(ooh, did you know WordPress has a “Stories” feature?!?)

I wrote this post a few days after announcements, but waited a while to actually publish it, because everything? About what we’re doing with this mentorship? Was up in the air? Because you see, it’s a long story…

I don’t think normally I would make a “How I Got My Mentor” post because for most people, it’s a pretty straightfoward event, unlike getting an agent…except this time, it totally isn’t straightforward, and it helps reinforce that nothing is a straight line, and you never know when your moment will come.

Definitions for non-writers:

• AMM: Author-Mentor Match, a program that matches agented and/or published authors with baby writers like me
• Pitch Wars and RevPit: other programs. If you’re an avid reader of new books, you may have heard of Pitch Wars because it’s like the American Idol of publishing
• Querying: Yeeting the first pages of your book to agents with a pitch letter aka the query trenches aka lighting your soul on fire and weeping as the rejections roll in
• Fulls and Partials: agent or mentor requests for the full manuscript or the first 50 pages, respectively

Okay, chickadees. Let me take you back to February 2020. Pre-pandemic, pre-the world on fire—oh no, wait, it had already been on fire for awhile, let me update–okay, so pre-the world even more on fire than it had been, okay?

I had just finished writing a manuscript called Kara and Karenna. It was crap. Kinda. It had a good premise, but I had never actually finished writing a book before and I knew Writing Is Rewriting and Editing Is Good and Necessary but…like…how the heck am I supposed to revise the book when this is the best I can do?

(Note: I’m still like that, in the sense that most of my major revision happens while writing the book, and the post-draft editing I do is very similar to the post-draft editing I did on Kara and Karenna. )

(Except now that I’m a mentee, I’m probably going to learn A Lot of Shit on How to Revise When You Think Your Draft is Done but It’s Not Done, Actually… and I need to stop with the weird caps.)

Oh crap. This post is already getting too long. Can you imagine what an Agent post would be for me? Anyway, I wrote it really fast, between November and December 2019, edited in January 2020, and then was all NOW WHAT and that’s when I joined twitter, participated in RevPit’s mini 10-queries event, joined a Slack group hosted by a RevPit editor which was my first taste of writing community, and then applied to AMM in February.

Reader, I did not get in. Duh.

Buuut, I actually got a full request! And then feedback! So that was nice.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I started querying that book before it was ready, but I got AMM feedback, RevPit feedback (I had a full request from them too), and finally, feedback from a full and from a partial (it still amazes me I got requests on this flaming pile of dung but again…premise was good?), and all the feedback combined with an accelerated course on How to Write (not an actual course, I just mean I found writing friends and that’s when I learned everything), convinced me I needed to rewrite the entire thing, and that’s how I rewrote it and it became A Matter Of Ancient History.

Which is still not my best work, really, but I’m a lot more proud of it.

During that time, I also wrote and polished my second ms, The Star-Crossed Empire, which has a very different writing style and voice and premise, but was heavily influenced by understanding what’s marketable in the book world today (I didn’t write it to be marketable, but it did unconsciously influence my writing choices).

I submitted Star-Crossed Empire to AMM the next year, in January 2021.

I…I had a great experience. I got a full request before the submission period was over, and it turns out I had been requested by two of the four mentors. And a third mentor didn’t request but really enjoyed and liked it, but it just had themes a bit too close to her own work, and she was unsure she could help me with my dual timelines. But I got feedback from all three mentors, and it blew my mind. One of them actually read it all the way through. The other two — one of the requests and obviously the one who didn’t request–only had the first 50 pages but were very complimentary.

The mentor who didn’t request was Melissa Work, and I figured I’d never really cross her path again, and if I ever did, I would NOT tell her that I printed off something she wrote in my feedback and put it on my corkboard because that’s really embarrassing and weird, okay? But I did print it out, and I refer back to it often, whenever I feel down in the query trenches (which is…a lot of times), and it is really really important to me.

As I was querying Star-Crossed Empire, I wrote my third manuscript, which AGAIN is in a different style and voice, called Shining Palais. In September 2021, I subbed Shining Palais to Pitch Wars and got two requests but ultimately no mentorship.

AMM was coming up for 2022.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to apply.

You see, I love the idea of mentorships, but it’s stressful to apply. Even though I tell myself I really don’t care, and that actually what I care about are the requests. (And let me reiterate that not getting a request isn’t a judgment on your writing. But, no matter how many times people tell me that and I tell other people that, it’s hard for me to internalize.)

Anyway, the mentorship programs are hard. If you don’t get a request, it’s easy to feel really down in the dumps about your work. (But at least you can count yourself out at a certain point and then move on) If you do get a request..then you spend weeks haunting the twitter teaser feed for any scrap of information or hope and you get really obsessive and…okay that’s just me.

Anyway, I never mourn when I don’t get a mentorship, but it still makes it not worth alllll the nervous energy of the weeks before. I had had a good Pitch Wars. I had slowly started querying Shining Palais already and didn’t want to hold off on actively querying. And…I wasn’t getting the request rate in my preliminary querying for Shining Palais that I had been getting for Star-Crossed Empire, and I didn’t think my heart could handle not getting a request in AMM. So, I was out for this round.

Until a writing friend discovered that I had hardly queried my very first manuscript (A Matter of Ancient History) and pretty much yelled at me being like, “WHY’D YOU GIVE UP ON THAT MS?!? YOU SHOULD QUERY IT MORE.”

Which gave me the idea of reentering A Matter of Ancient History into AMM. Bonus, I wasn’t very emotionally tied to it any more so although it would hurt a bit to not get any requests, it wouldn’t hurt that much.

Reader, I did not get any requests.

(I actually tweeted at one of the mentors I had subbed to, Melissa, who was the one who gave me such kind feedback the year before, being all like, “Are you going to tell us when you start requesting?” and she was like, “nope. not gonna tell.” And then I was all embarrassed and slunk away.)

Again, like I said, the good news about not getting requests is that you can move on. And it was much easier to move on this year. I stopped paying attention to AMM altogether.

The mentee list was due to come out on or around February 4th.

I got an email February 2nd.

It was an AMM full request. What the shit.

Not only that, but the email was like…soo….the mentor was also interested in your other work so feel free to send anything else over like WIPs or other completed projects, if you want, if that’s not weird or anything, ok? And I was like, “Okay…?”

(I hope it’s clear I’m paraphrasing all these communications, right?)

So for the first time in weeks I wade into the teaser hashtag and lo and behold, Melissa posts something cryptic about someone in the mentor Slack keeping it chaotic up until the last minute which obviously means it was her.

Which made sense, when I thought about it, but I also wasn’t too stressed about it because it was 2 days till announcements and obviously, she wasn’t going to pick me hahahahaha that would be ridiculous.

Reader, I…I got into AMM. She picked me. She likes my writing and concepts overall, and couldn’t stop thinking about it and decided she wanted to mentor me.

The announcement post has it that we’ll be working on Ancient History together, but as I originally drafted this, we actually didn’t know which manuscript? Melissa needed to take some time to…you know…read my manuscripts. Since she requested two days before announcements.

Now I’m pleased to announce we’ll be working on The Shining Palais, my science fantasy espionage story about a sleeper agent who loves her unwitting kids and ex and will do anything to protect them, except her next mission is to betray them, basically a science fiction “The Americans” or Red Sparrow, or as I tag it, DISASTER BI SPY IN SPAAAAACE.

(Do you see how I wrote that like it was a Publisher’s Weekly deal announcement? Run-on sentence and all?)

It still blows my mind, and I stare at the welcome email a lot. I got effectively picked off a partial. Because nothing in publishing is linear, or makes sense, and you just need to go along for the ride.

It’s a good lesson for those of us in the trenches. Nothing is linear. Your backlist can work for you. It just takes one yes. Someone can believe in you even when you’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Shoot your shot.

You are so close. Don’t give up.

Edit: My fellow R9 mentees have been writing and filming their own “I got into AMM” posts! Please check them out:

Gates Palissery

https://giwritesbooks.wordpress.com/2022/02/19/amm-round-9-im-in/

Aiden Siobhan

https://aidensiobhan.com/blog-1

Emily Rae

https://youtu.be/3p8eRmjiy7w

Lanchi Le

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcNzBgX3HvE

E.M. Anderson

https://andersonbooks.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/this-is-where-i-thrash-talk-about-author-mentor-match/

Elle Taylor

https://elletaylorwriter.wordpress.com/2022/03/10/the-start-of-my-author-mentor-match-journey/

I guess it’s time for an FAQ!

So you write? What do you write?

Um..mostly science fiction/fantasy. Although I plan to branch out into romance and thriller.

Isn’t that for kids? Isn’t that hacky stuff that anyone can churn out? Is it mostly all about white dudes flying around with lasers and/or swords?

No. And no, and no. Actually, if you ever need book recommendations for science fiction or fantasy that’s diverse, dense, written at a high level, literary, upmarket/book club, or anything like that–let me know.

Similarly, if you want SFF that reads like awesome fanfic and has humor and wit, I can give you that too. And, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Also, the “hacky” stuff is awesome too. C’mon y’all, we’re in a pandemic. Let people enjoy things.

How many books have you written? How many pages?

3 full manuscripts. We don’t count by page numbers, but the word count is, respectively, 110k, 117K, and 113K.

That’s long.

I know. Well within range for SFF, but yes, it’s exhausting to write that much. I’m looking forward to my 80K upmarket contemporary thriller.

So, are you getting published?

Hah.

What does that mean?

Most major publishers won’t take on unagented writers. You need an agent, first.

So, time to get an agent?

Yeah…um, I’ve been working on that. Hence, winning a mentorship contest.

Why do you not have one yet?

Demand vs supply. Publishing is downsizing, so there are fewer editors to acquire work, which means there are fewer people for agents to submit to, which means they take on fewer clients.

Ooor, you’re not good enough.

I may or may not be good enough. That’s really the only part of this process I can control. But plenty of brilliant books and writers never get published. Not that I’m brilliant. But I’m decent.

(side note: have you ever watched The Movies that Made Us? You know how Forrest Gump or Dirty Dancing or Home Alone almost never got made? Yeah. It’s like that).

Do you think you’ll get published some day?

Yes. Some day. I can only control what I can control, though.

If you get an agent, you have it made, right?

Oh. Hah. No. You might still not be able to sell the book. Your agent might decide to leave agenting and become a blacksmith. (True story) Or they might drop you as a client out of the blue. Or you might decide to leave them.

That’s rough

Yeah. And trust me, most authors/writers have stories like that.

So, what’s the secret to success?

Perserverence.

Are you going to be a bestseller?

No. Never. I know bestselling writers, actually, via social-media, but that’s not my market.

Will people know your name, at least?

No.

Um, why do you do this again?

It’s a compulsion. Roll with it.

My cousin published a book on Amazon.

Good for them!

Why don’t you just publish it on Amazon?

I’m an establishment/traditional publishing kinda gal. Self-pub isn’t for me, and I would never be able to attract that kind of readership because I’m not a marketing/selling type person.

(“Just self-publish” is not as easy as you think it is, if you actually want to be successful)

Yeah. They’re all hacks and losers.

Please don’t insult my indie/self-pub brethren. That won’t fly here.

(If you need indie book recs, ask me)

So, do you sit by a roaring fire surrounded by verdant greens, writing to classical music while people bring you snacks?

I’m a stay at home mother with a house to keep. I write on my phone in the car line, while doing dishes, in the middle of the night when I wake up with dialogue stuck in my head, and literally in the shower...

Women (and men, yes yes I’ll be equal opportunity, and everyone in between and outside the gender binary and so on and so forth) since time immemorial have been multitasking and getting it done because that’s what’s expected of us.

So you’re not neglecting your kids?

No. Although “Bluey” is an excellent babysitter. Also, screw you.

No, seriously, how do you have time? That plus the 100+ books you read a year?

It’s called hyperfocus. It’s a gift and a curse.

I found a typo/misspelling. You call yourself a writer?

….

I’m not going to answer that one.

What should I never ask you when I see you in person?

“How’s that writing thing going?” Actually, if you see me, please never talk to me about writing, unless it’s your writing, not mine. I would like to Not Be Perceived, please.

But…but you want to get published…

I would like to NOT BE PERCEIVED, OKAY?

All right. Sheesh. What can I ask you?

if you’re a fellow querying writer, I would love to commiserate with you. And if you’re a few steps behind me and need advice or information, I’ll be happy to help. If you’re a reader, I’d love to scream about books with you. If you’re a few steps ahead of me, you get it and I don’t need to explain my desire to yeet myself into the sun most of the time when publishing comes up as a topic

It’s the final week! I got the awesome services of Kota Rayne. They had really nice things to say about my story, especially the two things I know are my strengths: the dialogue and the incremental lead-up to the ending. But they wanted to see a little more in terms of motivations: why is Karenna doing what she’s doing? What about Tim? And a little more to show the love they have/had for each other.

I’m not entirely sure I’ve succeeded in all of it, yet. Usually significant feedback takes me a bit longer to digest, so this idea of throwing in an edit within a week is hard. For example, there were details that Kota suggested were taking them out of the story, and some other ones better served in dialogue. The lazy ass I am, I just moved the paragraphs around rather than recast them into dialogue. Stuff like that. So, I’m not quite going to call this a final draft. Maybe next week, when I post my final reflections.

Regardless, I’m thrilled I was able to add more characterization and goal/motivation/conflict and I hope to be able to deepen it more next week!

---

The stardust in our souls

Long ago, Tim’s mother told him that all humans were made of stardust. And Tim would look in all his nooks and crannies, checking belly lint and earwax and boogers, trying to find evidence of sun particles, but all he could find were the lumpy, stinky, bulbous leavings of Earth-bound bodies. And promptly put it out of his mind.

Little did he know that stardust was powerful enough to turn a man immortal. Or that it could bring a civilization to its knees.

Sitting in his office, Tim poured himself a much deserved drink and regarded his wife. “Karenna, I swear to the Ancients, this is not what I need right now, pre-launch on a brand new ship. You remember what that’s like, don’t you?” 

Karenna–beautiful, ageless–crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back with a pout. “I’m just saying, Tim. You’re new to this. I was a captain for forty years. And I’m tellin’ ya, the Admiralty is up to something.”

“What,” Tim said, “you think I couldn’t make Captain on my own?”

Now captain of the ESS Starfell, Tim was on a mission to recreate a path between Sol and Alpha Centauri, employing the very dust that had stunted them before. 

Because the dust giveth and the dust taketh away. Funny word, dust. A noun and a verb, the verb being a Janus word, one that means one thing and its opposite. To dust interstellar space could be spreading dark spores everywhere, or furiously brushing it away. 

Karenna was coming along on the five year journey to blaze a path between the stars, and was adjusting rather badly, indeed, to being busted down to mere civilian, subject to his captainly authority, of all people. 

No, that wasn’t quite fair. Karenna was selfless, giving, one of his biggest cheerleaders. His guiding star, with a sense of right and wrong that saw her take on an entire Admiralty. A force majeure in the form of one blessed red-headed  Ancient, touched by holy stellar particles. 

Sunbeams danced around his wife’s curly hair. They looked like dust motes, which was charming, but—

Dust was a death knell in space.

“That’s not what I mean.” Karenna rolled her eyes. “But  they’re using you. Lo and behold! You get tapped to command the ship that’s going to be out of pocket for five years, knowing there’s no way I’d want to be separated from you. And they get what they want. The only way I can come along is if I’m on sabbatical as a civilian and bonus, I’ll be out of the way.” 

Maybe Karenna was a Janus herself. Just like the verb sanction, as in, the Earth Union sanctioned a plan to use Martian technology to create a way to reconnect the star systems, but the Union also sanctioned his wife, the celebrated Admiral, because she prevented those self-same Martians from taking a few mining exoplanets—and the miners that lived on them—as compensation. 

When Tim had met Karenna, she had been a  true-blue believer in the Earth Union, enforcer of its ideals.  Now she was a thorn in its side. Troublemaker. Karenna would tell you she made the decisions she did out of love for the Union, trying to make it better. Tim wondered, however, if perhaps she just enjoyed it. More than one lifetime of toe-ing the line could make anyone gleeful at the thought of inciting rebellion in the name of justice.

Tim contemplated the end of his highball of whiskey, looking at Karenna through distorted glass as she extolled the lengths to which the Union supposedly went in order to stymie her. “Seems a little you-centered there.” 

“Maybe,” Karenna mused, “they’re hoping you’ll keep an eye on me.” 

Tim snorted. “They’d have a high opinion of my ability to keep up with you. Besides, what would you even be doing?”

Karenna crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “You know, this ship…” she began slowly. 

“I’m not sure you should finish that thought, K.” 

Antagonym, that was another term for that type of word, which brought to mind antagonist, like the way he and Karenna had been the last few months, duking and sparring and circling, waiting for the other to land the death punch. They cleaved to each other during the original crisis that led to the collapse of the space lanes, but the current spate of disasters were cleaving them apart. They were bound for Sol, but were chafing at being bound for life.

“It has an amazing cross-section of humanity. Union officers, but also civilian scientists, and Coralie theologians, and Martians, even. I’m thinking,” she said, tapping her chin, “I can gather some intel on what Mars is up to, and do some influence ops to right the Union’s thinking.” 

“I’m thinking you have too much time on your hands. You need a hobby. Ever try knitting? Making ceramic cats?” 

“I’m serious, Tim.” 

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Speaking up was one thing, but Tim knew his wife. She wasn’t one to stoop to half-measures. It was one of the things he loved about her. Why just yell about the Union’s faults when she could disrupt it completely and work to put new folks in charge?

He blew out a breath. “And I’m serious. I’m the captain of this ship. The senior Fleet officer, once we get out there in the black. I know you still think of me as that down-on-his-luck pilot you met on your ship, but I have a job, and one of them is not letting anyone under my purview foment unrest. Unless you don’t want to hitch a ride with us. I’ll drop you off.” 

She whistled low in appreciation. “You’re hot when you’re commanding.” She gave him an apologetic smile and came closer, sighing happily as he pulled her in his lap. 

Contronyms, that was another term. They were both older, and weathered, not the same love-struck pair they’d been at the beginning, but they could weather any storm. Hopefully.

He buried his face in her hair. “Promise me you won’t stir up trouble?” 

“I’ll try to respect your authority. But my opinions are my own, you know?”

He mmhd, breathing in her scent. Sanguine. Confidently cheerful. 

She ruffled his hair in turn, and left him to his work. 

He sat alone in a darkened captain’s office, and groaned in frustration. Sanguine also meant cheerfully bloodthirsty. Like the instinct that led him to accept a captaincy, in exchange for a job as a snitch. 

He was being unfair to himself, for sure. The captaincy wasn’t his motivation. Ancients knew he had never put much stock in rank, or in pure ambition. But when one immortal man took stellar dust particles and cast them past the heliosphere of a backwoods star system, he created a chain reaction that led to the entropic collapse of humanity’s interstellar space lanes. And like his wife, Tim would do anything to serve the Union. Reconnecting Alpha Centauri and Sol was his mandate–and so was preventing his wife from doing anything that would bring chaos at a time they need to stand united.

He pushed a hidden button and spoke, throat coated in ashes, voice thick with regret. “Did you get that, sir?”

“Copy,” came the voice. “Keep your head, Captain. Our analysts think our disgraced Admiral is going to make a move soon.” 

Tim signed off, and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the crumbling ruins of his marriage all around him.

I had two really awesome CPs assigned to me this week! I really enjoyed reading their stories, and their comments on mine were so helpful.

The main thing they both said was that there was quite a lot of information up front in the story. I was worried about that, so it was good to get confirmation. In this edit, I tried to move things around a little bit. I’m afraid I didn’t do it very well–I literally edited on my phone on an airplane with a toddler kicking my head–and it might be a bit choppy? Oh well, we shall see!

---

---

The stardust in our souls

When Tim was young, little did he know that stardust was powerful enough to turn a man immortal. Or that it could bring a civilization to its knees.

Now captain of the ESS Starfell, he was on a mission to recreate a path between Sol and Alpha Centauri, employing the very dust that had stunted them before. 

Sitting in his office, he pourrd himself a much deserved drink and regarded his wife. “Karenna, I swear to the Ancients, this is not what I need right now, pre-launch on a brand new ship. You remember what that’s like, don’t you?” 

Karenna, his beautiful, ageless, immortal wife—one of those blessed Ancients touched by stardust—crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back with a pout. “I’m just saying, Tim. You’re new to this. I was a captain for forty years. And I’m tellin’ ya, the Admiralty is up to something.”

His wife was coming along on the five year journey to blaze a path between the stars, and she was adjusting rather badly, indeed, to being busted down to mere civilian, subject to his captainly authority, of all people. 

“What,” Tim said, “you think I can’t make Captain on my own?”

Sunbeams danced around his wife’s curly red hair. They looked like dust motes, which was charming, but—

Dust was a death knell in space.

Long ago, his mother told him that all humans were made of stardust. And Tim would look in all his nooks and crannies, checking belly lint and earwax and boogers, trying to find evidence of sun particles, but all he could find were the lumpy, stinky, bulbous leavings of Earth-bound bodies. And promptly put it out of his mind.

But when one immortal man took stellar dust particles and cast them past the heliosphere of a backwoods star system, he created a chain reaction that led to the entropic collapse of humanity’s interstellar space lanes. 

“That’s not what I mean.” Karenna rolled her eyes. “But  they’re using you. Lo and behold! You get tapped to command the ship that’s going to be out of pocket for five years, knowing there’s no way I’d want to be separated from you. And they get what they want. The only way I can come along is if I’m on sabbatical as a civilian and bonus, I’ll be out of the way.” 

The dust giveth and the dust taketh away. Funny word, dust. A noun and a verb, the verb being a Janus word, one that means one thing and its opposite. To dust interstellar space could be spreading dark spores everywhere, or furiously brushing it away. 

Just like the verb sanction, as in, the Earth Union sanctioned a plan to use Martian technology to create a way to reconnect the star systems, but the Union also sanctioned his wife, the celebrated Admiral, because she prevented those self-same Martians from taking a few mining exoplanets—and the miners that lived on them—as compensation. 

Tim contemplated the end of his highball of whiskey, looking at Karenna through distorted glass. “Seems a little you-centered there.” 

Antagonym, that was another term for that type of word, which brought to mind antagonist, like the way he and Karenna had been the last few months, duking and sparring and circling, waiting for the other to land the death punch. They cleaved to each other during the original crisis that led to the collapse of the space lanes, but the current spate of disasters were cleaving them apart. They were bound for Sol, but were chafing at being bound for life. 

“Maybe,” Karenna mused, “they’re hoping you’ll keep an eye on me.” 

Tim snorted. “They’d have a high opinion of my ability to keep up with you. Besides, what would you even be doing?”

Karenna crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “You know, this ship…” she began slowly. 

“I’m not sure you should finish that thought, K.” 

“It has an amazing cross-section of humanity. Union officers, but also civilian scientists, and Coralie theologians, and Martians, even. I’m thinking,” she said, tapping her chin, “I can gather some intel on what Mars is up to, and do some influence ops to right the Union’s thinking.” 

“I’m thinking you have too much time on your hands. You need a hobby. Ever try knitting? Making ceramic cats?” 

“I’m serious, Tim.” 

He blew out a breath. “And I’m serious. I’m the captain of this ship. The senior Fleet officer, once we get out there in the black. I know you still think of me as that down-on-his-luck pilot you met on your ship, but I have a job, and one of them is not letting anyone under my purview foment unrest. Unless you don’t want to hitch a ride with us. I’ll drop you off.” 

She whistled low in appreciation. “You’re hot when you’re commanding.” She gave him an apologetic smile and came closer, sighing happily as he pulled her in his lap. 

Contronyms, that was another term. They were both older, and weathered, not the same love-struck pair they’d been at the beginning, but they could weather any storm. Hopefully.

He buried his face in her hair. “Promise me you won’t stir up trouble?” 

“I’ll try to respect your authority. But my opinions are my own, you know?”

He mmhd, breathing in her scent. Sanguine. Confidently cheerful. 

She ruffled his hair in turn, and left him to his work. 

He sat alone in a darkened captain’s office, and groaned in frustration. Sanguine also meant cheerfully bloodthirsty. Like the instinct that led him to accept a captaincy, in exchange for a job as a snitch. 

He pushed a hidden button and spoke, throat coated in ashes, voice thick with regret. “Did you get that, sir?”

“Copy,” came the voice. “Keep your head, Captain. Our analysts think our disgraced Admiral is going to make a move soon.” 

Tim signed off, and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the crumbling ruins of his marriage all around him.

Welcome to anooooother week! Unlike last season, I didn’t jump immediately into self-editing. In fact, I put it off, mostly because I didn’t have a plan. Last year I created a world out of whole cloth, and so a lot of my self edits was thinking about if my random world-building made sense. The other edit was changing it from a scene into a story.

This year, I already know my world and my characters, so what I had left was to think about structure. One thing I struggle with in flash fiction is what a scene is and what a story is. I prefer to have a structure that’s like a novel in miniature, with rising action, a turn, and falling action. This time my turn isn’t much of one; it mostly reveals that Tim and Karenna’s relationship is in trouble, leading to the final lines that cast a different light on the conversation. But I couldn’t figure out how to improve it, so mostly, what I did was remove a few words and adjust some lines for clarity.

The one “major” thing that changed is that I was reading Catalyst Gate by Megan O’Keefe, and there was a note in there about how dust motes are a really bad sign on a space ship! And I had a line in my first draft about dust motes dancing around Karenna’s hair, highlighted by the sunbeams (I think you can still get sunbeams on a spaceship, lol).

Anyway, I changed the line to reflect that reality and make it more sinister.

Bonus: I’m deep in edits in Shining Palais (the ms that was inspired by last season’s Writer In Motion) and I have flash-fiction length interludes. Came across this one:

Ammu called her taara, star, and told her she was created from the same particles as the glorious furnace blazing down on them without rest. 

Shine always. Shine bright. The stars are you and you are the stars.

Like maira? she remembers once asking.

No, beta, Ammu said. This is a different type of magic.

---

Anyway, here’s the much-unchanged Take Two on the prompt:

The Stardust in Our Souls (FYI, the title is actually the proposed title of this MS)

When Tim was young, his mom told him that all humans were made of stardust. And Tim would look in all his nooks and crannies, checking belly lint and earwax and boogers, trying to find evidence of sun particles, but all he could find were the lumpy, stinky, bulbous leavings of Earth-bound bodies.

Little did he know that stardust  was powerful enough to turn a man immortal. Or that it could bring a civilization to its knees. But when one immortal man took stellar dark particles and cast them past the heliosphere of a backwoods star system, he created a chain reaction that led to the entropic collapse of humanity’s interstellar space lanes. Now Tim, captain of the ESS Starfell, was on a mission to recreate a path between Sol and Alpha Centauri, employing the very dust that had stunted them before. 

Because yes, the dust giveth and the dust taketh away. Funny word, dust. A noun and a verb, the verb being a Janus word, one that means one thing and its opposite. To dust interstellar space could be spreading dark spores everywhere, or furiously brushing it away. Just like the verb sanction, as in, the Earth Union sanctioned a plan to use Martian technology to create a way to reconnect the star systems, but the Union also sanctioned his wife, the celebrated Admiral, because she prevented those self-same Martians from taking a few mining exoplanets—and the miners that lived on them—as compensation. 

And now his wife was coming along on the five year journey to blaze a path between the stars, and she was adjusting rather badly, indeed, to being busted down to mere civilian, subject to the captainly authority, of all people. 

“Karenna, I swear to the Ancients, this is not what I need right now, pre-launch on a brand new ship. You remember what that’s like, don’t you?”

Karenna, his beautiful, ageless, immortal wife—one of those blessed Ancients touched by stardust—crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back with a pout. “I’m just saying, Tim. You’re new to this. I was a captain for forty years. And I’m tellin’ ya, the Admiralty is up to something.”

“What,” Tim said, “you think I can’t make Captain on my own?”

Sunbeams danced around his wife’s curly red hair. They looked dust motes, which was charming, but—

Dust was a death knell in space.

“That’s not what I mean. But they’re using you. Lo and behold! You get tapped to command the ship that’s going to be out of pocket for five years, knowing there’s no way I’d want to be separated from you. And they get what they want. The only way I can come along is if I’m on sabbatical as a civilian and bonus, I’ll be out of the way.” 

Tim contemplated the end of his highball of whiskey, looking at Karenna through distorted glass. “Seems a little you-centered there.” 

Antagonym, that was another term for that type of word, which brought to mind antagonist, like the way he and Karenna had been the last few months, duking and sparring and circling, waiting for the other to land the death punch. They cleaved to each other during the original crisis that led to the collapse of the space lanes, but the current spate of disasters were cleaving them apart. They were bound for Sol, but were chafing at being bound for life. 

“Maybe,” Karenna mused, “they’re hoping you’ll keep an eye on me.” 

Tim snorted. “They’d have a high opinion of my ability to keep up with you. Besides, what would you even be doing?”

Karenna put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “You know, this ship…” she began slowly. 

“I’m not sure you should finish that thought, K.” 

“It has an amazing cross-section of humanity. Union officers, but also civilian scientists, and Coralie theologians, and Martians, even. I’m thinking,” she said, tapping her chin, “I can gather some intel on what Mars is up to, and do some influence ops to right the Union’s thinking.” 

“I’m thinking you have too much time on your hands. You need a hobby. Ever try knitting? Making ceramic cats?” 

“I’m serious, Tim.” 

“And I’m serious. I’m the captain of this ship. The senior Fleet officer, once we get out there in the black. I know you still think of me as that down-on-his-luck pilot you met on your ship, but I have a job, and one of them is not letting anyone under my purview foment unrest. Unless you don’t want to hitch a ride with us. I’ll drop you off.” 

She gave a low whistle of appreciation. “You’re hot when you’re commanding.” She gave him an apologetic smile and came closer, sighing happily as he pulled her in his lap. 

Contronyms, that was another term. They were both older, and weathered, not the same love-struck pair they’d been at the beginning, but they could weather any storm. Hopefully.

He buried his face in her hair. “Promise me you won’t stir up trouble?” 

“I’ll try to respect your authority. But my opinions are my own, you know?”

He mmhd, breathing in her scent. Sanguine. Confidently cheerful. 

She ruffled his hair in turn, and left him to this work. 

He sat alone in a darkened captain’s office, and groaned in frustration. Sanguine also meant cheerfully bloodthirsty. Like the instinct that led him to accept a captaincy, in exchange for a job as a snitch. 

He pushed a hidden button and spoke, throat coated in ashes, voice thick with regret. “Did you get that, sir?”

“Copy,” came the voice. “Keep your head, Captain. Our analysts think our disgraced Admiral is going to make a move soon.” 

Tim signed off, and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the crumbling ruins of his marriage all around him.

Last week, I blogged my first impressions on this season’s prompt. I knew I wanted to write from a male point of view, and I wanted to do something with the idea of something turning to ashes or dust. I also love adding dorky linguistic things into my short story (I am not a linguist, so I’m sure I make tons of mistakes), and so I hit upon the idea of Janus words, words that mean one thing and their opposite.

I decided it was easier to play with characters I already knew, even if maybe the plot of the story ends up being different than what happens in my books –a sort of AU, I guess. I started with my favorite character, Max, whose book I’m working on now (Book 2 of the Broken Union series). Turns out I know a bit too much about Max. I kept trying to throw things in there that would be too hard to explain in 1000 words. So I shifted to another character, Tim, who will be a POV character in Book 3. I’m not sure what I’m writing here will be a plot point in Book 3 or not. I didn’t mean for his marriage to become as contentious as it does in this draft! But it does provide a guiding light as I move toward plotting that book.

This draft is supposed to be unedited. However, I am someone who has to write to target word count (y’all, for my most recent MS, I budgeted 28K per act for a total of 112K and guess who wrote her last word and saw the counter tip over to 112,000? This gal). So although I knew I shouldn’t, because I wrote 1086 words, I cut out the 86. Seriously, they were extraneous words, and this way, on the self-edit week, I can focus more on story structure/development work.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s my first draft!

---

The Stardust In Our Souls

When Tim was young, his mom told him that all humans were made of stardust. And Tim would look in all his nooks and crannies, checking belly lint and earwax and boogers, trying to find evidence of sun particles, but all he could find were the lumpy, stinky, bulbous leavings of Earth-bound bodies.

Little did he know that stardust  was powerful enough to turn a man immortal. Or that it could bring a civilization to its knees. But when one immortal man took stellar dark particles and cast them past the heliosphere of a backwoods star system, he created a chain reaction that led to the entropic collapse of humanity’s interstellar space lanes. Now Tim, captain of the ESS Starfell, was on a mission to recreate a path between Sol and Alpha Centauri, employing the very dust that had stunted them before. 

Because yes, the dust giveth and the dust taketh away. Funny word, dust. A noun and a verb, the verb being a Janus word, one that means one thing and its opposite. To dust interstellar space could be spreading dark spores everywhere, or furiously brushing it away. Just like the verb sanction, as in, the Earth Union sanctioned a plan to use Martian technology to create a way to reconnect the star systems, but the Union also sanctioned his wife, the celebrated Admiral, because she prevented those self-same Martians from taking a few mining exoplanets—and the miners that lived on them—as compensation. 

And now his wife was coming along on the five year journey to blaze a path between the stars, and she was adjusting rather badly, indeed, to being busted down to mere civilian, subject to the captainly authority, of all people. 

“Karenna, I swear to the Ancients, this is not what I need right now, pre-launch on a brand new ship. You remember what that’s like, don’t you?”

Karenna, his beautiful, ageless, immortal wife—one of those blessed Ancients touched by stardust—crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back with a pout. “I’m just saying, Tim. You’re new to this. I was a captain for forty years. And I’m tellin’ ya, the Admiralty is up to something.”

“What,” Tim said, “you think I can’t make Captain on my own?”

Dust motes danced around his wife’s curly red hair, highlighted by the sunbeams reflected through the viewport. 

“That’s not what I mean. But they’re using you. Think about it. I refuse to dance to their tune, they try to put me on enforced sabbatical, I threaten to join the dissident factions stirring up trouble in Alpha Centauri, and lo and behold! You get tapped to command the ship that’s going to be out of pocket for five years, knowing there’s no way I’d want to be separated from you. So, they get what they want. The only way I can come along is to temporarily suspend my rank, and bonus, I’ll be out of the way.” 

Tim contemplated the end of his highball of whiskey, looking at Karenna through distorted glass. “Seems a little you-centered there.” 

Antagonym, that was another term for that type of word he was thinking of, which brought to mind antagonist, like the way he and Karenna had been the last few months, duking and sparring and circling, waiting for the other to land the death punch. They cleaved to each other during the original crisis that led to the collapse of the space lanes, but the current spate of disasters were cleaving them apart. They were bound for Sol, but were chafing at being bound for life. 

“Maybe,” Karenna mused, “they’re hoping you’ll keep an eye on me.” 

Tim snorted. “They’d have a high opinion of my ability to keep up with you. Besides, what would you even be doing?”

Karenna put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “You know, this ship…” she began slowly. 

“I’m not sure you should finish that thought, K.” 

“It has an amazing cross-section of humanity. Union officers, but also civilian scientists, and Coralie theologians, and Martians, even. I’m thinking,” she said, tapping her chin, “I can gather some intel on what Mars is up to, and do some influence ops to right the Union’s thinking.” 

“I’m thinking you have too much time on your hands. You need a hobby. Ever try knitting? Making ceramic cats?” 

“I’m serious, Tim.” 

“And I’m serious. I’m the captain of this ship. The senior Fleet officer, once we get out there in the black. I know you still think of me as that down-on-his-luck pilot you met on your ship, but I have a job, and one of them is not letting anyone under my purview foment unrest. Unless you don’t want to hitch a ride with us. I’ll drop you off.” 

She gave a low whistle of appreciation. “You’re hot when you’re commanding.” She gave him an apologetic smile and came closer, sighing happily as he pulled her in his lap. 

Contronyms, that was another term. They were both older, and weathered, not the same love-struck pair they’d been at the beginning, but they could weather any storm. Hopefully.

He buried his face in her hair. “Promise me you won’t stir up trouble?” 

“I’ll try to respect your authority. But my opinions are my own, you know?”

He mmhd, breathing in her scent. Sanguine. Confidently cheerful. 

She ruffled his hair in turn, and left him to this work. 

Tim sat alone in a darkened captain’s office, and groaned in frustration. Sanguine: cheerfully bloodthirsty. Like the instinct that led him to accept a captaincy, in exchange for a job as a snitch. He pushed a hidden button and spoke, throat coated in ashes, voice thick with regret. “Did you get that, sir?”

“Copy,” came the voice. “Keep your head, Captain. Our analysts think our disgraced Admiral is going to make a move soon.” 

Tim signed off, and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the crumbling ruins of his marriage all around him.

Hello and welcome to another season of Writer In Motion.

This prompt is not what I was expecting! Especially after last season! Unlike last year, when I looked at it and knew exactly what I wanted to write, this time I’m at a bit of a loss. I even asked my kids what impressions they got from it. Their responses ranged from the hand looking like a beard and a guy smashing a cloud on his face.

For me, the phrases that kept coming to mind were “dissapating into mist” and “toz ol” (get lost, in Turkish, but literally “become dust”).

A passage from my WIP came to mind:

No more ground. I’m done giving ground. This is Finn. This should be painful, but I’m dissecting it clinically. This is the moment of change. This is when my life as Tessa Daevana is instantly over. Evaporated. I feel like I’m in a fog. A fine mist of a dissolved Tessa.

-The Shining Palais, almost-drafted WIP

And this from a completed MS:

What was that phrase? That insult baba would mutter under his breath at their neighbor? Toz ol! Become dust! Fitting. A disintegration of the corporeal form into nothing but particles of dust was kinda like… How life was these days.

-Ancient History

So for me, I’m thinking something slightly angsty, but not so much to be cliched. A sense of a loss of self. A wraith in the shadows.

But even if it starts out depressing, I want the ‘turn’ in the story to lead to something triumphant. I came across this passage on a blog post (I’m doing this on mobile so I don’t have a citation ready atm):

The English language is full of paradoxes, like the fact that “literally” pretty much always means “figuratively. Other words mean their opposites as well — “scan” means both ‘read closely’ and ‘skim.’ “Restive” originally meant ‘standing still’ but now it often means ‘antsy.’ “Dust” can mean ‘to sprinkle with dust’ and ‘to remove the dust from something.’ “Oversight” means both looking closely at something and ignoring it. “Sanction” sometimes means ‘forbid,’ sometimes, ‘allow.’ And then there’s “ravel,” which means ‘ravel, or tangle’ as well as its opposite, ‘unravel,’ as when Macbeth evokes “Sleepe that knits up the rauel’d Sleeue of Care.”

So to me, there’s this concept of a reversal. Someone wanting to hide away and dissipate into nothingness deciding, in the end, to become made of dust, something powerful and ancient and stealthy.

In January, I wrote the most rambly post ever about organizational and writing tools when one has ADHD. I have a few updates. Hopefully, it’ll be less all-over-the-place.

SAD Lamp: I had mentioned I was getting a huge lamp for my desk to replace the tiny pink one. Although I’m in a room that technically has a lot of windows, it still isn’t very bright. This lamp, however, totally is.

Weekly calendar: I think MochiThings has something like this, but I got a cheaper brand. It’s really helpful for the way my brain works. Not too many bells and whistles. Just a week at a glance and a small spot for high priority to-dos.

Backpack: I didn’t want something huge that I would take around if I were a student. I wanted to be able to hold my wallet, my laptop, and my pretty floral portfolio (last post) that holds all my writing notebooks/pens. This fit the bill.

Dabble: I used Scrivner back in 2015 when I started writing, but I no longer have a PC or Mac, and Scrivner doesn’t work with Chromebook. And I write a ton on my phone, which isn’t compatible with Scrivner. So I’ve been writing in Google Docs.

But recently, I was sold on Dabble, which is kinda like a Scrivner-lite with mobile support. Instead of one fee, it’s a subscription. I’m not a fan of monthly subscriptions, but I find this worth it. It’s not for everyone. Think of it as software that’s still in beta mode. Like, it only recently added the mobile support that convinced me to buy it. It exports into Word but not Google Docs. There’s a few things where it formats in standard ms format but doesn’t let me customize when I need to (I like doing soft scene breaks where I still don’t indent the first line, but I can only do that with hard scene breaks). The mobile app is…iffy. And so on, and so forth. However, b/c it’s subscription model, there’s no needing to download a new option; they just keep pushing patches and new features, and you can suggest features too and see which ones are pending.

It’s been really great, however, for drafting and organizing my thoughts, and the font/format for some reason tricks my brain into writing more. When I’m editing something completed, I still do so in Google.

The Wallet and Accessories:

One of my ADHD things is that I need everything in one place. Like, I can’t keep a purse, keys, phone, and wallet separately. It just won’t work. So my wallets keep getting bigger and bigger to hold everything I need. I’ve finally splurged and gotten a Better Together Daily Wallet form Mochi things.

I can stick my phone in it, as well as my tiny Kindle. I hook my keys on it. It has my cards and money, of course, plus my I’m vaccinated sticker and card, because of course. I keep a few extra masks in it. And the front pocket is where I can slide my soft glasses case and place my glasses when I’m not wearing them (I don’t need to wear them 24/7, and glasses are realllly uncomfortable with masks, so…)

Additional wallet stuff:

Tile: Y’all, I can’t live without this for my keys/wallet, plus a hard core key chain for it.

Notebook and Pen: It comes with a Mochi things notebook but it’s not really my thing. So I threw in my super tiny pocket Moleskine notebook, and a tiny pocket pen.