The Next Big Thing

Andrew Williams graciously invited me to be next in the Next Big Thing blog hop. He got it from Eric J. Guignard, who got it from Erik T. Johnson, who caught it from John F.D. Taff, who doesn't really remember where he got it from.

If all infections diseases were so fun and productive to spread, we'd have no need for modern medicine. I guess that's why they think of memes as a life form. The symptom of this disease is that I will be posting the answers to ten questions about my current work in progress. As a reader, you have no need to fear -- I will not be spreading this infection to you. If you never engage in the unsafe act of writing fiction, you are inoculated.

My writer friends, on the other hand, are completely exposed, and I have infected tagged four of them who will be acting out their symptoms next week on December 19th.

Hey, at least it's not a pyramid scheme...

...or IS it?

Now for the questions...

What is the working title of your next book?

Emerald City Iron. The theme grew nicely out of the working title, so it is now firmly the title.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

This novel is a sequel to my last novel, Emerald City Dreamer. I wanted a simple monster-hunting plot to parallel Sandy's inner growth, and so used the most horrifying monster I'd ever encountered in all of my fairy lore research - the Nuckelavee. Because I never can be too mean to Sandy.

What genre does your book fall under?

Urban Fantasy.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Scarlett Johansson would make a pretty decent Sandy, as long as she's wearing reading glasses.

Only with auburn hair.

Phaesyle should be played by Elle Fanning.

Woops, did I accidentally trick you with enigmatic phrasing again?
I'm such a faerie!

Kirsten Dunst has the perfect face to play Gretel - round and youthful, almost childlike.

Only with round glasses and an accent.

Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters might make a good Hollis, if he had long white hair and shaved everything below his nose instead. Philip Seymour Hoffman has the right versatility and subtly as an actor, but not quite the right face.

Hollis is likely to glare, like this. Also he is just as likely to make something nerdy and cool...

...but this guy can actually act.

Emily Haines, lead singer in Metric, would make a perfect Jina. I wouldn't want anyone else to play this part.

Everybody just want to fall in love.
Everybody just wanna play the lead.

Jett would be a difficult role to fill, given her other-worldliness. Aside from having elfin features, she is half-Japanese, half-Irish. Matsushima Nanako or Yuko Takeuchi might come close.

She's a thousand years old..

...but you'd never know it. Maybe it's Maybelline.*
(*Actually, it's glamour created by feasting on the will of dreamers.)

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

While hunting down a dangerous faerie sea monster, Sandy Windham gets help from a therapist and discovers why her inner demons won't stay dead.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I will self-publish Emerald City Iron to retain creative control of the series.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

This is a very short novel. My target was novella and it went long. I took my time, editing old scenes as I continued to write new ones. I began plotting and outlining in mid-September, and I finished the final scene in mid-November. So about two months. Now I'm doing final cleanup, which is going really quickly.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

To be honest, I don't read enough Urban Fantasy to make a comparison. I do try to be unique, crafting deeply psychological UF, and so far, I haven't run across anyone else doing that. If you have, please let me know in the comments and I'll check it out.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Folklore. And I drew very strongly from my own experiences with hunting faeries personal growth and trauma recovery. Metaphorically, Sandy's struggles in Emerald City Iron mirror my own during the past year. I learned as much from her as she learned from me.

What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

Seattle. Faeries. Danger. New characters. Thematic metaphors. Harpoon cannons. Squirt guns. Beach battles. Surprises. Tir Nan Og. Angry elves. Abandoned buildings. Drinking. Hallucinations. Cellar Demons. Bodies. Mutilated cattle. Explosions. Boats. Seagull poop. Trespassing.

Tag, You're It

The following four authors are totally cool, and they're all working on the Next Big Thing. Be sure to visit they're blogs on December 19th to catch a glimpse of their projects.

John Nakamura Remy
Andrew Rosenberg
Elf Sternberg
Jennifer Brozek

Shelving Emerald City Hunter, Starting Novellas

Indie writing is a great experiment. The old formulas are being remixed in new electronic test tubes. The new media and models of distribution via ebook are changing reader habits, which are changing the industry.

As a new writer, I have taken lots of risks. My horror novella, Make Willing the Prey became the prequel to my urban fantasy novel, Emerald City Dreamer. This is the sort of shenanigan that is simply not done in the publishing world, and there are good reasons for that. I was aware of the risks when I made that choice. Hey, I've got a long life. Might as well waste it in style.

According to tradition, the next step is to write a trilogy or series matching the pace and format of Emerald City Dreamer. And that was my plan, the plan I've spent the last few months (okay, year) following. I have a draft of Dreams by Streetlight Book 2, Emerald City Hunter, and have invested many, many hours in editing it.

Plans change.

Emerald City Hunter, as written, takes place eighteen months after Emerald City Dreamer. A lot has happened in that time, and the characters begin ECH after huge changes. Changes I haven't written about. Changes I gloss over and sum up. As with ECD, it follows four point-of-view characters with a complex interweaving plots.

Frankly, it tries to do too much.

Too many stories in my Dreams by Streetlight world demand to be told, and sometimes I try to tell them all in a single project. Emerald City Hunter can't tell all of them.

This is a difficult decision, because it is a huge risk. Writing and publishing is a slow occupation, and I will not see the results of my decisions for years to come. Yet here it is: I will pause Emerald City Hunter. Instead, I will write a few novellas that take place during that eighteen month gap. They will be single-POV with simple plots told across 10-15 scenes.

There will probably be three novellas.

The first will be an adventure plot, featuring Sandy, doing what she does best: Fighting the fae. She will have a single antagonist, and will work closely with her friends and allies to that end. She will also begin her healing process. My working title is, Emerald City Iron.

Jett may need a novella all to herself, since she has grand designs that need to be begun properly. And the third will be another monster hunting story, either from Jina or Sandy's POV.

Novellas are an order of magnitude simpler, which I hope will speed up the release cycle, and let me do tiny projects (like short stories) in between. It also gives me space to really focus on the characters that you've come to love, rather than speeding past them like I tend to do in the fast-paced novels. I can cover a few of the background story elements I tried to cram into Emerald City Hunter, to make room for everything else.

Most importantly, I think this may bring back some of the "fun" to my writing process. Sandy needs a couple of monster-hunting romps, don't you think?

A Hint of Emerald City Hunter (photo)

The below photo is from one of the settings in my work in progress, Emerald City Hunter.  Can you guess where in Seattle it is?

Somewhere in Seattle, WA

Wayward Reading - June 29th

Two exciting announcements this week!

Reading at Wayward Coffeehouse

I am booked for my first debut live author reading at Wayward Coffeehouse in Seattle with my friend, horror author Michael Montoure!

Michael has a long background of doing readings at Seattle venues and at cons in various places.  His short story collection, Slices, is awesome, and available at Amazon in Kindle and print.

I have performed an author reading once before, but on video.  This will be my first live performance.

I will be reading three pieces:

• Let the Bugs Work Themselves Out,  a sci-fi short story about ants and hackers.
• The Metro Gnome, a story set in my Dreams by Streetlight world, about a gnome on the 358 bus.
• An excerpt from Emerald City Dreamer.

Details: Wayward Coffeehouse in north Seattle.  June 29th, 8pm-10pm. Directions

The other announcement is my book blog tour, starting next week.

Emerald City Dreamer Launched!

Today am pleased to announce the release of my first full-length novel, Emerald City Dreamer, on Amazon Kindle.  I am twice as pleased that the timing, by chance, brought it up right after midnight on St. Patrick's Day.  I love synchronicities, and the past 24 hours has shown me several.  Every new epoch of my life is peppered with synchronicistic events, and the fact that St. Patrick's Day is America's celebration of the Emerald Isle is a nice twist. While my novel contains no leprechauns, there are korrigans, lutins, and one Irish-Japanese elf.

Emerald City Dreamer will show you the world of the fae from the perspective of both faerie hunters and faeries alike, revealing the conflict between iron vs. rain, science vs. art, facts vs. imagination, and the potential of dreams vs. unforgiving facts of cold-hard reality.

The main character, Jina, is a rock star, who exudes dream-energy, or toradh, that the faeries crave.  Little do they know she is also hell-bent on destroying them.

Emerald City Dreamer is Book One in a series, Dreams by Streetlight.  My novella, Make Willing the Prey, is a prequel, Book Zero, which covers Sandy and Jina's traumatic backstory.  It doesn't really matter which order you read them in, although the writing in ECD is better.  I wrote ECD intending it to be read first, so if you're not sure, start there.

(Note, Make Willing the Prey leans a little closer to the horror genre than urban fantasy -- i.e. it is scary.)

Emerald City Dreamer is available on KDP Select aka Amazon Lending Library, which means if you have Amazon Prime, you can read it for free.  I also have tentative plans for a print version in the near-future.  Also, if you're new to the ebook "thing", you can download Kindle software to just about any device - including smart phones and PCs.  My favorite Kindle platform is my Android phone.

It was over a year and a half when I first began my notes and outline on this project.  What a long journey.  This week I've worked every waking moment to get it out on time.  Last night I shed tears of joy and sat stunned in disbelief as I finally clicked the "Done" button on Kindle Desktop Publishing.

For all the people who helped and supported me, I wrote a long list of acknowledgements in the back pages of the novel.  I'd like to again thank my family, the Cloud City Wordslingers, my beta readers, and of course my readers.  No gratitude is ever enough, although I guess there's such a thing as "annoyingly too much".  :)

What will I do to celebrate this accomplishment?  I will force myself to stop working, just for today, and take a much-needed sanity break.  I plan to play RoboTek HD on my newly inherited iPad (I told you there were synchronicities) for the rest of the day.

Please enjoy reading my book.  If you like it, please tell your friends.  And feel free to review me on Amazon, Good Reads, your blog, and anywhere else.

Final Cover... (or IS it?)

This is what I went with.  I had a number of people offer feedback, and my friend Michael Montoure even did his own fantastic design, which I borrowed some ideas from.  I took all of your advice, except one good suggestion from two people, relating to the title, which would have been too time-consuming to implement with the tools I used.

Everything is uploaded to Amazon and pending publication.  Look forward to an announcement tomorrow.  It's a perfect synchronicity -- tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, and my book is about faeries!  How's that for lucky charms?

Cover Draft - Judge This Cover

Here it is, at long last:

This is a low-res JPEG draft of my cover with layout.  I am not an expert at design, although I know a couple of the basics.  Please let me know what you think, and if there's something I could do better, please let me know!

This was designed with the Amazon site in mind.  I made sure the title and my name are both readable at super-tiny thumbnail sizes.  I also wanted it to look good at Amazon's medium thumbnail size, and work as a trade-paper cover in a large size.  (It may need slight tweaks for the trade paper version.  My focus was on the initial ebook release.)

Please leave feedback in the comments.  Thanks!

Emerald City Dreamer Cover Art

One of the best parts about going indie is having full control over the cover art.  My artist is Ana Cruz, (DeviantArt profile) and I was able to explain to her my vision, and work with her until the cover art for Emerald City Dreamer was perfect.  She was a joy to work with.  I am very proud of the final product:

I will be doing design myself, which includes cropping and adding the title.

Some people may wonder how this process works.  I will tell you.

I went to DeviantArt.com and searched on "fairy", not only to find an artist, but to get an idea of what kind of cover I wanted.  I had recently browsed the sci-fi/fantasy section at the bookstore to see what current trends were, so I didn't end up with something out of date.

By browsing here, I decided I wanted a photo manipulation style, and then I let my visualization processes stew for a while until I imagined my character in the pose I wanted, with props and background.  I made a terrible sketch in pencil just so I could remember the details, bookmarked the artists and images I liked, and waited a few months.  (I was still running the manuscript past my fellow Wordslingers, and publication was still far off.)

When I returned to the process, I ruled out the artists I had bookmarked for various reasons, so I had to start over again -- this time I searched for "photo manipulation".  I chose three artists based on these criteria:  1) I liked their art, 2) they seemed professional -- i.e. they presented their gallery in a professional manner, they listed the fact that they took commissions, they had their own website, and they had a portfolio of previously commissioned work.

Here are some examples of what I looked for.  Notice the sidebars are well laid out, contain links to offsite profiles including a professional website, and they state she offers artistic services.  Deviant Art hobbyists often do amazing work, but will not list their credentials or mention commissions.  They may or may not be able to do a great cover for you, and who knows if they can act professionally.

I contacted these artists with a professional, serious email, stating my intentions and asking for details such as timeline and price.  I settled on one artist, but her workload was full, so I started the process again, contacting three more artists, at which point I found Ana.

What impressed me most about Ana was her professional attitude in her email replies.  She stated that she always produces a "sketch" or outline of the art before spending too many hours on it, so that if there were foundational corrections, it saves time and money.  That showed me that she'd given this lots of thought.  If you are commissioning cover art, I would strongly recommend you request this of the artist.  Given that this is a digital image, my "sketch" was full color and consisted of the basic model standing in front of the basic background.  Details such as her hair, props, touch-ups, color-finishing, etc. had not yet been done.  The feedback I gave at this level greatly improved the direction of the image, so I was able to get exactly what I had envisioned.

As an indie writer, my toolbox needs to include the ability to describe an image to an artist in sufficient detail to get what I want.  I'd had some practice on a tattoo I got just a few months before starting this, and I quickly learned not to be fuzzy on any detail.  It forced me to really dive in and not gloss over anything I thought might be important.  Ana was a perfect fit, because she was able to listen.  She got it all, including the facial expression I wanted -- which I thought would be impossible to achieve.

The next time I do this, I will plan ahead a lot further.  It's difficult when you're in the middle of the second draft of a novel to think about the cover art, and to commit to getting started on that piece, especially when you're full of uncertainties and self-doubt.  But the process did take three or four months.  Fortunately, I was far enough behind on the revisions, line edits, and everything else, that it didn't matter.  Of course in the future, now that I've gone through the full process, I should be able to better plan the timing of everything.

They say you should also begin marketing efforts long before release date, and I don't even have a release date.  I've been reluctant to commit to anything until certain things are done -- and it feels weird to market without a cover.  For my second novel, I will be better prepared on all levels.  This novel has very much been a learning process.

Urban Fantasy Short Stories Roundup

Indie Urban Fantasy has a monthly newsletter.  You can sign up here, and read the archives here.

I've been writing short stories there every month since August.  All but one all are set in my fae world, the same as Make Willing the Prey and my work in progress, Emerald City Dreamer and Emerald City Hunter.  In fact, two of the characters, Jett and Perstin, are both in Emerald City Dreamer.

Some of these are whimsical and some fall into the creepy/scary category.  That's just how faeries are.

Right After Feeding Time

Vivian is a crazy cat lady and a witch.  Will her powers protect her when she meddles with forces she does not understand?

The Thief at 619

Perstin is a pygsie with a penchant for painting.  But the supplies he uses aren't exactly his...

The Metro Gnome

Buses are the perfect place for gnomes who love books. Too bad nobody ever reads anymore.

Cold Hunger

It lives in the woods, and it is always hungry.

I hope you enjoy!

Indie Urban Fantasy Roundup

It's been a while since I posted on here.  I have been writing, and I have been blogging.  Since my August post, I have written 116,000 words of novel (two novels).  And I've been blogging twice-monthly over at Indie Urban Fantasy.  The goal was to link an excerpt from each one, in a separate post, around the time of the original posting, but... well... Writing two novels in three months is one of the best excuses I have ever had.

So here's the roundup.

A three-part series on faeries:

The Science of Faeries Part 1
The Science of Faeries Part 2
The Science of Faeries Part 3

Urban Fantasy is the New Folktale:

Folktales in the past did not always begin "Once upon a time, in a land far away". When medieval German mothers told their children tales, they often began, "Just down the road by the old church, there lives a witch", or "When I was as old as you, I met a dwarf in the woods."...

Argentina Gnome - Creepy Reality? Or Just a Hoax?

In 2008, the small town of Guemes, Argentina gained notoriety when The Sun (UK) reported that a gnome had been captured on film. According to The Sun, locals had been plagued by this little gnome for some time.  The boys who captured this video were minding their own business when they heard a sound, as if someone where throwing rocks.  When Jose Alvarez, who had been playing around with his phone camera, saw a movement in the grass, he pointed it towards the sound.  And that's when he captured the gnome...

A humorous post about supernatural NaNoWriMo participants, Interview with a NaNoWriPire:

As you all know, Belle Art ran a popular late-night paranormal podcast. She disappeared last June under mysterious circumstances, along with every copy of every podcast she ever recorded. These transcripts survive. They were of a show taken exactly one year ago, today...

For a very special Thanksgiving post, featuring infinite turkeys, finite unicorns, Zeus, and how they are related, see A Toast to The Copious Cornucopia of Ancient and Modern Folktales

And most recently, last week in fact, I wrote about Mind Control, Mystical Mesmerism, and Other Magical Compulsions, in which I explore all the methods a modern-day fantasy character might use to force you against your will. 

Up next, a roundup of all the short stories I have written for the Indie Urban Fantasy Newsletter.  But you'll have to wait until tomorrow. :)

Make Willing the Prey

It's published!



Faeries: Cute, sparkly, magical and serene. Only one of these is true; They're magical. Save the rest for vampires. If you attract the attention of a faerie, you might wish all they wanted is your blood.

Sandy Windham is a lonely history major piled up to her elbows in books, facts, and the names of dead kings. Old wars and dynastic successions mean more to her than finding love. She's the least likely person to ever believe in faeries, and she especially wouldn't want to marry one. That's why she's caught the eye of Haun, a wicked faerie who's been put to an interesting challenge: Get a banal girl to marry him.

At first Sandy is delighted to receive so many luxurious gifts from a secret admirer. All she has to do is play his silly little games. It's flattering and fun, and she hopes to one day meet this mysterious romantic.

But before long the seduction turns chilling and Sandy wants the game to stop. By then it's too late. She and her friend Jina are ensnared in a web of illusions they may never be able to escape.

Once upon a time, fairytales were scary. Now they are again. Make Willing the Prey is a dark urban fantasy and horror novella that will startle you into believing in faeries.

Excerpt:

A draft fluttered the book open. It sped through some pages, while on others it slowed, as though it were looking for a specific paragraph.

The pages stopped moving near the center of the book. Sandy leaned in to read the page, looking for some kind of meaning or reason. Before she could see a single word, the center of the book began filling with red. Not wax this time. Blood.

The blood seeped upward from the center, absorbing into the white paper and crisp black words.

"What, did you get a little bored you sick f***?" Sandy shouted at the ceiling. "Decided it's time to play again?"

There was no answer. Instead, the edge of the pages, untouched by blood, began to rot. They crumbled with age, as though the book were bio-degrading before her eyes. The blood-soaked portion remained unchanged.

Yet the blood continued to flow. It now pushed away brittle bits of paper. Dirtied and thickened with dust, it oozed gently onto the floor.

"We've done something wrong," Lewis whispered.

Sandy smelled something dead. An acrid, nose biting smell. She looked up and around, sniffing, trying to find its direction. Jina had moved to her side, firelight shining on her face.

Sandy looked back at the book and Jina screamed. The body of a green salamander twisted back and forth as it walked off the edge of the cloth binding. Tiny footprints of blood trailed behind it.

"Let's go. Now." Lewis pulled Jina towards the door. Sandy followed close behind.