Personal ad drabble:

SEEKING: A child at heart—male, female, or any combination in between. I am incurably romantic and well-preserved (if underappreciated), and I’ve been told I’m a “Spring”. You should be prone to daydreaming, with spontaneous flights of fancy a big plus. A passion for fairy tales and fantasy is also a must, as is a natural attraction to the lush and the sensual as well as the ethereal. Rigid realists need not apply. Gold body paint not necessary (but respected); rose-colored glasses completely optional. Direct all serious inquiries to the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island, please.

Maxfield Parrish, Daybreak

It won't let me link directly; to see it, you have to click on the Parrish icon, and then go to "Daybreak." Sorry.

Morning. Weirdly, I knew about mantel-mantle, but I do occasionally have the free rein thing, because either spelling works, definitionally: if it was missepelled as reign, you would define as free rule, a king thinking he was George Bush and trying to rule everything. But of course, it's the bit and bridle rein, not the "where the hell is my sceptre?" reign.

Deb, I'm working on "Famous Flower", and I'm getting obsessed with openings again. Is it assumed that the reader has read the blurbs and knows going in that this is going to be a ghost story, and, as such, is expecting a particular mood and a certain sequence of events? Or is that the function of the prologue, to set the mood?

Um. I don't assume any prior knowledge on the part of the reader; I just write the thing. I know it sounds facile, but it isn't, it's just basic simplicity; I have a story I want to tell, I work out the details needed to get me (JUST me) past the "once upon a time" stage, and I let it rip. If it's a ghost story, I can see that in my own interior room. My job is to write well enough, believably enough, engagingly or compellingly enough, to make the reader put aside their expectation and just strap in for the ride. In this instance, the prologue was an addition at the suggestion of my agent, Jenn Jackson; she felt that a modern frisson of mood-setting and stage-setting would push the reader who hadn't read the first book closer to Penny. And she was absolutely right; all my DING DING DING receptors went happily off and she got her prologue. In this case, it works very well. Weaver's prologue happened organically.

One thing to remember is that I don't tend to write "throwaway" characters of any description; even if they're only there for a scene or two, I want them vivid and real. I prefer not to hire extras for my stuff.

Also, being as this is part of a series, how much character introduction to do you do? I understand that you can't always count on the reader having read the first book, so you have to lay the character's groundwork, but how do you avoid annoying the person who said, "Hot diggity, there's a sequel! What happens next?"

Damn, good question. Tricky to answer, because what you're reading in FFoSM is precisely how I would always do it: just write the character. The details are in their lives as told, their personalities as drawn. You don't need to have read Weaver to get a strong sense of who Penny is and what she does for a living, by the end of the first chapter of FFoSM. But it ought to flow naturally enough in the second book to where readers who have got interested in the characters and their ongoing stories are nodding and saying, cool! we get more of Penny in this one!, rather than spitting damn, more blather about her theatre stuff.

You don't need to have read Weaver to get a strong sense of who Penny is and what she does for a living, by the end of the first chapter of FFoSM.

This is very much true, BTW.

As I suspected, I'm over-thinking processes I understand. I figured your answer about reader's expectations would be what you gave and it makes sense, but my brain gets locked on "but WHY!". I should have gone into physics.

At the risk of offending anyone at all who values the process highly - and for the love of peace, can we understand that I am NOT trying to do that - I find it overrated. I'm not devaluing research and whatnot, I do a metric ton of it (anyone who wants to find me good sources of post-WWII UXB removal work in southeast London, right around 1948-1950, will get a big wet sloppy kiss in "Cruel Sister"'s acknowledgements), but I feel very strongly that putting whatever it is you've researched, or outlined, or learned about what you're writing, should really be part of the creativity, not part of the linear, er, infrastructure.

Basically, drop the overthink, get the creator's knickers on, and make the bits and bobs your bitch.

Cool by me. You're the first "real" (ie, published, reviewed, etc.) author I've ever had a chance to get my mitts on, especially with one of your published works to hand, so I'm taking advantage of the fact to study. I have a tendency to do that instead of trusting myself to know what I"m doing. My issues.

Is that the size of the book as it's going to be on the shelf? And am I allowed to be all sorts of impressed that it's coming out in hard-cover?

I read lots of writing books, suspecting that there's a "secret" that I'm missing. Because if I know how to do something, then obviously it's too easy and I'm missing something important. Like I said, my issues. At least fic is good for the self-confidence, until I start saying, "Yeah, sure, you can write with other people's characters, but you'll suck with just original characters." Ah, the internal voices that screw us up.

See, my problem with writing straight fic is that I get irritated at having to stick with the traits the existing characters' creators have decreed. That's why I'd generally prefer my own people. Dance, little invisible people in my bloodstream! Dance for mama! (jeeeez, it's a god complex; scary...)

Is that the size of the book as it's going to be on the shelf? And am I allowed to be all sorts of impressed that it's coming out in hard-cover?

Just about the size; I have the hardback here as well (my one copy to date; a box will arrive via FedEx with two dozen more, shortly, I hope) and the hardback's a bit thicker. It's actually about 10,000 words longer than the first book, and Matty Groves is about ten thousand words longer than FFoSM. They keep getting longer, and a bit darker each time.

And sure, you can be impressed about the hardcover aspect; I keep forgetting it's supposed to be preferable, though, since the paperback is actually much more lucrative for the author. A lower royalty rate (I forget what, exactly, but it's something like 8% of the first however many sold and then it goes to 10% at the top of the scale), but a tendency for much bigger advances and much larger print runs.

But it's harder. You have to, you know, be canon. No net...Um, episode guide.

I'm always afraid I haven't made my original characters three dimensional enough.