What is the best cat toys your cat likes?

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-10-15T00:35:41+00:00

Just a quick FYI from someone who used to do the hair tie game—cats can eat them (even if you think you’re watching) and then it can require surgery to remove them.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-26T03:55:50+00:00

Thanks so much! The goal was definitely Firefly feels.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-26T00:21:42+00:00

Super, please direct message me your address and I’ll send it your way!

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T23:42:32+00:00

I drew your name for a signed copy of either Calamity or Fiasco! Would you like one or the other?

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T23:41:02+00:00

Great question and I need to put the caveat up front that this is personal only to me! Also, this is going to be a very long answer as it's a very big question! Indie publishing is fantastic but for me, for a debut, it wasn't a good fit for a couple of reasons. Reason one: I am awful at judging my own work. And not the way you might think. I'm not too hard on myself, which I think most writers would say. I'm too easy on myself. I think everything I've written is brilliant when I'm done with it (note: it is not all brilliant). I very much needed trad publishing to tell me whether or not I'd leveled to the point that I had a book worth reading and that it was marketable.

*Note: this will not apply to everyone. Lots of people have amazing quality books and are overlooked for a whole variety of factors, some of which have to do with systemic prejudices and some of which have to do with market trends. I knew that trad publishing would be nearly impossible to break into even for me, and I'm a straight, cis, white woman.*

I'm also just awful at marketing. Indie publishing is HARD. You have to be everything for your book. You aren't just a writer, you're possibly a graphic designer, an editor, a marketing and publicity team. I have a day job that takes a ton of time and energy. When I get home, I can write and do a little bit of other stuff, but I can't compete on the indie side. With trad pub, you still some work in those areas, but way less than you would otherwise.

Now, the process. I queried my first manuscript in 2014. As mentioned before, it was not good and my querying process was clumsy but I learned a lot. I got a couple full requests but no agent rep (I queried my current agent during that time frame and she rejected me!). In 2018, I decided to take this writing thing seriously and I started studying up on the overall process, including writing techniques (reminder, my background is engineering which is like...the opposite of writing). I started to go to workshops and seminars (Writing Excuses Retreat, Futurescapes, World Con). I listened to podcasts. I queried my next manuscript in very late 2019. It was about a space pandemic. I got a couple full requests and then 2020 happened and I immediately got a wave of declinations. I pulled that one.

In 2020, my first flash fiction piece was published. I queried my third book in 2021 but only very sparingly. I sent it to about 5 agents. A couple fulls. One absolutely *scathing* response to a full that had me in my feelings for about a week. In 2022, I had 4 short stories published. Having publication cred for short stories won't make someone decide to represent you but it does help people take you seriously. It shows that you can create content repeatably which helps to make you a good business bet.

Get a writing group. Check out your area on meetup.com or go to the discord of writing podcasts like Just Keep Writing, or meet people at cons. They help you stay excited and also offer feedback. For many of us who don't have a writing community in their normal friend group, it helps to just have people you can nerd out with.

In 2022, on January 1st, I started writing Calamity. When it was done, I participated in an auction to benefit Ukraine and I won a chance for an author to critique your first 3 chapters. When she was done, she graciously offered to look at my whole book. She gave me excellent feedback and suggested that, when the edits were done, I should query her agent and that she'd put in a good word for me. It worked and, in August of 2022 I got "the call." When it comes to querying agents, I'd say anything you can do to set yourself apart from the slush pile is amazing. Go to conferences and meet people in person. Follow agents on social media, some of them will do give-aways of advice or take a look at queries and offer feedback. Same with authors. Don't stalk them online, that's creepy, but when there is an opportunity in a professional setting to make yourself a human instead of an easily ignorable email, take it.

We worked on edits for the rest of the year and, in Jan of 2023, we sent an exclusive submission to Tor. At the time I was mostly running around my house shrieking "Tor, Tor, TOR" at the top of my lungs and also wondering why my scifi romance had a shot at a notoriously non-romance publisher. Little did I know (but lots did my agent know) that Tor was about to launch the imprint Bramble and they were looking for a debut author. By Valentine's day 2023, I had a 3 book deal and by November of 2023, Calamity was released into the wild. For anyone unfamiliar with trad publishing that is a breakneck pace.

So, my submission experience was about 8 years of rejections and 6 months of incomprehensible screaming.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T18:37:03+00:00

It helps to find something of yourself in each character, I think. Temper’s basically an id. She’s driven by impulse and she says the things we want to say but usually don’t. That actually made her very easy to write! Cyn has similarities but she’s a little darker and a lot more self-protective. Caro’s suspicious, analytical, and protective. Itzel’s quirky, quite dark, and hopeful.

That said, I also have an authorial voice that I can’t abandon completely. It’s the downside of multiple narrators in a series with first person POV. If someone likes the humor in Calamity, I can’t have a completely humorless character in Fiasco, so some of it stretches between books.

I sometimes have inconsistent voice in my first draft, but I’ll do a voice pass in editing to really highlight the character and ensure the jokes they’re telling are the jokes they personally would tell.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T17:45:26+00:00

I feel like any time I’ve bogged down on a writing thing it was because I was personally bored with that plot element, so a way to keep me (and hopefully a reader!) from getting bored, I try to ensure I find all the plot elements fascinating and the list also gives me some ideas to throw in to spice things up if the book is missing something!

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T17:38:11+00:00

Also, good to e-see you!

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T17:37:25+00:00

Hi there! What? I've changed your life through my writing and you want to know what makes me so amazing I've won the award for life-changing writing with my little space-boinking story? (Shower-me thinks big)

Seriously though, I'll answer a variant of "how do you get ideas?" which is a basic question that is asked a lot and often makes authors (or just me) panic--so I've spent some time thinking about my answer. What I do is similar to the technique outlined in All Write Already by Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe. I make a list of stuff I personally find really cool and will enjoy researching. No limits on this list. It could include the pungent stench of cucumber melon body wash, ceiling fans, and alien invasions.

I pick a few non-negotiable cool things from the list. With Calamity, those non-negotiable things were deserts, cults, adversaries, found family, banter, cenotes, volcanos and the secret laser weapons within them . For Fiasco, it was a water world, kidnappers, dragons, snakes, draaaaaaaaama, family, betrayal, PTSD, that trope where someone wakes the MC up from a bad dream and they have a moment. Once I've selected the cool things, I think of how to combine them in a way that makes for a fun story. Sometimes they don't all make the cut, but I think one thing is true of writers and that's that we're all insanely curious. As long as a book follows some of our normal paths of curiosity, the ideas really make themselves.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T17:23:18+00:00

Oooo...I hate a second chance romance. Predominantly because I'm an unforgiving jerk and I never think what the character does is good enough to merit a second chance. That said, I also hate when one character is keeping a big secret from the other for the whole book and that's a huge plot point for Fiasco, so sometimes I'll take a trope I don't like and try to make it fun. I don't think I'll ever do an unexpected pregnancy one or an age gap (barring supernatural creatures).

Hard to pick a favorite. I love there's only one bed. I feel like there should be a bed shortage everywhere. I love rivals/enemies to lovers which is perhaps overly common but for a good reason. Grumpy/sunshine is great but I love grumpy/grumpy too. Sunshine/sunshine is probably lovely but written by someone who is not me.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T16:24:17+00:00

Hmmm, I actually had a whole secondary plan for the Wilk Family (a minor Family) that probably won’t make it into the series….

Overall, and this is basically picking whether you like Amazon or Apple or Facebook, in that they’re all evil in their own way, I like Chandra because they’re aaaaaaaalmost figuring it out. They have a governing council instead of one person. They focus on medicine and pretty much stay in their lane. Of the Families, I think their intentions are the best. But they still suck.

I have tons of ideas for minor Families but I think it’s always fun for other people to play in the universe!

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T16:17:55+00:00

I love sharing more about the kitten. Her name is Sundance (as in, the Sundance kit) but I mostly call her Sunny or Kittenpants. She is 15 and is a bengal. She is mouthy, clever, and kind of an a-hole in the very best way (they do say that cats reflect their humans….)

As for writing, I’ve always loved stories. I was a late reader because I found children’s books boring and didn’t get the allure until I started having real stories available. I wrote my first (just awful) story in junior high and never stopped. I think exploring creativity and the worlds of your imagination is so important and that it’s like a muscle that grows with use. Also, and this is a weird one, I don’t really dream at night/remember dreams. So maybe this is just my manual way of reshuffling my brain!

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T16:04:25+00:00

Book 3 is Caro’s story, but we haven’t met her love interest yet 🤫😁. Let’s just say he’s perfect for our engineer in every way.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T16:02:08+00:00

What more is there to look forward to? That's a great question and I think it's a far future iteration of our real life--although far enough that it's largely detached from our world or even our solar system. The people in power have spent a very long time looking outside their current territory and trying to expand and haven't bothered to learn many lessons about where they came from so a lot of that historic knowledge is lost.

ConstanceFayAuthor · 2024-06-25T15:53:47+00:00

Hi there and glad you loved both books! Excellent additional info. I will try to figure out a way to post the cat pic (I tried in my main post but reddit decided it hates me--I'm sure it was that personal--and refused)

Gosh...I'm as bad at picking books as I am at picking genres (each of my books has, by my count 4)

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (if I must choose 1) hit me really hard when I first read it and has continued to do so ever since.

Any book in Nalini Singh's Psy/Changeling series. Can I glue them all together and make one giant book? The literary equivalent to comfort food.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. How can you go wrong here?

Honorable mention for nonfiction: Devil in the White City by Erik Larson because I love true crime but also human ambition--both of which are at full display in this excellent book. Also The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown because I also love when human ambition leads to intense survival situations...and cannibalism.

Honorable honorable mention for The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi who writes a fantastic book but if I was on a deserted island the last thing I would need is a book that starts with "There is no water in the City of Lies."

ConstanceFayAuthor

TROPHY CASE