pbray

As an author, it's always difficult to tell which pieces of promotional swag are helpful, and which ones are a waste of money. The strongest reaction I ever received was for the lizard keychains/bottle openers I gave out for THE FIRST BETRAYAL. The lizards were both fun & useful, and were remembered by Elizabeth Bear when it came time for authors to list their favorite book swag in the essay Love It or Leave It.

One lizard to rule them all....

Becoming a published author involves mastering many skills, one of which is learning how to write a synopsis for your book. If you've never seen one before, this can be a daunting task, so jpsorrow put out a call for his friends to share examples, and declared that March 18th was S-Day.

For my part, I've posted the synopsis for THE FIRST BETRAYAL, the first volume in The Chronices of Josan series. Because this was a proposal based on sample chapters rather than a completed novel, the package included detailed background information as well as summaries for all three books in the proposed series. In order to avoid spoilers for either THE SEA CHANGE or THE FINAL SACRIFICE, I've removed those sections from the synopsis posted on my website.

At the time the synopsis was written, I has only writen the opening chapters of THE FIRST BETRAYAL. Astute readers will notice differences between the synopsis and the final book. I like to think of the published book as the "Director's Cut" of the story.

You'll also notice that many of the details in the synopsis never made it into any of three books, such as Prince Lucius's family tree, or the detailed history of the Ikarian empire. This is an example of world-building--as an author I need to know the underpinnings of the world and civilizations that I've created, but it's not necessary to explicitly include these in the story.

In his livejournal announcement jpsorrow refers to synopses usually being 3-5 pages in length. This is where I beg to differ--while shorter is generally better, synopses come in a wide variety of lengths, depending on the project and the author. The synopsis for THE FIRST BETRAYAL was the longest one I've ever written, mainly because it wasn't associated with a completed novel--there had to be enough detail in there to convince the folks at Bantam that I had enough story to sustain a multi-volume arc. Luckily Bantam liked it, and as you've probably guessed, they bought all three books in the series :-)

So, without further ado, click here to read my synopsis. Then take a look at the links posted below, to find more examples.

Enjoy!

Plot Synopsis Project participant links:

For more examples, check out the links below. Note, authors are posting throughout the day, some links may not be immediately available.

Edited on 3/24 to add permanent links to the blog entries.

desperance Chaz Brenchley's entry
Mike Brotherton's entry
Tobias Buckell's entry
scbutler S.C. Butler's entry
Barbara Campbell's entry
davidbcoe David B. Coe's entry
jennifer_dunne Jennifer Dunne's entry
sleigh S.L. Farrell's entry
difrancis Diana Francis's entry
frostokovich Gregory Frost's entry
Felix Gilman's entry
jimhines Jim C. Hines's entry
jackiekessler Jackie Kessler's entry
mindyklasky Mindy Klasky's entry
madkestrel Misty Massey's entry
mizkit C.E. Murphy's entry
naominovik Naomi Novik's entry
jpsorrow Joshua Palmatier's entry
Maria V. Snyder's entry Link takes you to Myspace page, then search for 03/18/08 entry
smokingpigeon Jennifer Stevenson's entry
msagara Michelle West's entry
ladnews Sean Williams's entry

Folks have been asking how I came up with the title for THE FIRST BETRAYAL, so I decided to share the answers here. Warning: spoilers under the cut tag.

( So how do you come up with those titles anyway? )

Tonight I'll be appearing at Flights of Fantasy, 488 Albany-Shaker Road, Loudonville, NY. Dinner with the folks from LASTSFA at 5PM, followed by a reading and signing at 7PM.

Looking forward to a great time. If you're in the area stop by to say "Hi!" and grab some of the M&M's.

If you can't make it, I'll be signing copies for stock, so you can pick one up later this month. But the M&M's will be gone :-)

Back from Balticon. The long weekend and drive back drained all functioning brain cells, so expect a longer post on this later in the week. For now, here's a quick recap.

The Good: met old friends and made new ones. Most of the panels I was on were very good, and today's reading from TFB was all I could hope for. I was intrigued to meet several students from Seton Hill University's Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Maria Snyder, this year's Compton Crook winner, is currently in that program.

The Bad: programming was disorganized, to put it charitably. Among other issues--the pocket program only listed program titles, not descriptions, so both panelists and con attendees were left guessing as to the purpose of some of the panels. For the most part they'd also failed to identify moderators, which left panelists scrambling to choose a moderator as they were sitting down.

The Odd: there were actually two cons going on. The Neil Gaiman con, with a large contingent of his fans only interested in going to his events, and then the con for the rest of us. Preregistration was over 2,000 with many more registering at the con, yet when I was in the public spaces it had the feel of a much smaller con.


In other news, The First Betrayal goes on sale tomorrow. Which completely explains why BN.COM just sent me an email saying that my preorder would be delayed since the publisher had changed the publication date. I called the Ingram's stock line to confirm that the books were in the warehouses, and they are, so BN.COM appears to be experiencing the electronic version of a brain fart. It wouldn't be the first time. I always preorder copies of my titles from the online bookstores, just to check to make sure they are in the channel and shipping, and about half the time I run into a problem with at least one preorder being arbitrarily cancelled, outright lost, or receiving strange status messages.

Anyway, that's all the news that fits to print. More later this weekend, after I recover!

Been busy, so haven't been posting recently.

A few tidbits of good news--DEVLIN'S JUSTICE went back to press for another printing, and the author's copies of THE FIRST BETRAYAL arrived over the weekend, more than two weeks before the release. Usually I get my copies after the book is in the stores, so I'm quite impressed.

Plans for biking this weekend were canceled by rain on Saturday and yesterday by other obligations, as a friend's mother insisted I join the family for their traditional Mother's Day celebration. ( Read more... )

The sequel to TFB isn't finished yet, but it's moving along. At this point I'd be willing to cut open my skull and insert the brain in the universal input port, if I thought that would speed things up.

Reading: Finished PATHS NOT TAKEN by Simon R. Green. One book left in the series (so far).

It's that most wonderful time of year, as the first review is up. Harriet Klausner's review of The First Betrayal was posted on BN.COM. Ms. Klausner isn't known for her critical analysis, but she's almost always the first one to post a review for new books, so it's a bit like spotting the first robin of spring. You know the others can't be far behind.

I saw that the review exists, but haven't read it yet. I almost never read my reviews--or at least not until they've been pre-screened by a minion. Even a favorable review can drive me crazy if it gets details wrong, or reveals too much of the plot.

I'm wondering about the rest of the authors on my friends' list. Do you read reviews of your work or do you find them too aggravating?

ETA: jennifer_dunne read the review and assured me that it was favorable, but also gave away key plot points. Par for the course.

My new icon is from the title page for the new book. Very pretty.

Finished up the project box by tossing in the photocopy of the galleys, and writing today's date. For those keeping score at home, the project box for THE FIRST BETRAYAL consists of:
- Original Proposal
- Interim outline (shown only to arcaedia)
- Revised proposal (version that sold)
- Submitted manuscript
- Revised manuscript
- Copy-edits
- Galleys

Back from Boskone which was lots of fun, but unfortunately didn't get to hang out with friends as much as I wanted. Saw matociquala and truepenny only briefly to say "Hi!", as we kept meeting while on the way to panels/readings/appointments etc. Had a nice chat with arcaedia, got to meet Neil Clarke clarkesworld, saw tryslora who recommended a new author to me and admired the custom printed M&M's, chatted briefly with Walter Hunt about his new project, had a fantastic dinner Saturday night with wen_spencer and Ann Cecil, saw rolanni and kinzel and commiserated over the printing problems which meant their new book wasn't ready for Boskone, and saw many others whose names/LJ ids have slipped my mind.

Handed out many postcards for THE FIRST BETRAYAL, as well as lizards and the M&M's. Overall a great weekend, but a tad rushed and no time to actually see Boston. Furthest I got from the hotel/Prudential center was a walk over to Turner Fisheries for dinner.

jennifer_dunne and jpsorrow proved admirable traveling companions, sharing the long drive and the hotel room with grace. Sadly they discovered a new game to play while visiting the game room, so I can see more game nights in my immediate future.

Bought many books from Larry Smith, including Patricia Briggs' new urban fantasy MOON CALLED which immediately sucked me in.

Came back to the day job to find everyone in crisis mode--the automated forecast process on Friday didn't work so everyone is manually cranking numbers and I'm trying to troubleshoot the database. Fun.