There’ a meme going ’round, focusing on writing process. Joe Iriarte was kind enough to tag me in to take a turn.

1) What are you working on?

I’m finishing up the editorial revisions on The Younger Gods, my new urban fantasy coming toward the end of the year. It’s a bit darker and way more mythological-y than the Ree Reyes books, about the one moral son in a family of callous demon cultists. I’ve completed my second pass of this round, and now I’m going to add a couple of scenes to adjust the pacing and to clarify some worldbuilding elements. Then it goes back in for copy edits.

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

The biggest point of distinctiveness for The Younger Gods is probably the voice. Jacob Greene, the lead, is a character I’ve developed over a number of years, dating back to a story seed I had in undergrad. I wasn’t good enough as a writer to make that voice work, so I put the character away. I brought him back out for a role-playing game campaign, and after that, I had a good enough handle on him to write a different version in prose format, which became The Younger Gods.

3) Why do you write what you do?

The flippant answer would be ‘because I want to,’ but the more useful answer is, I think, because I am an aggregate remix of every influence, story, and experience that has made up my life. Much of my work tends to be action-driven, probably due to having grown up with action-driven video games and spending twenty years (on and off) studying martial arts.

4) How does your writing process work?

My process has changed a lot just over the almost two years since Geekomancy was published. When I first got started as a writer, I was almost entirely a pantser/gardener/discovery writer, which meant that I got a vague idea and then started writing.

No more. I’ve moved toward outlining project by project, and have been very happy wiThe last first draft I wrote of a novel was fully outlined (3-4 page outline), which I then expanded into scene by scene outlines about a third at a time, keeping ahead of my drafting. And as a result, I wrote the first draft of Hexomancy in just over four weeks. And for the next novel I write, I’m going to try to outline even better. Not outline more, but better. My hope is to do a stronger structural outline to incorporate sub-plots and balance pacing, so that my first draft is even better, so that I won’t have to do as much revision.

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I don’t like the average chain-letter-meme thing, but I’d be happy to pass on the love. If you’d like to carry forward the meme, comment below and I’ll link through to your site. Applies to the first three commenters so interested. And anyone else who wants to pick up the thread is of course welcome to do so.