Writing Progress, all current projects.

updated 10/27
I am so preoccupied with the writing of the third book of the Resurrection of Magic trilogy that I am not writing blog posts (or anything else) very often. I will be MUCH more interesting in a few months. Until then, I think I will start putting my FB writing dailies up here, too. All in this one post, I mean. I will keep adding them to the bottom--you can read downward, oldest first, so it makes SOME sense.....it's just a sketchy little writing diary as I wade through this third, complicated book:

((adding this later. I am now (11/7) splitting days between two projects
and the updates include The Faerie's Promise, book 3 Wishes and Wings))

10/10
Just made the *best* connection in the book. One of those things that drops into place like it has been machined into 1/1000th centimeter tolerance and fits! Oh I love my job.

10/11
Good morning, Richard is sick and I kiss him a lot, but I am hoping... Still flying on the third book of the trilogy--can't wait to go to work. LOVE the new covers for The Unicorn's Secret and The Faeries Promise, releasing spring 2010. New website coming up~~wrote the bio: I have such a weird life. Adult and YA readers: the experiment is working better than I ever thought possible. http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

10/12
I was awake between 3:00 and 5:30 whispering into my digicorder and walking the dark house back to front...staring at the moon through the trees. The book is getting deeper and wider.

10/13
I am writing like mad, like MAD, I tell you. It is an undescribable high when it comes this fast.....

10/13
Maybe getting what Richard has, coughing a little ...gave up on sleep at 4:30, have been working since. I'm writing Sadima's story but have to switch soon. Hahp's story interlocks; I must make them fit. The timelines--200 years apart in the first book-- are now within 40 years of concurrent. Sadima is fighting to stay whole: The boys are capable of anything at this point. Anything. So who knows? Not me. I love my job.

10/14
Another good day yesterday, two chapters added (they are short chapters, so about 3800 words.) I hope to add two more today. This helps make up for all the stare at the wall days...I had to spend time trying to get started! Today I will leave Sadima at a delicate... and painful.... crossroads to go see if Hahp and Gerrard are starting to see past the craziness...

10/15
The TLA panel I will be on: Cory Doctorow, Matt de la Pena, Chris Crutcher, Shannon Hale and me. And Ellen Hopkins tells me she and Sonya Sones will be on a panel with Lisa Shroeder. That is a lot of YA amazingness all at once. TLA should be huge fun this year. (adding this later, also Jenni Holm is coming. YAY!)

10/15
Here for two minutes, apologies to the people I am not responding to for real-time chat... I have to seriously WRITE now...in a few months will have a little more time to play...NEW WEBsite coming soon...YAY!!

10/16
The nameless book three is flying. Which is good. Because it took a long time to START flying. But, of all things, there appears to be a love story emerging. Maybe. I can't quite tell yet. A really really REALLY weird one.

10/17
Just wrote a really good chapter. Let the twists begin!!!

10/18
Today (In the unnamed book I am being eaten by) two people will be face to face who have not seen each other in 10 years. I am afraid that one will not be honest about where and why and what and who...and that the other one won't see the lies because of fear and exhaustion. Not just yet, anyway.

10/19
I left off writing last night at a really critical part of an emotional (for Sadima and me) scene. I never finish a chapter, so I always have a pick-up point in the writing, not a cold start, first thing in the morning... and this morning, I will be walking back into a maelstrom ...


10/19
Just got a bad review in a major journal. First one. Ouch. Major complaints, "nothing much happens" and "nothing is explained" in Sacred Scars. Well the last thing is sort of true. But MUCH is intimated....

10/20
I apologize for the whining. I am a little stressed, I think. Giant dreadlines are far to close....So I am off to write. The weird love story is looking more likely. I just...? It really is odd...but kind of wonderful, too.

10/22
Spent some time with the boys inside the cliff and then found a yogi who would talk to me about levitation, how it feels, how it clicks inside, clicks into place, how belief that one can do things is pivotal in doing them....and then I started thinking about how the magic in Limori would be shaped in order to make this possible: http://www.vimeo.com/1778399wingsuit base jumping
Source: vimeo.com

10/23
Woke up with a little avalanche of revelations about something in Limori that has puzzled me lately. As you may know, there were no libraries in that mostly illiterate city except the royal one, which should have fallen into the hands of the magistrates when the last king was dethroned. But it didn't, and now I know where all those books are. Of course.

10/24
Sadima has not been to South End in years. This morning, she is on the long road from the countryside into the city of Limori. She has two graves to visit, rent money to collect, a cypress tree to find and a man she must deal with. One way or another.

10/25
What happens in South End...stays in South End? Not this time. Sadima visited the graves and went to the meeting hall, where Thomas spoke so often. It's locked up; a broken window; a man in a red tunic seemed to have the keys. But about an hour later, in the middle of a cobblestone street, near what was once her cheese shop, something happened to Sadima that has changed everything.

10/26
Two stories, 200 years apart. The first story causes the second, and by the middle of this last book of the trilogy, the time gap will have closed. The stories are about 30 years apart now. I often write 5-10 chapters of one strand, then switch. Sadima's story is at a resting point, so I will go back to Hahp and Gerrard now. Somiss seems to be gone. Why? Is it a chance or a trap...I will begin to find out today.

10/27
I ended up following Sadima through a very long and very hard night. And now, TODAY, it's back into the maze of passages inside the cliffs...I am hoping the boys are alive, eating, reclaiming their humanity after what happened in Sacred Scars. There are only five of them alive now. Hahp, Gerrard, Will, Levin and Jordan.

10/28
Report from inside the cliffs: everyone is still alive and managing, but the simple logic of "pass or starve" is disintegrating. I have no idea why or what will be replacing it, if anything. I can't tell where Somiss is, but Hahp thinks something is wrong...so do I.

10/29
I am stopped cold this morning by a new idea. Will jot the thing down until the ideas dry up, then sprint back to Limori.

10/29
Ok, the new idea is written down and digicorded, therefore safe. I think it might be good. NOW off to Limori. As it turns out, most of the market-place fakers were performing metaphors for actual magic, a disguised art to survive the pograms/hangings. So Hahp is learning this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqim3Y3ir2g&feature=related to prepare for the real stuff. I only hope I can describe it...

10/30
Today's chapter will have a terribly sad scene and I am procrastinating...but after that chapter comes one I have been waiting to write since I got the idea for these books 15 years ago...

10/31
The sad scene got written. Oh I cried. Then I had to do writerly nonwriting things (2 interviews, respond to emails, books flights for Jan FL writers intensive, etc, etc, ETC. and answer an email from an artist friend who is doing stage design for a play in China. Then I cut down more tree limbs. Today! Now! I write the long awaited scene of the beginners' exercises for the magic that underlies all other magic.

11/1
Sadima demanded my attention late last night. And when I add a chapter for her, I have to re-pace the Academy side of the story to add one there, too. Got up early and JUST finished the reordering. NOW I can reread the long awaited Franklin's New Class scene written yesterday morning. It came out faster than I could type, always a wonderful feeling. Next up: a midnight meeting. I think.


11/2
Ok. I have to split my time for a week in order to finish the third title of the Faeries Promise. So....Mornings= Faeries's Promise for 2-4th graders. The dark of night will be for the Limori Academy...As of last night I can only say that the forgotten half caved-in passages of the ancient smugglers' tunnels beneath the city of Limori are attracting street orphan "squatters" as the weather turns.

11/3
The Faeries Promise: faeries are forbidden contact with humans. Old Lord Dunraven made the laws. Without magic, people are dulled, easier to rule, better serfs. Alida was the hostage to ensure her family's exile, but Gavin, a human boy, has helped her escape. It's an apartheid story, in a way, both cultures damaged in isolation.

In Limori: it's all about trust. And shame. And secrecy. And juggling.

11/4
Two reactions to the odd love story emerging in the last trilogy book: The editor: "OOooooOOOoooooooooo...That could be INTERESTING!" The writer-friend whispered "Wow. Wow!! But...can you... DO that?" I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...and the characters want it. So this morning, I will write about faeries ...who want to go HOME. And then, in the dark of night, I will slide back to Limori...

11/5
The book with no name: It is raining in Limori today. Sadima is painting, crying. The street-rat kids are shivering and hungry. Inside the cliffs, no one can hear or even smell the rain. But they can hear screams.

People have asked about other projects. So there is a longer update below, then back to eensy ones tomorrow:

RUSSET:
Thanks for emailing and tweeting and FBing and etc…I will continue his story when I can scratch out the time to talk to him again, probably in a month or two. I am completely fascinated with him. He is trying to escape his ((crazy and/or abusive or non-human, or victimized, or reality-gamer ...or??) parents and the one-winged angels: but first he has to get to Stehekin before they do. It’s a real place. The story is here, free, incomplete but I think it is kind of amazing…http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/


A VIRGIN'S BLOOD:
This one is lurking at the edge of my thoughts most of the time. HUGE idea file now, many-many digicorder notes. Can't wait to write it.

FREE RAT:
The treatment is growing, expanding and the story is getting grittier and wilder. I will send it off to the incredibly patient agent (we talked about this at lunch in NYC in 2007) soon.

SHORT STORIES:
I have one included in an upcoming anthology edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier. It's dark...about a unicorn who has lived too long. Many incredible writers are included.

(((The amazing editors: Holly's upcoming THE WHITE CAT is intricate, mysterious, creepy, set in a world almost like ours...*almost*. It stars a teen you can only love and worry about… first of a trilogy.

Justine's recent LIAR is getting stunning reviews, awards buzz, and amazing word of mouth recommendations. It is on my desk. I can't wait to read it.)))

OTHER SHORT STORIES
I am writing short stories set in Limori, the city of A RESURRECTION OF MAGIC for my website which is slowly being completely rehauled. It’s a mess right now. It will be awesome…And when the stories are up, I will announce it here.

Take Care, everyone, and now I have to get to work! Tomorrow's update will be tiny again...


11/7
Still splitting days. Faeries are on their way back to Ash Grove: Elders, adults, rambunctious faerie kids, babies, goats pulling stout wooden carts, a caravan of winged people--all walking. Midday, continued reading. From 5pm to eyes-are-closing-time, back to Limori. Sadima knows she is being manipulated but by whom? And why?


11/8
The Faeries are so much fun to spend time with, I had forgotten how much I love Lord Dunraven's lands. The setting is the same as The Unicorn's Secret. Alida is watching her mother try to settle an argument. (faeries are noisy and opinionated). In Limori, Hahp is following Gerrard, ducking back out of the cold-fire light when he stops...


11/9
Fairies are funny. Testy, argumentative, difficult, and interesting. Lovely break from the dark and silent world in the cliffs. And Sadima has a man in her house...

11/11
Focusing on faeries for a few days to make a deadline:
Faeries are standing still, breathing silently. The magic makes them invisible. But Dunraven's guards are off their horses now, staring into the trees...

11/13
In a meadow near Ash Grove, everything grows faster because the soil has absorbed magic for a thousand years. The townspeople suspect the faeries have come home. They are all so afraid of what will happen when Lord Dunraven finds out.
11/15
I am getting close to the end of Wishes and Wings. I am reading it through, from page one, then will write the last two chapters.....

11/ 24 Between the last update and this one, I have finished the third Faeries' Promise, book ((LOVE to click send!))....then slept a little, rose at 3:30 am to make an early flight to Philadelphia, appeared at NCTE, saw many writer-friends, met a few new ones whose work I admire (I love meeting authors), signed many books for many terrific teachers and librarians, did a nine-minutes-per-table-of-fifteen-educators speed-dating session, joined Zilpha Keatly Snyder and Michael Buckly at the Secret Garden Bookstores to meet teachers and sign books, then flew home last night. And now, back to work. Today I start the copyedits of "Silence and Stone", the first of the Faeries Promise books, then will begin, tomorrow, writing the fourth one in the mornings, devoting the nighttime hours to the last book of the Resurrection of Magic trilogy. There is a new interesting idea/thing pounding on the door that I will sketch out today. And there is Russet. He is talking again....

11/25 thru 11/27
Am trying to find a middle grade novel idea I can fall in love with to send an editor I REALLY want to work with. Can't find one yet. Keep coming up with great ready for chapters ideas instead. Also fiddling with three other things, sort of a holiday break and idea-fishing trip... Have to get back to REAL work soon. But wheeeee....this is nice.

11/28 Copyedit/final go-through on Silence and Stone today. Should get the copyedits of (book #2) Following Magic back next week. Wishes and Wings (book #3) is off to the editor. I will start writing the fourth one mid next week.

11/30
Good day yesterday: finished Silence and Stone copyedits (short book, 60 pages), wrote text and batched pictures for the website re-do, gave the Free Rat proposal a couple of hours, and recorded MANY ideas/insights for the third Resurrection of Magic trilogy book while doing yardwork. Today: First, the dried out, now lettuce-edged Following Magic copyedit. Tonight: Free Rat again, I think. Or back to Limori... ((added 12/1 : thanks to the people on FB and Twitter who voted for Limori. You won. Hahp and Gerrard are learning this a quickness of mind and body that astound me. And them.
2/3
I am not sure where yesterday went. But it is gone. This morning I have begun a final read thru of the Faeries Promise #2 copyedits. Noonish, I will begin the revision of #3, which UPS says is *almost* here... THEN, tonight, I intend to go visit Russet. Thanks to everyone who is nudging (and the few who are pummeling me) me to get back to it.

Sacred Scars Review

No Spoilers!! Yay! (except my use of the eyedropper...?)

SACRED SCARS: Hornbook review 10/09

After the momentary pause at the (cliffhanger) end of SKIN HUNGER, the action resumes full throttle. In alternating chapters, magically attuned servant-girl Sadima plots a rebellion against her exploitive master Somiss, who is keeping her and Franklin captive in a cave complex while he relearns how to use the old magic; and two hundred years later, in the sadistic school for wizards run from the same cave complex, apprentice wizard Hahp plots a rebellion against Somiss and Franklin in a world where magic is now widespread. The plot-gunning question of what has happened to Sadima in the meantime is only partially answered: Duey doles clues with an eyedropper, keeping readers busily but happily engaged in connecting dots even as the horrors and triumphs of the unfolding story hold them spellbound. When the last page of this exquisitely suspenseful fantasy is turned, readers will be satisfied (Both plotlines come to crisis and thence to resolution, however temporary) but will feel they are still living in Duey’s world, waiting to discover what happens to the characters they have become so invested in—waiting impatiently for Duey to conjure the concluding volume.

SACRED SCARS: NOW AVAILABLE!!!!

SACRED SCARS released: http://bit.ly/11CPB7


I just received the first review of SACRED SCARS, from Kirkus, and it’s lovely:
(I am editing out some spoiler-ish things...)




“Thrumming with dense, meaningful tension from first page to last, this middle installment in the Resurrection of Magic trilogy follows the two plotlines established in the first volume, Skin Hunger (2007), through despair, oppression and rare moments of hope. Sadima’s thread begins in the caves, where she’s repeatedly hand-copying sociopathic Somiss’s research on ancient magic and (ostensibly) teaching caged boys to write. The second thread, interwoven, follows Hahp through indeterminate years in the caves, in an epoch far later than Sadima’s early section but possibly matching the end of her later one. The text so successfully portrays Hahp’s experience in this grueling, cold-blooded wizard “academy”—isolation, starvation, abuse and constant, unsolvable puzzles—that readers may absorb his strain, confusion and desolation themselves. A single detail implies that Sadima’s thread will converge with Hahp’s in a heartbreaking way, but it could be a red herring. Absorbing and unwaveringly suspenseful.”



New review of the first book in the trilogy, SKIN HUNGER
http://bit.ly/118sUx

Sacred Scars

Just got the the ARCS and am so pleased with the cover. Also the size. It's 200 pages longer than Skin Hunger.

A /SF/F Editor/ tribal elder called me to tell me I am going to need four books, not three. We'll just see, Charles...

It looks good. Weighty. I love the smell of new books. I love this job. Sacred Scars will be released in August.

You can read an excerpt here: http://www.ipulpfiction.com/

It's free, of course. You have to sign up for an account, (free, and quick!) choose my book, click BUY (for free) Whooosh...it goes to your library page, click the cover and five pages of excerpts--some from each story, come up.

Ipulp is growing fast. Keith Shaw wants to make downloadable stories as easy and available as downloadable music.

((He is looking for writers/content, too!))

An update, of all things

Here's the scoop.

Garden, mostly planted, weeds, mas o menos under control.

The second Faeries Promise book is mostly written--another week or so.

Sacred Scars needs a few more hours in response to the final copy edit and it's off to production.

Russet (see post below) is ongoing and absorbing. I usually write fast and furious, but this is totally without a net and I can't explain how great that feels. How real.

Free Rat is stalled, but it won't stay that way. The science is burgeoning. My premise becomes more and more probable.

STAYS is growing into a great book. Should have the first 60 or so pages together by month's end.

The Unicorn short story (currently titled The Third Virgin) is lined up for revision...is all marked up with notes from my amazing editors' astute comments.

What else. Oh, a new thing, at the talking stages with my oldest and dearest friend. We spent a couple hours Monday walking in long circles in my little town, talking into my dinky digicorder, laughing like loons, doing the writers'-speed-flash-concept-brain-party thing. We have a *great* idea.

Back to work.

Inheritance:

I just finished a kitchen chore; the way I do it is incredibly efficient. My mother, a farm girl during the depression, could squeeze more meals out of the contents of the pantry, the chicken coop, and the garden than anyone else I have ever met. She taught by example. My father and his brothers grew up in a 700 square foot house. They all three graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, by alternating--two in school--one out, working full time. They lived together in a shed up the hill from the old mill.

My parents are the reason I loved all the looney places I once lived-- fishermen's cabins, tipis, adobes, old trailers, most without electricity, some without running water. If times get tougher, I will be more prepared than most of my friends.

Watching the debates, I was thinking about my parents, and when I came into my office to continue the revision of Sacred Scars, I realized why. Hahp and the other boys were raised in luxury by people who had been raised the same way. All but Gerrard. And that makes all the difference just now. Necessity is a great teacher.

The picture is a wall in Modena, Italy, the backside of a restaurant with a strip-mall-esque bricked, modern frontside. Limori is full of buildings look like this wall: A long history, in layers. One of them is an unfinished stone monstrosity begun by the last king before the magistrates took over. It is shrinking now, as people find ways to carry off the stones.

Getting down to it....

The ending(s) of Sacred Scars are coming together. Sadima's story is nearly finished. Hahp's has a little farther to go. He is still alive and I am hoping...

Thomas Marsham's passage

It took me an hour to find this image in my files. I remembered it, the arches, the various colors of stone and brick, the proximity of ancient and modern. It is the place where Sadima is shivering, standing straight. She is becoming something I never expected, but completely understand.

I am going to be adrift and weird when I am finished with this book, which will be soon. I will have to start the third one asap.



This is Volubilis, the southernmost Roman outpost. The restored arch (brick) frames the original Roman construction beyond it. Soliders lived here. Click to enlarge.

exits and traps

This image is from Morocco. It's also in South End, Limori, one of the exit-alleys, lined with vendors and kiosks. It eventually leads away from the ale houses and the sailors and the squalor, back to cleaner, better parts of the city. It's one of the alleys that Sadina cannot walk. She just can't.

I realized something this morning:

It's weird how much of every book is autobiography. Oblique, maybe, but true, true, true...

The Tannery

This tannery/leather dyeing enterprise is 400 years old. It is a family-run business in Morroco. When you ask to be shown around a little, one of the kids will lead you up long narrow steps to the rooftop, and give you a sprig of mint to hold under your nose. It doesn't help.

There is a tannery in Limori's South-End, too. It is guarded by a vicious dog. He is Sadima's very first friend.

click the picture....

sacred scars update, quick and done

Jux has survived, a homeless, familyless child in a starving city with cobblestone streets and an inept king. He has loved only one person, and she is in terrible trouble.

Sadima is running, sobbing in each breath, too terrified to even look back.

.

Hahp is standing before a wall of stone, shaking, knowing he must walk through it, knowing what it will do to him.

.

This is a ceiling from a Paris renovation of an historic building. Standing beneath it, I thought about massive wealth, the options it brings, the art that money midwives. Somiss's mother has ceilings like this, painted, with gold leaf on the rosettes.








Adding this on June 2, 2011:  Updates on the third book in progress can be found here:
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/05/writing-updates-all-projects-2.html

Back from ALA, back to work

My camera died. So this picture was taken in the Emirates, but it is the same variety of palm that lines the walkways of the Anaheim Convention Center where ALA was held this year. They are 40 or 50 feet tall and truly magnificent.
.
I saw lots of friends. LOTS. I love writers--they are generous and kind and funny: All good things. My signing was great and encouraging--a lot of people came up to me with kind words about my books, and I feel very ready to get back to work on Sacred Scars. Before I went I was wussing out on a tough scene. I can write it now, I am sure.

The Newbery/Caldecott acceptance speeches were incredible, just-flat-out, goosebumps great. I am so glad I went. I wasn't going to, but Ellen Hopkins had an extra ticket, so last minute, I did. Thanks Ellen!!
ALA rocks. Librarians will save the world if we just fund them well and get out of their way.

This is a student's window overlooking a courtyard in the oldest university in the world. It is deep in the maze of the medina in Fez Morocco, the old city, a labyrinth built to discourage and repel invasions. Unesco Word Heritage Project has a quick video. It's an amazing place. Parts of it are in Sacred Scars.

.
click to appreciate the incredible delicacy of the wood carving.

Sacred Scars (with orchid)

So I am in a writing doldrums now--probably because I had such a great surge last week. It ebbs and flows. Sadima continues to amaze me, she is living through what no one should be able to live through, as least so far. 





Into this lull has come an idea for the next work. I had a notes file going and it is expanding faster than I expected. I love knowing what's next before each book is finished. It saves me panic, terror and poverty....

work,work,work, cough, sniffle, work,

Have a flu. BAD one. Started with stomach yuck, became a nasty cough, no energy *at all* for a few days. Not anything like normal yet, day eight. Lots of people have it. I was on a plane, coming back from Orlando, the night all the tornados hit in the midwest. The air traffic controllers took us up to 36,ooo feet. Still bumpy. So we were routed south and spent an extra hour in the viral soup that is airplane-air. I sat next to a nice mother and son. The boy was, maybe ADHD--very energetic, at the least. He was charming, smart company. His mother was really nice, too. Both were coughing every ten seconds...everyone was coughing and sniffling. Sigh. Back to work. Sadima is on the edge of a decision that terrifies me. I didn't think she would do this.