It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

I remember the first story I ever wrote. It was for a class in grade three when I was all of seven or eight years old. Our class was told to write a story and it had to be at least one page long, both sides. I remember this story, not because I did particularly good on it or because I wrote fifteen times the amount. In fact, I can't remember what I got as a mark on it at all, although I think it did come in at a very respectable 3-5 pages, both sides. What I remember most is that I'd recently found out about tropes and decided to subvert one. I titled it, "It was a dark and stormy night" and my first line was, "It was a bright and sunny day".

I thought I was brilliant. Seriously.

The rest of the story was about a girl and her friend going bike riding into a park, not so subtlely filling in for the one near my house. It occupies around 43 hectares of land (about 106 acres for you folks from the States), bordering a river. Unsurprisingly, I hadn't gotten to explore it all yet, though I'd been there a few times already on school field trips and such.  In the story, the girl and her friend fell asleep after riding their bikes to exhaustion, only waking up after it was dark with a storm forming overhead. They ran for their bikes but my main character saw a house that she'd never seen before and they decided to take shelter in it. A witch lived inside, and she had cast a spell so that her house only showed up during dark and stormy nights and she tried to kill my protagonists. I think they escaped, but don't quote me on that. It was a bit of a horror and I remember that my teacher had a long talk with me after that class, asking how my home life was, why I'd written it and where I'd gotten my inspiration from, confusing me greatly since I was so proud of myself, despite my father shaking his head at me when I told him of my "brilliance".

Fast forward to grade 11 when my teacher told us to write a poem about rubber boots. I followed inspiration where it took me and ended up writing a poem about suicide using the idea of losing your boots as stumbles along that path before giving up and only realizing too late that they'd made the wrong choice. Again, I thought I was brilliant, making something amazing out of such a useless little prompt. Again, my teacher did the same thing, except when I was obviously pleased about my brilliance, she talked to one of our counsellors and refused to return my poem back to me, despite giving every other student in class the option to get theirs  back. I even asked after it specifically because I wanted a copy and hadn't kept one. I assume it went into my permanent file, just in case my happy demeanour was just a mask I used.

Not to say that I've never had mental health issues; I have and I still suffer from some of them. This post isn't about that. It's about the fact that I realized much later on, after writing multiple novels and short fiction, that my short fiction is either very dark or its erotica, which is overall a very oddly opposing set of points. Strangely, my novels are straight epic fantasy, with only touches of the dark and poignant to them. 

For that matter, I tried writing an erotic urban fantasy novel last year, but I couldn't make it work either. I thought it was mostly a problem with me not having enough of the story or world figured out. Honestly, while that was certainly true, I'm also wondering if I'm writing it too long. Perhaps what I really want is a short story or novella about these characters, rather than the novel-length story I thought I had. On the other side, I have a Dieselpunk novella that clearly wants to be the precursor to a string of novel/novella-sized stories set in my own version of World War II with dimensional aliens(because why not?).

What I'm getting at here is that I'm still learning things about my writing style and that's all to the good. I'm sure that as I get even more comfortable with my writing I'll start working faster, clearer and be able to get more done.

What about you? What's your favourite type of book to read, and do you know if you prefer a different genre in shorter fiction? What would you think about getting a Dieselpunk story of mine? 

In the meantime, if you're in the mood for something a bit darker than normal, perhaps I can recommend my short story, Fated to you. If lighter fantasy is more your mood, check out my novel, Hunter's Gambit. Either way, enjoy what you're reading. Life is too short to read books that clearly aren't your thing!

Year-End Review

          Hello out there! This is your friendly Canadian author. Its been one hell of a harrowing year, so while I don't normally do one, I think I'll use this platform to finally do a year-in-review post. I must admit, I usually have this idea to do one and then forget and never end up posting one. That's because while I love posting these, I am always exhausted after Nanowrimo and I never seem to pick it back up before mid-January. This year, since I wasn't working a full-time job, I had the time and energy to do blog posts and keep working all through December. Which was good because it was amazingly busy. I'll get back to that later though. 

          I'll start in January. I was working away at book 2 in my novel series and had actually begun editing it before I got hurt. For those of you who didn't know, or forgot, I ended up falling head first down an escalator. I was seriously hurt, and for the next four to six months, I pushed myself way too hard. I've never been a good sick patient and always try to get back too soon. I honestly probably could have been up and about and a hell of a lot healthier had I just settled back and healed, but instead, I kept forcing myself ever upward. And I can't say that I'm back to 100% yet. I am healed enough for government work, of course. I do notice that I get headaches when the weather is changing though and that I tend to get depressed more often than I'd like to admit. Fortunately, neither is debilitating, even if I do tend to take it easier than normal when something is acting up. 

          Despite that setback, I started pouring my heart into my art again. I say despite, but it was really closer to because. My head hurt and I couldn't read or look at screens for very long, which was driving me mad while I healed. For two or three months I couldn't write at all, just because trying to write down my thoughts actually hurt and would cause headaches. Fortunately, drawing was easier, perhaps because all I was trying to do was make something pretty. In February, I entered a picture I'd coloured into Rhonda Parrish's cover contest. She had a lot of art she'd had commissioned for her anthologies but wanted one of the picture's coloured for the cover. I was honoured when she chose mine for the front cover of the anthology. So, I had my first very official publishing credit to my name early in the year for cover colouring. 

          September was a time of loss. My husband and I lost our cat, Kuro, to liver problems and within a week of that, I lost my long-time job with the Cooperators. I had worked there for over ten years, but my position was phased out. Honestly, I welcomed the chance to spend a few months dedicating my life to my writing. And while I am looking for a new job already, I haven't found one yet. 

          In October, at the very last moment possible, I published my short story, Fated. Unsurprisingly, it didn't make waves or even many ripples (though I did receive my first review on it just a few days ago and it was a five-star review. Please, if you want to give me the gift that keeps on giving, more reviews are the way to go), but I was honoured to be able to contribute it to Rhonda Parrish's Giftmas project. They did incredibly this year, surpassing their goal of $750 to be donated to the Edmonton Food Bank. In the end, $1,127 was raised, which will really help the food bank get food to the needy this holiday season. 

          Finally, I sent in my first novel to my editor and received it back in early December. Since then, I have been working hard to work on all of the edits and just a few hours ago, I managed to finish them. No, you didn't hear that wrong. The novel is done and as edited as its going to be. I've got a shiny new title and I'll be ordering a cover for it tomorrow, though, with the holidays ongoing, I assume it will be a few days before I have a cover to share with all of you. However, I am going to be working hard behind the scenes to get this novel out to you guys as soon as possible. I will have pre-orders going out as soon as I have an idea of how much the physical novel will end up costing, so if you're interested in getting a signed copy, please subscribe to my page here or keep up with my Facebook page, since I'll be putting the news up there as well. 

        What did you end up doing for New Years? Did you have any successes that you want to share? Please, tell me about them in the comments below!

Week Three and a Character Shakedown

          I had the best of intentions. Really. I meant to post last week.

          Then Klei, apparently not knowing that November is supposed to be essentially ignored by the world, opened its beta release to its newest DLC for Don't Starve. Hamlet is a Don't Starve world where the pigs have a civilization, but the rest of the world is a terrifying array of deadly everything.  I grabbed it and have already lost probably 20 hours or more to it at this point. It helps that it basically starts the game by saying, "Yo, you, the one playing this game. Yeah, You. So this edition is essentially Don't Starve-Hardcore Mode. If you're still starving to death within days in the regular game, you might want to play that mode a bit more before playing here."

          It does not disappoint. I can get to 15 days or so, but the last time two times the Thunderbird has come for me, I've died. Once because I was in the pig settlement and on my last few points of sanity... I think a nightmare got me before he could land that time. The second time I was in a battle with some houseplants that wanted to eat me and they got me just as the bird arrived. I am loving figuring out the world though. Wait until after Nanowrimo, but please pick up this game when its officially released on December 6th.

          As for my Nanowrimo, its going. I had a really tough time getting started. After 8.5k I finally figured out where I should be starting the story. Fortunately, those words weren't wasted because its Nano and they still count towards my total. I have stayed ahead of the game pretty much all month. I'm about 7k ahead of where I should be, giving me about 32k of words that actually further my plot. Unfortunately, at that point, I got stuck and my characters started falling into a bit of depression on me. 

          To get past that, I decided to talk to my husband and take an evening off from actual writing to do some planning (also, for those of you asking, yes, those words count towards Nanowrimo too. If it's written for the story during November it counts. Period.). I started by writing a kick-my-characters-in-the-ass paragraph. It was full of dire warnings and general bitching, which was not only cathartic but useful and funny as hell. Let me know if you want me to share that here. I don't think it has any secrets for the books in it, and you guys might find it hilarious. Anyways, from there I spent about 1300 words or so figuring out where all of the characters were going. Basic stuff; what is your motivation, where does it have a pivotal change and who's with you when it does? Why is that a pivotal change and what did the villain do to you to get you there?

          Surprisingly, this is working for me. 

          Here's a reminder that my poignant short story, Fated has been released and is available, pretty much wherever you buy your ebooks from. Check the links below. And please remember to leave a review about it and give it a star-rating, if nothing else. Those really help my book to get seen by more people. 

          Finally, I'm going to end here and put up a fair warning, that I think my next blog is going to be an art one... Maybe talking about Inktober, but certainly talking about my first Paletteful Packs subscription box. Keep an eye out for it!

Fated on ibook
Fated on Android
Fated on Kobo

Week One

          The first week of Nanowrimo has kicked my ass. Between releasing my short story, sending my novel to my editor and everything else, I felt like I would never get to write! Of course, time doesn't actually stop, and when Nanowrimo did start, I had a story, but no good starting place and despite telling myself not to start my characters before the trouble starts, I did. Mostly because there is trouble. Just no new troubles. Finally, we lost our internet connection for 24 hours which forced me to look at my story objectively and stop plodding on even when I could tell it wasn't working.

          How has all this translated into my word count? Well, our total for day 7 is 11,669 words. I'm already above that, sitting at 13,110 words. So, just 226 words off of having tomorrows total finished. I've only written 500 or so words today though, and I'll be doing more tonight. So in word counts, I'm doing just fine. The problem is in the quality. Around 8k of that total won't even make it into my finished rough draft. So I'm just over 5k into a draft I'm willing to work with.

          Still, Nanowrimo is a time for playing with plot lines that don't work and false starts. It's a time to forget your inner editor and ignore everything, right? Well, that is right, which is why I'm not really down on myself. I am above my daily total and while I'm clearly doing some editing on the run, it's only because my writing flows faster and smoother knowing that I have corrected the major hurdle I was facing. Also, those words still exist. Knowing that they weren't the right words doesn't negate the fact that they were written. I prefer to say that I have found one of the ways not to write this novel... it just took me 8k to do it.

          What about you? Are you doing Nanowrimo this year? If so, what's your word count? What hurdles have you crossed in week one?

          The last thing I wanted to mention is a bit of self-promotion! If you follow me closely, you may have heard that I released a short story on October 31st (If you didn't see it, consider yourself informed). I have reached #46 on Amazon's Hot New Releases in the anthology and short story category and is #292 on Amazon's Short Reads in the Science Fiction & Fantasy section.

          If you'd like to help me to get these numbers a bit higher, and you've already taken the step of buying my short story (Thank you), there are two more big things you can do. The first is to please leave a review. I am not asking for only 5-star reviews; any review helps to get my story a bit more coverage out there in the world. So wherever you picked up my story, leave a review and throw a few stars at it. You can also do that on Goodreads, if you prefer to leave your reviews all in one place. The other way you can help is to spread the word. Tell your friends and family about it and convince them to pick it up and star it themselves.

          Thanks again. I'll be back with another update in a few more days. Until then, good luck if you're writing and happy reading if you aren't.