Today I have a Halloween guest post for Jeri Smith-Ready's Blogtoberfest! If you haven't already been following her month of guestposts and giveaways, head over there now. There are several contests still open (including mine), and the grand prize is over $300 worth of brand new YA books, including Jeri's YA debut, Shade, which I'm dying to read.

[Note: the grand prize is open to US residents only, because of shipping restrictions.]

To read my post and enter to win your choice of a signed copy My Soul to Take or a signed copy of My Soul to Save (once I have my copies), click here. And don't forget to check out the other guest posts and giveaways!

Happy Halloween!

From Rinda: I’ve been going through some of our last few critiques and surprisingly, it’s hard to find the funnier comments that don’t give away spoilers. For instance, in one of Rachel’s books, she has some seriously cool um, things. I was fascinated and asked all kinds of weird questions. We’ll have to share some of those after that book comes out.

Readers here seemed to really enjoy the actual critique comments from our manuscripts when I shared them before, so I’m sharing again. (And yeah, one of the Rachel comments is referring to one of my misplaced modifiers. Actually, that time, I just neglected to put in a verb. Hey, I was rushed. It happens.)

Rinda:
“You so have to make a Borg reference in here somewhere.”

“Wait, they’re sitting on the floor in the hall? Okay, are there any other people walking past? Making noise? Is the floor dotted with scraps of paper and dust shoved against the edges?”

“Could she “show” his happiness first either in step or expression?”


“I’d lose this. What he’s done is pretty bad and I don’t think she’d be thinking this. Not yet. “

“Wow, the implications blow the mind here. This could be revisited in the future. Sociopaths in the making…”


“I hope you describe the smell in the next chapter because I wanted to know what it smelled like in the paragraph that ended with whiff of beer on him.”

“Oh, this is such a BAD idea. I felt the foreshadowing dread crawl up my back with this. I suppose you want that. ;)”


Rachel:

“You’ve already said this, but frankly I think I like it better here than before. Any way you could avoid explaining earlier to leave this bit in?”

“Need a verb in here somewhere. Or maybe a subject. I assume you don’t mean that the coat nearly freaked out. ;-)”

“Wasn’t it you who used to tell me that eyes couldn’t meet? Only gazes? ”

“In my own work, I would cut this, but you don’t seem to overuse “nodded” like I do. ;-) But you could cut the first sentence and start with “Vanir nodded.”

“She’s one of him? That doesn’t make sense. Do you mean she’s like him? That she’s whatever he is?”

“Ha! Now my question is: is it a hostile takeover?”

“Why can’t he lift his head? A horseshoe shouldn’t stop his neck from working.”

“Ew. But I get what you’re saying.”

Hi! I'm Rinda Elliott and Rachel's guest blogger this week. Those of you who follow the Deadline Dames will know who I am, but for those of you who don't, I'm just another writer. LOL! Seriously, I write urban fantasy among other things and recently finished the first in a paranormal romance young adult trilogy. That book is making its way out into the world now. I also have the first in an adult urban fantasy series under submission.

Rachel and I share several things in common and have an excellent working partnership. It's not always easy for either of us because we came into this with promises of honesty above all else and we've held to that. There are times when we argue and we've both admitted to stomping around after a particularly unwelcome critique--but both of us have grown as writers and I trust Rachel to catch my big blunders before anyone else sees them. I do the same for her.

There are also a lot of exciting plot phone calls and laughter. I tend to amuse her highly with my misplaced modifiers, for instance. But we both love creating new worlds and sharing stories of the people who live in those worlds.

So, with this first post, thought I'd answer a couple of questions Rachel's readers have asked.

The first? What was my dominant emotion while reading Shift?

You guys are sneaky. ;)

I don't give away spoilers, but I suppose I won't be giving too much away if I admit to a squirmy sort of dread/anticipation mix. I knew something had to happen and the anticipation of that something kept me on the edge of my seat. If you read Prey, you'll get why. I also felt excitement and some anger and let's see... hope. Rachel did an excellent job of stirring emotion. It's a wonderful book and I can't wait for you all to get your hands on it.

Someone on Twitter asked for information on mapping out a long series and that's a better question for Rachel. She's written further into her series books than I have. Now, I have worked with her on every book after Stray, so her world is pretty strong in my mind. There have been several times we've been on the phone hashing out some plot when one or the other stops and brings up a point from a past book.

I brought this up already, but some of our best work is done hashing on the phone. We brainstorm, laugh and even argue. Rachel's worlds are very set. Her settings and characters are so very real to her, down to the smallest of details. For instance, here's an example of a conversation:

Rachel. "I wrote (?) into a bad situation. Now I have to figure out how what they'd do."
Me. "What if they did this?"
Rachel. "They'd never do that, it's impossible for their bodies to do that."
Me. "But you're the writer, their creator."
Rachel. Silence. "No, it's not logical."

As you probably guessed from that particular phone call, I wasn't much help that time. Not with coming up with the solution. But.. and this is the all important huge "but" here. That is not what we do for each other. No, our role is to get the other's mind working. She throws out ideas and I respond with some of my own and at some point, something clicks.

So, there you have a glimpse into our working world. :)

I'll continue to answer questions in upcoming posts, so feel free to ask them!

I'm drive-by blogging today. Life has gotten crazy-beyond-belief and progress on ALPHA has stalled as a result. So I have to bury myself in work today. But I will point you to my new guest blog post at the Harlequin Paranormal Romance blog, where I discussed the difference between YA and adult novels, referencing my own two series.

More tomorrow, I promise! Based on the questions I'm getting, I think we're due for another "Things you may not know about publishing" post. Don't cha think? ;-)

Okay, this is the second guest blog from relliott4 from last week, while I was gone. I'm setting it for the date she actually posted it, so this may not show up on friends lists. Sorry.


This is Rinda, guest blogging for Rachel again. ;)

So, yesterday, I revealed some of our funnier critique comments. How about a further glimpse? ( Read more... )