Okay, so maybe I'm doing these updates
every couple months--I can handle this! Overall these last few months
have been a whole lot of BUSY and not a lot of BOOKS, either reading
or writing. I have had at least one long trip, right there at the end
of March, so I got a lot of reading done, (hence the proliferation of
Reader's Reviews) but I've also been pretty sick with the Mother Of
All Colds the last couple weeks (hence the lack of pretty much
anything else happening on this
blog...) I hope you'll forgive me, and let me take this opportunity
to let you all know exactly where I'm at with things!
WRITING
The
Last Inkweaver
Getting down to the last little bits, here! Creative flow kind of
petered down to a standstill when I hit upon an idea that I felt a
very strong sense of "THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING" but
then again, when I ran it by friends who didn't really have much
context--the concept kind of fell apart. Looks like I may be staring
down the barrel of a THIRD full draft before this novel is ready to
be unleashed--but at the same time, I know deep down that 100% I am
still committed to telling this story, and that each time I take on a
challenge to any of my ideas and figure out a way to make it all make
sense to someone who doesn't think like me (which would basically be
anyone who ever reads this book and is not me), the story is
just going to be that much stronger for it.
Meanwhile, Callista is in the thick of "Moon Valley", which
I've renamed "Alithea" and here's why: I was trying to come
up with an origin for the Wordspinners' abilities, without
attributing it to any actual magic, a way to justify why it's not
just anybody who can Tell items, and how "Telling"
actually works, beyond just taking raw materials and making things.
The concept that I came up with was Deep Truth: the idea that
everything raw and natural, from materials and resources to animals
and humans, has a Truth they carry deep inside them, that affects
their interactions with the rest of the world, and also how they can
be affected by external influences. A Wordspinner hears the Deep
Truth of their particular material (Inkweavers hear the "deep
truth" of threads and cloth; Earth-Tellers hear the "deep
truth" in a rock or clay; Talesmiths hear the "deep truth"
of metals and ores, and so on) and they have the ability to Tell a
story that resonates with that "deep truth", which then
brings out the beauty and the detail of the thing, while accentuating
and amplifying the Tale it is meant to tell.
Now, there are only so many Deep Truths in the world, and very often,
the Deep Truth of an object will resonate with the Deep Truth of a
person, drawing the person to that object, whether they knew they
needed to hear the Truth or not. This is why only certain people can
hear the Tale of a given object. If they heed the Truth, it brings
satisfaction, fulfillment, and purpose as their Deep Truth gets
validated and supported in their lives. If they choose not to heed
the Deep Truth they hear, they can steel themselves against that Deep
Truth--but the object will quickly deteriorate and become useless if
they do, as the Deep Truth meets resistance and not encouragement.
There is a second reason I felt the need to come up with a concept
like this: while Moon Valley indeed just popped into my head as I
needed it, and in the first draft, I created a scenario that
Shereya/Callista had basically "Told" it into
existence--but if that was so, why did it already exist, then? What
was the point of this fabricated "refuge" in the mountains?
The Deep Truth concept provided some answers: it has existed for a
long time, centered around those who acknowledge the Deep Truth,
namely, the Wordspinners. Only the Wordspinners could basically
reveal Alithea, and that would be only by telling a part of their own
Deep Truth. Then it would make sense that Callista would reveal it,
because right at that moment, she made the decision to tell Matthias
the truth about why they had set out on this journey, to begin with.
Telling this truth to Matthias reveals Alithea, Callista and the
others enter, meet a few key characters who have new significance for
why they are there (more than "just to be cryptic and
give exposition before the very end of the story!" anyway) and
it just fit!
BUT
here's the problem: I'm about 90% of the way through the book, and
I'm only just
talking
about this now--because it literally didn't exist until I came up
with it recently. I've gotten away with it so far because none of the
characters really would know about the Deep Truth yet, since the
characters I've had so far knew precious little about Wordspinners
anyway, and all information had been severely censored, so there
wouldn't be anything about Deep Truth. So to start talking about it
now runs the risk of either an info-dump, or a profound sense of deus
ex machina,
the worst kind of retro-continuity. What's a girl to do? When in
doubt, rewrite, I suppose!
What
do you all think of the Deep Truth concept? Does it make sense? Feel
free to ask your questions, and I'll do my best to answer them--or
they may be ideas that I hadn't yet considered, which might be worth
thinking about! Ask away!
Red,
The Wolf
It's been submitted, I know... at
least, a decent-sized chunk of it. BUT surprise, surprise--the
submission wasn't at all the complete story I wanted to tell. Oh
no... just like with "The Dragon's Mark", the whole story
would be waaaayyy over
the prescribed word count... SO in light of this, and again, just
like with "The Dragon's Mark", I'm going to post the WHOLE
thing here on the blog!
The anthology version is probably going to
end up a little different, so you would probably enjoy them both in
different ways, regardless. I would likely recommend that you
purchase the anthology, when it comes out, anyway, because of all the
other stories
you won't want to miss, besides mine! Stay tuned; the beginning of
the story still eludes
me... I tried again the other day on what would be my fourth
(or maybe fifth?)
version of how to start this story, and I hit on an idea that might
be a little better... but then again, maybe I should just post it and
let you all decide. Would you want that? Or do you want me to hold
off until I come up with something that works first, and then
post it? Weigh in on
the comments!
So... I've been slowly working my
way back into reading, finally! Over the course of a trip to Mexico
and back, at the end of March, I managed to finish two ebooks: Red Hot Steele by Alex P.
Berg (meh... it was okay... Could have been better, really...) and The Arena by Santana Young
(SO GOOD!) Which means I am now onto Angel
Tormented by C. L.
Coffey (homigosh, I am so
close to the finish of
that series!) on the e-reader, and since I also managed to read Frost
Bitten by C. A. King
(oh man, the Portal Prophecies series just keeps delivering one
wonderful installment after another!) from my "indie"
bookshelf, that means I can finally read Book 5 of Kelly Blanchard's
Chronicles of Lorrek, You
Left Me No Choice!
Just in time for the release of Book 6 of course... Oh boy, that
reading slump really did me in!
The
Sheriff's Showdown
Haven't touched it in a while,
truth be told. I really ought to get back to it, though--the series
isn't going to write itself! I just thought I'd mention it briefly...
maybe because when I made the graphic for this post, I might have
thought I would actually get around to writing the next chapter
before it
came time to do this blog post... No such luck. Oh well!
I guess the reason I haven't really touched this one is because there were a few others that kind of took priority over this one. I still want to do it, though--and every so often (particularly when I'm hitting a difficulty in The Last Inkweaver) there is a small voice that reminds me that the A Writer's Tale series would be a LOT easier to write than trying to nail down a full-length novel... but then again, I have both "The Dragon's Quest" AND "The Commander's Courage" on Wattpad and they haven't gotten a whole lot of feedback, which leads me to wonder... Is it worth it to continue this? Maybe just to have it, eventually... like they say "It's easier to edit a finished draft than a blank page." But how do I know what it's missing if nobody will tell me?
Takeovers
GALORE!!
So... I have found that the best
and easiest way to keep getting the word out about my published works
when my only social media is Facebook, is the "Author Takeover"
events, where I am granted an hour during someone else's event
(usually to celebrate and call attention to the release of a new
book) to talk about my stuff.
 |
| Click Here To Find The Group For This Event! |
I recently joined a group that
does takeovers every month, with each week being a different theme.
In March and April there was Dragon Week (when I talked about "Arthur and The Egg"), then Fairy week (when I talked about "Serenity's Light" and other fairy stories I'd written); a day for Short
Stories, where I talked about all the anthology submissions I'd
gotten published, and a "free-for-all" day when I actually
got to talk about all the different mermaid stories I'd written, both
those published (like Princess of Undersea and
"Heartsong") and on Wattpad (like Amazon Triangle and The Water-Man) It was so
much fun, and I'm looking forward to May--in particular, the third
week of the month, when the theme is going to be "Fairy tales,
legends, and myths". Guess who gets to talk about all
her fairy tale twists
over again? If you're interested in getting on board with this, stop
by my Facebook Author Page and I'll point you in the right direction!
ALSO coming up this Saturday, the
27th, I'm hosting an hour during another author's release
event--Click >HERE< to get to the event page and see if it's
something you're interested in! (P.S., this is also what keeps me
kind of busy so I'm not blogging... incidentally...)
ALSOAlso... Coming in MAY I will be participating in another "CyberCon" (which is to say, a mini kind of convention thingy that is only online) hosted by the group Our Write Side, so if you're interested in exploring new authors, finding books, or hobnobbing with other writers and book enthusiasts, feel free to mark your calendars and look for the event on Facebook when it pops up... Meanwhile, here's a graphic so you'll know the dates! (ProTip: If you join the group I linked above, all of us participants in the CyCon will also be taking over slots in that group during the weekend, so you'll see us then and there, too!)
READING
As far as my personal goal of
reading all the books from library book sales that I haven't read...
I'm down to the last two!! The
Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was
every bit as fascinating as I thought it would be... sort of a
"deleted scenes" of Sherlock's adventures, since these were
all written much later than the main bulk of the stories. For a Baldacci book, Last
Man Standing packed a
hefty punch... but somehow the "landing" didn't stick as
well in the stand-alone novel as it did with the various series I've
read. Oh well, it was pretty good, anyway! Kept me guessing, at
least.
So now all that's left is The
Book of Ti'ana and
State of Fear--and
then I can go back to the library! I also have a book gifted to me by
one of the students I work with, since she already owned a copy of
it--the book is The
Skin I'm In by Sharon
G. Flake. I've never read it, but the student had positive things to
say about it, so I'm willing to give it a chance! Here's to plenty of
good reading in the next two months... No doubt I'll have a few book
hauls to share with you by the next update!
Feel free to let me know what
you're up to these days, and as always....
Catch You Further Upstream!
