Lucienne Diver Talks Revision Hell

Some of you already know my friend Lucienne Diver, who is both an author and one of the agents at The Knight Agency. Needless to say, she's a very busy woman, but she was kind enough to come share her experiences with revisions, and give you a sneak peek at her new book, THE COUNTDOWN CLUB. (Hint: It sounds amazing.) Be sure to let us know what you think (either about revision, or the book, or both) in the comments! Lucienne will be giving away a copy of the book to TWO lucky commenters.

Take it away, Lucienne!

My Prolonged Process

So, the demented little DJ in my head wants to rewrite songs from musicals today rather than be productive. For example, “How Do you Solve a Problem Like Maria?” from The Sound of Music:

“How do you solve a problem in revisions?

How do you catch a flaw and pin it down?”

It’s a curse. If only I could rewrite books with the ease of lyrics. Unfortunately, I have a horrible love/hate relationship with revisions. I adore first drafts – writing practically stream of consciousness, having a plan, but not knowing exactly how I’m going to execute it. You see, I was an inveterate pantser (a writer who flies by the seat of her pants, winging it) until I started writing mystery/suspense…and then my wings needed a lot more bolstering to get me off the ground. With my first YA suspense, FAULTLINES, I created a murder board, just like you see in all of those television shows—The Closer, Major Crimes, Without a Trace, Castle, and I’m sure a million more. It had the suspects, clues as to motive, means and opportunity, timelines, connections and all that jazz. It still didn’t quite tell me how I was going to weave these into the storyline. For that I drafted. And redrafted. And drafted again. I wish I could say that I learned from the experience and that my novels are now tightly plotted and then swiftly and seamlessly executed, but that would be a lie.

I maybe can get away with calling myself a plotser now (half plotter, half pantser), but that might be overselling things. What I am is willing to make mistakes and go over and over and over and over my work ad infinitum until it’s really there. Or at least, so I think. When I turn my novel over to my critique partner or readers, it’s absolutely as good as I can get it at that moment. I’m proud of the bright, shiny work I’ve done. Otherwise, I’d never let anyone see it.

And then they burst my bubble. 

All for the best. They make me work. Spot flaws I secretly suspected were there but was hoping no one would notice. Suggest fixes or improvements I never even considered. Or in some cases, cheer me on and give me the confidence to keep going. They make me better.

I make all the improvements, embarrassed that anyone ever saw the manuscript in the condition it was in, but I soldier on. I whip it into shape, and send it off to my agent, cross my fingers and toes and hope she’ll get back to me before I lose all circulation in them.

And receive another set of notes. 

Then, after those are handled and the manuscript is absolutely amazing, it goes out on submission…and perhaps there will be further suggestions, like a revise and resubmit from an editor. Or perhaps someone loves it and buys it and gives it a good home. But, of course, there will be more edits—content edits, line edits, copyedits.

So what am I saying here? That I’m a slow learner? That it takes a village? Well, no, and yes. This is just my process, and I’m willing to put in the work, as aggravating as it sometimes is, making every draft better and better until I hit best. (Always with the realization that I could tinker until I die and still never reach perfection.)

I guess this has been on my mind a lot lately, because, as some of you may know, I’m an agent as well as a writer, and I represent over forty authors, which means I’m always offering critiques, making suggestions, driving my authors—hopefully to greater heights rather than to madness, but I understand that it can be a fine line! But I understand their pain first hand. And shared pain is supposed to be lessened, right?

Right?

______________________________________

The latest product of Lucienne’s blood, sweat, and tears, THE COUNTDOWN CLUB, is available now! (Barnes & Noble, Amazon)

About the Book:

“Mysterious and cleverly plotted, The Countdown Club is a must read for fans of One of us is Lying.” ⸻Amy Christine Parker, Author of Gated, Astray, and Smash and Grab

Making her way through high school in her art geek bubble, Rayna Butler is used to being largely ignored by her classmates. Sure, she marches to her own beat—her Kool-Aid dyed hair and her edgy paintings make that perfectly clear. So when she arrives at school one normal Monday morning and finds a handwritten note in her backpack that reads “Six days to die,” she’s sure that it’s just a friend playing a prank on her.

Jack Harkness is one of the toughest guys in school, a loner hiding his painful home life. When he also receives one of the threatening notes, he doesn’t take it for anything he can’t handle.

Rayna and Jack soon discover that even more students have received threatening notes, although each has a different expiration date. “Six days to die”. . . “Two days to die”. . . “Twelve days to die”. . . there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. And none of the kids appear to have anything in common.

The students take the threats with varying degrees of seriousness . . . until the first murder. Class salutatorian Liam is the first to go, when his house mysteriously burns down around him and his mother as well. Certain that their days are numbered, Rayna and Jack convince the others to join together to track down the killer before their time is up.

About the Author:

Lucienne Diver spends her days agenting and plotting murder. Luckily, she limits the actual execution to fictional characters…so far as you know. She’s the author of the popular Vamped series of young adult novels (think Clueless meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the Latter-Day Olympians contemporary fantasy series of myth, magic and mayhem, and young adult suspense, including FAULTLINES, also from Bella Rosa Books.  Her short stories have been included in the STRIP-MAULED and FANGS FOR THE MAMMARIES anthologies edited by Esther Friesner for Baen Books, KICKING IT edited by Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price for Ace, and TRIBULATIONS, a Rogue Mage anthology, edited by Faith Hunter for Lore Seekers Press.

She lives in Florida with her husband and daughter, the two sweetest pups in the world, and an overflowing library under the mistaken impression that death is not allowed to take her until she has read ALL THE BOOKS.

More information is available on her website, www.luciennediver.com.

Lucienne and friend

Coastal Magic Report Part One

So I just got back from attending the Coastal Magic Convention in Daytona Florida (well, I got back on Sunday, but it always takes me a while to recover from these things). This was my second year attending, and if anything, I had more fun this year than I did last year. It helped that my roommate, author/agent pal Lucienne Diver didn't have to leave early because of a bad back this year, and also that the weather was nicer, so I actually got to spend some time sitting on the beach. I love the ocean, so this is something of a motivator for me to go to this con, although there are a zillion other reasons besides this one...

Although you have to admit, it's a pretty good reason.

 I left by bus on Wednesday afternoon, arriving in Schenectady in the early evening, where I had dinner with my sister Sarah and adorable niece Addy (they live there, along with my poor BIL who couldn't come along because he'd just had cataract surgery). After dinner they took me to the Colonie Barnes & Noble, where Addy gleefully showed me some of my books on the shelves!

Seriously, isn't she adorable? Also, I love to see my books in the wild.

 I flew to Orlando in the morning, where Lucienne met me at the airport and we drove together the hour or so to get to the hotel at Daytona Beach. After we checked into our room, we went to this fun seafood restaurant called Bubba Gump's, based on the movie Forrest Gump. The food was delish! Thank goodness there are no calories in food eaten at a con. That's right, isn't it?

NOM

The lunch gang, including Lucienne, Eric Asher, Nancy Northcott, Gail Z. Martin, and Alethea Kontis.

 That evening, there was a fun author/blogger meet up, where some folks managed to find the elusive stuffed unicorns!

Unicorns!

 This was the sunrise outside my window on Friday morning. Unfortunately, they were doing construction at the hotel, so on Thursday and Friday, the calming sound of the waves was interspersed with the not-so calming sound of circular saws... Still, ocean.

Glorious!

 My first panel on Friday was a fun one--A Kind of Magic, where various authors discussed the use of magic in their books.

The "Magic" gang: Chudney Thomas, Eric Asher, Larissa Ione, and me.

 Later, I managed to find some time to relax on the beach. This is my happy face :-)

I'm at the ocean!

A Katie Fforde book from across the pond, and look, a unicorn!

That afternoon, Lucienne, Alethea, and I took part in a paranormal authors "Meet and Greet." The theme for ours was Tea and Tiaras, and we all dressed up as princesses and/or goddesses. (My tiara was borrowed. Can you believe I don't own one? I do have a witch's hat, though.)

Goddess Lucienne, Princess Alethea, and me.

We started out behaving so well...

It didn't last.

 The funny thing about this picture was that Alethea and Lisa Kessler, seated in the front, had no idea what was going on behind them. They didn't realize until we put the picture up on Facebook!

The evening ended with a fabulous dinner and Lucienne dragging me out onto the dance floor at the Mixer/party, gimpy knee and all. But more about that in the next post. For now, have a look at the beautiful sunset we saw as we walked to dinner.

 Beautiful, wasn't it? The six inches of snow outside my window is making me very nostalgic...

Lucienne Diver and Faultlines

I'd like to welcome my friend Lucienne Diver to the blog. I fell in love with Lucienne's writing through her lighthearted paranormal romances, but she has a book out today that is a complete change of pace--and it looks truly amazing. So I invited her here to talk about what it took to do such a major shift of her writing gears, and ask her why she felt the need to write this book in particular. I hope you'll give her a warm, Writing the Witchy Way welcome.

Lucienne: Shifting Gears

I've been writing since I was eleven years old. At first it was a lot of wish fulfillment, like my story about the girl in the forest who tamed the unicorn—oh, how I wanted that to be me! (Yes, I was one of those girls, the unicorn girls. There was hardly a space on my walls that wasn't taken up with their images.) 

And then—well, as I write, it occurs to me that there wasn't really an and then.  Not for a long while.  The two series I've written, Vamped and the Latter-Day Olympians, have featured snarky heroines who are tough enough to take on anything life throws at them. They're special. They have powers, not the least of which is thinking of that perfect one-liner I'd only ever come up with after the moment had passed.  I love these girls. I want to be them when I grow up. Well, maybe not Gina so much, since I do like my tanning options, but certainly Tori from the Latter-Day Olympians series with two hunky guys falling all over themselves for her and the ability to quite literally stop men in their tracks.

But with Faultlines, I'm writing about things I wouldn't wish on anyone, yet teens deal with them on a daily basis. Sure, I put my issues into a suspense plot, but that only ups the tension and stakes rather than lessens them.  I couldn't wisecrack my way through this book.  My tone had to change.  This was difficult for me at first. As my critique partner could tell you, my first few beginnings were too light in tone. Too flippant or distant for what was going on.  My character, Vanessa, needed to be wrecked.  Really and truly. Her best friend Lisa had just committed suicide, and she didn't know why. Lisa had pushed her away, pushed everyone away, a few months prior to her death. Vanessa blames herself for letting it happen, for not fighting harder for the friendship and for not seeing the signs. She's dealing with horrible guilt on top of her loss and gets herself through things by finding a purpose, the search for answers about why Lisa did what she did. Unfortunately, that search brings danger to her door. 

This was the hardest thing I've ever written. To tap into Vanessa's emotions, I had to tap into my own. Books don't develop in a void. They're spawned from our own experiences, and this book came from a deep, dark place within me.  I was afraid to access that place, afraid that rather than me illuminating the void, the darkness would reach out to snuff my light. I needed a very strong and powerful light as a talisman against that dark, both for Vanessa and for myself.  That talisman came in the form of her little sister Ari, who she dubs the "tiny terror".  Ari is alternately irrepressible, troublesome and sweet.  She's a force of nature, and she will not be denied.

With all the sorrow in the world—the terrible stories of bullying and harassment, suicide and other violence turned inward or outward—it's vital that we all find our light, that thing that banishes our darkness, whether it's people who love us, furbabies (or scaled or feathered babies) who count on us or art that refills our well.  When you find your light, shout down any voice, internal or external, that tells you that it's frivolous or a unacceptable or anything else. Especially, don't bully yourself. It's self-care, and it's crucial.

I love my strong, snarky heroines, but I want to speak for others as well, just as in Faultlines, where Vanessa needs to speak for Lisa when she can no longer speak for herself.

I love this cover, don't you? Deborah

 In case you're interested in learning more about the book or (yes!) getting a copy for yourself, here are a couple of recommendations, the book blurb, and a couple of links. If you have any questions for Lucienne, go ahead and ask them! She's going to be GIVING AWAY A SIGNED COPY to one lucky commenter!

“Vivid, suspenseful, and charming, Diver creates a world where anything can happen in this must-read page-turner.” —Carrie Jones, New York Times bestselling author of the Need series

“Faultlines blew me away! A tense, suspenseful read that will break your heart and keep you guessing right up until the very end.” —Amy Christine Parker, author of GATED and ASTRAY

Six months ago Vanessa Raines lost her best friend.

Lisa had changed, pushing away everyone close to her, even Vanessa. She had quit soccer. Started wearing dark and dismal clothes. She refused every offer to talk and suffered whatever she was going through in silence. Now she’s really gone. Suicide they claim, but Vanessa knows that isn’t right. It can’t be.

Vanessa blames herself for letting Lisa chase her off. She wants answers, so that she can put to rest the rumors surrounding Lisa’s death and so that she can move on, heal. But Lisa left no note and the journal she was always scribbling in—which might tell all—is mysteriously missing.

As Vanessa struggles to come to terms with the loss of her friend and to reconstruct the last months of Lisa’s life, someone calling themselves “Poetic Justice” begins taking revenge against those he or she thinks drove Lisa to suicide. Everyone at school believes Vanessa is this mysterious “Poetic Justice”. It’s easy to blame the former best friend, and Vanessa makes an obvious target.

Struggling with her own guilt, Vanessa is determined to ignore the threats and allegations aimed her way. But as Poetic Justice’s vengeance takes a darker turn, retaliation against Vanessa begins to escalate, from cyber bullying to violence, putting both her and the little sister she adores in the line of fire. To protect them both, she has to find out who’s behind the attacks before things turn deadly. And hope she can survive the truth.

Pre-order links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Faultlines-Lucienne-Diver-ebook/dp/B01MCVAR9N/

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Faultlines-Lucienne-Diver/dp/1622681002/