Progress Report.

We're about to send Pyromancy to the betas, and there's been an odd week here, where Melanie and I are done but we're waiting for Sabrina to give it a once over before we send it, so there's a vacancy of WIPs, for me.

 In some ways it's nice. I've read a bunch of amazing books, including Code Name Verity, which broke my brain and my heart at the same time. (I've since forced three separate women I know and love to READ this book.) But the absence has made me bring out Waxling again.

I've blogged about Waxling before. A few of you beautiful readers were even my betas for it.

I'll tell the rest of you what the betas came back with. It's a good story with major structural problems. And it took me a couple of months away to really digest the beta's comments, and figure out all the solutions.

So now, I'm applying the solutions and I'm happy with it. Sort of. The main problem, is that story tells two love stories, and it's a short book, and simply put-- that's too much love story into one book. One love story needs to be the star, so I've decided to back seat one of the love stories, which sounds dirtier than it is.

 Ha. I'm sorry, Mom. Anyway.

I'm getting to the point in the story where I have to delete stuff that I love, and I just don't want to and you can't make me.

 I keep thinking maybe I can just lose this paragraph, or chapter, or sentence, and the story will be just fine. I agree with my own thoughts, which is you know...helpful, and my mind and my outline all make sense, and I go to the text and highlight, and I just can't press delete. I created a separate file, so I can save it to put it in a later chapter, but I go to the file, highlight the words, press control c, and then can't do it.

They say you should kill your darlings. They say you shouldn't be so attached to any sentence or word that it hurts to cut them, or that you do whatever you can to serve the story and get the story out there, but I say, please don't make me cut this chapter. Please don't make me lose this line that I love, even if it makes the story better without it.

So it just sits there, in a file, waiting for me to be brave enough to break it.

Now the story has more structural problems than ever before. It's half way fixed, and half way broken. I love it and want everyone to read it, and it's broken and no one can read it until it's finished. I know how to finish it, but it means breaking my heart to do it, and no thank you. Let's watch cat videos instead.

So it's there. This story that I could finish and publish if I was just brave enough to lose a paragraph I love, or smart enough to find a reason to keep it.

I'm too close to the story now. It's too personal. It feels like taking my name off of it.

Writing is really hard work. It breaks your heart sometimes.

I'll take a breath.

 Kiss me, Hardy. Kiss me quick.

I just clicked delete.

~Sheena

Rose Under Fire

During my unplanned vacation (thanks a lot, Congress - now all my deadlines are much worse than they were before), I did manage to get a LOT of reading done. I had two favorites, one of which I'm going to talk about this week. And for that, I'm going to need to address my fellow Code Name Verity enthusiasts.

You all know this is out, right? And that it's a companion book to Code Name Verity? (Not a sequel - though a certain someone makes a few appearances). Oh, and there are no spoilers for CNV here, because some of you silly people haven't read it yet.

Anyway! Look what is out!

Description from Amazon.com:

While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery and friendship of her fellow prisoners. But will that be enough to endure the fate that's in store for her?

So, here's the thing. I was extremely nervous about reading this book. I loved Code Name Verity more than I have just about any other book in a long, long time. Which is pretty much setting up an unfair disadvantage for this book, but there you go.

Did I love it as much? No, I can't say I did, in part because of a pacing issue. But I still loved it, and if I hadn't just recently read Code Name Verity (and The Fault in Our Stars), THIS would be the best book I've read in a long time. I'm going to take a go at trying to tell you why without any spoilers.

But if you want to go into the book completely cold, I don't entirely blame you. Just go read it. But be prepared, it's not easy.

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I still loved this book because the most important facets of CNV that I loved were still there. For one, the emotional impact is there. It's different, but it's still there. And once again. Elizabeth Wein's skill with characters is the best I've come across in a long time - though it's more the side characters than the main heroine that stuck with me. This is a harder book to read too. It's set in a concentration camp, and it's pretty much as horrific as you think it might be, and then some, because all of these horrors are pulled from historical fact. And yet... it's not hard to read in the sense of it being horror after horror, because the characters are front and center.

But really, the main thing that impressed me was that you learn about 1/4 of the way through the book what will happen to all the characters. And it doesn't matter. It still hurts every bit as much when it actually happens. So much so that I'm trying not to tear up now.

There's so much more I want to say, but the book just came out a few weeks ago, and I doubt many people have read it so far. But this book, like CNV, is something I want to implore people to read, because these women and their struggle gripped me and still hasn't let me go. For the one thing those characters asked for more than anything else:

Tell the world.