A Lovely Thing

I had a lovely thing happen today that’s just got me floating a bit. We’ll set aside the fact that the amazing people who work in my local medical lab thing (as I say, the vampire’s office) see me so often they know me by name and like me enough to support me. Today, my favorite of the women who work there (because she’s the only one who can get all my blood without having to stick me 8 to 10 times) asked me a question about one of my books. A really good question at that.

Generally speaking, I don’t really run into people who have read my books that didn’t buy it directly from me at any number of my local events and I don’t think anyone has ever really asked me where a particular element came from. I love questions like that and I thought maybe someone else might be interested in the response also.

The question was about Hunter’s Crossing – where did the gray road come from?

To my knowledge, there isn’t such an artifact in the real world mythology but the basis of it is sort of there, in a way. The foundation of it comes from Greek mythology. The River Styx forms the boundary between Earth and the Underworld. It seems to me, if there was a third plane, the Otherworld, a similar boundary would exist and thus, the Gray Road was born. It is not a place without cost or without danger. Because it was an artificial boundary, designed when magic stepped away from the regular world, it had to have rules. Because it was designed to keep the planes separate and humans are insatiably curious, it had to be hidden. It is a dead space between worlds but the things that lived there when it was created were accidentally granted immortality in the process. Being a dead space, there is no color, time is a bit weird, and death is ever-present. Not the sort of place where you want to vacation but an important place in the story (and later stories too).

Hunter’s Crossing can be found on Amazon, your local bookseller, or direct from the publisher.

Hunter’s Crossing by Sarah Wagner from Boroughs Publishing Group

The Histories of Things #1: The Teak Ladies

I collect old stuff. This might be an understatement maybe. I do love it – I love these things and all the stories that they may or may not have to tell. Some of them, I love how they’ve come into my life or where they were before I got them. Some of them I fell in love with in a shop or on a screen.

I thought I’d told the story of my two ladies and I went to link it only to discover that I did not. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my grandfather’s funeral home a time or three. A good number of the interesting old stuff that I have came from there, either my grandparents time there or from the woman who owned it prior to them.

Many years ago now, my grandparents sold the business and my husband and I went to help them pack up a whole lifetime of stuff. While we were packing up, my grandparents gave us a whole bunch of amazing things including a teak bust of a woman which I dusted off and put in my curio cabinet to sit for about a decade. She’s really pretty and it felt like a nice goodbye to the funeral home that was my only consistent home in my childhood.

Last year, we found out that the funeral home’s building was up for sale and likely going to be demolished and were given the opportunity to go in and purchase a few things (oddly enough, I don’t think the sale has actually gone through as no one has called us to let us know that we can get our fireplaces). I did a lot of reminiscing on that trip through the building. It still feels like home to me, even if parts of it have been rearranged or redone. I brought home some slate from the basement, some tools from what had been the embalming room, and my fabulous husband found something in the garage, just sitting on a shelf all by her lonesome as if no one else had ever noticed her. A very nearly but not quite matching teak lady.

• 

  The Teak Ladies Together

• 

  The first goodbye

• 

  The second goodbye

Teak Ladies from my favorite old house.

I know for sure that they came from the many adventures of the woman who owned the funeral home before my Pap. She traveled the whole world and brought home so many interesting things, these lovely ladies among them. And now they’re both mine. Two goodbyes from my favorite place. My oldest kid used to think it was weird, to talk about places like they have any sort of intelligence (fortunately, they’ve met a few interesting places since then and now at least pretend to understand what I mean). I loved that house and I swear that house loved me right back. To me, these ladies prove it.

Someday she (the house) will make it into a book or star in one but I haven’t quite found the right story for her yet.

I might just make this a series – I have so many neat old things – some of them the stories I know are amazing but for some, it’s the story I don’t know that makes them interesting. I’ll likely write a good bit about the lady who owned the funeral home before my Pap: what I know of her is interesting, what I remember of her is very little, but she remains the only actual ghost I’ve ever seen (and apparently, the only instance of any paranormal anything going on in that funeral home after being a funeral home for some 50 years), and I know she collected some of the most interesting things.

Next time though, it’ll be something different. Next time, I’ll show you one of the things my father brought back with him from the USSR in the late 1980s.

Happy Halloween & Some News

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted – it’s been quite the odd year. I’ve been weirdly busy though. The biggest change to my daily existence has been never having an empty house. I never left my house much to begin with though.

Before the whole thing started, I was working on something big and I’ve more or less got it off the ground now – Crow’s Hollow Botanicals is my new little boutique herbal bath and body care business. Apparently, I really enjoy making soap.

I’ve been writing pretty steadily also, working on two books, one of which is out in the slush of submissions and the other is getting a solid rewrite, gearing up for this year’s NaNoWriMo which should be extra fun, and dealing with rereleasing a couple of books in my backlist – Hardwired Humanity is my science fiction short story collection and it’s now got two new stories and some new commentary from me and Guardian of the Gods, my space opera, has a brand new cover.

Hardwired Humanity – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KJNXVBG

Guardian of the Gods https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M2FXYSD

Over this winter, I think I’m going to gather up all the short stories in the Acknivar universe that have been published and make them available and maybe rewrite the other novel I have in this universe as well. As I was editing this, I remembered how much I really enjoy these worlds, these gods, these people and I am definitely not done playing there yet.

I hope you are all doing well. Take care and stay safe and have a wonderful Halloween!

Four Minutes at Every Day Fiction

New story published – it’s a bit outside my usual work as it isn’t genre but I like to stretch my wings sometimes.

Read it here: Every Day Fiction

Magical Moments: Romance Author Panel

Romance Author Panel

If you’re in the Pittsburgh area (or Ohio Valley) and can come out to the Settler’s Ridge Barnes and Noble in Robinson, please do – I’d love to say hello!

I’ll have Hunter’s Crossing, Eldercynne Rising, and Christmas in Bear Ridge with me. My understanding is that I’ll get to talk too so hopefully I manage to not trip over my tongue too much.

Christmas in Bear Ridge – Release Day!

Christmas in Bear Ridge by Sarah Wagner from Boroughs Publishing Group

It’s release day for Christmas in Bear Ridge – a little myth and a little magic, just in time for Christmas!

From the back cover:

Sometimes it takes a little magic, and a Christmas wish, to see beyond tomorrow, but it takes love to see forever.

SOMETIMES…

Bear Ridge is the cutest little town that no one can remember. It gathers magic like faerie dust to a wand, especially at Christmas. Toni Bell hasn’t believed in magic since her parents died. She’s been on her own for more than a decade, driving from town to town, job to job, gig to gig, living out of her truck turned tiny home, making a point to never get attached. She’s on her way to the West Coast for New Year’s Eve, and plans to be on the road for Christmas, hoping to avoid the heartache being reminded of how alone she is brings. But a wrong turn, a loose dog, and a bollard pole change her world.

IT TAKES A LITTLE MAGIC

Stuck in Bear Ridge until her truck can be fixed, Toni decides to make the best of it only to discover everything she’s ever wanted, and never dared to wish for, were all within her grasp. Nicodemus Panait makes her want to believe in magic, miracles, and Christmas, but she’s afraid that all he offers will prove too good to be true. Nico knows what his forever looks like, but he has only until Christmas to make Toni see it too. Fortunately, he has fate and love on his side.

You can get it a number of places:

Direct from Boroughs, from Amazon, on Smashwords. Barnes and Noble links take a few days longer for some reason but it’ll be there soon enough!

Christmas in Bear Ridge!

Christmas in Bear Ridge by Sarah Wagner from Boroughs Publishing Group

SOMETIMES…

Bear Ridge is the cutest little town that no one can remember. It gathers magic like faerie dust to a wand, especially at Christmas. Toni Bell hasn’t believed in magic since her parents died. She’s been on her own for more than a decade, driving from town to town, job to job, gig to gig, living out of her truck turned tiny home, making a point to never get attached. She’s on her way to the West Coast for New Year’s Eve, and plans to be on the road for Christmas, hoping to avoid the heartache being reminded of how alone she is brings. But a wrong turn, a loose dog, and a bollard pole change her world.

IT TAKES A LITTLE MAGIC

Stuck in Bear Ridge until her truck can be fixed, Toni decides to make the best of it only to discover everything she’s ever wanted, and never dared to wish for, were all within her grasp. Nicodemus Panait makes her want to believe in magic, miracles, and Christmas, but she’s afraid that all he offers will prove too good to be true. Nico knows what his forever looks like, but he has only until Christmas to make Toni see it too. Fortunately, he has fate and love on his side.

 

Christmas in Bear Ridge is coming very soon – just in time for an early Christmas present! I’m going to be doing a couple of giveaways and such soon too so, stay tuned!

Writing Wednesday: Edits, Cuts, and Overused Words

Today I want to talk about the edits that get done before you even think about submissions or queries. I can’t say what process will work for you, only what works for me, so long as I actually remember to do it (silly old brain).

Imagine you’ve got a finished book, some 95,000 words of your soul, several months of your life in one tiny little space. Now it’s time to make it beautiful. There’s every chance that it’s just naturally beautiful but, I imagine it, like me, might need a little makeup to get there.

I tend to write the way I would speak if doing so didn’t make me nervous like I’m telling you the story. This works for me as far as the flow and the pacing but there are downsides. There are words I overuse in my daily speaking, daily writing, and just overall. See, that was one right there. That just there. When I’m going about my process correctly, I go into my writing program (at present I’m using Word but it was the same when I used Open Office and RoughDraft) and find all the instances of the words Just, Very, Almost, So and Apparently. Once I’ve gotten rid of 95% of those, I can move to the next step. To give you some idea, just recently, I had a project of just under 50000 words in which there were 277 instances of Just and 242 instances of Very. There are now 12 and 8 respectively.  This particular project only had 2 instances of Apparently. I was so proud.

After my overused words are corrected, I do double check my passive voice. It is useful and sometimes necessary to use the passive voice but in a lot of instances, there are better ways of saying what you’re wanting to say.

My last step, when all of that is done, unless I’m really trying to make a specific word count, is to cut out about 10% of the final word count. There is an old adage about killing your darlings that fits well here. If you write a phrase that is simply precious, it’s probably not necessary and just there because it’s pretty. That’s really not a good enough reason for words to be in a story. Neither is clever. If it doesn’t speak to the plot, setting, or character, stick it in a poem instead. That’s what I do with them anyway. My goal is to tell a good story in a clean, relatable and understandable way. This is how that happens for me. How it works for you, what you’re actually after in your final product, you’ll figure out as you go. Most people find their process by trial and error and a picking up bits and pieces of advice from other writers. We are all of us decorator crabs picking up a bit of this and a bit of that until it works.

Old Story, Old Thoughts

Grief has been on my mind a bit lately. I supposed that’s semi-normal for me, for the sorts of things I write, for the sort of life I’ve lived. You can’t avoid it when your grandfather is a funeral director – death is just a part of life. Sometimes, words get said and they aren’t exactly meant the way that they’re said. I think some people forget that words have power and sometimes the edges are sharper than they should be.

Instead of going on some little (or not so little) ramble about grief and the shape of it, the edges of it. I’m not going to go on at length about whether or not there is a wrong way to grieve (spoiler: there isn’t. Though I will say that avoidance is not dealing with it). Grief takes many shapes, many plateaus, and many forms. Grief isn’t always about death either. And I’ve already rambled more than I’d intended. No more rambling from me.

Instead, I’m going to put up an old story of mine that this train of thought always makes me think of. I was sitting waiting on an ultrasound for my youngest child and the story bloomed from there. It appeared in Flashquake in 2010 or 11, something like that. A long ass time ago but I still like it. Hopefully, you do too.

 

The Woman Next to Me is Dying

Sarah Wagner

Disinfectant does little to mask the scents of sickness and death, the inescapable odor that hovers beyond the reach of even the most thorough of cleanings. My nose rebels against the bleached vomit scent, threatening to make my stomach riot. I am at odds with these surroundings, carrying new life into this sick place.

The waiting room is bursting with people in line for their Rorschach images, their internal inkblots. Mine will show a beating heart, tiny fingers and toes, but the others in this room are not waiting for something so delicate or sweet. They’ve come to see the true breadth of what ails them, the lumps and bumps of scary things, lurking in the dark things.

The woman next to me is holding hands with her third round of chemo. As long as there is any offer of hope, she will be fighting. I admire her more than I have words for. What great strength must she possess in those frail, irradiated bones to face mortality with such hope.

She wears her baldness uncovered, a badge of honor, a crested buckler against death. She’s a fighter, deftly deflecting each coup de grace thrust in her direction. She won’t go quietly. Next to her, I’m a novice. I hope when the duel is mine, I am as strong as her, my will as sharp.

I am not here to parry, but to bring the next student into the world. I am waiting to hear that locomotive heart, to feel him moving beneath my skin, squirming against his prison. Anxious to begin his training.

He’s going to come out bald, like the woman next to me, and I hope he’s a fighter like her. I pray that my boy has the same strength to face life, the same steel will. I pray that the woman next to me finds her answer, finds remission in her IV bag, victory in hand.

*

I know it’s not exactly grief in the most obvious way, but for me, hope and grief spend a lot of time holding hands. The woman was more an amalgamation of people in that room and I knew none of them and I have no idea what happened to any of them. I prefer to think that each of them won the wars they were fighting.

 

Interviewed!

JD Holiday was kind enough to interview me! You should all go read it now: JD’s Writer’s Blog