My freshly-acquired workshop!
It’s not much to look at right now but we just signed the lease yesterday. I’ve managed to secure a headquarters large enough to have a dedicated workshop. If all goes according to plan, the Adamant Studio will soon been in operation once again and I can start making new Seraph Blades! Can’t wait!
Stay tuned for more news and, as always, happy hunting.
What a beautiful place it is. I’ve been here for about five days now but I only just got a chance to make a post now. It’s been crazy. I’m still struggling to find an apartment here and Finnish language lessons. Luckily I have some new friends helping me out.
As you may guess, I do not have my workshop set up here yet so I CANNOT MAKE SERAPH BLADES RIGHT NOW. Please watch this blog for announcements of when I have my new work space and tools and stock to sell. Sorry for the inconvenience! I’m sure you can understand my situation. It’s a little difficult starting a new life in a new country. I estimate I will have a new workshop sometime in late October so if you need a Seraph blade starting in November, I can probably do that for you. I will start a list of future orders and let you know as soon as I am open for business. Thank you so much for your patience.
In the meantime, I’ve been fooling around with a photo series highlighting funny cultural differences as I find my way around Helsinki. A friend suggested that I put it on a blog somewhere … hmm, I wonder where I could do that … I wonder …
I’ve been quiet about my sequel for awhile and I’d like to update you fine folks on my progress. I’ve rip-tear-and-repaired the plot, re-conceptualized the character arcs, and I’m now in the process of solidifying the timeline. Since the launch of my first book, Blood of Midnight: The Broken Prophecy, I’ve learned a lot about what makes a story run smoothly and how to keep my readers on their toes. I’m really eager to bring you a novel even better than the first!
In other news, I will soon be launching my YouTube channel to serve up some more literary goodies with a more interactive medium. More news on that later.
Finally, I’ll be attending a Beltain Fair at the Montreal West Curling Club at which I’ll have a table. If you’re in the area and fancy snagging one of my paperbacks, swing on by! Also, check out some of the other local authors and activities. I for one am seriously in the mood to celebrate after a long, cold winter.
Catch you later guys and as always, thanks for stopping by!
Oh my Gods guys, I found a writing game and it looks shiny! I shall be playing this, I assure you. Check it out.
You know how you’ve always heard the advice that you should keep writing to the end of the manuscript before you even think of editing? Before you delete anything? It’s lovely advice when it works. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t. Writing the sequel to The Broken Prophecy has turned out to be just such an instance.
I stopped writing A Hollow Vengeance halfway through because I just wasn’t feeling it. After some exploration and the advice of my marvellous, patient, and very astute peers, I realized that it wasn’t working because I started writing it from a place of guilt. That’s right. I felt guilty for having focused so much on Damon in the first book. I worried that I hadn’t done enough for Phoenix.
The first draft of Blood of Midnight featured Phoenix as a character who was introduced halfway through the book and ended up just being the main character’s love interest. Thank the Gods that I didn’t stop there and instead took my time to learn more about character development, plot, cliché, and the frustrating lack of good female protagonists in fantasy and fiction in general. I committed to having a fully fleshed out character who could stand on her own, who was three-dimensional, had a personality, goals, hopes, fears, and is just generally not a sock puppet or a cardboard cut-out of a person. Continue reading “Sacrificing Plot for Political Correctness”
Woo! I ordered a small stock of my Blood of Midnight: The Broken Prophecy paperbacks from Createspace so I can sell them locally. I hadn’t even taken them out of the box yet and a friend told me to bring one to her house so she could buy it. It seems that most people are still very much attached to the paper-and-ink format of books despite the wonders of ebooks. I sell many more paperbacks than I do electronic copies even though the ebook retails for only 3.00CAD.
Well, I can’t argue. I like the feel and smell of a book in my hands as much as the next guy though if I’m travelling, it’s Kobo or no-go. Readers want what they want and I’m happy to provide.
I had a wonderful 30th birthday celebration. The house was packed with friends playing with Lego, eating pizza and candy, doodling in colouring books, and of course getting in touch with our inner child via alcohol. I like to take the opportunity to have fun and be silly on my birthday. We call them “kidless kid parties” in which we bring together the things that remind us of our youth and forget about responsibility for awhile.
I’d like to share one of the lovely presents I got from my friend Jocelyn.
This is a custom-made notebook just for me with a dragon eye on the front and my name on the spine. I didn’t know she had such a talent! It’s so cool. She even gave a tutorial afterwards on how to make one of our own. Soon, the Bonavista Writers’ Circle is going to be all blinged out with our own personal writing books. If this doesn’t inspire me to get writing, I don’t know what will.
Just a quick scribble here to say “Hi!” and remind y’all that the Review and Renew Writing Challenge is still ongoing over at Jill Jepson’s site. Daily exercises delivered to your inbox to energize your new year of writing.
I puked up a “poem” for the writing prompt and thought I’d share it with you.
Gears
My year of writing was like rusted gears. Still moving, still grinding away, still propelling this busted machine forward, but screaming and flaking and smoking all the way. Exhausted. In need of repair. In need of replacement parts. In need of a break. In need of a new roadmap to tell me where the fuck I’m going. Fuel. Sweet holy fuck I need fuel and better shit than what I’m burning. I got a warning signal flashing and pinging away but I can’t figure out what’s broken. Keep stalling and skidding out of control and I pray to the traffic lights and guard rails that I don’t crash cause I’m fairly sure these airbags don’t work.
I didn’t lose my train of thought. I know exactly where the fuck it is. It jumped track and rolled over into my field of dreams, crushing innocent bystanders. It’s up to the maintenance crew now to put it back together and give ‘er a push so I can get going again. I can’t do this by myself; I’m a terrible mechanic.
Some days, I need a jump-start and some days I need a goddam tow. But I can’t stop ’cause parking is too expensive here. I need a real repair, not a fucking MacGyver. This wreck isn’t gonna be fixed by hanging a new air-freshener on the dash.
Yes, you read that right. My ebook, Blood of Midnight: The Broken Prophecy, which is available for only three dollars, got pirated by General EBooks. Not just once, but twice. For the Smashwords/Barnes & Noble version and again for the Kobo version. If it hadn’t been for a post on the NaNoWriMo Facebook community, it probably would have been ages before I found out about it.
I’m not alone in this either. There are many other ebooks that have been offered up for free download without consultation with the authors. If you have been a victim as well, you should take a moment to read Has Your eBook Been Pirated?, an article by Molly Greene on what to do to protect yourself.
As for me, I’m still reeling from this. I attract very little attention. I’m not in-your-face with my advertising. I don’t regularly google myself or my work. I guess I’m the kind of person who (naively) thinks that if my book is good enough it will be discovered and enjoyed. I priced my book as low as possible while still making a very small profit (about a dollar a book), knowing how it feels to love books but have very little income.
Look, if you absolutely can’t afford my book but desperately want to read it, message me and explain your situation and we can work something out. I’m human too. I won’t be a jerk to you.
If you are an author, especially an indie author, or you know anyone else who is, please let them know about this so they can have a chance to protect their property.
EDIT: A friend of mine also linked me to the SFWA Information Centre where you can find lots of helpful info including templates for DMCA Takedown notices. It’s a site geared toward sci-fi and fantasy writers but the info is applicable to any writer. You don’t have to be fluent in legalese. There is help out there for you.
BAM!
Yes it’s been another great November for me. I finished my 50k wordcount on the 26th and was able to take a couple days off besides. I took a break from writing for the rest of November and now I’m working at finishing the novel.
If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, I strongly suggest you take a look. It’s a blast.
As for Blood of Midnight, I’m going to wait until I’ve finished my NaNo novel to decide what’s to be done about Hollow Vengeance. It’s possible that I’ll publish the NaNo novel first. Hollow Vengeance needs a major rip-tear-and-repair job before I can enjoy it enough to write it in full. I mean, if the author hates it, the reader can’t help but hate it. I would much rather push back the release date than put out something that is crap.
In other news, I’ve signed up for Jill Jepson’s Review and Renew Writing Challenge 2015. I found it so helpful last year that I decided to do it again. It starts in January, so if you’re interested, you still have a chance. It’s free.
Thanks for stopping by y’all.
I’ve been struggling with Blood of Midnight: Hollow Vengeance. It’s been going slower and slower until there have been days where I haven’t been writing at all, too intimidated by the prospect of slogging through another chapter. When I began writing the sequel to The Broken Prophecy I very much wanted to focus on the female lead who got less attention than her male counterpart in the first book. It annoys me that there are far fewer female protagonists than male, and even fewer female protagonists of colour. Very often, the only female characters of note end up being the male lead’s love interest and nothing else. I did not want that to be the fate of Phoenix.
But there’s a difference between what you should write and what you want to write. I found myself not wanting to write Phoenix but feeling like I owed it to feminists and women of colour. I rarely ever get inside this character’s head. Is it because she’s female? Is it because she’s not white? I don’t know.
The feedback I’ve had so far from people who have read the chapters from Phoenix’s point of view has been universally positive. They like her. She’s a badass. She doesn’t take shit from anybody. She’s complex. She sometimes makes the wrong decisions and has to deal with it … So what’s my problem with her? Continue reading “Shifting Gears – NaNoWriMo 2014”
Hey This IS My Job 