Why Poplar is the Best Dog and A Kickstarter Update

As of Day 1 of the campaign! 

 

I didn't set out to write a story with a telepathic dog. In fact, I didn't plan on any dog at all. But when I was working on the early drafts of what would become LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD, Poplar showed up. 

Yes, characters do appear like that. A gift from the subconscious that any writer worth her salt doesn't turn away. So Poplar stayed. Even as the story morphed and changed. Even as other characters got cut and never returned to the manuscript. 

And when I look at the story, she is its heart and soul.

I'd like to say I created Poplar as an amalgamation of all the dogs I've owned throughout my adult life, but I think she really created herself out of my memories and relationships with our canine companions.  

Let me introduce you to them.

Maxwell Smart

I didn't grow up with pets of any kind. The night before my wedding in 1988, my sister asked if she could bring over our gift as 'it was fragile' and she didn't want to risk bringing it the wedding. 

Sure, we said, come on over. 

And she walked in with a 12 week old puppy. A Lhasa Apso aka a white ball of fluff. 

Maxwell Smart Dog, age 6 with our first born kiddo, circa 1994

Unfortunately, all our photos of Max as a puppy are somewhere in photo albums in a storage unit. He was a clown of a dog and set himself as the protector and best friend of our son pretty much from the start. 

Max was a great first dog to have. He was patient and gentle and playful. Would hop in any car ready for adventure. Max was also something of a Houdini and found many ways to escape our fenced in yard to ride shotgun for the day with our town's animal control officer. 

 

Tigger 

Tigger with her favorite thing in the world: A tennis ball

 

Max lived to be almost 17! When he passed in December of 2004, we weren't going to look for another dog for a little while. It was winter. I had 2 young children to care for. But my youngest (8 at the time) held me to my promise that we would look for a dog once there was no longer snow on the ground. 

In March of 2005, Tigger found us. When we got her records from the dog rescue, we discovered she'd been born the day Max died. The kids ever after believed that Max sent her to us so we could stop being sad. 

Tigger was a hound/lab mix and one of the most responsive dogs I've known. She loved to learn tricks and when she was old enough, she and I passed the tests to become a therapy dog team. We spent many years visiting hospitals, nursing homes, and adolescent psychiatry facilities. She was a natural. Always knew the exact person who needed her love. 

 

Dustin

I swear, this photo was not staged.

 

When our kids got older and busier, it was clear that Tigger needed a canine friend. So we adopted Dustin. Then we found out that he was part Jack Russel Terrier. AKA terror. 

Terriers are a special breed of intense. And Dustin had a lot of trauma from being a feral stray. But Tigger loved him. He became her puppy and she civilized him. Dustin was definitely a challenge, but over time, he became a very sweet cuddler, albeit a menace to other dogs. 

Mya

 

Mya cosplaying a babushka

 

Sadly, Tigger died of cancer when she was 10 and we quickly realized Dustin needed a companion. So we adopted Mya - a border collie mix who had been shot as a puppy and only had 1 eye. She was very much my dog. Extremely sweet with people. Unpredictably fear aggressive with other dogs. Though she and Dustin were definitely pack. 

Dustin and Mya made the transition with us to empty nesting and our move to the farm where we live now. In fact, when I came out here in 2020 at the beginning of covid (while my spouse stayed in Boston, treating ICU patients), they were my loyal companions. 

 

Gigi 

 

1 year of Gigi

 

Mya got lymphoma in 2024 and after 6 months of chemotherapy, died in early 2025. Dustin - probably well in his teen years by then (we were never really certain how old he was) - died of heart failure about 6 weeks later. We were heartbroken, but definitely not ready for another dog. 

Until Gigi found us. A lovely mix of shepherd and hound, Gigi is a lot like Tigger was in terms of her emotional intelligence, responsiveness, and gentleness. Unlike Mya and Dustin, Gigi is exceptionally well mannered with other dogs and knows how to alter her play style to suit her companion. She's also the first dog I've ever had who naturally retrieves a ball and drops it at my feet on command. So these are all my good dogs. 

 

 

And Poplar? Well, she has a little bit of all of them in her. I am indebted to each dog we've shared our lives with for helping me bring Poplar to the page with clarity and honesty. Along with a nose for cheese.

As for the Kickstarter, you can help bring more Poplar to the world with your support! Now that we've reached the initial funding goal, anything raised beyond this will go toward the audiobooks of book 2 and 3 in the trilogy, all with Poplar being the best good dog on the page. 

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And done

 

Screenshot of the chapter and scene info. The overarching reminder for me as I was writing the story is that everyone is where they need to be, not necessarily where they want to be. 

 

I completed the manuscript for EVERY SKY A STRANGER this week. 

Here are some metrics: 

Total words: 82,000 

Number of POV characters: 9

Chapters: 17

Scenes: 53

Writing progress: 

18,000 words between January 2024 and December 2024 

I had recently finished LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD and was preparing for its February 2025 release. After working on book 1 for close to six years, I was worried that I would have the same problem with book 2. I spent a lot of time reviewing my half-baked notes early in 2024. While I had had a plan for where book 2 was going to begin, once I got into the first few chapters, I realized the story wasn't really moving forward. I had all these characters standing around waiting for stage direction. Not good. I quickly shifted the entire plot plan (such as I had) and made life harder for my characters. Much better. 

34,000 words between January 2025 and December 2025

I made steady progress through the story's middle in 2025, though I knew it would need to be stronger. And until fall of 2025 when I attended the Writer Unboxed Unconference in New Mexico, I wasn't sure how I was going to fix it. I took dozens of pages of notes that week and in the margins, I had this note to myself: Each major character needs to have a "trolley problem" moment. Once I figured this out (and it took me until the end of 2025), I was able to see the entire structure of the story, as well as the overarching structure for all three books of the series. 

30,000 words between January 2026 and March 2026

This is where my fingers flew over the keyboard, but it wasn't without work. In early 2026, I was working up to the book's climax when I stumbled and didn't know how to proceed. So I assembled each of the major plot threads separately as if they were their own books and read through them one at a time. (I do not recommend working with a complex structure like this. It was the only way to tell the story, but it tested me as a writer.) This allowed me to see where the writing needed to be smoothed or expanded or changed and set me up to create a cohesive whole. 

In the final month of writing, I drafted the entire last 25% of the story.  

At this point, the first half is at least on its 3rd revision. The middle at 2nd revision and the last 25% has been revised once. This is typical for my process. By the time I get to the last sections of the book, my writing is much bolder and more confident. Those last few chapters typically need the least amount of revision. 

I've sent it out to a handful of trusted readers - trusted in that I can trust them to be honest with me to help the story be its best before it goes off to the editor.  

The metrics only tell part of the process. More importantly is how I feel about this story. And how I feel having finished it.

I am quite pleased with the shape of it. The characters - despite how well I know them, despite the fact that I created them - still have the power to surprise me. Their voices have become distinct in my mind and on the page. I found an ending that is both surprising and inevitable (and, I hope, satisfying). Certainly it sets up the starting place and conflicts for book 3. 

Sitting here, I feel as if my brain has been hollowed out. For the past 2 years or so, I've been living with this story and these characters in my mind. This was especially true in those last writing months. And now that it's finished, the sense of their company is gone. I know they haven't gone far and they will return when I start drafting the final book in the trilogy, but for now I feel empty. 

EVERY SKY A STRANGER will be my 10th published novel. I'd like to say the process gets easier with each book, but that's not really true. Each book is a universe of difficult in its own way. Honestly? I welcome that. It means I'm stretching and growing with every piece I write. 

Each story changes me. And that alone is reason to write. 

 

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Dealing with Vulnerability

The author in her preferred state

So, I have a book out this week. 

Which means I've been talking and writing and otherwise interacting with a whole lot of people in support of the release. And it's exhausting. Not just because I am -- like so many of my fellow authors -- an introvert, but because being noticed means I make myself vulnerable.

I had been prepared for the energy cost of the intense social interactions of back to back appearances: Arisia, a group reading in Brooklyn, Boskone. I had not counted on the deep fear that has come along for the ride. 

Those that know me would never describe me as fearful. I've spent my life advocating and speaking out for what I believe in. If I were to pick a single word to represent my personality, it would probably be determined. (A more polite way to say stubborn, ornery, unyielding...just ask my spouse and my children.)

But fearful? 

Yeah. 

Give me a cause to rally around, and I am all in. Put a bully in front of me? I'm all "you shall not pass". But have me stand up and promote myself? My work? I'd rather face that Balrog.  

Tomorrow, I will be traveling to Boskone in Boston and celebrating the release of LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD with my science fiction/fantasy community. I will need to cosplay a confident, functional adult author. All the while, my insides will be squirming and I will have to work to keep my hands from flailing around in distress. (One of the reasons I'm usually knitting at cons.)

If I didn't care so passionately about this story, it would be easy. And while I  know I am not my book and my book is not me, it is still the deepest expression of my innermost self. So, in a way, it represents me. It's important to me and as an artist, I believe the work can't reach its true potential until it's experienced by the reader.  

Truly, most creators I know are -- like me -- balls of anxiety wrapped in a human suit. So if you encounter me at Boskone, please be gentle. Approach as if you were nearing a feral kitten because I will be torn between wanting to flee to hide under a table and needing to be (metaphorically) petted.

 

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Where to Find Me: Book release edition

Photo of me with one of my fellow readers, Donald Maass at Brooklyn Booze and Books

.

Two weeks from today, LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD will be released. (!!!!!) It's been a long road from original idea to finished novel and it doesn't quite feel real to me yet. 

The work of being an author isn't only in writing the book. It also includes doing what you can to help it find its readership. But authors are notoriously shy creatures (many of us, anyway) and self-promotion is a terrifying process. 

So we do what we can, hoping that the readings, the interviews, the cover art reveal, the convention panel appearances all conspire to pique a reader's curiosity. 

To that end, I was a guest participant at Arisia in Boston last weekend, then took a train to NYC Tuesday morning to participate in a group reading at Barrow's Intense tasting room in Industry City in Brooklyn. The reading was to celebrate an anthology series (Of Gods and Globes) that the readers had contributed to. I had the opportunity to show off the ARC of Litany (yay!) and read a short story from volume 1 of the anthology series that I hadn't ever read aloud to an audience before. ("Perpetual Silence"). 

It's a story I wrote B-C (Before Covid) and one that I haven't really looked at in quite some time. I was happy to see that it held up and for 20 minutes, I was able to capture the attention of everyone in the room. (It's a powerful story. I'm so glad Past-LJ wrote it.)

I was recently a guest on Max Bowen's CityWide Bytes YouTube interviews. You can watch the short video here, where we talk about Litany and its influences. 

An early review of Litany is up here, as well. 

If you're going to be at Boskone this February, I'll be reading from Litany during the Broad Universe Rapid-fire Reading and participating in the Boskone Book Release party, where you can snag a copy/get your copy signed. 

As a reminder, ebook pre-orders are live and print orders will be open on release day (Feb 10). If you are considering buying the book, pre-orders are really helpful for a book's visibility. If buying the book isn't in your budget, spreading the word about it and marking it as 'want to read' on Goodreads can be the boost a book needs to get noticed.

 Many thanks!

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Litany For A Broken World

Cover* for Litany For A Broken World

After six years of work ...

After 3 (or maybe 4) false starts where I discarded 20,000 words and began again ...

After multiple crises of faith in my ability to write ...

After the help and encouragement of my family, writing friends, and communities ...

After a writing residency at the Eagle Hill School ...

After a computer meltdown and repair ...

 

I give you Litany For A Broken World.  

A modern adult reworking of/homage to The Wizard of Oz that takes place in a Boston homeless encampment. 

A young girl's disastrous first foray through the multiverse cleaves her from her family and abandons her in a homeless encampment, adrift in a world and a body not her own.

A doctor struggling with grief volunteers for the annual Boston homeless census and is confronted by the impossible and her deeply buried childhood trauma.

A lonely, disaffected seer rejected by those he seeks to help is drawn from his home by a desperate call across the world walls.

When the three strangers, each broken in some way, are drawn together in a conflict between those with the ability to travel the multiverse and the organization seeking to exploit them, they must risk everything that matters to heal the fractured places in themselves and throughout reality.

Coming February 10, 2025

 

 Pre-orders are now live for the ebook version. (Available at all retailers). Print is forthcoming.

 ______________

 

This is the book that nearly broke me as a writer. One that wouldn't let me go once the characters took hold in my subconscious. 

As frustrating as my slow writing process was over the past 6 years, I don't regret the work this book required to reach the finish line. It was an ambitious story. 6 years ago, I didn't have the skills to do it justice. None of what I wrote and discarded was ultimately wasted, even as it wasn't used in the novel. Those words, those attempts, were all part of what I needed to level up in my writing ability. 

And isn't leveling up critical to the creative process? I'm not in competition with any other author or book out there in the world. I'm here to work harder and write better than my past self. To grow as a creator. To fail better in the immortal words of Samuel Beckett. 

I hope I have failed better with Litany. And I will continue to work and stretch as I complete book 2 in the Entangled Realities series, Every Sky A Stranger. I'm currently just shy of the 25% mark in drafting and making good progress. 

 

_______________

 

If you are a reviewer/book blogger and would like a complimentary ebook copy to review, please email me: lisa@ljcohen.net

*Cover art created by the lovely and talented Chris Howard

 

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What makes a professional writer?

My personal bookshelf: 8 novels published in 6 years

This is one of my periodic musings/rants on the state of publishing. As ever, this is my opinion, based on my experience and YMMV.

Depending on your definition, I'm either a professional author or a hobbyist writer. Personally, I'm not sure it matters. And I'm okay with that.

I came to writing after spending almost 25 years as a physical therapist, working in a variety of settings from hospital-based inpatient care to an outpatient private practice. I earned a good living and spent significant time and money on professional development so I could stay current in my skills.

I had the opportunity to speak at professional conferences and contribute to the research literature as well as write chapters for text books.

There is no doubt that physical therapy was my profession.

During my latter years as a clinician, I started to focus on long form fiction - as a hobby. While I can't deny holding to the fantasy of having one of my manuscripts discovered and published to world-wide acclaim, I understood that this was fantasy. Being an author wasn't my job at that point.

However, I was also the parent of two children, and as their needs changed, I also shifted my working priorities to part time employment which allowed me greater flexibility to care for my sons.

Just because my earnings decreased as I limited my work hours didn't suddenly demote my work to hobby status in the eyes of the world.  Whether I worked 10, 20 or 40 hours a week as a PT, I was still a professional. And that designation remained whether I was the primary 'breadwinner' of my family or not.

Fast forward to 2012 when I published my first novel. By then, I had disbanded my physical therapy practice and was no longer working as a clinician. I remained a licensed professional, even as I didn't earn any income in that profession.

I may have earned $500 in 2012 from that first venture into publishing.

So where did I stand as a writer? Professional? Hobbyist?

Would it matter if I said I spent time and money on professional development? Wrote consistently? Sought feedback on my work? Learned about the changing landscape of publishing? Had an agent? Went on submission?

If your definition of professional is someone who earns a full living from their chosen work, then there were many, many years I wouldn't have been considered a professional physical therapist. Without my spouse's income, there were years I wouldn't have been able to pay the rent, childcare, and basic needs for my family.

Let's fast forward again, this time to 2019.

I have 8 novels in the marketplace.

My average annual income as a novelist is approximately $6,000 - $12,000 a year, depending on if I have a new release or not. That is not by any definition 'a living' - not when you have a family to support.

So, am I a professional author? A hobbyist?

Would it change your mind if you knew I was a full member of SFWA? An invited guest speaker at well regarded genre writing conventions?

If your definition of professional has an income requirement attached, then the percentage of writers who are professionals is vanishingly small.  Yes, there are writers earning good money. They are the outliers. Trust me. I know a LOT of writers. Most of them don't earn the equivalent of minimum wage from their creative work. And some make far, far more than that.

Still others sell a ton of books and plow nearly all their earnings into promotion and advertisement, writing fast and furious in search of audience share. That is a route I have seen lead to financial success, but it requires a kind of relentless focus on the numbers (both books written and sold) that doesn't work for me and would lead me smack into the brick wall of burnout.

And honestly? I don't see all that much of a difference between my traditionally published writer friends and those who go the indie route. Some writers will do extremely well. Some rare writers will be in the right place at the right time and grab that brass ring.

Yes, hard work and discipline is certainly a factor in artistic success - and it's the only part of the process the writer has any control over - but even the most successful writers will tell you how much luck and timing had to do with it.

It was far easier for me to make a living as a physical therapist then it is as a writer. I suspect most artists of any stripe will say their 'day jobs' make more financial sense than their art work.

And none of this means that artists cannot also be professionals even as they pursue their art as part of their life. As a hobby, if you will.

I think the biggest problem with the professional/hobbyist divide is that society has conflated pursuing a hobby with dabbling and all the negative connotations it carries.

I would love to reclaim and redefine the word hobby in a way that doesn't place it on the opposite side of some imaginary continuum where "professional" is the other end.

Perhaps we would all be better off with less of an artificial separation between vocation and avocation.

If you're looking for me, I'll be searching for that elusive balance.


#SFWApro

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2018: The Highs, Lows, and Mediums

Not *that* kind of medium, though I wish I could predict the future.

Image of John William Waterhouse's 'The Crystal Ball" used under a creative commons license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Crystal_Ball.JPG

I didn't set many specific writing goals for 2018 at the close of 2017. For the most part, this was because of my prior experience of setting goals and watching them crash and burn when confronted by life. However, the one major goal I had - finish the Halcyone Space series and publish A STAR IN THE VOID, was accomplished.

Albeit with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

When I look back over the year, it's pretty astonishing that I was able to get anything written. The political climate following the 2016 election  and leading up to the 2018 one was a confounding factor for so many creative people I know and I was no exception.

It was hard to write when I was obsessed with following political news on twitter. When news broke and kept breaking about women coming forth with their #metoo stories, I was shaken. Memories of my own childhood trauma that I had thought dealt with, constantly broke my concentration and sapped my creative energy.

I wrote anyway. Because I'm a stubborn cuss and I had made promises to myself, my characters, and my readers that I didn't want to break. Instead, it nearly broke me and from the time I finished drafting A STAR IN THE VOID early last year until this month, I've struggled to do any kind of consistent writing.

But not all is gloom and doom. When I looked back at 2018's work, I realized that I had accomplished more than I'd feared.

I wrote (and the process was painful, filled with stops, starts, and the delete key - just ask the editor of the collection) "Perpetual Silence" for the collection OF GODS AND GLOBES. It's a story that emerged from sadness and loss, and yet, I found hope in the writing of it. Creativity is weird that way.

Toward the end of the year, I was approached by the editor of LONGSHOT ISLAND and UNFIT MAGAZINE to submit for their inaugural edition of UNFIT. I dug through my story folder and found one that served the magazine's theme. "Persistence of Memory" was a story I had self published in my first collection of short fiction and took the opportunity to give it another editing pass before sending it on to be published alongside some of Science Fiction's heavy hitters.

There are a few other short stories written in 2018 that will be published in 2019 and I'm at about the 10% mark on a new novel that I'm excited to be working on.

The other writing I did was non-fiction: I took space in this blog to chronicle the incredible year I've had connecting with a birth family that I hadn't known and who hadn't known about me. I will be continuing that series, as I have so much more to share and new discoveries keep surprising me. If you want to read along, part 1 is here.


If you are so inclined to recommend any of my work to friends or for any applicable awards, I would be incredibly grateful.

I wish you all a happy, healthy New Year. May 2019 bring you joy.

#SFWApro

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Playing the Long Game

I'm taking a brief break from the long and twisting tale of my adoption search story to return to some hard numbers about my publishing journey. I do this periodically, mainly because I believe in transparency and it helps me maintain perspective.

First caveat: I am almost entirely self-published.
Second caveat: I do very little promotion or paid advertising. I have a small mailing list of under 1000 subscribers. I could probably earn more/sell more if I focused on this side of the business.
Third caveat: I walked away from amazon page reads to keep my books widely available. This resulted in a definite drop in income that I'm starting to recover from. It was a long term choice to eschew the immediate money for long term sustainability.
Fourth Caveat: I have learned I can write/publish a book a year and no more than that.
Fifth caveat: YMMV

This is an overview of my earnings from January of 2012 through yesterday, August 7, 2018.

I've marked when each of my 8 novels were published. They are color coded for the series they belong to.

A few things to notice:

2014 was an anomaly year. In June of 2014, I published DERELICT, the first novel in my space opera series, Halcyone Space. I did little that I hadn't done for my prior books, but this one (forgive the terrible pun) took off like a rocket.

There were fewer books being published in 2014 and Amazon's algorithms (impenetrable to mere mortals, then and now) somehow picked up on a week or so of modest sales and decided to promote the book in its genre newsletters.

Unfortunately, I had no way of capitalizing on this good fortune directly, as Amazon doesn't share its sales intel. While I had my social media links in the book and a link to my newsletter, I had no way to directly promote to all those readers.

One year later, when ITHAKA RISING was published, (book 2 of the series) I had no way to let all the readers of book 1 know it was out. And Amazon didn't magically do it for me. You can clearly see the tiny bump in income for that release. However, sales of all books over the following months were slightly higher than in the prior year.

In 2016, I had greater traction with the release of DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE, again mainly due to the power of Amazon: At that point, I had taken the newer books exclusive to Amazon in their Kindle Unlimited program and a big chunk of my income that year was through page reads.

Book 5 (PARALLAX) debuted in 2017, when I had pulled out from KU to have all the books available wide. My income between mid 2017 to mid 2018 was given a lovely boost by a .99 Bookbub feature on DERELICT.

This second graph is a yearly comparison of earnings between January of 2012, when I published my first novel, through yesterday, August 7, 2018.

With 8 novels in the marketplace, and a completed series, and greater traction on non-Amazon marketplaces (especially Kobo), I'm on track to exceed my KU exclusive/boosted-by-page-reads 2016 income.

If you omit the outlier of 2014, and factor in the switch from Amazon exclusive to wide, the trend is towards higher earnings year on year with more books available in the marketplace. (Note: the 2018 bar is only 7 months of the year and doesn't include the earnings from my latest bookbundle participation.)

Take Home Messages

• Publishing is a long game
• More of your books in the marketplace translates to more potential points of contact and sales
• Amazon is still the biggest player in the market. Some writers choose to stay exclusive with them and can do extremely well on page reads and the specific promotional tools that gives them. 
• Going wide entails risk and it can take a long time to gain audience share outside of Amazon
• Of my 8 novels to date, 4 have earned back their production expenses, the 5th is on track to do so. 3 have not and probably will not. This is the case even in traditional publishing: good sellers bankroll poorer sellers.
• This is not the business to be in if you need a steady income. AKA keep your day job or have a partner with one. 
• Luck and timing play a larger role in financial success in publishing that any of us want to admit. 
• You have no direct control over luck or timing. 
• Hard work is necessary, but it's not enough.
• If you, like me, find creating as necessary as breathing, there is no hope but to keep working. 

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The Art of Halcyone Space

Original art by Chris Howard

About a month ago, I revealed an earlier draft of this cover art for A STAR IN THE VOID for subscribers of my newsletter. Now, I'm sharing it widely in advance of the June 2018 publishing date of the novel.

Chris Howard has created original art for all 5 of the Halcyone Space novels.

Finally I can display all of these amazing covers together and talk about how each of the images captures the heart and soul of the novel it graces.

Derelict

While all of the stories center around an ensemble cast, each story has a single character whose arc stands out to me as primary. In DERELICT, that character was Rosalen Maldonado. At the start of the story, Ro is isolated. As a result of being moved from post to post by her emotionally abusive father, she doesn't have the emotional skills or experience in trusting other people.

The plot revolves around a derelict space ship and its damaged AI, but the story revolves around Ro learning to trust herself and trust others.

I love the way Chris depicts Ro as dwarfed by the cosmos, yet looking up and out as if hoping for a better future.

Ithaka Rising

This is Barre Durbin. The story of ITHAKA RISING is the story of brothers, loyalty, and sacrifice. Children of the space station's physicians, Barre and his little brother Jem have always been under pressure to excel. But ever since Jem outstripped him academically, Barre has felt like a failure. His relationship is particularly strained with his mother who can't  appreciate Barre's musical genius.

The main storyline borrows from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Barre, like Orpheus, relies on his musical skills to enter the Underworld and rescue a loved one. 

I love the look of quiet determination on Barre's face in Chris's image. 

Dreadnought and Shuttle

Devorah Martingale Morningstar (Dev, and she would be the first to mention how ridiculous her name is) enters the world of Halcyone Space in DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE. She is a character who emerged as simply a minor player but after her first scene, I bent to the wisdom of my subconscious and let her be who she needed to be for the story. 

She is a materials science student at the University Micah Rotherwood escapes to. She gets abducted in his stead and taken aboard a stolen ship by her captor. But she is far from a powerless pawn and uses her knowledge and skills to sabotage the ship. 

Chris created her with an intensity that matches her character. The image conveys her strength, capability, and focus.

Parallax

In the 4th novel, PARALLAX, the cover features Emmaline Gutierrez. In all the other covers, the character shown is a viewpoint character. While we never see Gutierrez's point of view, she is a major mover of the story and we see her interacting with almost all the other viewpoint characters. 

She is an old soldier whose loyalties are put to the test in this story. In a very real way, she is the last soldier standing from a conflict that she had already sacrificed body and soul to forty years earlier. 

While she appears a bit younger than I see her, Chris nailed her expression, her body language, and her prosthetic arm. There is both amazing strength and vulnerability here. She may be my favorite non-viewpoint character in the series.

A Star in the Void

For the 5th and final book in the Halcyone Space series, A STAR IN THE VOID, I asked Chris to use Ada May as the cover character.

While she is only a viewpoint character for a brief epilogue in book 4, she is the character around whom the entire narrative of 5 novels centers around. She was there at the start of the hostilities over 40 years prior. It was her genius that created the first true AIs that made space travel possible. She created the hidden world of Ithaka and its quiet rebellion against the Commonwealth. And her actions at the end of book 4 are the catalyst for the entire plot of book 5.

One of the strengths of Chris's work is that he understands that the power of a cover comes not from depicting a specific scene, but from bringing forth the heart of the story. It should be no surprise that his is a writer in addition to an artist. 

Here he depicts Ada's loneliness along with her determination. The title refers to many elements in the story: what it looks like to an observer when a ship takes a wormhole jump, the character Dev Morningstar putting herself at risk in the void for the sake of her companions, the hope Ada holds to for change, among others. 

Taken together, these five striking images have helped me tell five individual stories as well as a sixth overarching narrative that spans the entire series. Chris has made magic here and I am grateful for his talent, vision, and time.  

If these images and my commentary have piqued your interest, the first four books of the series are available at all online retailers. Links can be found: http://www.ljcohen.net 

Book 5 is forthcoming in June 2018.

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And so it begins. . . Again

This is the start of Halcyone Space, book 5. After letting the characters incubate in the back of my head for a few months, it was time to figure out the major goals and issues for each of them. This will help me form the main plots and subplots that form the core of the book.

I don't typically do a formal outline, though I will plan out several scenes ahead with one sentence 'blurbs' and once the story really starts cooking, I'll know where each character is and where they need to go. And I do know how the book will end. At some point, near the 75% mark, I typically go back and outline the entire project so I have a sense of its organization. I use this as a revision tool.

I have colleagues that write complete and detailed outlines before starting a single word on the story. That's not my process, but it's no less useful and valid. Don't let anyone get away with saying there's only one way to write a novel.

These beginning steps take some time. Once I find the flow, the story will move more quickly. Having done this a time or three already, I don't panic when I don't make my wordcounts for the day in these early stages.

There is a huge advantage to having gone through the process of idea to beginning through middle and finishing. It's one of the reasons I think it's important not to rewrite your first book over and over again, but to move on to something new. You can always go back to the earlier project and you'll have grown as a writer when you do. (Though sometimes even experience cannot help - I went back and did 2 major rewrites of Heal Thyself and it's still not ready for prime time. I haven't given up hope. Yet.)

I didn't know that when I started on my first novel in 2004. I thought if I kept at it, I could make it work. Four rewrites later and it's still trunked. I suspect no amount of poking at it will bring it to a publishable state. Trust me on this. It's 150,000 words of confused fantasy cliches and badly overwrought prose.

Books 1 through 12 represent my finished novels. 13 and 14 are works in progress. The ones in bold have been published.

1. 2004-6 Wings of Winter (trunked)
2. 2005-2006 MindBlind (trunked)
3. 2006-2007 House of Many Doors
4. 2007-2008 Heal Thyself
5. 2008-2009 The Between   (pub 2012)
6. 2009-2010 Future Tense  (pub 2014)
7. 2011-2012 untitled ghost story
8. 2012  Derelict   (pub 2014)
9. 2013-2014 Time and Tithe  (pub 2015)
10. 2014-2105 Ithaka Rising  (pub 2015)
11. 2015 - 2016 Dreadnought and Shuttle (pub 2016)
12. 2016 - 2017 Parallax (pub 2017)
13. 2017 Vito Nonce Project (in progress)
14. 2017 Halcyone Space book 4 (in progress)

That list comprises well over a million words of fiction. (And this doesn't count short stories.) Some of it unpublishable either for issues of quality, premise, or market. But each of the books I completed taught me invaluable lessons and made the next book better.
 
Halcyone Space, book 4, is my 14th novel.  (Not counting the 2 projects in the mid 2000's not listed here that I wrote about 30K each on and abandoned for various reasons.) Knowing what I know now about my process, (and barring any major catastrophe) I am confident that books 13 and 14 on this list will be finished, revised, polished, edited, and published.

At some point, I'll feel comfortable to share snippets of the work in progress.

Stay tuned!

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Finding my way home, again

I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons why I have been feeling rootless and anxious over the past months. Ultimately the reasons matter less than my reactions to them and while I've made my writing and publishing deadlines this year, it hasn't been without difficulty.

And it has been with the knowledge that I've wasted enormous amounts of time, lost to endless checking of FB, Twitter, and Google Plus.

I've tried more organizational techniques than you can count. They all work to some extent, for a little while and then I'm back to losing time at the screen or looking productive while researching yet another organizational system.

The other day, I pushed myself to go strawberry picking. I had had it on my to do list all week, and finally by Thursday, I had run out of excuses and knew that if I didn't do it that day, it wasn't going to happen this year at all. The season is short and doesn't care about my excuses.

So I drove out to the self-pick farm and spent the morning gathering strawberries in the lovely sunshine, under an intensely blue sky.

By that night, I had dehulled, chopped, and weighed out 3 pound portions of the 12+ pounds I'd picked and readied them to make jam. (One canner's worth is already done, the other packages are in the freezer waiting for their turn.)

What I realized in sinking into the process of making jam is the thing I've missed this year has been simple immersion. Doing one thing with my full concentration and intent. It's what ceramics helps me achieve, and I've only been at the studio sporadically.

Concentration is like a muscle. If it's not exercised, it atrophies. My ability to focus fully as been eroded by the coping strategies I turned to when I was under stress. In the end, they are maladaptive strategies and I need to build in more adaptive, more nurturing ones.

But I have to do it in a way that doesn't feel punitive.

Making endless to do lists haven't helped me in the past. It only makes me feel worse when I don't get to what I know will help.

So I'm just going to use this to remind myself how much better I feel when I take regular walks with the dogs, make jam, spend 10 minutes meditating, read a poem, do a bit of yoga, spend time at the studio, free write.

These are things that help me feel more like me. The doing of them is its own reward.

Today I took a long walk with the dogs in the woods. Aside from the ticks, it was a wonderful day. I found myself breathing in a deep and easy rhythm while sun and shadow made patterns on the trees. As I relaxed more and more, I started thinking about an old writing project that has been stalled for more than a year and came up with a different way of looking at the problem.

This is progress. This is self-care. This is coming home.

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Happy Book Birthday

I have done everything I can to give PARALLAX its best chance for success. The rest is not up to me.

So I have a book coming out tomorrow. It's a solid book. I'm proud of it. Now it's out of my hands & will have to find its readers. 1/

— LJ Cohen (@lisajanicecohen) June 6, 2017

Last night on twitter, I posted a bit about this - how by the time a book is out, it no longer belongs to the author. And let me tell you, that lack of control is terrifying.

Think about it: For the time it takes to draft a novel, the author is the Supreme Being On High. We create worlds out of our imaginations. We literally put words into our characters' mouths and thoughts into their heads.

So forgive me if I find this phase of the process enormously nerve-wracking. 

I wrestle with the hope that PARALLAX will find its readership and be a big success along with the dread that it might not earn out its production expenses. Realistically, I understand that later books in a series never sell as many as the initial books. I just hope I'm in that sweet spot where it will sell enough to keep the series going and perhaps reignite interest in the first books.

There are some wonderful opportunities on the horizon including a partnership with the folks who brought you HerStoryArc in their new F-BOM (Feminist Book of the Month) project.  I'm very excited at the prospect of bringing the Halcyone Space books to a new readership.

But, still I worry. It's the natural habitat of the writer. I'll be anxious about PARALLAX for some time to come, through it's first few weeks of sales, its first reviews. I'll worry that someone doesn't like it. Then I'll worry that no one's talking about it.

While I hate to say this part of it hasn't gotten any easier for me, despite the fact that PARALLAX is my 7th published novel, at least I'm in familiar territory. And that means I can acknowledge the intense emotions and keep moving forward.

I'm already immersed in a new world with new characters on a new project. That's the only antidote I've found to writer's anxiety.

And while I have your attention, let me remind you that PARALLAX is book 4 of Halcyone Space and all 4 books are available widely, wherever ebooks are sold. They are also available in trade paperback editions. You can find links to all purchase venues at www.ljcohen.net.

The novels of Halcyone Space

DERELICT (Halcyone Space, book 1): A group of teens stranded on a sentient spaceship must work together or risk being killed when the ship's AI wakes believing it's still fighting the war that damaged it decades ago.

ITHAKA RISING (Halcyone Space, book 2): A young computer genius struggling to function with a grievous head injury is willing to risk his life to get a black market neural implant, but what he finds is a planet that shouldn't exist and a rebellion that threatens the stability of the Commonwealth.

DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE (Halcyone Space, book 3): When a materials science student gets kidnapped, she's drawn into a conflict between the young crew of a sentient spaceship, a weapons smuggling ring, and a Commonwealth-wide conspiracy and must escape before her usefulness as a hostage expires.

PARALLAX (Halcyone Space, book 4): Halcyone's crew is drawn into a conspiracy threatening to reignite a galactic war when they discover the hidden power brokers who have been quietly manipulating the Commonwealth for decades.

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The process of Parallax

The novels of Halcyone Space

One of the questions I'm frequently asked by writers and non-writers alike is what does my process look like.

So I thought I'd do a quick overview, using PARALLAX as an example. The way I do this is by no means the only way or the best way; it's what I've settled on after writing more than a million words of fiction over the past 13 years. As always, YMMV. (Your Mileage May Vary)


July 2016:  Begin drafting during a week long retreat at a friend's summer home in Vermont.

This is the phase where I take a cheap Staples brand single subject spiral bound notebook and start brainstorming. Since this is book 4 of an ongoing series, it also means creating a document that outlines who knows what when at the end of book 3. It also includes reviewing the private wiki I have for my series bible.

August - December 2016 : Focus on drafting the story, including the goal of 1,000 words a day, for an average of 5,000 words a week. In any given week, I may not reach this goal, but I complete an approximate 100,000 word draft in 5 months.

December 2016 : After a 2 week hiatus after completing the draft, return to the story and complete a rough outline of the 4 quartiles of the book( This step is roughly based on Larry Brooks' Story Engineering and is particularly helpful in assessing the pacing of the story) as well as a chapter by chapter precis of each separate storyline. (Ro & Nomi, Barre, Micah & Dev, Jem & Gutierrez)

Because this book contains 4 storylines that must intersect, it is a more complex task than in other of my novels. I used a large white board. Across the top were the characters, down the side were the days, so I could see at a glance where everyone was at any given point in time as the story moved forward.

Initial 'alpha' read feedback received from several intrepid readers. First revision completed incorporating their story-level (big picture) feedback.

January 2017 : The completed 1st revision is sent to a cadre of beta readers, some who have read all of the series to this point, others for whom this is their first story in the series. This is a deliberate strategy because I want each story to be able to stand alone as well as work well together.

At this point, I solicited a back cover blurb from a writer in my genre.

February 2017 : Beta feedback comes in. It is read, assessed, and correlated. What I look for is patterns and consistency. If more than 1 reader has feedback on the same issue, it's flagged to review. If a single reader has a strong piece of feedback, it's flagged for review. Other issues - especially ones where it's what one reader has an issue with, but another notes it's what they love - are typically looked at as individual taste.

Several readers give me fairly substantiate critical feedback which requires careful assessment and consideration. I make changes to the story as a result.

March 2017 : As a result of the beta feedback, the 2nd revision is completed. After another few week hiatus, I print the manuscript out and do a 3rd revision.

Cover artist provides the initial draft of what will by month's end become the final cover.

Draft manuscript is sent (marked as such) to the author who agreed to read in order to provide a blurb.

April 2017 : Manuscript is sent to the editor. Continuity edits, copyedits, and proofing is done. The manuscript is returned.

May 2017 :  Editor's edits/suggestions are reviewed, considered, and incorporated in what is now the 4th and final revision. The manuscript enters the production phase.

Front and back matter is generated, beta readers are contacted for permission to thank them in the acknowledgments.

eBook formatting is done (using Sigil, an epub editor), print typography is done. Both take about 20 - 25 hours inclusive, as I have created templates and an efficient workflow for both.

Cover typography is created to echo the look/feel of the other books in the series. Files uploaded to CreateSpace and physical proof ordered. 

June 2017 : Publication. Final novel is approximately 110,000 words. During multiple revisions, approximately 15,000 words were excised, 25,000 words written/rewritten.


As the author/publisher, I:
write the draft
revise the draft
code the ebook
format the print book
give notes to the cover artist

I outsource:
the editing
cover art
cover typography/design

The key is to know your strengths and play to them. Hire what you are not comfortable and skilled in doing. Set a schedule if that helps you keep on track. Having been through this process multiple times now, I can reasonably and reliably hit this production schedule.

If you are working with an external publisher or publishing multiple books a year, your timeline will look different.

Feel free to ask me anything about the process, or describe how yours is either similar or different.

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Reality of a writing life

I have a friend who is struggling with the distance between where he'd hoped he'd be in his career and where his career stands.

We've had a lengthy email conversation and I thought I'd pick up on some of the points and show them here.

This is my experience and I have some sense from other personal stories that it's not atypical.

Written	Title	Comments
2004-2005	Wings of Winter	150K mess. Trunked.
2005-2006	MindBlind	Urban fantasy/thriller. Trunked.
2006-2007	House of Many Doors	YA ghost story. The book that landed me an agent from queries. Agent unable to sell. I still believe it’s a salable project, on hold for the present time.
2007-2008	Heal Thyself	Alternate world fantasy. Agent uninterested. Revised in 2012. Got a revise & resubmit from Angry Robot, but was dealing with personal/family matters and focused on writing Derelict by then. Was revised and resubmitted in 2016, rejected by Angry Robot in 2016. May be unsalvageable.Trunked.
2008-2009	The Between	YA Fantasy Agent came close with several really encouraging rejections with major publishers. Chose to self-publish in 2012 while still agented to see if I could gain some traction/audience to entice a publisher with a different project. Sold approx 500 copies, 1500 free downloads.
2009-2010	Future Tense	YA Urban Fantasy. Agent declined to shop. Self published in 2014. Sold approx 350 copies, 600 free downloads.
2011-2012	Ghost Story	YA horror/thriller. First draft only, never revised.
2012	Derelict (Halcyone Space series)	SF/Space Opera Agent submitted, but unenthusiastically. We parted ways in 2013. Self published in 2014. Sold approx 13,000 copies to date.
2013-2014	Time and Tithe	YA Fantasy Sequel to The Between. Self published in 2015 Sold under 100 copies, under 300 free downloads
2014-2105	Ithaka Rising (Halcyone Space series)	SF/Space Opera Self published in 2015 Sold over 2,000 copies.
2015-2016	Dreadnought and Shuttle (Halcyone Space series)	SF/ Space Opera Self-published in 2016 Sold approx 1,500 copies.
2016-2017	Parallax (Halcyone Space series)	SF/Space Opera To be published in June of 2017
2017	Vito Nonce Project	Cyberpunk thriller In process

The novels listed here represent well over a million words of fiction, written over the course of 13 years.

I have still yet to earn in a year of writing and publishing what I earned working as a physical therapist, even in the years in which I worked part time around the needs of parenting.

By many metrics, I am a success. (One of the first indie members of SFWA, strong reviews in Publisher's Weekly, invitations to SF&F cons.) But I am unable to support myself on my creative earnings, much less pay for health care or support a family.

My gross cumulative earnings since 2012 from my writing are $45,000, unevenly distributed across the years, with my most successful year being 2014. That's 5 1/2 years of income. Do the math: it's not a very lucrative business.

I am able to focus on writing because I needed to leave my physical therapy practice for reasons relating to family and care-giving, not because I had any illusions of quitting my day job to make it big in publishing. It has continued to be possible for me to write because our family can be comfortable on one income - my husband's.

If I didn't have his income to rely on, I would likely be working as a physical therapist and writing around the demands of my working and family lives. It continues to surprise me that I don't produce significantly more now than I did when I was working 30 hours a week and had school age children. In fact my first five novels were written while I was still in PT practice.

I don't think enough writers share enough real data about writing and publishing. Feel free to ask me any clarifying questions you might have.

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