An update on the endless novel

[pameladean]

I'm actually rather excited that it's Election Day, but for people who are tired of the whole set of shenanigans, a post about writing the Same Book After All This Time:

Volume 1 went off to my editor a few weeks ago, thank goodness. I was very grumpy about having to write a last chapter for it. I expect I'll get yelled at for its being abrupt, and whether I write yet another chapter or dig my heels in and snarl that it's not the end of anything, it's just a stopping point because book-binding isn't up to much these days, apparently, remains to be seen.

Anybody who has had the misfortune to talk to me in the past month will already know that I am also grumpy about having to write a new first chapter for Volume 2. I had originally thought I'd have to write two chapters, but mercifully, that is not the case. I started having a little fun with it when I decided to refer to the beginning of The Whim of the Dragon and use a letter from one of the viewpoint characters to bring people haplessly beginning with the wrong book up to speed. If one is writing Love and Rhetoric without the Blood, one can't bring in a man with a gun, but it would seem that one can bring in a letter.

I'm now having even more fun letting the character eviscerate a number of recent incidents in order to examine her soul, and soon I can bring the other viewpoint character on stage and they can have a conversation that I hope very much will be extremely funny.

Then I can get on with the revisions, at least if I can find all the notes I made about them when I was still fussing with Volume 1.

Volume 2 is due in March. The reissue of The Dubious Hills should be out sometime in 2009. On a very limited local front, things are looking excellent.

Next time I write two books, though, I'd prefer to do it on purpose.

Pamela

Comments

[herefox.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it's going well. I admit to having squealed a bit when I found out you were writing this book.

I shall have to buy Dubious Hills for a couple of people when it's reissued. I adore that book.

[pameladean]

Well, after all, if no one were squealing about it, it would hardly be worth the writing.

I have a special place in my heart for Hills. I'm glad it's being reissued.

P.

[herefox.livejournal.com]

I've never found any of your books, not worth the writing, even if I didn't know enough about them to squeal beforehand about them. :-)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

For real!

I think your solution of the letter ex machina sounds like an excellent choice.

[pameladean]

When I was first thinking about this book I had the mad notion of making the entire thing epistolary, but when it came down to writing it, the book balked. I'm glad to have a few letters in it, though.

P.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I think I remember you talking about this before. I think it's VERY hard to make an entire book epistolary and to hold interest all the way through. On the other hand, I always love reading the occasional letter.

[pameladean]

I suspect that I could retain interest, at least in readers who like my stuff. What I absolutely couldn't do would be to actually get the incidents of the plot seamlessly into the letters. I guess that might translate in time into loss of interest, if it's impossible to tell what is happening. Also, I couldn't do as much description as I'd like.

P.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I think the difficulty of including plot elements and the paucity of description are deal killers.

Which is odd, because I have read books of letters, or collections of letters in a rare book room, and I love the experience. But I expect to have to work hard to create a narrative in those cases. I don't want to read a novel that's that hard, I guess.

(Nanook is staring outside, which makes me wonder who's out there. He's in alert mode, and his tail isn't swishing, so I suspect Martha, the Bitch Cat of All Time.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I took the books out to reread, Just Because, recently. (My copies are so fragile that they don't leave this room.)

[pameladean]

Aww.

I wish mass-market paperbacks weren't so ephemeral.

I probably have some extras of the new edition of the trilogy. Email me if you are interested.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I would love copies I don't have to sit at a table to read!

Will try to hunt down your email.

[pameladean]

It's on my LJ user info page.

P.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Volume 2 is due in March

OMG cannot WAIT. Want! now! //bounces

If one is writing Love and Rhetoric without the Blood, one can't bring in a man with a gun, but it would seem that one can bring in a letter.

Hee, that's fantastic.

[pameladean]

Still on track to be published in 2010. That doesn't seem quite as far away as it used to, but it's not precisely near, alas.

I'll have to remember about letters for future books, obviously.

P.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....heck, I remember when "2001" was in the Mythical Future and "2010" not too far behind.... //is rueful

I was just thinking about letters as used in various books! Jean Rhys, Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr. (oh she was a past master at them), and of course epistolary novels....


(and oh dear God I'm just babbling this is so nervewracking already //head in hands)

[aedifica]

Am still looking forward to reading these! I'm looking forward patiently, though, as I know the wheels of publishing don't necessarily grind all that fast.

[pameladean]

Alas, no. 2010 is the year. The comfort is that both volumes will be coming out in the same calendar year, last I heard.

P.

[vass]

This is exciting to hear.

[pameladean]

It's kind of exciting to me, to, actually.

P

[thinkum]

Next time I write two books, though, I'd prefer to do it on purpose.

(Then they'd probably want you to re-split it into three volumes.)

The apartment is currently piled excessively (even for us!) with stacks of books; Jerry keeps bringing more boxes over from the storage locker to catalog, and very few seem to be heading back to the locker when he's done. Add in the fruits of our recent forays through the region's used book shops, and we're left with only the occasional, narrow, twisting footpath, leading from bed to bath to computer. Nonetheless, he's been successfully carving out bookshelf real estate to house our shared library of titles by "the Minnesota writers", and I think it's more than safe to say that both he and I are delighted at the prospect of adding two more "Pamela books" to that collection, even if you only intended to write a single volume. :-)

[pameladean]

I know the scene you describe. It's a regular one around here.

Warn him that they are fat ones.

P.

[gypsy1969.livejournal.com]

Congrats on progress!

[pameladean]

Thanks! Maybe it will even accelerate.

P.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Good news! I'm glad it's moving along!

[pameladean]

*book thinks about cooperating better*

P.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yay book! *clap clap clap*

[pameladean]

*book preens and consents to have a paragraph added*

P.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Booooooooooooooook. Two books.

[pameladean]

With bonus extra chapters to lure beta readers!

P.

[tunxeh.livejournal.com]

Some distraction is good tonight, I think. Otherwise I'll just be endlessly refreshing news sites and not learning anything I won't learn tomorrow morning.

I'm now having even more fun letting the character eviscerate

For love and rhetoric without the blood you're using rather graphic language...those poor hapless recent incidents! What did they do to deserve evisceration?

[pameladean]

Old habits die hard, I guess.

Oh no, there I go again.

The recent incidents were pretty ill-behaved, though, I'll say that.

P.

[comrade-cat.livejournal.com]

Yay! Book! :-)

Looking forward to the rerelease of Dubious Hills.

[pameladean]

I'm very curious what kind of cover they'll put on it.

P.

[arkuat]

I'm looking forward to the conversation when the second viewpoint character reenters! *bounce*

[pameladean]

Me too! But she's being very coy, I'm afraid.

P.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Oooooooooh!!!!!!
And crazy with Delayed Gratification - Do.Not.Want.

[pameladean]

It does go on and on, doesn't it? Sorry, I'm working as fast as I can. Pesky characters.

P.

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

Hooray for two long books! Boo for a too long wait.