Crown of Oblivion Deleted Scene!

Hey friends! If you read Crown of Oblivion and would like an extra peek into Astrid’s family life, the below scene is for you! On the Instagram Live Chat I did on January 5 with the wonderful folks from Beacon Book Box, I mentioned that I deleted a scene from the beginning of the prologue because I felt it was better to jump into the action quicker. But I do still like the homey feel of this scene, and I think it makes a nice intro to Astrid, as well as her father and brothers. And if you haven’t read Crown of Oblivion yet, no worries! Since this scene came at the beginning of the prologue, it contains no spoilers! So anyone can read this scene without peril.

Enjoy!

CROWN OF OBLIVION

(Scene deleted from the opening of the Prologue)

Four years ago

“Courage gets a few to the summit,” my father says, “but fear convinces most to choose the mud.” He and my brothers are still seated at the little square table where we just shared dinner. It’s dark in here—not because of the coming storm, either. It’s always dark in this one-room apartment with its windows that are too few and too small, and there’s always too little money to waste on electric lights. An oil lamp burns in the center of the table. I’m standing at the sink, trying to scrape a bit of burnt-on grease from the world’s oldest pan. The grease is winning.

 “I don’t have a fear of storms,” I say without turning around. Why does this topic come up every time bad weather is threatening? “I have anxiety. Anxiety and fear are not the same thing.”

“Fear is fear, no matter what name you give it,” my father says. The bit of blue sky that had been visible through the tiny rectangle of glass above the sink has gone dark with clouds. I reach up and pull down the shade. After another minute, I give up on the pan, fill it with a bit of warm water to soak, and spin around to face them. My older brother, Jayden, rolls his eyes at me and smirks, but my younger brother’s eyes go wide and he makes a nervous sound in his throat, something like a stifled laugh. Marlon is only seven years old, and can’t always tell when we’re playing, and I think he may be worried my feelings have been hurt. So I cross my arms and stamp my foot in a way that makes it clear I’m playing along.

“Well, I’m not sure how a healthy respect for storms is equivalent to choosing the mud,” I say.

Marlon beams and stamps a foot under the table. “Choosing the mud,” he echoes.

Repetition. It’s kind of his thing. Well, repetition and puzzles. The mimicry comes out when he’s happy or when he’s nervous. Right now, I’d say he’s a bit of both.

“Silly parrot,” I say, winking.

“Silly parrot,” he answers. Then he’s giggling and I’m giggling too, and scooping him out of his chair to dangle him over the sink as if I might drop him in, and our father is prodding me to do it, saying the boy needs a bath, and the tension is broken and my anxiety over the storm is gone, at least for now.

It’s for the best that the subject’s been changed. I wanted to add that I might have a lot of faults, but cowardice is not one of them. I wanted to add that no one could live the life I’m living without a healthy heaping of courage, thank you very much. But I know better than to talk back to my father, even when we’re just joking around. Besides, courage runs in our family, so it’s sort of his specialty, too. It’s certainly Jayden’s. And if my father thinks my worries about the coming storm are the biggest worries I have, I guess that’s all for the best. He’s been sick—so sick he’s in danger of losing his indenture at the foundry—so I don’t need to add to his concerns.

By the time I’ve gotten the pan clean and Jayden’s dried our few dishes and put them all away, Papa and Marlon have moved to the den, which is what we call the corner of this tiny apartment that’s opposite our father’s bed. Jayden and I plop down on a couch that doubles as a bed for Marlon. Before I became indentured to the palace it was my bed, and before that, it was Jayden’s. For a little while before that, when our mother was still alive and Marlon had just been born, we lived in an apartment one block away, one with a separate bedroom, and this couch was just a couch. But that only lasted six months. Once Mama died we came here, and within a year, Jayden and I were living in the palace.

 I miss this place. I miss the way it smells of fish oil burning in the lamp and cabbage boiling on the stove, even though those aren’t usually pleasant things to smell. When I open the drawer where our father still keeps our mother’s clothes, it smells of her lavender soap, even after seven years.

I would take this place over the palace any day.

But every visit ends eventually, usually when Papa’s coughing becomes so constant, there’s no point in talking anymore, and the only thing to do is to send him to bed and beg him to rest. His indenture at the foundry is draining the life from him, one cough at a time. I tuck Marlon into his makeshift bed and offer one more puzzle. “You throw me away again and again, but I come back every time. What am I?

“A boomerang?”

“Yes! But also a sister,” I say. I tug the blanket up over his shoulder and he giggles, but he also coughs a mimic of our father’s cough, and I tell him to keep it down, since the neighbors like to sleep, too.

Jayden and I walk back as the sun is setting, and he tells me scary stories about monsters that lurk beyond the city wall, and then jumps as if something has lunged from the shadows of the darkening streets. I play like I’m scared, but really, what could a monster do to us that’s any worse than what’s regularly done to us in the palace? Maybe that’s why it’s fun to pretend.

By the time it’s truly dark I’m back in the palace dormitory, and though I’ve lived here since I was barely older than Marlon, it doesn’t feel like home to me at all. Not tonight, especially. My father’s little pearl of wisdom about choosing the mud must have shamed me more than I care to admit, because I’m propped on the stone sill of one of the dormitory windows, while all the other girls are in bed. A tree branch rattles against the outside of the glass with every gust of wind. Not afraid, not afraid, not afraid, I whisper to myself.

(Page one of the prologue would start here.)

OBSIDIAN AND STARS is coming! Is it Book Two of a trilogy or a duology?

Hi there! I know I haven't posted here for a while, but we're getting close to the release of OBSIDIAN AND STARS, so expect more activity as we gear up for the release on June 13!

Since IVORY AND BONE came out last year, many people have asked if it was the first in a two or three book series. And for a long time, I didn't have the answer. My agent sold IVORY AND BONE to HarperTeen as part of a three-book deal, so I had options to think about! In the post below, which appeared on the blog PublishingCrawl.com yesterday, I discuss how the books began as a duology, morphed into a trilogy, and ended up as a duology again in the end. So OBSIDIAN AND STARS will be the second--and last--book in the IVORY AND BONE series.

Which means that my third book for Harper, which I'm working on now, will be something new and completely different. That book is still under wraps, but I hope to share more about it with you all soon! In the meantime, below is yesterday's PublishingCrawl.com post. Enjoy!

Choosing the Best Length for your Story

Hi all! Julie here, and today I want to talk about how we as writers choose the best length for the stories we tell.

As readers, we’ve all come to the end of a story we loved and felt a real sadness that it was over and we were going to have to leave those characters and their world behind. I think this can happen with any length of story. I’ve felt it at the end of short stories (Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” comes to mind,) and I’ve felt it at the end of multi-book series (Harry Potter, for one.) No matter how short or long the story, I know these characters I’ve come to care so much about live on. Why would the author so cruelly cut short my time with them?

We all know why, of course. A writer chooses to illuminate a certain portion of a character’s life (I know there are exceptions to this, but I think this is a safe generalization,) and the portion shown to the reader through the story is chosen with care. A story is about change, and knowing what change you intend to show is the first step in choosing the best length.

In “Cathedral,” Raymond Carver reveals a change in a character over the course of an evening. In the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling reveals a change in Harry over years of his life, but those years are all important in revealing that change. (She also doesn’t show you every moment of those years, but carefully chooses the most important moments that serve the story.)  The arc of the character’s change has a lot of influence on the best length for the story.

Another experience we’ve probably all had (sadly) is the feeling that a story was stretched out beyond the length that would have served it best. Maybe the middle sagged, or you got the feeling that the writer was adding length to put off a “big reveal.” I think as readers, we want as much time with beloved characters as possible, but that time needs to reveal something–to add to the plot and build to the resolution.

So as writers, how do we make these determinations? I wish I had a simple, universal answer! For me, a big part of discovering the best length happens during the outlining process. (If you are a pantser and prefer not to outline, then maybe your first messy draft is the process that helps you make discoveries about length.) Outlining helps me to see the beginning, the end, and the major turning points. If I’m outlining a series, this also gives me the opportunity to look beyond the resolution of book one and plan how the characters’ arcs will continue on and expand over the remaining books.

To help find the best length for a multi-book story you’re writing, I suggest you read Jodi Meadows’s great post about how duologies differ from trilogies. Among other things, she discusses the series arc. You can also read this wonderful post by Susan Dennard on planning a series.

Sometimes, even when you’ve kept the best interests of the story in mind–you’ve planned all of your plot points and moments of character self-discovery, and you’ve charted the rising action–you still have to find the best length by trial and error. Which brings me to a personal example.

When I first planned out Ivory and Bone, I intended for it to be part of a duology. I had strong ideas for the two individual stories, the switch in narrator from Book One to Book Two, and how a two-book series would allow me to reveal a developed arc for both of the main characters. I was definitely writing a duology.

But my agent sold Ivory and Bone as part of a three-book deal, and the possibility of a trilogy arose. And I made a mistake, but one I hope you’ll forgive. Because I loved the characters and their world, I decided the duology I had planned could be made into a trilogy.

When I wrote the first draft of Obsidian and Stars, the sequel to Ivory and Bone, I “left room” for a third book. The mistake I made was that I didn’t truly change the story. I told myself I was letting the plot and the arcs expand, but I was fooling myself. Fortunately, my editor saw what was going wrong, and she advised me to tell the story as I had intended to tell it, without holding anything back. I followed this advice, and when the revision of Obsidian and Stars was finished, I realized that this story was always meant to be a duology. Two books was the length that best served the story and revealed the arcs.

So I’ve come back to my original plan. Ivory and Bone and Obsidian and Stars are a matched pair, and the third book of my contract (which I’m drafting now!) will be something completely different.

Was I sad to close Kol and Mya’s story? Definitely. Am I scared to be writing something completely new and different from my two published books? Yes, very. Do I think I made the right choice? Absolutely. I made the choice that best serves the story, and as writers, that should be our goal with every choice we make.

IVORY AND BONE has a tagline!

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Did you notice the change in the cover of IVORY AND BONE? A tagline has been added! A tagline is a sentence or phrase that helps give a reader a bit more info about a book when they see the cover for the first time. The tagline for IVORY AND BONE is "Two clans. Only one will survive." I LOVE it! I think it hints at some of the action and high stakes within the story, while weaving a bit of mystery.

If you go to the "buy" page for IVORY AND BONE on Amazon.com, BN.com, or Indigo.com, you'll see a cover image with the tagline! Other retail sites will be adding the cover image soon!