Category Archives: Works in progress

Everything I Can Tell You So Far About My New Book

Dagger and Coin, Sword and Verse, Works in progress, Young Adult Fantasy

Earlier today I finally got to announce the title of my upcoming YA novel:

Dager and Coin by Kathy MacMillan

I’ve been working on this book and unable to say much about it for more than two years, so it’s exciting to finally be able to share more!  Here’s what I can tell you about it so far:

  • Dagger and Coin is due out in Fall 2018.
  • Dagger and Coin picks up about 30 days after the events of Sword and Verse. However, I prefer to think of it as a companion novel rather than a sequel, because it focuses on a different protagonist and can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read the first book.
  • The cover is just as beautiful as the cover of Sword and Verse and was done by the same artist, Colin Anderson. Hopefully I will be able to share it soon!
  • The main character in Dagger and Coin is Soraya Gamo, the heiress who was engaged to Mati and was all set to become queen. We saw in Sword and Verse that Soraya was much more than just a pretty rich girl, and in this book she has thrown her lot in with her former enemies in order to pursue her ambitions.
  • Many of the major players from Sword and Verse appear in this book, especially Raisa, Mati, and Jonis. We also get to know some minor characters from the first book better: Deshti (Raisa’s adversary in the Arnath Resistance), Alshara (Soraya’s younger sister), and Gelti Dimmin (that handsome guard captain).
  • Decisions made in Sword and Verse come back to haunt our characters in Dagger and Coin, particularly a big one made by Mati. Sword and Verse was about upending an unjust system; Dagger and Coin is about the messy, seemingly impossible task of constructing a better one in its place.
  • This book is unabashedly, fiercely feminist. In 2016, I thought, “Oh, I wish this book were out now! It’s so relevant!”  In 2017, I thought the same thing. Sadly, I don’t think this story is going to get any less relevant in coming years.
  • I like to think of this book as a tale of a well-educated female policy wonk battling her misogynist foes. In case you are wondering about my politics. 😉
  • I’m just going to put this out there right now, because some people have mentioned it: Soraya and Jonis are NOT EVER going to be a couple. Just not going to happen.  Soraya’s relationship with Jonis is arguably the most important one in the book, but don’t look for kissing there.  Just don’t.
  • Look for kissing (and more) elsewhere, though. There is romance in this book, just not with Jonis.
  • Like Sword and Verse, Dagger and Coin can be read and enjoyed as a standalone. Of course, it also features lots of rewarding tidbits for readers of both books!  And yes, if you read Dagger and Coin first, it will give you lots of spoilers for Sword and Verse, so be warned if that sort of thing bothers you. (Personally, I love spoilers, but I am weird that way.)
  • I’m seriously considering making myself a bingo card of all the things that Soraya will undoubtedly be called once the book is out in the world.  I mean, she’s an ambitious woman, see, so of course that means she must be inviting the whole world to comment on what’s wrong with her.  A few of my predictions: too proud, too strong, too passive, too emotional, too icy, too ambitious, too shrill, too slutty, too prudish, too petty, too demanding, too calculating…
  • The story of the gods comes into play in Dagger and Coin, but in a different way than it did in Sword and Verse, because Soraya’s relationship to the gods is completely different from Raisa’s.
  • I really, really love this book and I can’t wait to share it with you!

A Chance to Uncover the Past

Cold Iron, Works in progress, Young Adult Fantasy, ,

20131115_151532Periodically on this blog I have mentioned a long-term work-in-progress, COLD IRON, the first book in a trilogy set in the Catoctin region of Maryland.  In the process of researching for the book, I was lucky enough to meet archeologist Elizabeth Anderson Comer, who has answered my questions with grace no matter how ridiculous they seemed.  (“Is there enough iron left in the ruins of the Catoctin iron Furnace to melt a fairy?” led to a particularly interesting discussion…)

Elizabeth edited Catoctin Furnace: Portrait of an Iron-Making Village, which was written by her mother, Elizabeth Yourtree Anderson, and she has kept her mother’s legacy of historical preservation alive through her own involvement with the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society.

240_Catocin_Furnace_front_cover

So when I heard about the society’s newest initiative, I had to donate and help spread the word!   I’ll let Elizabeth take it from here:

The iron furnace at Catoctin Furnace, which made cannonballs used during the Revolution and so on, was first worked by enslaved Africans and African Americans, but this first wave of workers all left the area by the 1840s. As it goes with power imbalances, no one wrote down much about their lives, and, with one possible exception, the whereabouts of their descendants are unknown. Yet their story is integral to the story of early industry, labor in America, and African American history – using bioarchaeology, we can find out what their lives were like, where they were from, and (possibly) where their descendants are. Consider throwing your charity dollars at this IndieGoGo campaign, and, if you can’t do that, share this link as far and wide as you can. I think we can find enough people to crowdfund $14,000 to tell this unknown story – what do you think? Thank you so much in advance for your help!
Here is the link to our campaign:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/catoctin-furnace-bioarchaeological-research

1000 is the Magic Number

On Writing, Works in progress, ,

For me it is, anyway. As in 1000 words per day. Ever since I started the draft of my newest work in progress, I have committed to writing 1000 words per day as a manageable amount, and this morning I hit 18,000 words after two weeks. This is lightning fast, for me. It’s a new era for this tortoise.

Years ago, when I first started writing, I couldn’t give myself word count goals – too frightening, too much pressure. So I set time limits for myself. I had to work for an hour at a time. I made myself a CD that was exactly an hour long and I had to keep at it, even if I was just staring at the screen, until the last song was over. The first 30 to 45 minutes were usually agony, but by the time that hour was up, I was hitting “repeat” on the CD player. That tactic got me through several manuscripts. Continue reading 1000 is the Magic Number →

Another Sneak Peek

Authors You Should Know, On Writing, Works in progress, Young Adult Fantasy

So remember a few weeks ago, when I posted 7 lines from a recent work-in-progress because the current one was too formless for such things?  Well, maybe the 777 Meme has burned itself out by now, but I am bringing it back because I am so excited that the as-yet-untitled sequel to my as-yet-untitled debut now has words on pages (over 6000, even!).

Set-up: this story is from the point of view of a different main character than the first book, but I am not going to tell you who because it would spoil the end of the first book.  🙂 So I will give a very broad description of the plot: this story is about a character from a privileged background struggling to find her place in a new world where the things that made her special no longer matter.

I am supposed to post the first full 7 lines on the 7th page, starting 7 lines down.  Here you go:

Continue reading Another Sneak Peek →

Scary Starts and Fictional Census Results

On Writing, Works in progress, Young Adult Fantasy

It’s been a weird couple of weeks, writing-wise.  I submitted my latest revision of the novel-that-has-no-name-yet to my editor, and now I have turned to something scarier: writing Book 2.  The thought of doing in less than a year what took me almost ten years to do the first time is, well, terrifying, but we’ll see what happens.  There is a character who just demands to have her story told, so I guess I am going to have to give in to her.

As well as I knew my world the first go-round, I found that it was not nearly enough for this one.  This point-of-view character has a much broader education and experience of the world than the main character of my first book, and so I am learning things I never knew before.  I’ve spent the last few weeks doing things that don’t feel like writing but are a necessary prerequisite – lots of brainstorming and making charts and maps and background materials.  I’ve even pulled out a couple of books I bought about ten years ago, thinking that they might help with world-building someday, and it turns out that Past Me was correct.

Here they are:

culture      city

 

These are lesson-planning books for middle school teachers to guide students in a project researching various cultures and cities and then inventing their own.  These books have turned out to be great writer’s guides.  They help you think of all the angles on a culture, from the religious beliefs to the role of women to currency and games and sports.  I’ve ended up making a giant chart with all the major cultures represented in my story, and filling in these areas has led to some fascinating realizations, connections, and relevant story ideas.

And now, when someone asks what I did at work today, I can answer, “I wrote up census results for a fictional culture.” How many people get to say that?