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Monthly Archives: October 2012

Kid’s Corner – Little Black Cat

It’s fun learning question words with Little Black Cat! To find out if she catches Crow, you’ll have to peek in the book! You can buy the ebook on Amazon or Kobo, or buy it in paperback.

                                                                       

La Vie En Rose

I was wearing a gorgeous gown fit for a faery princess. A wonderful ball was being thrown in my honor, attended by all the people I most loved and respected. Delicious food and wine flowed unendingly. There was even cake, the absolute tastiest cake you could imagine. The man I loved most in the world had just promised to spend the rest of his life with me.

And I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran away in the middle of a conversation, hid in the dressing room, stared at myself in the mirror, despaired of my existence, and cried.

Yes, it was my wedding.

Why did I cry? Because I was afraid it was too good to be true–love can’t really last forever, can it? So I was just setting myself up to be destroyed. Because life goes by so fast, and then we wither and wrinkle and die. I still felt like a child, but here it was my wedding…before I knew it I would be staring into an old woman’s face, and into death. Because I loved my wedding dress and wanted to wear it forever, but now I had to change into another (also gorgeous) dress. Because no matter how much you want to, you can’t wear your wedding dress every day.

A release day is like your birthday or your wedding. You’re surrounded by friends, you’re getting presents, and you know you should be happy–and you are, you very much are–but never as happy as you feel you ought to be. Any little thing that goes wrong feels like the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco.

There’s plenty of emotion, including joy. But not limited to joy. There’s also anxiety, guilt, worry, despair at the transience of our own mortality (obviously, right?) and sheer terror.

At least, that’s how it is for me. I had a great release day–Wing reached #6 on Amazon’s Hot New Fantasy Releases–and I have all of you guys to thank for that. I don’t want anyone to think I don’t appreciate it. I do.

So don’t take it the wrong way if I confess that I spent half my release day swimming in joy and the other half fighting off an oil spill of black, sick depression. Admitting it, writing this, is actually helping me through it, as I can see how the two are intimately connected. High expectations, a long period of stress and the sheer terror of releasing my new book into the world, it’s all rolled together.

On my wedding day, my mom and my friends left me to myself in the dressing room for a while, as I requested, then came in, hugged me, re-touched my make-up for me, helped me zip up the new dress, and shoved me back out the door into the ballroom. There, while everyone watched and cooed, I danced with my true love to the strains of La Vie En Rose.

Release of Wing! Book 5 in the Unfinished Song is Here!

Wing, Book 5 in The Unfinished Song is here! To celebrate, today only there will be a special price. Pick up your copy as soon as possible!

Here’s where you can buy it:

Amazon **
Kobo
Smashwords
Barnes and Noble

Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Amazon FR
Amazon ES
Amazon IT

** Please use only this Amazon link. There is currently a pirated copy on Amazon for $1.99.

If you haven’t started the series yet, you can begin the first book Initiate for free, here:

Amazon
Kobo
Smashwords
Barnes and Noble
iTunes
Sony

Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Amazon FR
Amazon ES
Amazon IT

Now…the back cover and a sneak peak into the first chapter of Wing!

–>

UMBRAL SERVES THE DEATHSWORN. He exists for one purpose only: to hunt down the last girl with rainbow magic and kill her. Now he has Dindi at his mercy. But he discoverers that the Raptor Riders of Orange Canyon have played with dark magic that threatens all Faeath, and he needs Dindi’s help to stop them.
DINDI BARGINS FOR HER LIFE. She offers to help her captor rescue the White Lady from the Raptor Riders, who plan to use the faery as a pawn in a monstrous scheme. But Dindi will never forget that Umbral murdered someone she loved…and never forgive. She vows to escape and bring him to justice.
A DARKNESS UNCOILS IN ORANGE CANYON.  If they can’t work together, the darkness will consume everything.
WELCOME TO FAEARTH…where humans are trapped between the immortal fae and the minions of Death. But one woman and the warrior who loves her will defy every taboo to protect their people.

–>

Chapter One

 Blade

Umbral 

–>

I don’t know who I was before.
It doesn’t matter.
I can’t live in the past. The past is dead. I know my future. I know my purpose. I’m told I chose it, this path, this shadow. Who knows. Do any of us really choose what we become? Does the stone choose to become the blade? The chips fall away from either side of the flint, and the edge is revealed by the stone-knapper. The edge was always there, waiting to draw blood. You can’t blame the stone-knapper for setting it free.
As a stone dies to be reborn as a blade, so a man dies to be reborn as Deathsworn. So I died to be reborn as Umbral: an edge sharpened to cut a single throat.
I have killed many. Men. Women. Children. Some in battle. Some in their sleep. Some I looked in the eye as I drained their lives. I felt their arms rub against mine, their palms press my palms, as if we were friends. I shadowed their auras as an eclipse blocks the sun, leeched their light and stole their power. Their faces accuse me in the grey mist just before dawn, before I chip free of them, each and every day. Those faces do not matter to any but themselves and me, and not even to themselves any longer. If I had not killed them, another Deathsworn would have.
There is one, however, that only I can kill.

Umbral

Shadow, his unhorse, galloped across the field of blood and snow, into the forest, where rain battled the fire that wanted to devour the trees. Any colder and the rain would have turned to sleet.
The girl trembled in Umbral’s arms. She felt good there, soft and tiny and clinging to him like a child. Her hair, brightly dyed red, held the fragrance of henna and dried flowers. She clutched at his chest as if she trusted him to protect her; though, more likely, she was just afraid that if she didn’t hang on, he would let her drop and break her neck. He sheltered her from the rain as best he could.
As if a few drops of water were the main danger to her.
Deep in the forest, he reached the Deathsworn menhir, large and looming, black and crowned with bones. Here he tapped his horse with his obsidian-beaded hoop, and the shadow beast halted. The forest fire had burnt out here, but it had done its damage. The skeletons of trees around the megalith stuck up from ash, raw black claws.
At the base of the menhir was another stone, gray granite, broad like an elongated egg or gently convex table. Heavy wooden stakes bit deep in the ground on either end of the stone table. A quick glance confirmed that Ash had stored his extra provisions under the lee of the stone, as he’d ordered.
When he slid from the horse with the girl in his arms, she tried to pull away.
“What do you want with me?” she demanded.
“Shhhh.” He stroked her aura, absorbed and stole wisps of her light into his own darkness. The power tasted even sweeter than he had imagined. “Calmly. I promise I won’t hurt you. This won’t take long. Come.”
Suspicious yet lulled, she let him draw her to the stone.
Drawing on the void of his Penumbra, he spun ropes of darkness. He pushed her back onto the rock.
At last her panic overcame her paralysis. He expected this moment of resistance. His victims never gave up easily; they always flailed for freedom at the end, always futilely, like birds with broken wings trying to fly.
He sculpted her aura as smoothly as a potter worked clay. She gasped as he fed pleasure into her aura, and while the sensation incapacitated her, he molded her back to the rock and bound her with the dark snakes of energy, wrists over her head, legs stretched straight crossed at the ankles. The rain pelted her, soaking her clothes, outlining every delicious dip and rise of her body. The arc of the rock lifted her hips and breasts, as if in offering. Her nipples pebbled from the cold. She shivered even as her body buckled, shuddering in involuntary ecstasy.
“Shadow.” Umbral snapped his fingers at his horse.
The dark bundle of equine-shaped energy unfolded and refolded itself into its giant bat form. Shadow flew to the top of the upright menhir and reached its wings forward, sheltering them both from the rain.
He used her sweet power, transmuted, to light a ring of fire around both the menhir and the sacrificial altar. Wet leaves burned like incense. Even now, he could not see her Chromas. But when he sipped her aura, the rush of power made him giddy.
He was supposed to take her to Obsidian Mountain to confirm who she was, but he had no doubt, and he dared not wait. She was more powerful than they suspected. She was too dangerous. She had to be eliminated now, before she realized her own strength.
Umbral drew his obsidian blade.

Dindi

She was helpless. With a single touch, the man in black had reduced her to quivering flesh, yearning for more of whatever he had done to her. Even after he released her, the aftershock left her whole body tingling.
Dindi recognized the Deathsworn menhirs, but he had no right to bring her here. She was not wounded, condemned or sick. By the law of light and shadow, his kind had no claim to her. But he had stalked her, deceived her and captured her. If he knew the law of light and shadow, he obviously did not give a damn.
She still did not know why he wanted her.
His strange, dark beast crouched overhead, hiding them from the rain under huge leathery wings. The man in black lit a circle of flame around them with a single gesture.
His face. His lie of a face. Why did he have to have thatface?
Grab it now while it’s on sale!

Analysis of a Book Cover

One more day…

With just ONE DAY LEFT to the release of Wing, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the book cover. What goes into the design of a book cover?

The first consideration is obvious: a cover should have aesthetic appeal. The image should caress the imagination, not assault the eyes. One mistake that some writers make, when they have control over their covers, is to want to stuff all the events of the book into the cover. Or they want to show a scene (not always a bad idea) with every detail exactly as it is in the book (always a bad idea).

For a lot of reasons, that’s not practical. Yes, sometimes the artist has time and a budget of thousands of dollars to hire models, make sketches, paint with oils, let the oils dry, die tragically young after lobbing off a few facial features, become famous after death, have his paintings posthumously sell for millions at auction,  have other artists rip off his style in cheap knock-off paintings done in artistic slave factories in China, have one of those scanned into Photoshop, and finally (a crucial step) have all the heads in the scanned painting replaced with other heads, thus creating a unique picture which can be used as a book cover. But there’s not always time for that.

Instead, when you look at most covers, you’ll find they strive for a simple, striking design evocative of the mood of the book, portraying a main character, in a pretty dress. And it should follow the rule of thirds. You’ll notice that the sky and tress take up two thirds of the space; the human figure also takes up about a third of the space.

Wing is Book 5 in The Unfinished Song series, so it has to have some features in common with the previous books. The Unfinished Song is a twelve book series, but here’s a little secret–you can subdivide that into four parts, or four trilogies, each with their own story arc.

The first three covers all feature the heroine, Dindi, in her white Initiate garb, because the entire trilogy takes place over the year she is undergoing her tribe’s initiation into womanhood.

The first book shows Dindi against a mountainous background, because she travels from her clanhold in the mountains to a new place — Yellow Bear, where she will undergo the Test to see if she is worthy of becoming a Tavaedi. The little pixie shows that this is fantasy, and it will involve pixies…among other fae.

The second book cover shows the ocean, and a couple dragon-like faeries, because during this book. Dindi accompanies badass warrior Kavio on a peace mission to an enemy tribe, the Blue Waters, who live by the…wait for it… ocean. (They have a thing for sharks.)

On the third cover, we have a glimpse of the Stone Hedge where Dindi must confront the fae…among others. The winged figure in this picture is ambiguous, a little ominous… is it a faery? High Fae? Or Lady Death herself? This is also the first (and so far only) cover to show the corncob doll. The doll is show larger than described in the story, actually, because otherwise it would be almost impossible to see.

Root, Book 4, departs in some ways from the first three books. The actress is the same model (I’m not sure if you noticed) but she’s in a different outfit. Hm…doesn’t look too Neolithic in fabrication, but let’s hurry over that… The main point is that she’s no longer in white. She’s past her Initiation, and no longer quite so innocent. (Those aren’t tatoos on her face, by the way, but henna.) The green color scheme and forest background reflect the new lands the heroine is visiting. The black of her garment hints at a character who is not shown on the cover: Umbral, the Deathsworn who is hunting Dindi.

So now we come to the fifth book. Obviously, it’s important to preserve some of the same “look” as the series, while also hinting at the big conflict in the book — the fact that the heroine has been captured by her enemy, Umbral.

The unity of the series is maintained through the choice of fonts. It’s a good idea to never use more than three fonts on the same cover. Two is better. Here, and throughout the series, there are two. One for the title and another font for everything else. The exact position of the series name, book number, title and author name vary from cover to cover. Root and Wing, both part of the second trilogy, use a slightly larger font size for author name and title than the first trilogy.

Font choice is a standard feature for each book in the series. But obviously it’s important to make THIS book stand for itself too. Wing takes place over three moons, from the winter solstice to just before the spring equinox, and much of the time is spend on the slopes of mountains buried under winter. The dyed hair, black bindings, and faery dress all turn up in the book. The motif of wings also features strongly in the story. There’s no other reason for the blue and white color scheme, since the tribe they are approaching uses Orange magic. As I mentioned before, it’s more important to choose a color scheme that is visually compelling than one that reflects the events of the books literally.

Still…look for an orange-red color scheme in the next sequel, Blood.

Sometimes it’s also possible to throw in nice extras to the design. Did you notice the shape formed by the pattern of snowy trees behind Dindi?

How To Write A Series – 02 – Medium and Genre

   

Chances are, you already have a good idea if you want to write a series or not.

But let’s say you don’t.

Let’s say you have a bright, shiny idea for a story, but no idea how BIG this idea is — is this an idea that can last a series, or is it the right size for a book, or is really just a short story.

Ideas stretch. So this is kinda a trick question. There are three main factors:

1.) Expanse
2.) Medium
3.) Genre

The expanse of the idea is a big topic, so I’ll postpone that to a later post. Right now I’m going to talk about medium and genre.
First, though, let’s get the obvious caveat out of the way: It’s less about the idea itself and more about your enthusiasm. I can think of a lot of good ideas for series that I know would bore me after one or two chapters, never mind books or episodes.
If you are a novelist, your enthusiasm has to last over the long slog. You can’t just shrug it off after a book and a half.

But, duh.

So let’s move on to the other two factors besides expanse.

Genre

Whether you write a series also depends on your medium and your genre. If you write epic fantasy, chances are, you’re writing a series. It comes with the territory. Same goes if you’re writing a cozy mystery. Chances are you have a spiffy amateur detective ready to solve a whole slew of murders, book after book.

If you’re writing a historical romance, you might not be sure. Romances are about one couple and end happily at the end of the book. It’s tricky to turn into a series in a way that’s emotionally satisfying. Yet, you’ll find, some of the most successful authors have done just that. And others use some of the tricks of good series writing to produce a huge number of books in a short period of time that have their own “signature” – and that keeps their fans coming back for more.

If you are writing a literary novel, you’re probably not writing a series. (But there are notable exceptions.)

So which genres usually have series?
(USUALLY) SERIES
Fantasy
Mystery
Television
Franchise Movies
(USUALLY) NOT SERIES
Thriller
Literary
Horror
Chick Lit
Women’s Fiction
Movies
EITHER
Romance
Science Fiction
Alternate History

Historical

Do you have to be a slave to convention? Can you write a one-book epic fantasy? Can you write a six-volume literary oeuvre?

Of course you can. You didn’t need me to tell you that. But there are reasons that each genre tends to gravitate toward series — or not. And when we look at the different kind of series there are, we’ll see genre plays a big role there too.

Medium

Genre is the kind of story (science fiction, police procedural) and medium is the form the story takes–often impacting the audience and distribution. Think novel vs movie vs video game. Three separate mediums. Within the visual arts, the two main mediums are television and cinema. In literature, you have novels and  magazines. (Just to name the most obvious.)

If you’re writing a screenplay for a movie, it’s probably not part of a series. If that same screenplay is for television, it almost certainly is. Almost all television consists of series of various types. Almost all movies are one-off – although the biggest grossing pictures tend to be part of a series, a sequel, or a remake (arguably a kind of “sequel.”

The alternative medium to novels, which is sort of the the “television” of the literary world, has almost died out—magazine serials. Before the middle class could afford many book purchases, magazine serials were the primary vehicle of fiction. Charles Dickens and Edgar Rice Burroughs both published their novels as serial installments, initially. They were paid by the word. (This one fact alone makes sense of many otherwise inexplicable scenes in Dicken’s works.) Serials are a special kind of series.

Serials aren’t common anymore, and the death of magazines may have doomed them to extinction. Then again, whenever technology closes a door, technology bulldozes open a wall somewhere else. Serials, like novellas, may make a comeback as blog content and as digital shorts.

The Final Test of a Novel

 
“The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define. … The story is primitive, it reaches back to the origins of literature, before reading was discovered, and it appeals to what is primitive in us. That is why we are so unreasonable over the stories we like, and so ready to bully those who like something else.”

— E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
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