RevisionLand; Or, Aliens/Robots/Dry-Towners/Mad-Scientists Ate My Brains

Gillray, "The Headache," 1819

One of the delights of living with a fellow writer occurs when I'm sitting at the dinner table, trying to wrap my mind around 200 or 500 pages of text. He raises an eyebrow, Spock-style. I say, "Revisions." And he gets it. I am not only not flying with the rest of the ducks at this moment, I'm nowhere near this planet. I'm in RevisionLand.

Some writers look at me as if Aliens/etc., really have eaten my brains when I say I love to revise. Everyone's different. I'm not a writer who uses detailed outlines. I know some who do, one or two 3 x 5 cards per scene. I work from an outline that tells me I need to get from here to there and this is the emotional tenor of this story hinge, and that is how I want to climax to come together. How I get from a blank screen to ### (the end, in writerese) is an adventure. The story doesn't happen for me in the first draft, but in the revisions.

Proofreading The Children of Kings

Here's an image from late 2012. Cleopatra left us the next year at the ripe old age of 20.

Here I am, complete with Cat Muse, working my way through page proofs of The Children of Kings.

Cleopatra is almost 20 years old, and I've had her since she was 8 weeks. She's moving very slowly these days but still loves to curl up with me while I work. She's so thin, I've covered her with the edge of the afghan for extra warmth.

[author squee] Sweet Words about The Children of Kings

Here's what Goodreads reader Marie Parson said about The Children of Kings. This review made my day!

Darkover stories have always at their heart been about transcendent acceptance-not only
one's own acceptance of who and what one is, and not only the acceptance, of one, by others. Darkover's tale of acceptance is the story of how, in the very act of accepting oneself and of the other--which too often is perceived as an act of weakness or simple naivete--instead, brings about a unity of soul and spirit that carries with it immense power and purpose.

The Children of Kings definitely does not disappoint, in this regard. It opens another brilliant chapter into a world of future possibilities, where not only do humans travel between the stars, not only find destiny and heart's home in the strangest of places, but also, find that they can do anything wondrous, build anything marvelous, if they find the way to do it together.

Well done, Children of Kings. Be warned, once you begin this book you will want to continue through to the end.

Deborah Chats About The Children of Kings

For your reading delight, here are some excerpts from a blog hop about current projects. I was finishing up The Children of Kings at the time

Where did the idea come from for the book?
A couple of things. One is that Marion's original concept for Darkover centered on the clash of cultures, so I wanted to bring the Terran Federation back into the picture, but not in a nice, sedately friendly way, in a OMG terrible crisis about to descend upon us way. I also wanted to run away to live with the chieri, and Kierestelli (Regis and Linnea's daughter, from Hastur Lord) kindly offered to take me.

For this tale set mostly in the Dry Towns, I used as background not only The Shattered Chain but a very early (1961) “proto-Darkover” novel, The Door Through Space. The Door Through Space contained many elements familiar to Darkover readers, from jaco and the Ghost Wind to the names of people and places (Shainsa, Rakhal, Dry-towns). Marion was exploring a world in which Terrans are the visitors, and adventure lurks in the shadows of ancient alien cities. She drew upon and further developed this material in The Shattered Chain (1976).

These books reflected the growth of Marion’s vision, but each of them was also part of the times in which it was written. 1960s science fiction novels were often tightly-plotted, fast-paced, and short by today’s standards. Most, although by no means all, protagonists were male, and female characters were often viewed from that perspective, what today we call “the male gaze.” By the middle of the next decade, publishers were interested in longer, more complex works. Not only that, the women’s movement and the issues it raised influenced genre as well as mainstream fiction, opening the way for strong female characters who defined themselves in their own terms. If Marion had written The Shattered Chain a decade and a half earlier, I doubt it have found the receptive, enthusiastic audience it did. Her timing (as with The Mists of Avalon or The Heritage of Hastur) brilliantly reflected the emerging sensibilities of the times.

Now we live in a different world. This is not to say that the previous struggles have been resolved, but that much has changed in the social consciousness from 1976 to today. In writing The Children of Kings, I considered how Marion’s ideas about the Dry Towns (and any patriarchal desert culture) might have changed over the last three decades. The Shattered Chain, with its examination of the roles of women and the choice (or lack of choices) facing them, focused on only a few aspects of the Dry Towns culture. What if we went deeper, seeing it as complex, with admirable aspects as well as those we find abhorrent? With customs that we cannot truly comprehend but must respect, as well as those that resonate with our own? With men of compassion and women of power?

As the Dry Towns developed in my mind, I turned also to the theme that had characterized the early Darkover novels—the conflict between a space-faring technological race and the marvelously rich and romantic Domains, with their tradition of the Compact and the laran-Gifted Comyn. And now, adding to the mix, the ancient kihar-based Dry Towns.

What genre does your book fall under?
Like much of Darkover, it's technically sf, reads like fantasy. This one's a bit more like the earlier novels in that there are space ships and people from outer space and such. And chieri, native non-humans. Definitely romantic.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When Terran smugglers arm the Dry Towns warlords with blasters, it's up to the grandson of Regis Hastur to save Darkover.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I typically take about a year to a year and half from beginning the outline to handing in the manuscript to my editor. It's hard to say "first draft, second draft..." as the amount of pre-writing and "oops-in-the-middle" varies so much. I also usually leap-frog rough drafting one project and revising another, interspersed with breaks for other deadlines (page proofs, short fiction for invitational anthologies). This one was no exception.

I should add that Matt Stawicki did a fantastic job on the cover. I love this painting!

Meeting Marion. Part 1

The next Darkover book, The Children of Kings, was released on Tuesday, March 5, from DAW Books. Here and in the following weeks, I'll also talk about how I met Marion Zimmer Bradley, how we came to work together, and a few thoughts on "playing in her sandbox."

I frequently am asked how I came to work with Marion and to continue her Darkover series after her death. Senior author-junior author dual-bylines are not unusual these days, but each partnership has its own story. In this case, the answer centers around our long-established professional relationship. That in itself would be insufficient to produce a smooth collaboration, but it was how she knew my natural literary voice would match hers and why she trusted my understanding and love for her special world. In addition, I had respectable publication credentials in my own right, both novels and short fiction, and was not using the collaboration to establish my career; I was already a working professional writer.

To begin with, I met Marion by writing her a letter. This was back in 1980 and I had no idea fandom existed, but I felt so moved by her work that I wanted to let her know. Having been on the receiving end of such letters, I now appreciate what a thrill they are for an author. We hurl our creations into the void, send our literary children forth without any clue as to where they will end up; to learn that we have touched the hearts of our readers or helped them through a difficult time is wonderful beyond words.

Marion wrote back, three pages of single-spaced typewriting. At the time, she was on the Grievance Committee of SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America, as it was then) and used the official stationery. I now appreciate the prudence of that step, knowing the volume of fan mail she received over the years and her sad experiences of theft and exploitation by people she reached out to. We began a cautious correspondence, although I must confess to a certain giddiness that my favorite author had taken the care to write to me.

Writing The Children of Kings

The next Darkover book, The Children of Kings, will be released on Tuesday, March 5, from DAW Books. In answer to questions asked by many readers, I'd like to share some background on the book. In the following weeks, I'll also talk about how I met Marion, how we came to work together, and a few thoughts on "playing in her sandbox."

Marion's original concept for Darkover centered on the clash of cultures, so for this next book, I wanted to bring the Terran Federation back into the picture, but not in a nice sedate and friendly way, but in an OMG-terrible-crisis-about-to-descend-upon-us way. I also have long had a secret longing to run away to live with the chieri, and Kierestelli (Regis and Linnea's daughter, from Hastur Lord) kindly offered to take me.

Writing in the Darkover universe is very much like writing historical fiction. Marion explored so much of this world and its history that I can't "make it all up as I go along." One of the frustrating and yet exhilarating aspects of tackling a Darkover story is that Marion never let things like geography interfere with telling a good story. Although a number of fans produced maps of Darkover, she refused to endorse them, saying that she never knew when she might need to move things around. She also appreciated that Darkover had evolved as she herself had matured as a writer. In the Note From The Author for Sharra's Exile, she says,

One result of writing novels as they occurred to me, instead of following strict chronological order, was that I began with an attempt to solve the final problems of the society; each novel then suggested one laid in an earlier time, in an attempt to explain how the society had reached that point. Unfortunately, that meant that relatively mature novels, early in the chronology of Darkover, were followed by books written when I was much younger and relatively less skilled at storytelling.

Darkover Book Giveaway!

The lovely folks at DAW are offering 25 free copies of The Children of Kings over on Goodreads!

The Children of Kings sighting!

Total author squee: the first glimpse of the actual book (at the DAW office, even if I don't have it in my hands):

Cover for The Children of Kings

Here it is (the painting is a wrap-around, so this is only the front).

Warning: the description on Amazon.com contains spoilers. Major spoilers. DAW is working to get that changed, but be warned. Just click on the pre-order button and ignore the text!

What's Next - "Blog Hop" - THE CHILDREN OF KINGS

So a bunch of nefarious conspirators got together and cooked up this game called a Blog Hop. The idea is to get a bunch of friendly author-type folks to answer a series of questions about their work and all do the linkies to one another. In typical fashion, I have answered what I felt like because if it's not fun, it's not worth doing.

You can read a bunch of other cool answers here:

Steve Harper Piziks
Jeffrey Carver
Katharine Eliska "Cat" Kimbriel
Patricia Burroughs
Pati Nagle 

Here goes for my "what's next" project...

What is the working title of your book?
Since I just started noodling around with notes for a new project, in between bouts of terror of the page proofs for one project and editorial revision requests for another that are going to descend on my any moment now, I'd rather talk about the book that's coming out in March. It's got a real, official title and you can pre-order it at Amazon. The Children of Kings, AKA The Next Darkover Novel.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
A couple of things. One is that Marion's original concept for Darkover centered on the clash of cultures, so I wanted to bring the Terran Federation back into the picture, but not in a nice sedately friendly way, in a OMG terrible crisis about to descend upon us way. I also wanted to run away to live with the chieri, and Kierestelli (Regis and Linnea's daughter, from Hastur Lord) kindly offered to take me.

For this tale set mostly in the Dry Towns, I used as background not only The Shattered Chain but a very early (1961) “proto-Darkover” novel, The Door Through Space. The Door Through Space contained many elements familiar to Darkover readers, from jaco and the Ghost Wind to the names of people and places (Shainsa, Rakhal, Dry-towns). Marion was exploring a world in which Terrans are the visitors, and adventure lurks in the shadows of ancient alien cities. She drew upon and further developed this material in The Shattered Chain (1976).

These books reflected the growth of Marion’s vision, but each of them was also part of the times in which it was written. 1960s science fiction novels were often tightly-plotted, fast-paced, and short by today’s standards. Most, although by no means all, protagonists were male, and female characters were  often viewed from that perspective, what today we call “the male gaze.” By the middle of the next decade, publishers were interested in longer, more complex works. Not only that, the women’s movement and the issues it raised influenced genre as well as mainstream fiction, opening the way for strong female characters who defined themselves in their own terms. If Marion had written The Shattered Chain a decade and a half earlier, I doubt it have found the receptive, enthusiastic audience it did. Her timing (as with The Mists of Avalon or The Heritage of Hastur) brilliantly reflected the emerging sensibilities of the times.

Now we live in a different world. This is not to say that the previous struggles have been resolved, but that much has changed in the social consciousness from 1976 to today. In writing The Children of Kings, I considered how Marion’s ideas about the Dry Towns (and any patriarchal desert culture) might have changed over the last three decades. The Shattered Chain, with its examination of the roles of women and the choice (or lack of choices) facing them, focused on only a few aspects of the Dry Towns culture. What if we went deeper, seeing it as complex, with admirable aspects as well as those we find abhorrent? With customs that we cannot truly comprehend but must respect, as well as those that resonate with our own? With men of compassion and women of power?

As the Dry Towns developed in my mind, I turned also to the theme that had characterized the early Darkover novels—the conflict between a space-faring technological race and the marvelously rich and romantic Domains, with their tradition of the Compact and the laran-Gifted Comyn. And now, adding to the mix, the ancient kihar-based Dry Towns.

What genre does your book fall under?
Like much of Darkover, it's technically sf, reads like fantasy. This one's a bit more like the earlier novels in that there are space ships and guys from outer space and such. And chieri, native non-humans. Definitely romantic.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?When Terran smugglers arm the Dry Towns warlords with blasters, it's up to the grandson of Regis Hastur to save Darkover.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I write Darkover novels under subcontract to the MZB Literary Works Trust, which owns the copyright. Their agent (who coincidentally happens to be my agent for my own work as well).

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I typically take about a year to a year and half from beginning the outline to handing in the manuscript to my editor. It's hard to say "first draft, second draft..." as the amount of pre-writing and "oops-in-the-middle" varies so much. I also usually leap-frog rough drafting one project and revising another, interspersed with breaks for other deadlines (page proofs, short fiction for invitational anthologies). This one was no exception.

The Children of Kings is a March 2013 release from DAW. (You can pre-order it now.)

The next "Darkover" novel...

The Children of Kings, has been scheduled for March 2013, from DAW Books. I'll post more details as I learnthem.


Meanwhile, here are some earlier posts about the writing process, including two snippets.

Changing Gears: Downshift to Beginner's Mind (May 2011)

Race to the Finish (June 2011) (includes snippet)

RevisionLand; Or, Aliens/Robots/Dry-Towners/Mad-Scientists Ate My Brains (July 2011)

The Children of Kings (is finished) (August 2011)

Progress on The Children of Kings (September 2011) (includes snippet)

You can also read a rough draft of the opening chapter here: Please note that my editor has not made me tear it apart and put it back together again, so it may change. It will change.

Progress on The Children of Kings

The Marion Zimmer Literary Trust has approved the draft of The Children of Kings and I'm giving it a "one-more-pass" go-through. This is not a substantial revision, but a light polish. Mostly, it's a check not only for grammar and syntactical infelicities, but all those little errors that creep in when you've done a bunch of cut-and-pastes (or is it cuts-and-paste? that sort of thing). These don't get caught by either spelling or grammar checkers. Only real human beings can detect them, and not always then. We tend to see what we intended to write, not what's actually on the page or screen.

I'm at the stage of feeling immensely pleased with this book. Here's what I was working on yesterday (I took out a couple of spoilers) Hopefully, this snippet, taken utterly out of context and from the middle of the book, isn't too confusing.

    The villagers drew together, murmuring under their breaths.
    "Well?" Hayat demanded. "Has the fire stolen your tongues as well as your wits? What happened here?"

The Children of Kings

The second draft is done, spell-checked, and off to the Marion Zimmer Literary Works Trust for their approval. I may take a play day...or simply fall over into blethering unconsciousness.

Race to the Finish

Today's blog has been pre-empted by what we call an Attack Chapter. In this case, it happens to be the last movement of the climax sequence of The Children of Kings. Here you go (subject to ruthless revision).


    The rapport faded, slowly at first, like the light from the twilit western sky, before fragmenting into the individual minds of the chieri.
    She felt the confines of her own mind grow stronger and more solid, a familiar prison. Although she might and undoubtedly would merge into the rapport of a circle, it would never be the same as what she had experienced. Like the passing of the chieri themselves, this transcendent unity had come to an end.
    Under her, the bench was hard and smooth. The room had gone chill. She ought to call for someone to stir the fire to life and bring her hot food. In a moment, she would do so.
    For now, however, she would honor what had been given, what had been lost, what had been won, what had been sacrificed.
    What she had become, what she would never be again. What had been taken from her.
    What remained forever.

Next up: wrapping-up-ends chapter... and revisions!

Changing Gears: Downshift to Beginner's Mind

I've been juggling two different writing projects, or perhaps more accurately, two projects that have to be worked on right now. One is the next Darkover novel, The Children of Kings, which I hope to have finished this summer. The thing about stories is that unless you write them, they don't get written, but the thing about novels is that the writing goes on for a long time. This business of "oh, I'll just skip today, it's so beautiful I'd rather be at the beach" starts with a nibble here and a nibble there and maybe I'll just write a blog post and call that a day's writing and before you know it, it's three or five or twelve months later and you've written only a few pages. Maybe a hundred. But you really needed to have written five hundred if you wanted to hit your book-a-year rhythm.

The other thing about novels is that there are so many elements and they're so interdependent that even a short lapse in focus leads to many dropped threads. Maybe some writers can keep all that stuff in their heads for prolonged breaks, or just pick up with the outline where they left off. I, alas, am not one of them. Hence my working style of slow and steady, emphasis on the steady.