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Libba Bray, author of The New York Times bestselling Gemma Doyle Trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing), will be hosting a virtual event on There.com, a 3D online virtual world that is free for users, in promotion for the paperback release of THE SWEET FAR THING.

Libba will be doing a reading of THE SWEET FAR THING and chatting with other There.com avatars from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST on Tuesday, April 28th.

As a prelude to her World Domination Tour with Shannon Hale on the west coast, Libba Bray dropped by our little children's section at Bookpeople here in Austin. She did a lovely presentation, read from her book, and did one of the longest signings I've ever seen. Yes, part of this was because she drew a huge crowd, but some of it was due to the fact that Libba was willing to chat with every fan who came up with a book. She has to be one of the most personable and friendly authors I've seen. As a terminally shy person myself, I always admire anyone who can put more than a sentence together when talking to a perfect stranger.

But as great as Libba's large event was, my favorite part of the evening happened earlier during our "Coffee & Tea with Libba." We held a drawing for four lucky people to come chat with Libba before the event. Here's Libba with the winners making the universal "W" sign for winner. Libba is in the center.



This more intimate event was a fascinating question and answer session moderated by our kid's buyer. Since one of the winners also happened to be a writer, there were lots of writing questions asked. What I found most inspiring was Libba's frank discussion about the art of revising. Like many writers, Libba has a more organic, unoutlined method of writing. She finds that she writes best this way but does have to revise more. Her first draft of her latest novel, The Sweet Far Thing, was 540 pages. She received back from her editor a full 12 single-spaced pages of notes and comments. She then went back in 2 months and rewrote 400 of the 540 existing pages. I find this story both daunting and inspiring at once. In 2 months she rewrote 400 pages? She said she pulled 2 all-nighters and several 18 hour days, but still . . . That's impressive. I think if faced by a prospect like that, I might just cry. But it's inspiring to think that this nationally best-selling author still has to do copious rewrites just like the rest of us. She doesn't automatically generate beautiful prose. Ah, there's still hope for the rest of us.

I'm hoping (see previous post) to properly start work on my non-Who Time Travel tale next week and I've been thinking about it a good deal in the meantime. The one thing I've been wondering is whether or not to have an object that precipitates Danny's time-travelling. My original idea was that he would not have such an object - no mechanical or magical machine that causes him to time-travel, so no TARDIS ("Doctor Who"), no DeLorean ("Back to the Future"), no Art Deco radio (London Calling), no Rift ("Torchwood"/"Doctor Who"), no bags of Time (Johnny and the Bomb), etc.

But I remembered conversations about Susan Cooper's King of Shadows, in which young Nat Field travels back to 1599 without the use of a particular time-travel device and now I'm wondering which method readers prefer ? If I choose to go for the no device option, how much of an explanation would you want for how Danny manages to travel in time ? Personally I'm quite happy without a detailed explanation (I think part of the reason I love King of Shadows is the mystery that surrounds Nat's time-travelling, but I'm curious to know what others prefer.

I've written another disconnected chunk of my non-Who story "Improbable Journeys" - and I find myself wondering if this is normal fiction practice ? Because so far, apart from a couple of Epilogues, I've pretty much written my Who stories straight through from Prologue/Chapter 1 through to Chapter 4/Epilogue without any wandering off. Whereas this story now has an opening paragraph, a short dialogue and piece of character description from later in chapter one, and now a random few paragraphs from another chapter, but I've no idea which one...

As with the other two sections I've written, this new bit seemed to just spring into my head, then flow onto the page from my pen, leaving me feeling rather like someone's amanuensis - which I understand is not an uncommon experience for some writers. But it is uncommon for me, so far at any rate, to write random chunks of prose that aren't directly connected to each other...

I'm not complaining, mind ! Just puzzled - as I frequently have been ever since I took up this fiction-writing business five months ago (and is it really only five months ? Somehow it feels far longer !)

I was minding my own business, serving up my dinner earlier, and two of the other characters from Improbable Journeys started a conversation in my head, so I wrote down the conversation, then expanded on it a bit. I'm not sure whereabouts it fits into the tale (quite near the beginning, though). I'm slightly concerned the character descriptions are over the top so I'd be grateful for some feedback.

"Is this him?" asked Castella, tapping the screen in front of her.
"That's him," confirmed Ash.
"Right. Let's go and see him then. And let's hope he's not too argumentative."
"He's a teenager. They're programmed to be argumentative," answered Ash.
"Programmed?" asked Castella, stopping dead so that he almost ran into her back. "You didn't tell me he wasn't human."
Ash sighed. "He is human. 100%. I meant genetically programmed."
"Oh. Why didn't you say so then?" She strode off.
Ash rolled his eyes, unseen, as he followed her down the corridor to their ship. Sometimes he really wished she wasn't quite so literal-minded. He hurried to catch up with her, knowing she would be irritated if he kept her waiting. They made an interesting contrast. Castella was a tall, red-haired woman, willowy in build, but strong, as all TICK Agents had to be. Ash was short, and looked even shorter next to Castella. He was also bald and tubby. For him, staying fit was a constant battle; not that he over-ate, it was simply that Nature had intended him to be a short, tubby man with a jolly face. He looked like a caricature of everyone's favourite bachelor uncle. Castella, on the other hand, was probably a caricature of everyone's least favourite spinster aunt. She had hawk-bright eyes and a beaky nose. Ash had often wondered if she'd ever considered surgery, but he'd always concluded that she would consider it mere vanity, and the one fault she definitely didn't possess was vanity.

As they always used to say on Monty Python.

I wrote the opening paragraph of my non-"Doctor Who" story last night (working title: Improbable Journeys) and this is it:

The one thing that Danny's history books never really made clear was the smell of the past. It was something he always noticed on his improbable journeys; that somehow the past smelled different. Right now his nose was full of the smell of mud, blood and death. It hadn't stopped raining for the last three days according to Hodges and the mud was so thick that men frequently pulled a foot out of it to find they'd left their boot behind. The duckboards were supposed to help but they just couldn't compete; half an hour after being laid down, they were sinking into the grey morass. Danny had only arrived three hours ago, but he felt as if he'd been struggling through the mud for three days too.

In case you missed it in my 8 Things Meme, I've now made the decision to put aside my "Doctor Who" novella series to write this non-Who tale that's bugging my brain. It's becoming very insistent (much as my fourth Doctor Who tale did) about being written, and I can see that if I don't sit down to write it, I shall be driven totally to distraction (as if I'm not distracted enough !) So I've pulled out some books to read, ear-marked a trip to the library for more books, and scribbled further notes. I'll begin the preliminary reading whilst I'm finishing the current 6th Who story-in-progress and then see where I go from there. Expect updates as and when I've some news to share - it'll be a couple of weeks or so before I begin writing the first draft - don't be surprised if the number of books I review drops even further whilst I'm doing the preliminary reading.

On the one hand, I'm excited at the thought of doing this story, but on the other, I'm terrified, as it means starting completely from scratch - new characters, new universe (though it's based in our world), new just-about-everything in fact ! And no familiar Doctor to hold my hand when I hit a rough spot...

Oh, and if you're interested, it features an older teen boy (I thought he was older than that when I first "saw" him, but it turns out that the uniform he was wearing fooled me) - so I guess that makes it a YA tale. Not that I'm writing it for anyone except me (but yes, I'll share it with others if they want to read it !)

Six months ago I was still swearing that I didn't have the imagination to write fiction. Then I re-watched New Doctor Who Season 2 and my brain started teeming with ideas, so now I find myself in the midst of a series of novellas featuring the Tenth Doctor and an original companion. You'd think that would be enough for one person - after all, I've written 5 of these novellas since mid-January - over 110,000 words for goodness sake ! But no, it's not enough apparently.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I read Linda Buckley-Archer's The Tar Man last weekend and it seems to have sparked a whole chain of ideas for a time-travel tale of my own (with nary a Doctor in sight). I went from the mere glimmerings of an idea at the beginning of the week to a 250 word (so far!) synopsis by last night. Which is all well and good, but I am in the midst of writing my sixth Doctor Who story and I've got plans to write several more yet. Plus to do this tale well, I'd have to do a whole lot of research for it - not that I mind doing research (love it, in fact) - but it's finding the time for it and to sleep and work as well !

How is that not only did none of my writer acquaintances warn me that writing fiction is as addictive as hard drugs (well so I assume - I've never actually taken hard drugs), but none of them warned me, either, that writing fiction would result in my brain teeming with ever more ideas - that it's like dropping a large rock into a still pool, the ripples spread out ever wider and end up engulfing everything in their path ?

Of course, this does mean that all those people who've made comments to me about wanting to see me write some "original fiction" (a phrase I find odd, frankly - my Doctor Who stories are original, I'm not stealing them after all - they just happen to feature a single character I didn't create !), will now be happy/pleased, I guess (hope!). Just don't hold your breath waiting for it, because you'll surely expire ! Even if I did set aside the Doctor Who series at the end of the story-in-progress, I can't see this non-Who tale surfacing any time soon !

As yet there's no knowing whether this tale would be a full length novel as opposed to the novella-length stories I've been writing. So far I seem to have naturally fallen into writing tales of around 22 - 23,000 words, but looking at the synopsis, I can see that this might well work out longer than that - I guess I'll have to wait and see, just like everyone else.