layla | Recent Entries

This is the blog of Alaskan writer/artist Layla Lawlor. Friend/defriend/follow at will.

Websites:

Active projects:

Kismet - primarily Hunter's Moon (complete 340-page, full-color SF graphic novel); the sequel graphic novel, Sun-Cutter, is currently on hiatus (returns early 2013). See also the *projects: kismet tag and -comics: sun-cutter tag.
Freebird - The book is available now! You can also read most of the archive online (all the original pages, but there's quite a bit of new material in the book). Updates and info can be found under the *projects: freebird and freebird tags (yes, my tags are a mess ever since I started crossposting from Wordpress; I'll figure out a way to fix it eventually ...)
The annotated Raven's Children is currently on hiatus (resumes early 2013) and can be found at the *projects: raven's children and -comics: raven's children annotated tags.

All entries to this blog are mirrored at both

laylalawlor on Livejournal.com and

layla on Dreamwidth.org. I'm now crossposting entries from Wordpress as well.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/159920.html

This is how it's going to be, huh winter? SERIOUSLY?

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/226970.html

I found a couple of short-story rejections in my email this morning. That’s always tough to deal with, although one thing that’s a little bit heartening is that I’m starting to get to the point where I’m getting personalized rejections with critiques, rather than form rejections. Which is a major step up!

And it’s interesting to me that there’s a recurring theme to the critiques, which confirms something I had suspected about my stories: they tend to ramble. This is the thing that keeps getting pointed out — my stories have good characters and ideas, but they’re loose and unfocused, and need to be tightened up.

I’ve always known that I had a tendency to do this. My betas have also pointed it out. It’s partly, I guess, that I naturally lean towards long-form rather than short-form writing, and this means that I want to stuff ALL the worldbuilding and ALL the characterization into my short stories — and you just can’t. But even in my longer stories, I do need to teach myself some better editing skills, and better techniques for maintaining suspense.

I know this is going to sound embarrassingly full of myself, but I’m one of those people who is used to being good at things. I breezed through school and always did very well at work. Of course, the down side of that (and this is true of a lot of other “smart” people I know) is that we maintain our mental image of ourselves as “person who is good at stuff” by only doing things we’re good at. When we run into something that’s hard for us, something we can’t pick up quickly, we have a tendency to reject it and do something we already know how to do instead. Which is obviously not a good life habit to develop. And it’s humbling and probably very character-building to have something that I want very badly to do, and work very hard on, that I’m actually not that good at — or, at least, not nearly as good as a whole lot of other people that I’m tacitly having to compete with.

Just for the heck of it, because I like numbers, the other day I was playing around with my submission spreadsheets to see how my numbers track over the years.

Year	Submissions	Unique stories	Sold
2009	8	5	3
2010	4	3	1
2011	2	1	0
2012	12	11	3
2013 (so far)	12	10	1

This is slightly misleading because some of the “unique stories” are actually from previous years. However, these numbers definitely indicate that I’m not sending out enough stories, and in particular I’m not doing nearly as well as I should be at resubmitting the same story to different markets. In 2012, for example, I was basically only sending out any given story once, and that will never do. (In 2011 I kinda gave up. :P )

This month I’ve set a new goal for myself of (minimum) 5 submissions each month for the rest of the year. Get a story back, turn right around and send it out again until it sells somewhere. That’s the plan!

Crossposted from Wordpress.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/226698.html

Things have FINALLY started to melt, and the snow is going fast! There's a wee bit of driveway flooding, though.

And my garden is not quite there yet, although you can finally see some of it.

But it's finally starting to look like spring around here!

On Monday, we walked up the creek to check out a beaver dam about a mile and a half from the house.

... YES, IT STILL LOOKS LIKE THIS.

This is the beaver lake -- it's still completely frozen over, as you can see. That's the beaver house in the upper left quadrant of the picture, a little hump with tracks leading to and from it. I could see fresh beaver chew-marks on some of the trees, so they'd been out and about recently. Orion decided to try walking on the lake, but about three more steps after I took this picture, the 20 feet or so of snow in front of him abruptly settled 6 inches ... and we decided discretion was the better part of valor.

Here's a kinda neat picture of the sun setting over the creek ice as we were walking home (this is about 10 p.m. or thereabouts) - with obligatory dog, of course.

The entire walk was about two and a half hours, partly because we tried taking a "shortcut" on the (old abandoned) road behind the house, which is more direct than walking back on the meandering creek. Completely untraveled by anything other than moose, it was all knee-deep, heavy, wet snow. It was miserable to wade through; even the dog was tired. (Probably more tired than we were; his legs are shorter, so knee-deep snow on us is belly-deep on him.) And then we came around a bend, and there about 50 yards in front of us was a moose in the middle of the road. Moose can be nasty at any time of year, but spring is especially bad, when they're worn out from the long winter, hungry, and often pregnant. We very quietly backtracked around the bend, and, having little choice, struck out cross-country for the creek again.

We were very glad to get home. And even more glad, I guess, that it's staying light so late; doing the last part of the hike as a race against oncoming darkness would have been doubly miserable. It's not really getting dark anymore (dim, but not dark) and I've had to block the bedroom window with cardboard because the sun is waking me up at 5 a.m.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/226077.html

Hey, Fairbanks-area people: our show opens tonight! Nine Alaskan comics and fine artists will be at the Alaska Center for Natural Medicine on Davis Road from 5-8 p.m. We will have tables set up throughout the building with books, art, gifts and more. There’s free food — if no one comes, we’ll have to eat it all ourselves! And free wine — if no one comes, we’ll have to drink it all ourselves. (And trust me, no one wants to see that.)

If you can’t make it on Friday, the art show will be up throughout the months of May and June, and the AK Center for Natural Medicine has kindly offered to host a small display of our books as well, so you can browse them there and buy them if you like what you see!

And now I am off to print more Freebird comics, which I plan to stick into every available scrap of gallery space. *g*

Crossposted from Wordpress.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/225994.html

It's Wednesday again (how???) and that means time for a reading recommendation! (The way the entire rest of the blogosphere is doing this meme, people blog about what they were reading the past week. I tried it, but I ended up talking about a lot of books I hadn't much liked, and that wasn't fun. So I decided to recommend something instead, preferably something a little less-known rather than something the entire Internet is already talking about. Discussion and spoilers in comments are entirely welcome!)

This Wednesday I bring you All the Flavors by Ken Liu (subtitled "A Tale of Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War, in America"). This is a Nebula-nominated novella that's online for free. It's set in Idaho in the latter half of the 19th century, and ... well, the really dull way to describe it, I guess, is that it deals with the tensions between Chinese immigrant workers and the white migrants who make up the bulk of the Idaho City population circa 1865. Which makes it sound very heavy and serious. But, while there is obviously a dark undercurrent (the brutal racism of the times is not downplayed), it's much more than that; it's a lovely, lively novella full of vivid characters, with a subtle magical element woven throughout.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/225620.html

This is my garden this morning.

Do you see a garden? ME NEITHER.

... Yes, I know I'm being very whiny about this spring. At least it's not all in my head. April's average high temperatures in Fairbanks were 15 degrees (!!!) below the normal averages. Looking at pictures I took on April 1st, I really don't think there is much less snow now than there was then.

I have been joking with Orion that we had "second March" this year. But, honestly, aren't we about due for some spring weather by now?

In other news, we hung the show at the Alaska Center for Natural Medicine last night, and it is going to be GREAT! The venue is a really neat place, with lots of twisty winding corridors and lounge areas and nifty little alcoves, and they are super supportive of us. On Friday evening, we will have a regular little comics convention there, with a half-dozen Fairbanks and Alaskan artists including me,

ellenmillion, and Jamie Smith. There will be cheese and crackers and wine!

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/225389.html

Forgot to mention Kismet in my previous list of done-dids and to-be-dones ... My March push to "just get the pages drawn already!" resulted in 13 pages penciled and inked, plus the 2 pages that I still had left over from last summer. These pages are all scanned and lettered, but I haven't even started coloring them yet. I'd still like to get a bigger page buffer finished before I start updating again, but it IS on the horizon! (And mostly, I'm holding off because once I start again, I don't want to stop until I finish Sun-Cutter -- which is projected to be about 150-200 pages, significantly shorter than Hunter's Moon, but still a couple more years.)

I have to say, though, that working on Kismet again was awfully fun. I really did miss it.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/224866.html

A lot, it seems!

First of all, I’m in an art show that opens in May! The opening is a First Friday event on May 3rd from 5-8 p.m. (although the show will be up all summer). It’s a comics-themed show at the Alaska Center for Natural Medicine — which might sound like an unusual place for a gallery show, but it’s an absolutely beautiful space, with lots of little corridors and nooks and crannies for art to hang in. The show itself is like a who’s who of Alaskan cartoonists and purveyors of fantasy-themed art, including myself, Ellen Million, Jamie Smith, Chad Carpenter, and Anchorage editorial cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl. I’ll mention it again closer to the show itself.

(Oh my, preparing for the show has been a nonstop comedy of errors. At the moment, after purchasing a number of cheap frames so that everything would match, I’ve just discovered that a double-thick mat doesn’t fit in the frame style, so one of my pieces of art is going to need a different, non-matching frame. FAIL.)

By the way, I have NOT forgotten about all of you who expressed interest in my watercolor cards! The main problem is that I haven’t made much more progress (on either painting more cards, or putting together a website ordering system), but I’m getting some cards together to (attempt to) sell at the opening, and after that I will focus on getting a catalog up on my website and contacting the people who had expressed interest. Thank you again for your interest and enthusiasm, and I’m terribly sorry I’ve been such a sloth about it.

On a slightly different front, my romance-writing alias Layla M. Wier has been busy. I’m starting to wonder if there’s even the slightest point in having a separate alias for that, because as it turns out, what I’m writing under that alias is basically indistinguishable from everything else I write, except for the way it’s marketed. On the other hand, the categorization split is unexpectedly useful for my work ethic. (“Today I’m working on Layla Wier’s stuff; tomorrow I’m doing Layla Lawlor” is how the thought process goes, and as bizarre as it sounds, it’s actually helpful.) As “Layla Wier”, here’s what I have for sale and upcoming:

One of my short stories appears in the anthology Snow on the Roof from Dreamspinner Press (m/m anthology about men over 40).
I will have a story — actually more of a novelette — forthcoming in July in Storm Moon Press’s Big Damn Heroines anthology (see their fantastic cover!), about plus-sized women kicking ass. This story is adventure fantasy with f/f and f/m pairings on the side. The anthology releases on July 12; I’ll have more info and a preview when it’s for sale!
I just sold a novella, Homespun, to Dreamspinner Press. This will probably be out in October or November, and I’ll post more info (the cover, etc) when I have it. I’m thoroughly delighted that this one sold, though I was (pleasantly!) surprised that DSP bought it, because it isn’t really their usual fare: both the main couple are middle-aged and have been together for 20 years, and the viewpoint rotates between the two of them and a third major POV character who is female. It’s not a story about falling in love; it’s a story about growing up and growing old and dealing with family and community along the way. And also, it’s about a sheep farm; I am embarrassed to admit how many books on sheep and fiber spinning I bought for “research”.
Also, I made a blog post over there on writing what you love that I meant to crosspost here and never got around to it. Oops.

And that’s what I’m up to! Oh, and I also need to get another round of agent submissions going for my urban fantasy novel. (Yes, I’m still at it; no, I still haven’t placed it anywhere, but that’s partly because I haven’t sent out more submissions in … uh, awhile. It’ll never sell if it never gets sent out, though.)

Crossposted from Wordpress.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/224607.html

This week it's a link to ... well, I don't know what you'd call it -- an article, a nonfiction novella? Anyway, it's online and it's free.

Out in the Great Alone by Brian Phillips: the author (city born and bred) becomes fascinated with the Iditarod so he decides to travel to Alaska and watch the entire race, all 1000 miles of it, from a small plane. This is his account of his adventures, an outsider's-eye view of Alaska that is, I have to admit, disturbingly accurate -- from the unique blue color of the long winter twilight, to the way that rural people are so unused to strangers that they don't quite know how to cope with having another human being in their space. It's not a deep memoir full of philosophical insights, but rather a lightweight, amusing and fun travelogue.

Here, for example, his bush pilot/guide is teaching him how to land on a frozen lake in the event of an emergency. (Nugget is the name of the airplane.)

( Excerpt under cut )

... which gives you a pretty good idea what the whole thing is like. It's also full of interesting details, historical and otherwise, about the race and the little towns along the way; I learned a few things I didn't know.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/224307.html

Still waiting for progress to occur on the “melting” front. Walking the dog last night, I noticed the setting sun glinting rather beautifully off the snowbanks along the driveway, although by the time I ran and got my camera it had mostly set:

(This was about 10 p.m. — we have a lot of light, at least.)

And here’s a picture I took today of water pooling on the creek ice:

It’s 40 degrees today and feels wonderful. Hopefully we’ll lose this snow quickly now that it’s getting warmer.

Crossposted from Wordpress.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/224147.html

If you had to flee your house and country forever, and could only take one thing with you, what would it be? This photo essay poses refugees with their most important possession.

Now here's what I did, and what I recommend doing: before you click on the link, think about it. If you had to flee forever, what would be the first thing you'd grab, and the thing you'd want to keep with you? Because I think it's kind of an illuminating look into our lives, and here's what I realized after I did it and then looked at the pictures (and if you're going to play along at home, I recommend picking your "important thing" before you click on the cut).

( Continued under cut )

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/223772.html

Spring, what did we do to offend you so. ;_;

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/223491.html

Today's cheery glimpse of spring:

The picture doesn't really give you the full effect because it didn't capture the falling snow, which was coming down pretty hard when I took it. Still, you can tell by comparing it to the one taken from the same angle a week ago that spring is not exactly proceeding forward here.

On a more genuinely cheerful note, I discovered this Croatian illustrator's gorgeous art -- definitely worth taking a look if you like lavishly detailed pen-and-ink art. The precision and shading is really incredible.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/223277.html

Yay, it's Monday again! Let's see how spring is coming alo--

... oh. Oh dear.

Yeah, if anything there's more snow than there was last week, because it's been below freezing all week and now it's snowing again.

Here's a different but no less depressing part of the driveway:

And under the cut, a few nostalgic comparative looks back at Aprils when we actually had some semblance of a spring by the second Monday in the month.

( *sob* )

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/223107.html

This week's book rec, which also happens to be the last book I read: A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge, which tragically is only available as an ebook in the US (or you can pick up a used copy that migrated over here by way of UK bookstores, which is what I did).

I adore Hardinge's books, and always look forward eagerly to each new one. She writes YA fantasy that is unique, highly original, and never talks down to its audience, and her books tend to tackle concepts that are often considered beyond the scope of kidlit -- this one deals with class and privilege in a fantasy setting, and her first book (still my favorite, Fly By Night) is about personal freedom and thought control.

A Face Like Glass reminds me more of Fly By Night than anything else she's written; another thing about her books is that they are all very different from each other, but this one deals with similar concepts and the worldbuilding is vaguely reminiscent of it, even if it's a completely different world. A Face Like Glass is about a society in which people do not have natural, inborn facial expressions; instead they have to learn them from a set roster of different expressions, and one's place in society determines which expressions one is allowed to learn, with people in the lower classes only being allowed expressions that are blank and polite, and those in the upper classes buying a unique face for each occasion. Into this world comes Neverfell, a friendly, coltishly clumsy girl who only wants to make friends with everyone she meets, and has no idea that the people around her are hiding terrible secrets behind their perfectly sculpted faces. It's a complicated, twisty book full of mysteries and secrets and betrayals, with a wonderfully funny, complex, sometimes tragic heroine.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/222969.html

For the past few years, I've done a little photography project that I call Monday Melt: every Monday in April, I go around the property and take pictures, so that I can compare them to past years and see how our spring is coming along.

(And yes, I know it's not Monday, but I took these pictures on Monday; I'm just now getting around to dl'ing them from the camera!)

As you can see, we have a ways to go yet.

( A couple more pictures and comparisons to past years under the cut )

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/222520.html

You may notice lately that some of my posts are crossposted from the WordPress blog and some aren’t. That’s mainly because crossposting from WordPress is more work than typing into an LJ (or LJ clone) window. (Not a LOT more work, but between troubleshooting formatting issues, having to log into WordPress every time, and not being able to use LJ-specific markup code … yeah. It’s work.)

So I think I’m going to bother with crossposting on WordPress only when it’s Serious Writing Stuff (updates on my projects, or posts on writing) and otherwise, I’ll just be posting to Dreamwidth and crossposting to LJ.

I doubt if this matters to anyone but me (since, for those of you reading along on LJ or DW, nothing will change, and I think that is 99% of you), but I figured I’d mention it.

(Though I may change my mind once my paid LJ time runs out and I have to deal with ads again …)

Crossposted from Wordpress.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/222357.html

The latest book from my Library Pile is one that I’d thought to be a historical murder mystery from the cover, but once I started to read, I realized it was a mystery-romance. The heroine has a meet-cute with a guy on the ferry that she’s taking to the Greek island where the events of the book take place. On the island, he is giving her a lift in his sporty little car, when he accidentally knocks over an old lady’s fruit stand, knocking oranges all over the road. Immediately, he stops, apologizes, and helps the old lady pick up her fruit.

And this really gave me pause; it made me stop and go, “Wow, I like this guy! This one’s a keeper, lady.”

… then about five pages later, the actual romantic hero shows up, which is clearly signposted because he is a total dick and the heroine hates him. Just to be sure, I turned to the blurb on the back (normally I avoid those, being a spoilerphobe) and discovered that not only is Dick Boy our “hero”, but the guy I’d liked so much is slated to be the murder victim.

Yeah. No. This one goes straight back to the library.

But this made me realize just how thoroughly over the alpha-hero trope I am. Over. Done. I want characters (male and female) who are the sort of person who would stop to help an old lady pick up her oranges. I am hungry for kind characters in literature, the sort of people who are aware that they exist as part of a community; who, when they accidentally hurt someone, notice and apologize for it, even if it’s a stranger, and doubly so if it’s a loved one.

And I think it was very eye-opening for me how startling it was, to encounter a scene in the opening pages of the book in which the character that I had believed to be the hero does something kind and altruistic. That’s rare. And it shouldn’t be. And this isn’t a problem specific to the romance genre. I read so many books in which the characters are misanthropic loners or just general jerks. I can enjoy me some misanthropic loners, but these days, I find that I’m really craving books about characters who aren’t. (Even if they may occasionally mistake themselves for one.)

Crossposted from Wordpress.

Crossposts: http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/222179.html

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Layla

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Life in a Northern Town

Recent Entries

Welcome to Layla's slice of Internet space

Really? REALLY?

Riding the rejection roller coaster

Monday (er, Tuesday) Melt

Monday Melt (sob)

Show opening tonight!

Wednesday reading rec

Happy May everyone. sob

Also, Kismet

What I’m up to

Wednesday reading rec

Inching towards spring

An interesting photo series

Oh, come ON

Snoooooooooooo

Monday (un)Melt

Wednesday book of the week

Monday Melt

Also, a quick WordPress blog note

Pondering heroes and the tropes thereof

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May 2013

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