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?

New Cover for Make Willing the Prey

Make Willing the Prey had an old cover, and while it was good enough, I wanted something updated and in-line with my Dreams by Streetlight series.  In other words, it needed to match Emerald City Dreamer.  But since this is a prequel, and a bit more scary than Urban Fantasy is supposed to be, I also wanted it to say, "Horror".  Hopefully I've pulled that off here.

I used stock photos that I paid a few bucks for over at pixmac.com.  I used the Gimp for the background art, and Inkscape for the layout.  Inkscape worked out much better in almost every way than my last tool, Scribus. Overall, the project took around six hours, and an extremely low level of skill.

I will be uploading it tonight, so the book should be refreshed tomorrow.

Here is the old cover, since I can't throw anything away:

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.

When Prey Hunts is Done!

Today I finished the first draft of When Prey Hunts, a novel set in the same world as Make Willing the Prey and a number of my short stories.  I started conceptualizing it in late August, and began writing in early September.  It came in at at 69,438 words, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.  I think the ending could use a little work, and lots of spit and polish will be applied to the beginning and middle as well.

My critique group is great.  They've already read through Chapter 4, and their comments have been really helpful.  Since this is my first attempt at a novel, my biggest concerns have to do with plotting.  I had way more characters, and a lot more going on, than any of my short stories, or my NaNoWriMo novel (The Sun Never Rises).  And since plotting is way more difficult and time consuming to fix than grammar and prose, I hope I pulled it off.

It also contains a few challenging concepts.  Sure, it's an urban fantasy about faeries.  Sure, it's a pot boiler.  But the protagonists are never clearly in the right, everyone is deeply flawed, there are a few non-traditional relationships, and I included a Christian cult.  I hope I was able to handle all of these subjects delicately, yet still be realistic, and most importantly, be true to my characters and my world.

It was really difficult to write a faerie as a main character, to make her both sympathetic and creepy.  What a tightrope to walk.  My faeries are alien.  They are not predictable, yet my readers still needed to understand and believe their actions.  Designing a character like Jett was both fun and challenging.  I love her to death.

What's next?  I've been thinking about editing Make Willing the Prey, just a little bit, to make the beginning more interesting.  I've gotten a lot of feedback that it starts a bit slow, and thanks to technology, I can fix that.

Then I go to work on the final draft of When Prey Hunts.  I will be held back a bit by the reading pace of my critique group.  There are thirteen chapters, I can submit a chapter at a time, every two weeks.  So the soonest I will have all the feedback will be in mid-spring.  I can do a few things in the meantime.  Then the final round of beta readers.  Then cover design, layout and formatting, possibly a proofing service, and by summer, it should be published.  It seems like such a long time!  I will do what I can to speed it up.

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.

Faerie Tales

Make Willing the Prey is still not quite out. I hit refresh on my Amazon DTP bookshelf every hour or two, but that's not making it go any faster. :)

I'm really excited about this story. It's the longest thing I've ever completed. The characters are great. The pacing and plot turned out much better than I expected before the rewrite. The genre is booming right now (dark urban fantasy -- thanks Twilight!) I'm tackling an oft-ignored supernatural race: faeries. I'm returning them to their folklore roots (dark, not-so-nice, alien morality) in a modern setting.

Given the state of the story before the re-write, I'm really pleased with how it went. It's amazing what your characters will do for you if you development well enough and give them free reign now and then. I'm a firm believer in the philosophy that your best stories write themselves.

The world of Make Willing the Prey is very interesting, and I'm going to continue. There is a series here, but I'm not necessarily thinking of a direct series. I'm thinking of stories where the same characters weave in and out, and sometimes interact, but it will be much less of a "trilogy" and more of a universe.

This is one of those times where I must balance "art" with "money". Traditional trilogies are done so often because they sell books. People who like Make Willing the Prey will want to know if [spoiler redacted] ever ends up [spoiler redacted]. Or how [spoiler redacted] ever [spoiler redacted]. So they will buy my next book to find out. But if I don't use those exact same characters and follow up on those exact questions -- if instead I follow those characters separately through separate stories so they can grow and develop and then follow up on their goals two books later -- readers may be disappointed.

These are the sorts of things I think about when weighing my next project.

There's also a new character that's driving to get out. I'm really curious about her. I suspect she will be a main character in my next project, but I don't know anything about her, or if she even knows any of the characters in Make Willing the Prey.

I'm also looking for a name for this faerie world I'm building. I had an idea few weeks ago, but it's gotten one thumbs down so far. I want something that reflects the dichotomy of my universe -- Dark, gritty, not-always-pleasant, often creepy on the one hand. But also magical, capable of goodness, love, light, art, and beauty.

My idea was "Undying Dreams". What do you think?

Cover Design for Newbies - Make the Kids Do It

I settled on a title for my new novella yesterday.

Today I spent many frustrating hours designing the cover for: "Make Willing the Prey". I already had a concept in mind, and figured I could easily use public domain clip art and The Gimp. I quickly learned just how wrong I was.

Two of my teenagers were within hearing distance of my various rants, and each time I complained, they offered to design it for me. Finally, I offered them a dollar figure, and pit them against one another to see who could design the best image.

B. hand-sketched a brilliant image, a loose interpretation of my original concept, but one that captured the idea better than I could have myself.

With a good image file, the rest was easy. I'm confident enough with graphics software that I was able to crop and make adjustments, add a title and byline, and have a completed image within a few minutes.

What do you think?

Finished!

Yesterday I finished the second-to-last-draft on "you know what", aka the Untitled Horror Novella.

Although now it's actually more of a Dark Urban Fantasy novella.

I will work on giving it a title today. My plan is to do a controlled free-write describing the story. A free-write is where you set a timer and start writing. You can't stop for anything. No censorship is allowed. If you can't think of anything to say, then you must type "I can't think of anything to say". A "controlled" free-write (which is my word for it) is mostly a free-write, but I pick a topic, and will allow myself a few pauses now and then, as long as I'm not getting too hung up.

I'm hoping that not only will a title fall out of the free write, but perhaps I can use it to develop the copy I use to sell the book. Aka the description for Amazon sales.

How does a horror story turn into urban fantasy? First you become possessed by a music video circa 1997. Then you lose your job (an unrelated event), and spend the next 6 weeks writing the story, inspired by the music video, that demands to be released from your soul. Then you submit it to your writer's group, and they tell you the first 12000 words are great, but the last 20000 words are total crap. They remind you that a good story should have ups and downs, like a roller coaster. Don't just sent your characters into the grist mill without at least making the reader think they have some sort of chance.

Then set the story aside for 13 years. Let it ruminate. Have some life experiences. Start up the writing again, and begin development on a universe where faeries are real.

Then reread the story. Realize the true nature of the antagonist. Realize that of course, he's a faerie! The elements are already baked into the story and need only a few adjustments (thank you subconscious!). Do some character development on the antagonist, do some exposition, let your formerly-doomed protagonists in on the secret so they have various ways of fighting back, and success! The story has been transmogrified, unplanned, into dark urban fantasy.

I like the story very, very much. But then, if I'm my only audience, I could simply write to myself and make the most perfect stories, for myself. The true test will be when someone actually reads the thing.

I've passed out copies to various family members. They have a reputation for honesty and I've made it clear that I can take whatever they dish out. Based on their commentary, I shall do the final edits.

Meanwhile, I'm starting cover design, formatting and layout, and other elements of publishing.

I also had another bout of insomnia last night. I'm noticing a pattern: reach a specific type of creative milestone, and be too hyper to sleep that night.

This time I recognized it early, and didn't waste any time laying around in bed. I of course had already done my read-for-an-hour routine, and tried meditating, thinking about my past, forcing myself to not think about writing, and other tricks. So as soon as I realized none of that was going to work, I hopped up (remember, I was hyper), took a melatonin, drank a glass of milk, and started answering OKCupid questions.

That did it! After about an hour I was ready for sleep. Whew!

Work On A New Old Story

I love my new life as a writer. Every day I'm hyper and happy. Especially when I get a lot done.

It's not always easy, and it does require discipline. The routine is starting to form, which helps.

I finished reading and marking up the ghost/vampire novella and it's a piece of crap. That's not to say it can't be salvaged, but it's going to be a lot more work than it's worth right now. Ghost/Vampire will avoid the trash bin, but it will also avoid the light of day.

Instead, I've picked up a much bigger piece. It's my longest "finished" piece, at 27,000 words, still within the range of novella. For lack of a title, I will call it "SA" for a now, since that's the name of the villain.

SA is a supernatural thriller/horror story about Sandy and Jina, two college girls who are lured into a creepy old house. The summer I wrote it, I was 22, a single mom, unemployed, and had just gotten an associates degree. I had just had a near-nervous breakdown after months on intense stress that culminated in finals and being laid off all in the same day. My stress level was so high that I had experienced several hallucinations over a few weeks. I labeled it "psychic attack", since that's exactly what it felt like: Like some intelligence was deliberately attacking my life and my mind.

I was watching a lot of MTV back then, back when they still played music videos. One had completely taken over my psyche, and inspired by that, the story forced me to write it. The feeling of being watched didn't fully end until I finished writing the story, 6 weeks after starting it.

My writer's group gave me very good advice. Everyone loved the first half. Gripping. Well-written. Good character development.

The second half, not so much. They rightly criticized its downward spiral. All good stories should have ups and downs, but this reaches a point where it's nothing but down. Something good should happen to my poor characters from time to time to give a sense of struggle.

That was the summer of 1997. Re-reading it after 13 years has left me with the same impression.

Fixing the plot on 16,000 words of a 27,000 word story is no easy task. But that's what I've been doing for the past week.

I started by heavily marking up the manuscript. Then I searched for writers tools. My main criteria was something that would let me break my story into small sections so I could get a good idea of the pacing and plot points. After trying a number of free and shareware tools, I settled on yWriter by Spacejock Software. It's free (requested donation) and written by a writer. (It's not as good as Scrivener, but that's Mac-only and I don't have a Mac.) I like that it saves the document sections as .rtf files, and that it tracks Characters, Locations, and Items as well as Chapters and Scenes.

I put all the scenes and sub-scenes into yWriter, and added notes about where I can lift the plot. I've given the villain a few weaknesses and some rules he has to follow. Oh, and I've made him a fairy. That's right. An evil fairy. It fits well with the existing story, since I think my subconscious was hinting at that. I just have to spell it out.

It's interesting that I'm tackling this story given the emotional intensity surrounding its writing. I've always felt that each writer puts a piece of themselves in every story. The characters, settings, and plot, much like a dream, are reflecting something about the writer's mind -- even if that part lies in the deepest recesses of their mind.

My recent therapy this year has often had me thinking back to this story. There is a lot of repressed darkness in this tale, and I think it holds some clues for me.

Here's to you, Carl Jung!