Category: Fiction

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites Progress Update

Image: Source unknown.

Happy Easter! He is risen!

I know I haven’t posted much lately, but as this has been Holy Week, and I’m Catholic, I’ve been quite busy. I’m also finishing up Dead to Rites, and I’m in the oh-my-gosh-I-have-to-get-this-thing-out-of-the-house-I’m-so-sick-of-it phase of the writing process. I tend to hit a period of malaise and despondency as I’m finishing a project, but this one has gone more smoothly than the last. Although crafting the final chapters was like pulling teeth, my editor only asked for minor alterations, and I was able to move forward on her requests without the lengthy period of blockage I had with the first novel.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Proofing
80%

I just finished the grueling and monotonous task of running the book through a spelling and grammar checker. I didn’t do this with Jake and the Dynamo; since I use so many made-up or foreign words, and since I write complex sentences the average grammar checker can’t handle—as well as a slew of sentence fragments in dialogue—I’ve inadvertently trained myself not to see the red and green underlining. I was subsequently embarrassed to find typos in the final draft of my first novel that a spellcheck could have caught, though the book had seen an editor and proofreader even after I had edited it extensively.

With this in mind, I put Dead to Rites through the checker, and it was as agonizing a process as I had envisioned, but it also caught several typos I might have easily missed while proofreading, mostly in the form of missing letters in some of the more exotic names. It also highlighted idiosyncrasies of my writing style, especially my bad habit of starting sentences with and, so this will give me opportunity to vary my sentence structure more as I make the final edits.

Only two steps are left in my editing process: I am going to do my customary search and replace for common grammatical errors, and then I am going to print the whole thing and read it through with a red pen to find any mistakes, overused words, or loose sentences I missed while reading on the screen. After that, it’s off to the publisher to go through a professional proofread before it sees print.

My editor wants a couple of characters’ motivations clarified. I’m still figuring out how to do that, but I don’t think it will require more than a few sentences, and I’ll determine where to insert those as I’m doing the read-through of the hard copy.

I mentioned before that my next project was Son of Hel, an action novel about Santa Claus and Krampus. I’ve realized, as I’ve begun working on Son of Hel, that it will require considerable research to do it justice since I want to combine together all the Christmas folklore I can find. But I also want to publish two novels this year, so I think my next book out will actually be Rag & Muffin, which is already complete in rough draft form.

Jake and the Dynamo, Book 2 Sneak Peek

I’m continuing to make the final edits on Dead to Rites, the second book in the Jake and the Dynamo series. Meanwhile, our interior illustrator, Roffles Lowell, is hard at work making the illustrations.

After we saw the final version of the paperback, Lowell suggested some changes for this version that will make the pictures sharper in black and white, but as you can see from this picture above, he has all-around stepped up his game.

This image depicts an early scene, in which Dana Volt and Jake’s girlfriend Chelsea square off in the virtual-reality fighting game Magical Girl Rumble. Chelsea plays as Sword Seamstress while Dana plays as Pretty Dynamo. And I must say that Dana looks great in her skater outfit.

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Progress Update

I have finished incorporating all of my editor’s recommended edits, so the next phase on the novel is intensive proofreading. I’m going through now and hunting down common writing mistakes. After that, I’ll print the whole thing out and read it through with a red pen. Once I’m done with that, it is ready to go to the publisher.

I’m expecting to be done by around Easter.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Proofing
50%

Comma, Part 2

I know I’m not posting nearly enough. I’m trying to get my act together over here, but it is my novel that needs to come first. I’m definitely in the I need to get this book out of the house right now oh please oh please phase of the writing process, which is also when my blog posts suffer—more than usual, I mean.

At least my taxes finally got done. Something goes weird with my taxes every year, and this year was no exception. I had the fun new experience of figuring out how to report royalties and expenses to the IRS, and then my taxes were rejected repeatedly when I tried to e-file. I never got an explanation for the rejection, just a message saying it was a system error and I should file again. I tried repeatedly to file over a few weeks, getting the same error each time.

Finally, I printed my forms off, and I’ll drop them in the mail next week. Maybe I really made a big mistake and they’ll get rejected yet again, but I figure if my mailed forms get rejected, the IRS will at least have to tell me the reason why so I can fix it.

Anyway, I’m pondering another issue of grammar, and I wanted to throw this one out to any grammar Nazis who might be with us in the peanut gallery. Here is a sentence from Dead to Rites, the soon-to-be-published next book in the Jake and the Dynamo sequence:

Remember how it was when you saw her for the first time, back when you were a bodybuilding Spanish billionaire and she was an impoverished governess with a physical disability!

My editor thinks there should be a comma after the word and, apparently supposing that she was an impoverished governess with a physical disability is an independent clause. Myself, I think the subordinating conjunction when, which begins the preceding clause, is implied but not repeated, so the sentence is correct (although informal and loose because it’s in dialogue) as written.

On the other hand, I wrote it, so maybe it just sounds better to me without the comma because my ear is used to it.

What do you think?

Comma ,

I’m spending the day on my manuscript for Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. Looking over my manuscript, I see that my editor and I have a disagreement over that little thing called the comma.

Grammar rules are fun. Some are hard and fast. Some change over time. Some are arguable. And some can be bent, especially in fiction: Comma splices can move action along, and sentence fragments create a punchy emphasis. Of course, they must be bent carefully and judiciously or the result is merely bad prose.

Serious writers must take interest in the mechanics of writing. If anyone tells you to “just write” and not worry about grammatical rules, that person is not serious. We have also done a great disservice to students in our school system, who no longer receive more than cursory instruction in grammar. This fact came home to me when I enrolled in a philosophy program and learned how important grammar is to clear thought: When people think, they think in words, and if they cannot use words clearly, they cannot think clearly. One of my professors, who was also a Benedictine monk, was a great lover of grammar, and he made this point to me. He had a poster on the wall of his office containing a diagram of the longest sentence ever written in English. He learned to diagram sentences in early elementary school.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve heard over my years is to review comma rules on a regular basis. I’m doing so now since I’m moving into the final edits on a manuscript. Besides, I’m infatuated with commas and tend to overuse them. One of my final editing moves will be to use Microsoft Word’s search function to find a group of words before which I habitually place commas in order to decide in each case whether they actually belong there.

But here’s an interesting issue: My esteemed editor has removed my comma every time I’ve connected an independent clause to another clause with the same subject using the conjunction but. Technically, according to most grammarians, she’s correct.

However, I get my comma usage from The Elements of Style, the classic by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White,which presents comma rules in a novel way. The original is available online for free. Although this little book changes every time it’s published, the fourth edition, which I have on my shelf, has the following:

When the subject is the same for both clauses and is expressed only once, a comma is useful if the connective is but.

Most grammar books indicate that a comma should be omitted if a clause following an independent clause, connected by a conjunction, has the same subject except in cases of extreme contrast. I think the rationale for Strunk’s rule above is that but, by its very nature, introduces contrast and should therefore take the comma.

The first sentence marked by my editor is this:

She rolled her eyes, but fished in her purse and handed him a coin.

The second clause has the same subject (she) as the first. Ordinarily, it would require no comma. The question of “contrast” is a judgment call, but I would say there is contrast here since the context is that she (Chelsea) is reacting in disgust to something Jake has said, but is acquiescing to it anyway. (And notice I just did it again in that last sentence.)

GrammarBook muddles the issue further with this rule:

If the subject does not appear in front of the second verb, a comma is generally unnecessary … But sometimes a comma in this situation is necessary to avoid confusion.

Gee, thanks.

It’s one of those cases where grammar gets murky. Having been several times through Strunk and White and having tried to put into practice what I’ve found there, I habitually use the comma in a case such as this, and now it looks wrong to me if the comma is omitted.

Ah, well. Decisions, decisions. At least this has me reviewing comma rules again, which is a good habit and a good thing to do while getting into the book’s final edits.

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Returns from My Editor

Time to write again.

That was surprisingly fast. I wasn’t expecting to hear from L. Jagi Lamplighter about the second volume of Jake and the Dynamo until late next month at the earliest, but she got right on that thing and burned through it. She said she usually moves much slower through a manuscript, but read 250 pages of Dead to Rites in one sitting because she was enjoying it. That’s certainly encouraging. She also says she thinks it is much more polished than the previous manuscript was, which is to me a complete surprise, since drafting the last few chapters involved about four weeks of torture.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Proofing
2%

So I’m once again tabling Son of Hel until I can get Dead to Rites out the door for good. I don’t know if I’ll manage to have Son of Hel out by this Christmas, especially since I’m beginning to realize how much research it will demand if I’m really to do the topic justice. I know a lot of other writers who crank out four or more books a year, but I have no idea how they do it. I’m simply not that prolific.

Heck, I have a hard time just keeping up with this blog. While I’ve been pounding away at this novel, I have felt the magical girl genre slipping away from me. It’s sure exploded in the last few years with tons of works out of Japan and imitators from elsewhere, and I simply can’t keep up. I actually haven’t been watching much anime at all lately.

Anyway, I’m going to go look at the comments on my manuscript, but before I go, I’ll leave you with the Dead to Rites unofficial theme song. For the first volume, you may recall I chose the power love ballad “You’re Mine” from Disturbed, but for this second volume, I think this old classic is more fitting:

It Is Finished (Again)

When Lord Shadow takes his throne, even the gods will bow down.

Featured image from CloudNovel.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
100%

I have not posted for a while because I was in another “I’m not blogging until I’m finished with this” phase of writing. More specifically, I was moving Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites from rough draft to submission draft. It again took me longer than I intended, but I believe it is ready to go off to both my illustrator, who will make the pictures, and my editor, who will ask for rewrites.

With this phase done, I may turn away from it to work on another project so I’ll be better equipped to see typos and so forth when I return to it to produce the final draft, after it’s come back from my editor.

So that means I can start in earnest on Son of Hel. And that means this will shortly become a Christmas blog as well as a magical girl blog.

I have some other things to write about, and I should have a review tomorrow, if all goes according to plan. But for now, I need to stop staring at a screen.

Progress Update

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
70.7%
Son of Hel
Phase:Writing
Due:5 years ago
2.4%

Today is another work day for me. I’m coming along on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. Very, very soon now, it will be out of the house. I’m in that “I’m sick of this” phase.

I’ve also added Son of Hel to my book progress tracker because it’s my next project. Fair warning: This is going to become a Christmas-themed blog while I’m working on that one.

My Little Girl Is All Grown Up

Roffles Lowell, the interior illustrator of the Jake and the Dynamo series, recently sent me this sketch. For the second book, Dead to Rites, he is planning to update the design of Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo to match the version that Lee Madison used on the cover of the first volume.

I have no strong opinions on Dynamo’s design myself. I’m just thrilled to see other people’s imaginings of her. That being said, I do rather like this updated version. I was quite impressed with Madison’s design to begin with, and I think Lowell’s version gives her a sort of spunky, whimsical character. In my head, I’ve always seen Dynamo (unlike her counterpart Dana) as a tomboy, the kind of girl who usually has a smudge of dirt on her face and who tries to make her voice sound lower than it really is. To me, this redesign conveys that impression.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites Progress Update


Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
41.1%

 

I’m spending the day working on the editing phase of Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. It’s coming along smoothly, if slowly. I hope to be about half done by the end of the day, and my goal is to have it out to both my illustrator and my editor by the end of the month.

In other news, I’m working my way through Little Witch Academia, and will review when I’m done. I’m also hoping to finally get through the two series of Glitter Force by the end of the month, but I’ve picked a bad month for it, since I’m also trying to finish my book.

There’s a lot of other things going on in the world of YA and anime, much of it rancorous. I’m mostly keeping my nose out of it, but might have a few comments later.