Questions About Writing

Who is your agent?

My literary agent is Lauren MacLeod. She works at The Strothman Agency where she spends her time selling books and looking adorable.

What is a literary agent?

They are fabulous creatures! Not only do they sell manuscripts, they work hard to get their authors the best deal with the best publishing house for the book. Sometimes they help edit. Sometimes they tell their writers to get away from the computer and actually sleep. Sometimes they eat frozen pizza.

Do you have advice for new writers?

Heck yeah. Here are a few of my old blog posts you might be interested in:

Other places I’ve found useful:

What is your writing schedule?

I write every day, at least eight hours a day. It’s a full time job.

When creating characters, how much do you take from people you know or have seen in real life?

Zero. It can take a while before I understand different aspects of their personalities, just like getting to know real people, but they always come to me fully formed.

What kind of research do you do for writing?

I research whatever I need to know. This varies from book to book.

For INCARNATE, I did a ton of research on Yellowstone National Park, which, like Range, is a supervolcano. (That is so cool.) I researched second-degree burns (less cool), primitive and modern instruments, and roses, in addition to lots of other random things.

I try to pretend I don’t know anything so I don’t accidentally use incorrect information. If I’m really concerned about getting something right, I get in touch with someone who can answer my questions; two serious musicians read the Incarnate books and picked the musical bits to shreds.

Do you know the whole story before you write? Or do you make it up as you go?

That depends. I actually wrote a lot of (trunked) manuscripts before I wrote INCARNATE, and they were mostly made up as I went along.

One of the things I wanted to do differently with this was have the entire story planned ahead of time, so I wrote a long synopsis that ended up showing me the book wasn’t just one book. It was a trilogy.

Because of that, I’ve had a lot of the basic story in mind since the beginning. That doesn’t mean there aren’t still surprises! My synopsis said nothing about the masquerade, but it turned out to be a very important part of the first book.

I’m working on a book. Will you read my manuscript?

Sorry, but I can’t. I have a healthy circle of crit partners already, and I don’t have time for more. But if you want feedback, you should definitely start looking for crit partners. I’d start looking at Absolute Write and Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.

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