Don't Throw It Away

So I was digging through some old files and came across some of the earliest words I ever wrote for a novel. I'm not going to share that one, because...reasons. But I am going to share with you the opening of the second novel I ever finished (At sixteen). Because I rewrote this one recently. That's write, I dug out a decades old novel and rewrote it. And I'm pretty happy I did. So, without further ado, one of the earliest examples of my writing.


Version One

It was dark by the time she came home. She snuck in through her bedroom window. Her feet had just touched the floor when the lights came on. Bringing her face to face with her angry mother. She looked around for an escape route but the only way out was through her window, and she doubted she could get out and down, before she was pulled back in. "Hi mom. Been up long?"

"Don't 'Hi mom' me! Where have you been? I've been up all night worrying! You are in so much trouble! This goes beyond grounding. I can’t believe you! Every night this week! I thought that you would have known better than this! First, you've been expelled from every school I've ever put you in. You spend most of your time away doing who knows what. Then you dare to break curfew. This is exactly why I'm sending you to private school.” Gwen eyes bugged out as she tried to make sense of what she had just heard.

"What!? I can't go to private school! They brainwash you and make you into little robots that act all snobby and not only that but, I'll look stupid. They'll make me wear a uniform and...eww."

"Not just any school. Darkcastle Boarding School for Troubled Youth. Besides you should have thought about that before you blew up the gym."

"I didn't blow up the gym. The moron, who decided to explain how dynamite works set up right next to my display about fire, blew up the gym."

"Yes but you lit the fuse."

"Not on purpose. I thought it was my candle! I was only expelled because the principal hated me so much!” she said trying to recover the upper hand. “ Anyway isn't Darkcastle in Europe?"

"Yes. But that's not important. They've accepted you on the reasoning that your uncle went there."

"Which one?"

"You have to ask?” she rolled her eyes in exasperation. “It was your uncle Eric." Ah yes the good for nothing uncle Eric who lived in Europe and apparently had no job.* At least he got away from my psycho mother she thought bitterly.* Her mother plowed ahead, ignoring her daughter’s look of chagrin." Besides, since he lives over there you can live with him while on break or you can stay at the school that is up to you. You'll come home for the summer, of course, but I can't afford for you to come back during the holidays this year, so I'll just send you your gifts."* I can't believe this. She's planning the rest of my school career for me she thought angrily.*

"Don't I get a say in this!?"

"No. You have a day to pack. Meaning tomorrow. Then the next day you leave."

"You couldn't have told me earlier? I won't have time!"

"Oh don't worry. Anyway, I didn’t want you running off. You just have to pack clothes and a few personal items. They provide everything else. Food, uniforms, soap. The essentials. Don't worry about it." *Oh my God. She was really gonna send me away she thought.* "The travel buddy I got for you has your ticket so you can't tear it to pieces or whatever. Now get some sleep. You have a big day tomorrow." She left the room and turned off the light, leaving the girl in the dark. Gwen flopped onto the bed and fell asleep.


_____________________________________________________________


So...you can see that I hadn't quite grasped "craft" at this stage. But that's okay, I was sixteen. I didn't have anyone who could provide feedback on my work. I didn't want to show it to my parents, or my teachers and at that particular moment I wasn't speaking to my friends so...yeah.


But, I kept coming back to the ideas I presented in the book. Because some of them were good. There were, as they say, good bones. So I tore it apart and came back at it once in college, and then again more recently. And that scene above? It's still in the book actually. Sort of. It's no longer chapter one, it's not the opening and my craft has been refined to some degree. So for comparison's sake, the newest version of that scene.



Chapter Three: Run
Astrid

The lawn was damp with morning dew before the sun had risen. I could feel the cold of it against the flesh of my bare feet as I made my way back to the house. It was sandwiched between two other homes; to which it was indistinguishably different. A cookie cutter home in a bushel of cookie cutter homes. A testament to the ingenuity of the American city planner. I crept across the dampened lawn like a thief, silent as I could be. The second story’s left hand window was still cracked ever-so slightly, just as I had left it. My hands met the twining greenery of the ivy trellis as I pulled my way up the side and towards the window.

My legs were already protesting as I had made my way across the lawn, and now they screamed at me. I could feel one of the muscles coil and tighten beneath my flesh, cramping. I gasped, letting a little hiss of air escape as I tried not to make too much noise and wake my guardian. I reached down and massaged the leg as best I could and pulled myself up the rest of the way to the window. Fingers slid under the metal pushing the window up far enough to enter.

My fingers were followed by my hands and arms as I pulled myself into the room beyond the window. “Ow.” I muttered, head slamming into the floor at my miscalculation of the drop from window to beige carpeted floor. As hand went to head the lights over my head flickered on and panic set in as I glanced around for the intruder. “Oh hi, Silvia.” I forced a smile and scrambled to my feet, waving at her with the hand not currently clasping my head.

"Don't 'Hi Silvia' me! Where have you been? I've been up all night worrying!” she shouted, waving her arms about in an effort to make her point of just how exasperated she was. I wasn’t really in the mood for theatrics.

“I took a walk.” Now was not the time to explain my midnight excursions into the forest. I didn’t want to worry her.

“You took a walk.” She turned away from me, arms wrapped around her chest. “I...” She turned back, face pale and eyebrows drawn down sharply. “You and I will discuss this over breakfast. Go to bed.”

She shook her head and marched out of the room, slamming my door closed behind her. I glanced down at the floor for a moment, marveling at the way the carpet sucked away the damp from my feet before I turned and closed the window. I took a quick shower and rubbed some ointment into my leg. I turned the light off with a sweep of my hand as I hobbled over to my bed, collapsing into its soft, warm embrace.

“She worries too much.” I whispered into my pillow, burrowing into the feathered puff and into a dreamland I could only hope would be friendlier than that which had driven me out into the woods.

__________________________________________________________________

So that's different, right? It's amazing what a decade, writing classes, critique partners and betas and a whole host of amazing writers can do. My point is, we all start somewhere. We all have those terrible first drafts buried in our hard drives and in battered Composition notebooks. It's okay.  And if you find one of those novels and see something in it worth saving, you should trust your instincts. Your younger writer self may not have been fully-baked yet, but all that creativity you have now was present then, and you might just find yourself with a real diamond in the rough.

Happy hunting!

Retrospective

I've been writing down stories since I learned how to write and telling them came before writing them. Making up strange creatures that lived in other lands, vast back stories for the Lego people my brother and I played with. I'm from a family of storytellers. We're loud and talkative and every conversation is usually five people all talking with multiple threads of conversation going at once where each person is expected to jump from one to the other, to follow those threads without losing track.

It's a daunting sort of thing to grow up into. I certainly have friends who've told me they're not quite sure how to join in these conversations that are half spoken, half remembered and entirely within the language of the family. It's English, but it's our English. Three of us are writers of the fictional variety, but everyone has dabbled at least a bit in storytelling.

My brother writes music and my dad likes to build viciously intricate campaigns for table-top gaming. It seemed only natural then, eventually, that I would wind my way back to storytelling. (At least, in retrospect). This past year I think I've found my way back to the initial story threads I first created. The ones that say more about me than I ever expected them to. This year showed me my weaknesses as a writer, and my strengths.

And more than anything, it made me feel like I'd progressed forward. For a long time I'd sort of felt like the apprentice aspiring higher than my skill level but now... I feel like I took a master level course in writing last year. I was pushed and prodded further than I have been in a long time and more than that--I feel as though I actually made it out with a greater understanding of my voice.

Grief over the death of my grandmother prompted a month long writing binge the likes of which I've never experienced. I wrote 5-6K words a day, clocking out the month with over 160K words. I didn't know what to make of the accomplishment, beyond that by the time I had finished the stories I was working on, I did feel a hell of lot better than I had before.

I'm not totally happy with everything I wrote in 2016. I wish I'd finished more of my WIPs. I wish I'd gotten a little further in my career. But what I did accomplish? Well, it's a hell of a lot more than I did in the year before.

I'm proud that I beta-read, I'm proud of my critique partners. I'm boggled by the number of people I've met and the writers that I'm now friends with. It's hard for me to believe some times that the little girl that wrote about a magical island with a unicorn living on it has become the woman who writes about...everything. I hope six-year-old me would be impressed.

I haven't quite mastered my craft yet, but I know that I'm getting closer. (As close as one can get to mastering the written word) With every story I tell, every word I force onto the page, I'm click-clacking closer to it.

I can't wait to see what words I write this year. I can't wait to see what my friends write this year.

In that, at least, I am looking forward.

We Rise

A thousand small cruelties

A thousand thorns in our skin

Like arrows in a giant’s hide

Bleeding sluggish, dragging

Painful pricks

Burning

A thousand small cruelties

A thousand words over time

Breaking and beating

Stealing our breath

Slowing

Weighing

A thousand small cruelties

A thousand and one

It’s just not done

And still

And still

We rise

- Ash K. Alexander

2017 Goals

I don't like the word "resolution" because it infers I have some sort of control over every aspect of the year. And I know better.

Instead, these are my goals, lofty at times, for the upcoming year.

Read: Read all off the books on my nightstand. There are like 30 of them and if I don't start reading them I'm almost positive the tower will topple, killing me in my sleep. It's practically my entire TBR list, honestly, plus some new books. I just...I didn't get a lot of reading done.

Write: I have a few unfinished projects that are too near completion to ignore and I'm going to finish them, dammit.

1: The Measure of  a Lady - Basically a gender-swapped, steampunk, Count of Monte Cristo with necromancy, ghosts and shenanigans - Currently sitting at 39K words, I believe I can wrap up the draft in 20-30K words.

2: A Caper in Crete - MG Steampunk - Currently sitting at 26K words, I believe I can wrap up it up in 10-15K words

3: Rule of Steel - YA steampunk, third book in a trilogy I've been working on with spies, an Irish empire, fairies inspired by Twelfth Night. Is at 46K words, should be able to finish it in 20-30K words.

4: Cyril : Sort of secret project. Currently just in beginning stages because of things. Need to finish ASAP.

5: Children of the Mountain: Adult fantasy, sitting at 17K words, an overhaul of a previous novel and sequel to another adult fantasy. Should be able to finish in 40-60K words

6:Are You Happy Now? - YA paranormal mystery - Started this end of December, I think it'll wrap up in 60K words or so, currently at 6K. Relatively hopeful.

7: The Merlin Cipher - Adult contemporary fantasy - Merlin's grand-daughter takes on Mordred. Basically. I needs to be finished. It's over the halfway point. 

Edit:

The only project I know I'll be editing majorly is Scout's Honor my Nanowrimo project from 2016. I've got a beta reader for the project and once feedback is in I'll start overhauling in preparation for possible submission.

Rule of Sword: Got the comments back from the lovely Chelsea, who beta-read this for me after the holidays, and once I've got a feel for where it needs help, I'll start on it. Not as exhaustive an edit as the other project, that's for sure.

Art: I need to get back into the habit of drawing or painting at least every week if not every day. We'll see how that goes.

The Truly Lofty Goal

Get an agent.


Well, that's it for work-related goals. I'm also hoping to finish some fanfics I have out there, meet at least one author in person for the first time and perhaps travel outside of the state. Fingers crossed.

Cheers.

Moving Forward

Hello wondrous people! This is going to be an odd post for me. Odd, terrifying. Mostly terrifying.

I've spent much of my life pretending I wasn't a thing that I was. Or at the very least, I wasn't as much of it as other people. Or maybe I wasn't that thing at all and I just thought I was. That there were qualifiers on the identification that I didn't meet.

I thought I was a fraud of some kind. I'd been stealthily "out" with a few people. Close friends, but not family, though I'd made some overtures of explanation I'd never just said one way or another in spite of opportunities to do so. After the election, and everything that came with it, I knew I could easily have just said, "Oh hell no, I'm never coming out now." But I can't do that. I'm done being uncertain. I'm done being anyone other than me.

So, here it is. Hi, my name is Ash and I'm demi & bi. (I was trying to come up with a demigod related pun and failed, sorry.)

As a kid, the only books I read with gay characters were the ones where those characters died, or were horribly scarred and/or torn from their love interest. They didn't get happy ever afters. The only reference I had for girls who liked other girls was couched in language meant to entice men. I didn't want to be looked at like men looked at those girls. I didn't think I could be one of those girls because I just...wasn't that. The image. The representation I'd been shown.

I rejected it so hard. I rejected myself.

I am so proud to see that the world of fiction has expanded. That there are little girls now who get to see themselves in books. That maybe those little girls won't have to muddle through years of confusion and self-doubt, they'll get to know who they are and know it's okay. That's amazing to me.

For me, self-acceptance means that I am finally writing about girls like me. I've always tried to write the books I wanted to read as a kid, and now, I think I'm also going to write the books I needed to read as a kid.

The writer community has been amazing. The first people outside of my tight cell of friends I told were fellow writers, who were incredibly encouraging when I decided to come out to my family. Which went really well, actually. It was very anticlimactic to be honest, but I am totally okay with that.

So, thank you fellow lovers of Colin (you know who you are), for supporting me.

Thank you writers at large for being awesome.

Thank you family for being totally cool. 

Next year is going to be hard, and probably the next four years, but knowing I have the support of an amazing group of people is going to help get me through that, and I truly hope that someday, one of my books does the same thing for someone else.

See you all in the New Year!

The Process of Not Giving Up

I first started querying for publication when I was fourteen-years-old.

I'd read one of Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' books and decided that if she could do it, so could I. Of course, what I didn't take into account at the time was that she had connections. Big time. But I learned some valuable publishing lessons early because of this. I learned about predatory publishers. I learned about vanity publishers. I discovered there were these things called agents.

And rewrites.

The point is, I've been at this for fifteen years. Fifteen. I've written book after book, queried hundreds of times. I've queried most of the books I've written and I was rejected over and over again. You'd think, after all of that, I'd give up.

And I have. There were a couple years where I wasn't able to do anything. Where I stopped writing but instead buried myself in reading. I spent a year living on a friend's couch after college because I couldn't get a job. I was diagnosed with a form of anemia that causes me to be fatigued very easily. I fell into depressive episodes.

It was hard. It sucked. But it was also during this time that I made my first headway into the publishing industry with an offer from a small press. Which I leapt onto, clung to and prayed would take me to greater things. Five years later I had to request rights back for failure on their part to, well, pay me. It sucked. It hurt.

But during the time that this was happening I had a string of unusual happenings. First, I reunited with my awesome CP Kaitlin after a hiatus brought on by my Grandmother's death. I tried out for #PitchWars. I didn't make it in, but I got some great feedback. Then #PitMad came up and nothing came of that. Not to be discouraged, I tried for #PitchSlam...and got in.

But before #PitchSlam, quite soon after #PitchWars, I was querying again. Researching, sending out cold queries every day. And out of the blue, I got a full request followed by a Revise and Resumbit (R&R). A couple days after I got into #PitchSlam, I got another full request.

I sent off the R&R, got it back, had a phone call, and started at it again for another resubmit. (This revision process was actually pretty awesome).

I should say, it was at this point that I was becoming pretty invested in this agent. She was enthusiastic on the phone, really seemed to understand what I was aiming for and more importantly--she could point out my weaknesses.

#PitchSlam results came out.

I ended up with ELEVEN requests. I hyperventilated a bit, bathed in congratulations, called my mother, thanked a bunch of people and...

Researched. That's right, I got out my spreadsheet, I put all of their names into the spreadsheet and found out who they were, how they wanted a submission and moreover, if I thought they were the agent for me. My full MS was still with my eager beta reader Courtney at this point. (THANK YOU!) I decided I would query Friday/Saturday and let the chips fall where they may.

Plans went a bit sideways, but I sent out requests on Sunday, and then that evening a partial request came in from a cold query. It was a deluge of requests. More than I'd ever had for any manuscript, period. 

Now we're in the waiting.  A lot of waiting. I'm still hoping to have an offer before the end of the year, but I'm not expecting it. Amongst the waiting there have been rejections, there has been another R&R and a even a few partials upgraded to fulls. None of this would have happened if I'd given up.

No matter what happens next, I know without a doubt that I have what it takes to make it the next realm of the query process. I just...have to be patient.

I Won.

That's right, I won Nano.

It was a crazy kind of November, which I talked about in my last post to some degree. I made 50K words on Day 29 after restarting from 0 on Day 14. Not too shabby. Of course, I wasn't actually done with the first draft at that point. I finished the first draft today actually, after staying up into the wee hours of the evening/morning. Final word count was 62.5K words in 19 days. I'm calling that a win.

This book was an unusual one for me. For one thing, it was scifi, and I haven't written science fiction for years. I've never finished any of the scifi projects I've started either, so finishing this was sort of a break through for me. Getting out of my usual genres was good for me.

Admittedly, writing without any supernatural or magical creatures had me missing them, but I'd conceived of this world some time ago and I knew that I wanted it to be science fiction. It let me flesh out some concepts I'd been toying with in some of my old, unfinished projects as well as dig into my technological interests.

Scout's Honor turned out to be one of the more honest books I think I've written. There's a lot of myself in it. It is, at it's heart, about a girl trying to put her family back together. The fight against a tyrannical government, prison breaks and espionage are all fun to write, but Dinah really just wants to get her mom back home.

She makes some great friends along the way, including (against my better judgement) falling for a grumpy medic named Eddy (short for Edwina). Romance was not in my plan for the book, but Dinah took one look at Eddy and was like, "Oh, that is mine." What can I say, characters do have a will of their own.

Set in a world where gene-modifications, micro-computers that can implanted into the body, and body modifications are common place, Scout's Honor is basically my take on the rise of technology, the rise of a very bad man to power, and what happens when the Girl Scouts of all people become a force for resistance.

I'm going to let it rest for a bit, but I plan on tackling revisions in 2017.

I've talked before about being ready to write a certain book. The WIP I tore apart to write this had long been resigned to the scraps folder. A few thousand words that petered out with no real direction. I'm glad that I found the place and time to write this book. I needed to write this book.

And, an obligatory excerpt:

Nothing about my room had changed while I was gone. The soft green of the walls I’d insisted on after I turned fourteen and could no longer live with dancing ponies on my wall. The half-chewed pen I’d left on my desk. It was a bit surprising there wasn’t a film of dust over everything but my bed was still half-made, my uniform was still hanging up in my closet. I wandered over to it, eyeing my wings. They couldn’t ever take the wings, I’d earned them, but the power that went with them was gone. I swallowed and gritted my teeth. I took hold of the pin, but jerking it off would only damage my uniform.

Fingers shaking, I let it go and turned away.

“Do you think you’ll be ready to go back in three weeks?” Papa asked, leaning in my doorway.

“I don’t know.”  I shook my head. “I didn’t think this far ahead. You know? I didn’t think about what would happen when I got back.”

“You weighed the probabilities. You didn’t think you would be coming back, did you?”

“I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t want to think too hard about it either way.”

“Well, now you’ll get your chance. You know they won’t let you out for field work until you come to majority.” Papa’s tone told me the truth. I won’t let you out for field work.

I couldn’t exactly blame him. I couldn’t let that get me down though, could I?

“Lunch in fifteen. I picked up a new ear piece for you and an upgrade module for your chipset. Do you need anything? I’m putting in the grocery order.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I need my birth control refilled.”

“Done. You have your first therapy appointment tomorrow afternoon, by the way. Dr. Kaplan has agreed to remote sessions to start, but she may want you in her office at some point.”

“Okay.” I nodded.

“Okay.” He managed a smile. “Shout if you need me.”

I nodded again and he headed off. I could smell food—specifically Papa’s goulash which was the only thing he ever made. It was his grandmother’s recipe. He always made it when we he thought I needed comfort food. He wasn’t wrong. I stripped down, changing into my worn favorite pajamas, gray with little black crows on the pants and a gray tank-top. The familiar smells of laundry soap and the lavender sachet I kept in my drawer.

I sat down at my desk, picking up things and setting them back down again. My sharpshooter award from camp. The tiny owl figurine my mom gave me when I was six. Random pieces of jewelry, pens and hairpins. A small photo of my parents and me in Berlin when I was ten. I was never very good at keeping my desk tidy. My room wasn’t too bad, but my desk was always cluttered.

I picked up a screwdriver tucked under my monitor. I couldn’t even remember why I had it on my desk to start with. I sighed and set it back down. I was feeling a little bit at ends. Uncertain. Alain was right about me putting together a plan.

If Scout Command couldn’t get Mom out, I would. I had to be prepared for that. Having Alain on my side would come in handy, but I was also going to need someone from R&D. Extraction and smuggling experts.

Like Maxwell Reed. Max had one of the best records for extracting dissidents. He’d participated in other prison breaks. From the outside in other instances, but still. He was good at what he did. I’d been counting on myself as the pilot no matter the circumstances, but now?

I had to put another list together that included a pilot.

“Lunch!”

But I’d have to solve that problem later.

I sure as hell would have the time.