Page 221: New Website, New Life

Hello, everyone!  You might have noticed that we are here at MY NEW WEBSITE! (Those following on my wordpress blog, click the link!  It’s awesome, I promise!  And I won’t be updating here regularly much longer.)

There is a lot to tell since my last blog post.   Most exciting of all is that I have an official publishing credit to my name now!   My short story “An Issue of Blood”, a sort of prequel story set in my Soldaris universe, took third place in the 2017 Dragon Comet short story contest by Sibyl’s Scriptorium and was published in their anthology.  Volume 4 (2017) of Sibyl’s Scriptorium   I am, of course, really excited about this.

Second piece of exciting news is that my health has improved to the point where I am able to do gainful employment again.  While I will lament the loss of my “excessive” writing time, the truth is that the stresses of being unemployed and sick were taking a toll on my ability to write anyway.  I imagine that having a day job again will help with the self-confidence and with idea generation.  It’s hard to get new ideas if you never leave the house or have no money to go out and have new experiences.

The third exciting thing?  I have a tentative release date in my head for my first novel.  It’s not going to  be Soldaris, as I thought it would be.  It’s from my Servants of the Source series, an urban fantasy romance series about a modern order of paladins.  I’ve enjoyed getting to know these characters and this world, and I think you all will as well.  As I get things like cover design and everything nailed down, I will have a better idea of the actual release date to announce it.  😀

Soldaris and Empress of Gold (my massive epic fantasy romance inspired by historical Korean dramas) are still in the works, but I’d feel wrong giving them to you before they were ready.  ❤

I’m looking forward to some serious changes here on the blog, and I hope you are able to enjoy them as well.   Please don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can keep in the know about news and when that release date gets announced!

Page 142 – Soldaris Essential Playlist

There’s a lot to tell since my last post, but some of it has to wait until official announcements. 🙂

But one of the cool things that’s happened recently is that Spotify has changed the way you can share.

So if you’ve ever wondered what the Soldaris Saga feels like, here’s the most essential twenty songs off the playlist that capture what I feel when I’m writing it.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/12600115/playlist/0QIb2DUHi9DhM0kcOWDG0M

Page 75 – Epiphanies

So I just had the biggest epiphany of my entire writing life and I’m actually half-hysterical over it. I can’t stop laughing and saying OMG out loud.

 

For those of you familiar with Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere concept… I’ve always kind of known that there is a relationship like that between all the different worlds I write in.  (Seriously.  Since I was 14 and Brandon Sanderson was still unknown.)  I was never quite able to pinpoint the connection, though… Until today.

 

I KNOW WHAT THE CONNECTION IS.

 

And this means I know what makes my magic systems on every world work at the core (adapted for different evolutions/worlds of course) and a much better idea of how it’s all going to come together at the end. (If the end ever comes; I don’t intend to stop writing until I’m dead.)

 

I am absolutely giddy.

 

And I need to let it sit and let this feeling pass because if I try to write like this it’s gonna look like a whole bunch of asdfjkl.

Page Two: 2017 Ambitions

I hate New Year Resolutions.  They are a great way to start off strong but more often than not, they set us up for failure when we don’t meet all of them and feel guilty about it.  So I am giving up on the word “resolution” this year.   I am not resolving to do anything.  What I WILL do, however, is send my ambitions out into the Universe and chase after them with a passion.

So without further ado, here are my writing ambitions for 2017:

Page One

Source

 

I saw one of those things on Facebook yesterday.  You know, the inspiring quote put over a lovely picture that can never be attributed to just one originator.   But this one caught my attention because 2016 was particularly rough to me in the second half. The biggest and worst thing to happen to me in 2016 was that my health got worse to the point where I lost my job in November.

Which shelf? (Your opinion wanted!)

So I’ve been struggling with the Soldaris Saga lately.  I’ve been trying to decide if I want it to try to sell it as romantic fantasy or fantasy romance, so I can point the last of my rewrites and editing in the right direction.

Some of you might wonder what the difference between romantic fantasy and fantasy romance even is.  Basically, romantic fantasy is a “standard” fantasy novel with a bigger plot than just the two characters getting together, but they’re a major part of it.  Fantasy romance focuses on the story of the hero and heroine and their happily ever after, using the rest of the plot as a backdrop.  The first goes in the fantasy and sci-fi section at the bookstore, the latter goes in romance novels.   Yes, it actually matters, if I’m going to sell it, because that also determines where I submit.

I have outlines for both ready to go.  Both outlines lead to the same ending, just told in different ways with the focus on different plot elements and subplots.

I have to admit that I’m curious what my audience would rather read (although if I start on one of the outlines and it doesn’t feel right, I will no doubt move right to the other).

Weigh in in the comments, would you?  ❤

So that just happened.

So the good news first:  One of my stories managed to garner an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest!  I’m still super-excited about that, and I have one submitted for last quarter, and one I’m working on to get submitted for this current quarter.  I have a few other stories I’m working on for other anthologies as well.  I feel like I’m so very close to making that leap into published territory and I am stoked.

The not so great news:  I am out of school for the foreseeable future.  I don’t care to go into all the reasons.  They’re multiple and complex and y’all are no doubt tired of hearing me talk about my stupid health.

But what does this mean?  This means that since my last classes ended a week ago, I haven’t gone a single day without writing at least a thousand words or some sort of outlining/pre-writing activity.  It means that I’m deciding to take this as a sign from the Universe that I am supposed to be pursuing a different path than finishing my university education at this point in time.   It means, basically, that this is the time to push forward on writing and do awesome things.

Now that I have time to write without feeling guilty about what homework should be getting done… there are going to be a lot of awesome things ahead.

Keep me in your thoughts, and wish me luck.  (And of course, buy my books when they come out! :P)

Whee.

So I might actually pass this class, now that this has arrived on my doorstep.

See y’all in seven weeks, when lit theory is over.

About Coffee

Life happens, especially with chronic illness, and I think we all understand that.  Today I just want to talk about writing, and some of how it works for me.

I’ve decided to give the Soldaris Saga a little bit of a break.  I was getting far too frustrated with it, and grumpy about having to set other ideas on the back burner because of it.  Yes, I know that’s not how editing and publishing deadlines work.  But since I don’t currently have an editor, a publisher, or a scheduled date of release, I thought it was time to give myself a break and let me feed my muse for a while.

I’ve got an awesome fantasy romance coming together, and an episodic KDrama-flavored story I want to start on Wattpad or something (yes, I’ll post details when I get it going, and yes, I will probably talk about the KDrama addiction in a later post),  and I’ve been posting Shadowfighter, and writing for class, and writing short stories to submit (including entering Writers of the Future two quarters in a row now), and meanwhile Soldaris continues to fix itself in the back of my head.

This is the hardest part of writing for me.  The being able to step back and let it go on its own.  For me, it’s like brewing coffee.  You add the coffee to the machine, which is the characters and the world-building, you add the water that makes it all work, which is the plot…  and then you sit back and let it percolate.  And eventually it all comes out through the filter of author’s vision and writing and editing, and you have your coffee.  But it doesn’t happen instantly, and if and when it does…. Well, there’s a reason instant coffee doesn’t sell well.  It’s because it’s just not as good as the brewed stuff.

So maybe I’ve been a little more delayed on my big projects than I might have liked.  But for now? It’s all still brewing while I work on the smaller stuff, and that’s okay.  🙂

Shadowfighter

So I have a ton of drafts sitting unfinished on this blog, not sure where I want to take the posts.

But something I have been working on diligently is putting Shadowfighter, the YA paranormal romance I wrote during high school, up on WattPad.  I’ve also just started putting it up on its own WordPress blog because I feel like there’s more I can do with WordPress–especially scheduling posts.

It’s not meant to be any sort of finished project, just something fun.  So if you’d like to go read, and enjoy, I’ll be scheduling it to update three times a week.  Happy reading!