Chaotic Array

Today on the blog I'm talking with Erika Kochanski, author of Polarity and Indecision! On a quick aside, I'd like to apologize for the short hiatus on the blog the past week or so - I took a break from social media for the week of my birthday, but should be getting back into regular posts now! The Author:  Erika Kochanski was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, and graduated with a Bachelor's degree majoring in writing and literature from Griffith University. Writing has been a lifelong dream, travel an ever growing passion, and when given the option to live out of a suitcase in a foreign city while writing about the world the answer is always 'Let's go!' Goodreads   // Blog The Book: ~ Interview Questions: When did you decide or realize you wanted to write? I wanted to be a writer as a child already. I used to write ghost stories for myself after I finished my homework after school everyday. I hung out for Wednesday's when my family...

I can't blog much this week since I'm busy working and working out. I need to work a bunch because I'm poor and need more books out to make more money, and I need to work out a bunch in order to become the messy slut I am on the inside. So in lieu of actual blogging this week, here's more of my look goals collection and some music I listen to lately while writing or exercising!  

Earlier I was reading old posts from January, which is only two months ago but feels eons ago. It was eons ago, because time is relative and time doesn't exist, but I'm not here to blow your mind or lose my thought process talking about weird time jumps. There are shitty B movies that can do that for you better than I ever could. I'm here to talk about thinking my way back to when I felt, for a while, like things were really looking up. I wasn't in the greatest place, but the world still felt brimming with possibility. And with my birthday coming up, I've been freaking out - you know, that old paralyzing anxiety about aging and death, right? And I had a bit of a breakdown for a month or so, there. I'm back now. I'm not going to lie and say I'm fine when just the other night I was talking about mental illness and suicidal thoughts, but I feel like I worked some stuff out of my system and I'm in a slightly better place after a day of reflection a...

I shouldn't, because I've dealt with my fair share of it. I'm a homoromantic, nonbinary person who came out at fourteen with homophobic parents (they're a lot better now) and relatives, who lost friends after coming out, has been followed in public for blocks by groups of men calling me slurs, been beaten up and derided by teachers and school administrators - you name it, I've probably been there. . . . And yet. Sometimes I forget. I think that goes to show how supportive the people in my life are, now. How my mom will so easily tell me I won't get a husband if I don't learn to clean better, or my dad will casually ask if there's a guy I like - those may seem like little, everyday things, but once upon a time they seemed like impossibilities. Once upon a time I thought I would live my life in hiding, locked to someone I didn't love and forced to have kids I didn't want. Once upon a time I thought that God didn't love me and I was going to...

My dreams are not moving along at their optimal speed. I turn twenty in four days. That might be the scariest thing I've ever written, right there. That's coming from someone who writes horror. I was complaining to some family members the other day, about how things aren't moving at the pace I'd hoped, and I figured I would get that same old spiel about things taking time and disappointment being a part of life, but instead, one of them told me I wasn't working hard enough. Here is the thing: I am working hard enough. I'm nineteen, and I've written more books than some bestselling adult authors have. I've given them the best editing and covers I can afford. I've taken on debilitating dayjobs that I loathe to pay for new equipment to keep creating. I've pushed through mental illness the best I can, when at times I thought I would not make it through the day without ending my own life. I'm working. You may not see it, but I am. And I th...

A lot of people liked my post about fast drafting the other day, so I figured I would write more about my process. Specifically, editing! Even more specifically, making editing fast, easy, and fun . If you haven't read the last writing post yet, you can find it here:  How Long It Took to Write Each Book So, editing used to scare me. When I wrote the Lilac Jones stories, my editing process was to go from start to finish several times, cleaning up different issues I hadn`t previously caught and generally trying to polish the work. It was slow and mentally exhausting, and it made me hate my stories and my writing abilities. Then Rachel Aaron saved my life. (Again.) If you haven't read her writing book 2k to 10k, it is, without a doubt, a lifesaver. It revolutionized the way I wrote, edited, and even interacted with my books. You can buy it here . Seriously, any advice I give you will be fractionally less fantastic than hers, and she has more full len...

I'm editing Shadows of Ourselves now, so over the next few days I'll be doing character spotlights! Today's is for Riley! She's one of my favorites from the novel, and I have some big plans for her in the sequel! (She might even become a POV character!)

Friendly reminder that Frenzy & Rage  is still free on Kindle right now! The book is on for the next three days, I believe, and you can get it here:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CTRN38C If you like books about lesbians with magikal powers with romance and mystery and -of course- some scary bits, then this is clearly the book for you. And if you don't like books like that . . . well, there's no help for you then, is there? When I was writing these I really wanted to bring different sides of Saint John to life, but both of my characters ended up wanting to leave the city. And so does Sky, in Shadows of Ourselves - although Sky kind of wants to run from everything. So I think in Maelstrom, Daisy is going to love the city and enjoy living here, because it really is nice here most of the time.

Today on the blog I'm talking with Stevie Turner, author of A House Without Windows (recipient of a 2014 New Apple Book Award) and various other titles including For the Sake of a Child, The Porn Detective, and Revenge . The Author: Writing with a unique focus on the darker side of human relationships, Stevie's stories are interspersed with an intelligent, sharp humor, and complicated characters - you won't find any fangs or magic spells in her stories; just a tantalizing glimpse at the challenging and real  lives of her characters - often while exploring dark subject matter. Goodreads // Twitter // Facebook The Books: ~ Interview Questions: When did you decide or realize you wanted to write? It was back in junior school when I won an inter-schools’ writing competition aged 11.  I’d written a short story about my budgerigar and how I always let it out of its cage when my grandmother visited, as she hated birds and always went into meltdown if it fle...

In the past couple days I've been talking with other authors (some indie and some not) setting up interviews for the near future, and I'm really excited for some of these. I love talking to other authors about their work and processes, and it's always fun to help another writer gain some exposure. Those should be up over the next few weeks, and I plan to do as many as I can, with as many authors across as many genres, as I can. If you're an author interested in being interviewed here on the blog, email me at ApolloBlake@mail.com with the subject line interview, and links to your social media, and I'll shoot you over the interview questions! Aside from that, most of the past few days has been me trying to figure out how much coffee I can ingest before I die, and trying not to commit murder. I get agitated a lot. Especially by the people I live with. Trust me, if I could afford to live in an ice palace in the subarctic somewhere, I'd be gone today. Clark K...

So I thought I would start sharing more of the music I'm listening to, because I listen to a lot of it. I like a bit of everything, but I go through phases. I always like pop and indie, but everything else - rock, screamo, rap, foreign music - all comes in waves and phases, where I'll only listen to rap or K-pop for a month and then go back to indie/alternative or mainstream pop music. So here's what I'm listening to right now: (This might be my favorite Ariana song ever, to be honest.) And on the other side of things;

If I finish editing the first two chapters of Shadows tonight, impleneting the edit notes I drew up for those chapters earlier, then I'm going to let myself play Alice Madness Returns for a few hours, because while I love it, I've never beat it before, and I haven't played it in like, a year and a half. But I bought my own copy the other day, along with a copy of Final Fantasy XIII, and I'm taking turns with both of them. Video games are evil, beautiful, distracting things that I should probably spend less time on. But I won't, because that's how I roll.

So. I wrote some things. Some things I would like to get more exposure and mainly, more feedback on. So I thought I would offer up some freebies! As you do, right? Rage & Frenzy are both paranormal novellas. They're set in the same universe, and while they can each be read as standalones, they work best when read together, and are available in a single collection, as well as individually;   They feature racially and sexually diverse characters, as well as action, romance, comedy, and horror elements. And I want you to read them for free. So, if you're a book blogger, or if you rate books on Amazon or goodreads, comment on the blog with your email - or shoot me an email at ApolloBlake@mail.com with the subject line 'rage and frenzy' and I'll send you a free epub! I would love to see more reviews and ratings - it's always fun to hear feedback - and I'd love to share Myra and Evelyn's stories with more readers. ( Note: I know the blog has be...

So today I thought it would be interesting to write about the books I've written and how long the process took for each one. Not all of these are published, and I'm only counting novellas, collections, and novels - not individual short stories. I have a fairly quick writing process; I take my initial spark or idea and come up with a few loose scenes, and usually the ending of the book. Then I create a character sheet with every character, a brief description of their looks and personality, and an outline for the book. Drafting itself takes around two or three days for a novella, and around fifteen to thirty days for a full-length novel. Editing can take days or months, depending on the manuscript. I attribute my fast writing to my detailed outlining strategies, which I developed after reading about how authors like Amanda Hocking and Rachel Aaron outline, and try to emulate the attitudes of writers like Jennifer L. Armentrout, who write for 6 to 8 hours a day when working o...

So. I decided something today that I’ve been trying to decide for a pretty long time, and that thing is essentially should I leave Goodreads? The decision I came to was something like no fucking doubt. Why? Lots of reasons. I joined Goodreads in 2012, when I was in middle school. It’s been five years. I’m not even in high school anymore. I’m turning twenty this month. I’m an adult, and an author, and so many other more important things it’s hard to keep track of. One of those things is someone who is fed up. When I joined Goodreads, it was amazing. It was full of cool users and thoughtful reviewers, it was a place where authors were started to interact with their readers more, and it did - and still does - work as a great tool for keeping track of what I’ve read. But the community has been going steadily downhill in the past five years, and it’s time for me to jump ship. Why? Because Goodreads is not the supportive, thoughtful, talented, and fun community it used to be. Tha...

Okay, that's a lie. In fact, I'm kinda poor. My version of opulence would be being able to pay someone else to do cover designs and still having enough leftover to buy veggie burgers and a new pair of headphones. It would be being able to buy a new laptop, since that one that died on me last week is clearly done with life. Alas, I can't really afford anything on that list, so I'll keep going DIY on covers (no big deal, since I'm also a graphic designer, but I like other people's art more than my own - who doesn't) and using broken headphones that I have to twist right in order to get them to work. That's how I roll. I think a lot of people have this misconception that I have all of my shit together, or that, because I'm an author, I must be rich. The thing is, and if you're an author, especially an indie one, you will know this - we don't make much. I mean, there are exceptions, obviously. There are indie authors out here who are killin...