Tessa Gratton Newsletter #38: my heretical prodigy (and 2024)
Since this IS December and definitely the last Tessa Gratton newsletter of 2024, I will absolutely get to my year-to-date thoughts and 2025 plans, but first, THE MERCY MAKERS cover is live!!!!
I love it. The design is by Stephanie Hess at Orbit and the art is by Eleonor Piteira. It’s such a relief to be able to flat out love it, because that’s just never a guarantee. When it was time to start planning and pitching for the cover my fantastic editor Angelica Chong said something about cover talks being one of the must fun parts. I gritted my teeth and made a rictus grin and kind of agreed, yeaaaaaahhhhhh!
The thing is, I have had some great covers, some fine covers, some covers that physically pain me to look at even today. Sometimes they start out great and end up that way, too! Sometimes they start mediocre and we press for them to get better and they do! Sometimes they start ok and every time we give feedback it gets worse! Sometimes they start out fine and end up fine! It’s a wide, wide spectrum out there.
I was Very Nervous about The Mercy Makers. It’s my first book with Orbit, my first solo non-SW book since Moon Dark Smile back in 2021 (six books ago! omg no wonder i’m tired), and my first adult fantasy since Lady Hotspur. Not only that, but since I was about 11 years old epic fantasy trilogies have been my ultimate favorite category of stories to read, and this is my first ever. I usually write stand alones and duologies and companion novels, not a Real Series.
That is all to say that I dreaded every single cover email. But all that dread was for naught. Each draft was exciting, interesting, and the feedback the designer and artist requested was nuanced enough I could say things like “can Iriset have a really smug smile? Her biggest flaw is pride!” “Love the desert-succulent quality of the city, but let’s add more buttresses to give it that cathedral-esque quality? But whatever you do don’t get rid of the giant phallus steeple in the center bc it’s giving real sword-in-chalice vibes that speak to how much Iriset thinks about (and has) sex.”
Friends, look at that smile. Look at that steeple piercing right up into that full moon. Look at the magic!!!
Preorder from The Raven for signed copies!
I am currently racing to finish the first draft of the second book in the Mercy Makers trilogy, real series title to come.
It is both going very well and not well at all. Very well in the fact that I like it, I love the messed up characters and the deranged magic, and I tried something that I consider to be ambitious and it’s giving me heart palpitations. But not well at all in that I need about 5 more months to write it, but only have 5 weeks.
See, I was supposed to have a total of eightish months, but then last February I was offered the opportunity to write an Acolyte spin-off novel and I could not pass that up. It knocked my time allotted for Book Two from June-Dec to Sept-Dec. Physically it’s very possible for me to write a 120k draft in that time, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually…not so much.
As mentioned above, since 2020 I’ve written seven books. Four of them co-authored, five of them for Star Wars, two the YA fantasy duology with Justina Ireland. None of them have been mine and mine alone.
When a person writes with a co-author, or 11 co-authors in a gigantic multi-media galaxy, there’s a lot of pre-planning. Outlines that have to be approved, shared, reworked before the book is written, plot-points negotiated, character arcs planned a little, and so when you finally write—at least for me—most of the thinky bits of writing have already happened. It’s a quicker draft for me, I can write a 2500 word chapter and do it again the next day, because the outlines are right there, and it matters that I stick to them at least like 85% unless I want everybody I’m working with to be annoyed.
When I write a book by myself, I don’t have a detailed outline, and certainly nobody to approve anything. It’s me, a couple of characters, a bunch of thoughts about conflict, emotional arcs, epiphanies, several tons of world building thoughts jotted down in a notebook and maybe a very bad map. If I have an outline, it’s a characterization-based outline more about what the character feels and goes through and chooses, not so much the how of it all.
So my writing goes more like this: write a complex, probably a little bloated, 6,000 chapter over two days. Take a day to stare at it, cut some bloat, finesse it, and sometimes another day to think and rethink (and feeeeel) what happens next, exactly, before I write the next big chapter that may or may not need to be divided into two smaller chapters. It’s frequently three steps forward, one step back, and I often delete chunks at a time to try a different direction.
But it gets results that I like. My first drafts, when I have the luxury to write like this, are usually really strong. The full draft is most of the meat of what the book is supposed to be, enough for an editor to be able to help me shape it up over 2-3 (or 5-6, haha) developmental rounds.
IT TURNS OUT when you cut away half your time to write a surprise Star War and also you’re writing the second book in a trilogy instead of another stand alone you can delay forever, writing the way I want is truly a luxury.
So here I am, trying to balance both ways of writing. Not with an outline—that would be crazy. But pushing forward into the characters’ needs, conflict, weird whatevers, and when I stall out between chapters, I am making an effort to give myself space to lay on the floor not in despair, but in comfort with my playlist and thoughts, to give myself the space to read good books and watch shows with some little kernels of what I need to figure out how to do what I’m doing. I’m trying to ignore that ticking clock whispering 36 days including Christmas every time I let my guard down.
In 2024 I edited The Mercy Makers, drafted The Crystal Crown (the Acolyte Book), and drafted most of The Mercy Makers 2. I had three books publish: Defy the Storm, Blood & Fury, and Temptation of the Force. Plus a short story in the Faeries Never Lie anthology. I travelled to Disneyworld with various iterations of my family, visited Alaska to see the Northern Lights, New Orleans for a writing retreat, Nashville to teach at the Reese’s Book Club Lit Up program workshop, San Diego ComicCon, Austin and the beach with family, Oklahoma City to visit a BFF, New York City for book launching, and back to New Orleans for Halloween and vampire shenanigans. I also finally figured out how to cultivate lots of indoor plants AND take care of an outside garden.
In 2025 I hope I get to travel a little bit less, except of course that Natalie and I are going to Japan for two entire months over cherry blossom season. More on that to come, for sure! I’ll be editing Book 2, and drafting the final book in the trilogy. Maybe drafting another secret project, which is still up in the air. But I am determined to guard my Book 3 drafting time better this upcoming year no matter what opportunities arise. Don’t let me get away with anything different!
This weekend is our 4th annual Untamed Weekend, where our friend Tara comes up and we bar the doors, shut down computers, drink wine, eat a bunch of casseroles, and binge all 50 episodes of The Untamed. Yes, some years it’s more of a stressor than others, but we are committed. If Wei Wuxian can invent a whole new cultivation path while dying in the Burial Mounds without a golden core or even a bottle of liquor, we can recharge ourselves with lazy debauchery and an intense viewing schedule.
As always, thanks for reading. Here’s to making it through the end of the year.
