Author: Kristbethke

Those who are the closest to me will know that I am…weirdly picky about names for my characters.

I’m drawn to certain names, and one letter in particular, and so they keep popping up when I’m trying to figure out what my character is called. Not only that, but if I have some sort of association with the name, good or bad, it’s immediately off this list. On top of that, the name needs to fit with the character. By that I mean it has to be something his parents would have named him, and also be age appropriate.

I’m not going to name a man Braxton if he’s the forty year old son of Italian immigrants, you know?

Above all, it has to be a name I like, that I won’t mind writing/thinking/seeing a gazillion times.

So sometimes, this is an easy task. Sometimes I see the name and it inspires the character. Sometimes I have the character first, and with very little thought, the name appears. I often have backstories as to why a character has the name they have, despite never getting to work them into the tale. Names are sort of my thing, and have been a bit of an obsession for a long time. I’ve always collected them, collating them away for use somehow, someway.

I’ve barely begun my latest WIP. Just have a few paragraphs written. Just the very beginning. But a big part of that was for days on end, I had no idea what the name of my narrator character was. I didn’t. I had his love interest pretty clearly, and though I did change his name at the very beginning, I quickly found the one that fit him. But for my MC who was telling us the story? I had no idea. I waffled back and forth, changed my mind a dozen times, kept trying on new ones that didn’t quite fit. Friends weighed in on the dislike of a few and offered reasoning for discarding a few others. Nothing felt right anyway. This guy was coalescing in my mind, all his pieces were coming together. I was learning about him, figuring out all the bits that made him, and I had no idea what he was called.

Until it came to me, out of the blue and it fit.

Now all I can think about is Seth, and how he’s going to fall in love with a pretty man. And I’m excited to tell the story.

I write about two guys falling in love. However that should happen. More often than not, it’s on the sweeter side. There’s not a lot of heavy angst. Just two guys meeting (or who already know each other) and then falling in love while they go through some stuff.

And it seems my stories are a particular length. You won’t see any 100,000 word epics from me. My plots aren’t that intricate. My characters aren’t that complex. I use as many words as I need to tell the story, and no more than that. So my wheelhouse seems to be the novella length book. Average is about 30k. Which is (very) roughly about 100 pages. I’m very comfortable with this and happy about it. I’m not going to pad my stories with scenes that aren’t necessary just to have more words. But neither do I have a strict word count (unless it’s a sub call) to which I’m trying to write. When I write the story, I have a goal sometimes, but ultimately, it will take as many words as it takes and whatever that is, I’m happy with. (Though, yes if you look at the WIPs page, I’m aiming for something a little longer with my next one. At the moment it feels like a longer story, but that could all change.)

It took me a while to get to this point. I looked at what everyone else was doing, and I put this immense pressure on myself to be like them. That all the hurt and pain and angst and long, drawn out, word heavy books made it real. And they are. Those books are very real. And they make  you feel and hurt and have satisfaction when you get to the end (I love reading those books!) But it took me a long while to get to the point where I could accept that my stories are just as real. (Which is silly, because sometimes I’m in the mood for shorter and fluffier so it makes sense that other people would be too)

Now I’m in a place where I have embraced what I write and how I write them. (I wrote about the how here.)

And if all that sounds like your kind of story, then please, check out my backlist.

I didn’t freak out nearly as much as usual.

I worked on it, did final edits and tweaks. I watched some YouTube, podcasts as well as some favorite songs which I sang badly at the top of my lungs. I just had to give the cat lots of love because she was just demanding all the attention ever. I read it through. I caught even  more typos (gah! bane of my existence). I poked at it, ignored it in favor of more bad singing, and then finally I had it complete. I panicked a little then. But I had the submission email already waiting. I had the synopsis already attached. All I had to do was attach the MS, after I saved it to ALL THE PLACES and then I would be done.

I attached it.

And then I hit send and ran away from my computer.

I could have thought of a dozen reason to keep reading it through. I could have dragged it out for months. I could have whined to someone for days or even weeks, about how it was awful and I wasn’t going to do it, until I was told firmly and unapologetically that I was exhausting and I needed to shut up.

But I knew deep down that it was the best I could make it. I knew that maybe I could make a few more adjustments, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t make that huge of a difference. So I pulled up my big girl panties and I just sent it. Panicked afterwards, pretty hard, but it was done. It’s out of my hands. It’s in someone else’s, and they get to make the decision. And even as I hate waiting, even as it will tear me up in the next couple of month while I wait for the answer, even though I will be a nuisance to those I hold dearest…it off. It’s no longer in my control. And weirdly, there is a comfort in that.

I can’t control what happens next, but I can control my reaction to it. And I am preparing myself for either outcome. And that’s all I can do.

Well…that and start working on the next one…

It’s kind of bittersweet when I finish up a story and get it ready to submit. That’s what I’m doing this week, making the final tweaks and changes and edits. Polishing it up. Writing the synopsis, which I hate, and then composing the email to send it off.

At that point I’ll have a flat out panic attack, wringing my hands and barely able to breathe until the best friend, who will be holding my hand, gives me a smack and tells me just to do it.

And that’s when I’m still worried and scared–because no one wants to face rejection right?–but I also get a weird sort of calm. Because it’s out of my hands, I’ve done what I could, and now it’s up to others to decide if it’s going to be published. I hate the waiting to hear. It’s sort of excruciating. But at the same time, I’m half removed from it because there’s nothing I can do. (That’s not to say I don’t have random panic attacks during which any number of people in my life have to say “dude, chill” though I am not a dude and I am almost never chill. Heh.)

But I’m ahead of myself, a bit. I’m not quite there yet though I’m hoping to be by the end of this upcoming weekend. I’m still tweaking and editing. And then I have to read it through, start to finish, to try and make it the very best it can be. And then I can get to all that other stuff. That’s my goal for this weekend…to get to the worrying.

When I was younger, I was convinced that February 29th was some kind of magical day. It only came around once every four years, so it had to be special right? I used to image how cool it would have been to be born on this day (though I ignored the fact that I would have to have been born a year and 19 days earlier). I used to pretend it was the day that some sort of veil between the realms would weaken and beings from elsewhere could cross through (I cut my teeth on fantasy at a young age).

Only later did I learn how it could be a topsy-turvy sort of day of love, where women could propose to their men instead of the other way around. To my impressionable young mind, this thrilled me. I was an independent sort, back then, and thought I would take this tradition to heart. That I’d been the one to do the proposing, and I’d make it romantic and magical and it would be awesome.

I know better now. I know that the veil is always thin, and that women can propose whenever the hell they want, and it doesn’t have to be to a man either. But I still celebrate this day with a sort of fondness, enjoying the crap out of it every time it comes around.

So do something special for yourself today. Just because you can.

It might be weird, but I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

It’s not as strange as it sounds. At least, I don’t think. Because when I’m in the shower, I have two things working for me that allow my mind to wander. The water pouring down turns into white noise, and then I’m easily able to block out the outside world. And I don’t have to think about what I’m physically doing. Muscle memory has me repeating the washing steps–hair, body, face–without much input from higher brain function. With these two things combined, that plotting part of my brain is able to just go off anywhere it wants to.

I’ve been struck my true inspiration while getting clean. I’ve untangled plot snares and figured out how to patch over plot holes. I’ve created whole new worlds and characters in the span of a ten minute shower. I’ve even been known to get in the shower when I’m particularly stuck and can’t make my mind work, just to see if it shakes things loose.

The point? This morning’s shower was productive besides just getting myself clean. I know have characters, and the first scene, of a new work. Or rather, those things that have been percolating have now solidified into real, tangible things. If it continues apace, it’ll be the next on on the docket. There are things about it that I really love, and I’m looking forward to writing this one.

In other news, internal edits still continue on His Needs and after I shape it up nice and pretty, I’ll submit it for consideration. Watch this space for updates!

I’ve mentioned before how I write notes while I’m at work. How I have the story I’m working on in the back of my brain, always working, plotting, thinking, writing. That’s basically always the case all time, whether current story or future.

But right this minute, I’m in the in between.

Right after I finish writing a book, I enter this kind of…holding pattern. I need time to decompress. And I’m never ready to let my boys go that quickly. There always needs to be some downtime after. I mean, I’m not quite done with them yet of course. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be working on comments the betas send in and tweaking and editing and shining up my work as much as I am able on my own. But still I need to downshift, to go from writing mode to relaxing mode.

I don’t write every day, even when I’m in the zone. I may write for several days in a row, but ultimately, I work better when I have a huge chunk of time and can really get into the zone and just write. But even when it’s been several days, or a week or two, since I’ve actually opened the document and put real words there, I’m still working on the story. Those aforementioned notes, for one thing. And the always thinking about it.

But now I’m in the weird space where I’m taking a break, which I need and want, and yet I feel itchy and strange NOT to be writing and working and thinking. It’ll give way soon, and I’ll be in full on relaxed mode until the next idea strikes.

Okay, I’m actually pretty sure I know what’s next on the docket, but I’m not giving it brain time right now. Well, not really. Some brain time is happening just because that’s how it works, but we’ll see how the story coalesces. Or if something else swoops in to take its place. (When I get going, you can check status on the WIPs page at the top, if you wish)

But ultimately, right now, I’m in the in between. Not yet fully done with the last one, not yet working on the new one. And my brain is working on downshifting, so that it can idle, until I’m ready to rev it into high gear again.

Okay, well, 3/4 finished.

I was doing the happy dance on Saturday! I had taken a couple of days off last week, to celebrate the release of Love at Roades End (yay!) and I did that by writing on my new story. I had some other stuff to do to, and I got a little anxious about writing one part, so I was a little bit of a slacker and didn’t get it done then. But with some work in the evenings and then a few hours Saturday morning, I finished it!

Woo!

That’s always a spectacular feeling. I feel very accomplished. (I also have that deep down dread that it’s all bad words and needs to be rewritten, but that’s my process. Can’t change it!) But it’s now complete and tweaked, and a couple people are going to give it a read for me, and then I’ll edit some more. In the next several weeks, I hope to have it ready for submission so I can send it off. And then comes the nearly unbearable waiting to hear if it’s accepted and then more waiting until its time for edits and publication. (It wouldn’t be out until at least December.) But that’s a whole other blog post.

At any rate, it’s finished and now it’s just time to fix and fiddle until it’s good. So I’ll be doing that over the next few weeks, while I also figure out which story I want to start writing next…

(Keep an eye on the WIPs page for details and progress)