letting those things grow and surprise the reader. And Stina Lindenblatt shares 9 things not to do as a writer, unprofessional behaviors to avoid.

Writer Beware looks at the acquisition of Whiskey Creek Press by Start Media. The authors are being asked to sign new contracts; there are sticking points in both the original WCP contracts (for which authors can choose to continue using) and the new Start Media contracts that cause Strauss to take a less-than-excited view of the contract language, although Start Media drops a couple of former WCP red flags. However, the raised-eyebrow points are more "regard with caution" or "I've seen better" than "run away"--could be worse for authors. Read both links for Start Media's statement and answers to the questions Strauss asked in the first link.

Also on Writer Beware, a definite "run away"--from American Writers Association, a company that offers to be an agent to help you find an agent, for the low-low price of $700. Don't pay a company to query an agent for you. Agents hate it.

Agent Janet Reid answers questions and gives advice. If you do a derp and accidentally send to two "exclusive only" agents at the same time, do you fess up or hope one rejects you? (Fess up immediately. And be more careful.) Is a bad title an instant death for a query? (Don't worry about the title overly much. The agent will tell you to change it if needed--it's the book that counts.) Who is it okay to brag to about how well the query process is going? (Almost no one. Close-mouthed family, crit group... that's about it. A request isn't anywhere near an offer or a sale.) If you've previously had an agent but parted ways, do you address it--and how--in the query? (Yes, but it's not a big deal. Reid explains how.) What are standard commission rates on domestic and foreign sales for US agents? (15% domestic; 20% foreign). What is, and isn't, word of mouth marketing?

Agent Kristen Nelson takes a firm stance in the Amazon vs Hachette spat--that she doesn't know the full story, and shouldn't make a firm judgement without all the facts. Authors, meanwhile, write a letter asking Amazon to resolve the dispute in a way that doesn't hurt authors' sales. Meanwhile, other authors sign a document showing support for Amazon.

On the Editor's Blog, using physical motion for characters. Variety is good; don't overdo the same ones; chase off talking heads, and more (and better explained) tips.

Author Shannon Donnelly drops by the FF&P blog to explain how to create characters that don't fall out of character midway through the book.

9 Literary magazines for unpublished authors are listed on Aerogramme's Writer's Studio.

GalleyCat links to an infographic on Who's Stealing eBooks--a look at the actual numbers in e-book piracy.

Retale offers a site on real-time sales: how much US consumers are spending on books every second the page is open.


What other publishing news have you encountered in the past three weeks?

Disney Vacation: a few final photos and a couple of tips

Final photos of Disney, and then I promise, no more! ;)

Princess Tiana and Naveen

Flying Triceratops!

Warning: Fossils may bite. But they don't have digestive
tracks, so as long as they swallow you whole, you'll be
fine. Just jump out the ribs.

You're probably safe from giraffes, although they share
long necks and have skin covering their ribs. They tend
to prefer grass.

The traffic's pretty bad in the Animal Kingdom, though.
Step on the gas, zebras!

And then we got lost in the sea on the way back.

We made it back to the Animal Kingdom proper
by sunset, though.

So they gave us sword-fighting lessons in Epcot,
taught by Norse statues...

Which we only accepted because lightsaber lessons
in Hollywood Studios were restricted to those under age 12.

But Hollywood Studios does have a bit of magic of its own.

Such as a much-abridged version of Beauty and the Beast.

Still not as magical as the Magical Kingdom
at sunset, though.

Word to the wise: Take water-flavorings (we used Mio). The fountain water tastes pretty, um, let's just say it's a good idea to avoid having to taste it. A couple of bottles of water each day and two bottles of Mio, though, and we stayed hydrated and happy the whole trip.

Tip two: If you want to get a nice, high pedometer count (we got up to 25K steps one particular day), sign up for Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. Not only is it fun and adorable to find the hidden portals and try the "spells" (hidden cameras recognize the trading cards you hold up), but it's great exercise. Also, you get free keepsake cards. Keep using the first ones you get, because they level up the more you use them, and if you complete easy level, you'll need leveled-up cards to play medium difficulty.

Yes, we had a lovely time.