Progress and Character Pages

Posted on February 23, 2017 by

I know I’ve been scarce this past month — alas!  But there hasn’t been much to write about.  The Book 4 cover continues to inch along.  I’m 11 chapters into the Book 5 rough draft and feeling fairly confident, but with nothing I can show.  I’ve started doing another paperdoll, but my wrist isn’t happy with me when I do too much mouse-based art so I haven’t gotten far.

On the plus side, today I started doing something I’d been planning to do for a while: start making character-specific pages.  Made one for Firkad Sarovy today — not the main protagonist, I know, but I like him a lot and it was nice to finally get all his backstory down in one place.  This version is spoiler-free; I might add one with post-Book 3 info later, but ehh, I don’t know if that’s necessary.

Anyway, I hope to do more soon, to expand on the thumbnail-info in my current Characters page.

Edit 2/24: Added Cobrin today!

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Monday Music: Two Steps from Hell — Cannon in D Minor

Posted on January 30, 2017 by

Yes, cannon.

Two Steps from Hell — Cannon in D Minor.  Orchestral combat music.  From the album Battlecry.

I got this album for Xmas and haven’t stopped listening to it in the car.  I feel like I should be writing a hardcore military fantasy with this on in the background, but I’ve never been an armies-on-the-field kinda gal, so I just have to adapt it to suit my mindspace.

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Book 4 Cover Process #1

Posted on January 20, 2017 by

SO.

So.

IT’S BEEN A WHILE!

Yep.

AND BOOK 4 IS READY.

Yep.

AND IT’S 2017.

Yep.

SO…

Continue reading →

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Best Reads 2016

Posted on January 1, 2017 by

erestoia-testheaderIt’s time for my year-end wrap-up!  Slightly late, alas, as it is now the new year, but then I tend to be late in most things.  As always, these (generally) aren’t books that were published in 2016, since I make no effort to keep up with the times.

My goal for 2016 was to read more SF/F and graphic novels from female authors, since there were only ten women in my top 100 Most Read authors according to Goodreads at the start of the year — and one of them was Ann M. Martin, because I read so many Babysitters’ Club books as a kid.  I managed to change the balance to 21 out of 100, but I still have only two women in my top 10 (25+ books read) — though C. J. Cherryh is closing in.

I read 344 books this year, though most were graphic novels or manga, but let’s see what was best!

Continue reading →

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Authors Answer 113 – Writing in 2016

Posted on December 31, 2016 by

cropped-pia19912-main_mcam-sol-1099Last answer of the year!

Question 113: Looking back on 2016, how was your year in terms of writing?

Well, beyond the standard ups and downs (such as losing all will to live during the desert summer and then losing some extra will to live in October and November), I did fairly well writing-wise — got one book completed and started on another, even though publication for the first book is delayed until 2017. I kept a pretty steady pace all year, and am starting to actually feel like I know what I’m doing, and that I’m qualified to go back to some older work and fix the problems that have nagged me for ages. I shouldn’t tinker with my older stuff as much as I do, but as long as this first series is still being written, I can’t help it; sometimes I have a revelation and I need to correct old bad information. But that’s fine. After all, I’m still just self-published. These books can remain living, changing works as long as I need them to (though I do believe the large-scale changes are now done).

Adding to this, since I sent out the answers in mid-November: I also finished NaNoWriMo for the first time, because it coincided with starting the rough draft of my fifth book.  In previous years, I’ve always been in the middle of writing or editing, so didn’t want to take time to do a side-project just for NaNo; I tried a time or two but they all fizzled out quick.  So I’m proud that I got 50k+ on book 5 in November, even if I only did 30k in December.  (I blame the holidays and that video game I got myself for Xmas.)

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Authors Answer 111 – Killing Off Main Characters

Posted on December 17, 2016 by

cropped-pia19912-main_mcam-sol-1099Sooooo.  Not that this is a spoiler or anything, but I do have a certain…tendency in my writing.

Question 111: How do you (or would you) feel when you kill a main character?

First, I laugh maniacally.  Second, I think of how my beta readers (and then my actual readers) will take it.  Then I laugh maniacally again, while trying to figure out how best to defend myself from irate friends/coworkers/fans.  …Seriously, I kill a lot of characters.

That said, I hate nothing more than a pointless death, even if pointlessness is a large part of realism.  And while I also hate the trope of people coming back from the dead all willy-nilly like in the superhero comics of yesteryear, death on Halci isn’t always as permanent as it looks — what with the skinchangers’ spirits, the elementals’ primordials and the wraiths’ bodiless immortality, among other things.  So death is an ending, but it’s not always The End.

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NaNoWriMo Success!

Posted on November 30, 2016 by

Just a little moment of back-patting for me, on finishing 2016’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for those not in the know) on the very last day with a final word-count of 50,253.  Could’ve done better — but I also could have dropped the ball like I’ve done for the past ~ten years by either not bothering or by trying to start a new NaNo project while I was in the middle of working on a main novel project.

This makes three and a half chapters of the rough draft of my fifth novel, tentatively titled The Drowning Dark, in the War of Memory Cycle.  The fourth, The Bloodied Army, is still unavoidably delayed, but hopefully 2017 will be a good publication year for me.

Cheers, all you NaNo successes and everyone who tried!  Getting any creative endeavor done this month is a miracle in itself.

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