Shockingly, not many people read this blog. I know, I know, a blogger blog for an indie author that hasn't regularly published since 2020/2021 isn't a huge hit. Shocker, right?
So I think sometimes I shouldn't even bother publishing here, but then I think, there's no reason I shouldn't, either.
Frankly I do it for myself as much as anyone else; it keeps my head clear and me focused on my goals, rather than ambiguously shuffling around trying to remember what I was doing. Like, right now, I'm working on things I can't announce, but I am working on things.
Like, launching new pen names, new books, republishing old books with cool new editions. Writing sequels. But it's hard, hard work. And I'm also psyching myself out.
I used to blog so much, and had so much fun.
I think that's worth trying again.
I noticed last year I only posted four times. Probably because it flew by, but also because it felt like I had so much happening. Now I kind of wish I had slowed down and made more of that time and documented it more. Ah well, I can at least start now.
The tracklist is eleven songs. There was another song called Twisted Delicate that came just before and led into the track 'somewhere in the middle' but it kept getting copyrighted and made private. I submitted an appeal and they restored it only to flag it and remove it again. I'm at my wits end. I'll still publish that track elsewhere because I did remove all the copyrighted samples from it only for them to still mess around.
Anyway it's got a little pop, a little rock/grunge and a little weird digital stuff. I never know how to make something one genre, or make the genres sound interesting, but it is what it is. I love this record.
For now, that is. I'll probably decide I hate it in a few weeks and then make a new one.
I have a weird love/hate relationship with all my music, but it's the best I can make it and at a certain point you just have to release shit.
I'm gonna get back to my writing projects, but at least I feel like I've contributed something to this blog for this year.
I outlined a new story last night, but I did it entirely on paper, which is curious for me. I am such a digital writer. I need a laptop or a computer or something, or I cannot get a novel done. A journal entry or a short story is fine to write on paper, and I like taking copious amounts of notes in journals and notebooks and a sketchbook or two, but I never have the urge to like write a novel entirely by hand. Who am I, Zoe Marriott? No, I am not, and that's probably a good thing because I could never pull off being a British person anyways.
The point is I was surprised how fun it was. I feel like this story is very pink/purple and so I used a bright pink pen and I outlined the entire first story out of a duology. I have vague ideas about what the sequel could be, but I'm not sure what the theme is so a lot of it is cloudy.
I may be saying too much, but it's either an engagement or a birthday party. But the first story is more of a seduction/trap so I'm worrying about that first.
I'm drafting it tonight but it's not as ambient because it was raining last night and I kept the window open for a bit and it was very nice. But I can write without the sound of rain. As long as I have a computer to do it on, seriously, I could not be a writer pre-80s or 90s and even then computers were so rough and ugly. I love modern tech. If I'm time traveling I'm brining my phone and tablet with me and if the locals think I'm a fabulous magician with amazing eyebrows and light-up paper, so be it. It's an amazing and totally awesome burden I'll just have to accept with grace and humility, because that's how powerful I am.
I'm even powerful enough to drink this cold coffee instead of reheating it. That's definitely not because I'm too lazy to walk to the kitchen. And now I'll go continue writing books people will hopefully read instead of ridiculous rambly blogs they definitely won't!
PS, the entire album Who I Am by Tasha Angela is amazing. Spotify kept recommending it so I checked it out and Who I Am, Uphill Battle, and The One are fantastic. I didn't love Chloe's new album BUT Cheatback is one of the best songs I've heard in years and she should definitely go country, 100% I think I like her pop music better when she's working as a team with Halle though, for sure.
I also am slowly making my way through Andrew Bird's discography and the song Sifters made me cry like a bitch the other day.
Also when I finish Rescue and share the book playlist it's gonna knock your guys's socks off, mark my words.
PSS, my new Amanda Hocking books (they're actually the old 2010 self-published editions with the turquoise covers) got here, but it's just the first two and I'm still waiting on Ascend. Once all three are reunited I'm gonna post some pics. Torn is a little worn but Switched is high quality as fuck, and the covers look so pretty in person!
*Title from the song Show Me Yours by Trisha Paytas. So all I've done for the past two days is work on this new story I don't want to talk about, and play Fortnite. I'm now officially trash. To be fair I also walked to our mailbox today but the only thing inside was a death threat/parking ticket reminder. It was really nice outside, even though it was cold as hell. I wore combat boots instead of sneakers so I wasn't slipping on all the ice for once. It's weirdly beautiful and, I guess, 'fresh' outside when it's winter and there's snow everywhere but it's still sunny. All the white snow and golden light combines and makes things look like some kind of a fantasy world. Anyway, my walk was nice, but I'm sore all over. I'm probably ruining my back by sitting in all the weird positions I sit in. I made a blanket nest on the floor in a corner of my room and I've been retreating there more often than I want to admit even though I know it's really fudging up my back and shoulders, especially my neck. Oh well, though, it's comfy and I have no decent chairs and even if I did, I'd want to sit on the floor anyway because I'm a weirdo. The truth is both my bed and my house in general are twisted and bent to hell. The entire world is warped. I have no money to get a new bed, but even if I did I'd probably spend it on books... So I have to deal with my back problems and I mostly do it by spraying my entire body with a muscle relaxant that has peppermint in it but honestly just smells like root beer. Like to a degree that it's weird. I think it's about time I give my body a break from the constant assault of coffee and weed I put it under, so I'm cutting those out for a couple days, hopefully, even though I already cut back on smoking. The truth is it helped with quiet a few things, so I guess that's a sign I should keep cutting back. I'm one of those people who doesn't like to do what's good for me, though, and even when I finally relent and do it, I end up kicking and screaming the whole way. In fact, it's probably why I'm writing this blog right now instead of writing my next book. To be fair, I only have a couple more chapters to write, because it's not actually a book, it's a novella, and I am in love with it, but I'm at the final fight scene and I always kind of hate the action scenes because as cool as they can be, I'm more interested in characters just talking and having feelings about each other, and it's also a scene where some reveals need to happen to most of the characters present, and a lot of different moving pieces are involved, and I'm not sure entirely if I'm wrapping it all up right. But it doesn't really matter, right? The first entry in a series doesn't even need to wrap much up, it mostly just needs to get you excited for the next one, and I think it will. I actually wrote the first 10k words of this project all in one night, and I really had a lot of fun with it up to now, but I think I need to reread it all from the start and do some editing to re-familiarize myself with it before I hop back in and write the end. I know 'they' say you shouldn't edit as you write, 'they' being the unseen council of art gods whose opinions get spread around the internet as fact, or the cold hard rules of writing, but I'm gonna go ahead and break that rules. I've been hanging out playing video games and listening to the new Trisha Paytas EP all day. I was really hoping I'd get my new books in the mail, since some are supposed to come this week, but I don't think they'll get here until tomorrow some time, and I'm annoyed about it. I want those books! I've got the entire My Blood Approves series coming, both Hollows books, and Gumiho 1 (Wicked Fox) and I bought a box-set of the Splintered trilogy so I can have nice new paperbacks that actually match, because I haven't read book three and I hate that the copies of the first two I have don't match, one is paperback and the other is hardcover, and I prefer paperback, which I've been told I'm weird for by hardcover lovers, who are what we in the business of being awesome call haters. <__<
I'm already reading a ton of books including The Red Scrolls of Magic and Margaret Sthol's Black Widow book Forever Red (I also need its sequel, gah) because I want to get excited for Black Widow's solo movie. The trailer they just put out looks awesome. I'm also considering rereading The Hunger Games because Fortnite really reminds me of it, lol. I haven't read those books in two or three years now, and I watched the trailers for their movies earlier and got really nostalgic. Remember when we were all like a hundred years younger and The Hunger Games was first blowing up, and the first movie had just come out in theaters? Damn, we are old. That said Suzanne Collins is coming to save western society with another book in that world, so hey, maybe the Gods who run the simulation haven't abandoned us yet at all! Anyway I will leave you with the promise of new links and new covers for new titles next time I post! I'm not letting myself write another blog until I write my damn novella! I'm probably going to go back on what I said about quitting coffee, aren't I? I know I am. - XOXO, your local insane indie author who is definitely NOT Gossip Girl, I swear
Obviously I've blogged more in the past couple days than I have in a long time, and that's going to keep happening, because I'm in a much more convenient position to write blog posts now. So, here's some stuff you can except to see me talking about in the next few weeks and months: 1) Spider-Man. This has happened and will happen again. 2) Video games in general. I've got Fallout 4 and inFamous First Light coming in the mail, and inFamous Second Son just arrived today. 3) The short stories I'm working on! 4) Pop music. Always pop music. Although right now I'm weirdly getting back into indie rock. 5) Dropping Like Flies. This is my next new full-length book and it's about a cannibal. Nuff said.
I figured out how to fix the previous posts I mentioned in, well, my previous post; I had to edit their HTML directly for some reason. Changing actual post settings didn't work. Had to manual that shiz. Blogger is glitchy. It has the flu, I guess.
That's all I really have to say right now, but I will leave you with the new Harry Styles song because he is a bi icon (bicon) if ever there was one...
Today I got in a huge fight with my parents, and now my head is pounding. My best friend Kuma cheered me up a bit and comforted me, because they're awesome. And I've been listening to all the good new pop music to make myself feel better. Olivia O'Brien's new album is crazy. I also like the new Ashnikko song, and of course, Taylor Swift finally dropped her new single. I didn't like it at first but it's growing on me. She always picks bad lead singles anyway, then her albums have amazing deep cuts.
I made some beats in BandLab tonight that I really enjoy. I made like six songs and of those I think four have potential, so I wrote some lyrics for those to record later today once the sun is up and I'm home alone.
I want to move out really bad but I'm not sure I want to leave the country, I'm kind of too used to it even though it's inconvenient and spooky sometimes. I think cities are scarier because of inevitable societal collapse. I mean, I say inevitable, but I hope it's not, but all the climate change news and deforestation freaks me out. But if I lived in the city my neighbours would hear me singing, and that's awkward. Even though I do post some of my songs online, it's the final versions that I think sound decent enough to share. And even now I look back on many of those songs and cringe. But I still feel a compulsive need to make them, even if I'm too shy to sing when other people are around. Basically everything I do is a random compulsion though, so that's that.
I have a short story in the works I really don't want to finish. I'm just not in the mood to write more erotica tonight, but if I don't finish now I don't know if I ever will. (Note: since writing this I finished it. It was easy and fun, I was just being a drama queen.)
All I want to work on is the sequel to Storm of Masks. I have so many ideas for it and I feel genuinely inspired, but I have other things on my checklist first. To satiate myself I'll republish Storm of Masks sometime soon, since it's down right now. I'm very excited for these sequels. Each one ramps things up a step further, to crazy levels. I've got a few things to finish first though, and right now all I want to do is go play video games and be lazy.
First I'm going to eat more baked potatoes and salad though, because that's the only thing in the world I want right now. I don't know why I have such intense cravings for baked potatoes lately. It's probably that weird Tierra Whack music video for her song Unemployed. I just love the texture of the skins I think, they're super crispy and I drench them in butter and salt and pepper. Plus they're simple to cook and require like 3 tiny steps. If I have to put in effort in a dish I'm either going to burn it or ruin it some other way.
I disagree with my parents on a lot of things but they have finally convinced me I can't cook, so there's that, but I can make baked potatoes, and salad, and that's good enough for me.
Actually since I said that I cooked some honey garlic chicken and rice that my mom said looked good, and she told my brother I'm an awesome cook. So I think she's as indecisive as me. Maybe it depends on the day. I do burn stuff a lot but it's usually because I get stoned and forget I turned the oven on.
Yup, that's it. Coffee, and cookies, and my butt in a chair. That last one is the hardest part. Especially since these dogs want to distract me so, so bad... I'm babysitting my brother's dog Otis. (Follow him on Instagram here.)
He's adorable, but don't let it fool you, since we've got him he's eaten 3 dish towels, a $600 dollar cheque, a blanket, 2 chew toys, 2 footballs, and more. We can't keep him out of anything, and he has a bad habit of jumping onto the kitchen counters and grabbing anything out there. He's a cuddlebug, though, even when he's biting at you. I'm determined to finish the new edition of Shadows within the next few hours, though, so I can publish it already! I'm hoping I can head up to the she-cave today and record some music in there, since I have no privacy in the house while everyone else is on vacation. I really want to put out a new EP today. Too ambitious? We'll see, lol. Listen to my latest song here: Maybe You Were Right
I posted an EP on SoundCloud earlier this month that I never talked about here. It's a little ambient/instrumental EP. And yeah, that's lil me on the cover. I think that's when I was five or six. Anyway, I'm sorry I haven't been active here much; I'm planning Shadows book 2 so I can start writing it very soon, but I have to reread the first book before I get too far into outlining. I'm also balancing two novella projects on the side. So, yeah, I have my hands full. You can listen to THE APRIL EP here... I'm going to try and get it up on Spotify in the next couple of weeks, but it's a real dick to get the file conversion right for my distributor, which is why I never posted any of my old music there. Either way, you should check it out if you like relaxing synth sounds and pop stuff. I'm going to come back here and redesign this blog soon because it needs a new layout. Or I might do it tonight while I procrastinate actual work...
I'm stuck in editing hell again. I keep coming back here despite my best intentions to never write again, because it drives me up a tree, even when I feel like I'm having fun. Right now I'm polishing up the first chapters of Break This Gilded Cage (the first installment in my new vampire serial, I Am Your Fate) before I write the last three.
In non-writing related news, I've honestly just been watching zombie shows on Netflix and napping. I'm so exciting, huh?
I spent my Halloween night drinking spiked coffee and listening to Spotify, so nothing too special is happening. I think I may put out a new chapter of Fascination on Wattpad tonight, though. So, slowly, the ball is moving forward on a few different projects. I just put Shadows of Ourselves on Pronoun for free, so once it's live maybe Amazon will finally price match?
It's been a hell of a time trying to get them to do that--Shadows is on InstaFreebie and Wattpad, but Amazon doesn't really care about that. RoAnna Sylver said they finally price matched her book once she put it up on Pronoun though, so maybe it will work for me too. I hope so. Shadows needs the love, and I think if it goes permafree on Amazon it will start to get the hype it deserves.
I'll probably make Break This Gilded Cage free, too. Every other installment of the serial will be 99 cents, since each one is only 15 to 20 chapters.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I'll have a better, less pointless blog post tomorrow or maybe even later tonight. Until then, here's some good music.
I finished editing the first of the Lilac Jones stories for Beacon tonight so now I'm letting myself start drafting a just-for-fun paranormal romance and I figured I'd throw some writing music at y'all! So, here's what I'm listening to: Bloodstream by Astrid S (The title of this post comes from this song)
Now or never by Halsey... I waited two years for this and I'm so, so in love with it.
I know, I know, I know. I haven't blogged since October started. I'm not good at this. Since the month started I've written a novella called Iceblood for the new edition of Souls of Salt & Seawater I'm putting out, and tonight on Twitter and Goodreads I announced I'm also working on a new edition of Blood of Midnight. The new edition is mainly jut a project I took on because I'm a perfectionist. Looking back at BOM as I start writing book two, I realized that there were a few seeds I meant to plant and didn't, a few paths I could have and should have gone that I just didn't recognize for what they were at the time. To be clear this isn't a rewrite or a drastic change or anything - I'm adding new content, not changing what exists. Mostly it's just going to be sexier, more dangerous, and a tad longer. I wanted to explore a few side characters more and give them the screen time they deserved, as well as taking a closer look at the main trio. I'm hoping to put those both out around the same time, before the end of this month. But I also have a third little project I'm working on that, should I finish it, I would be sooo happy to share during the beginning of November, too. Outside the world of writing I'm kind of just pumped for Halloween. Obviously, last month I wrote a book about it, but I'm mostly excited for discount candy when it's over. I know I shouldn't gorge on mini-Mars bars or whatever, but nobody can stop me. Today Grimes released a bunch of new music videos, including this perfect one for Belly of the Beat, the best song on Art Angels:
I've also been listening to The Black Book by Jully Black on Spotify, which is still a really strong album. I'm actually surprised how much the music still holds up, since I'm pretty sure it came out over six or seven years ago. I remember buying it at HMV but I lost the CD over the years :I
Anyway, I'm in good company as far as writing music goes, and also drinking a bunch of coffee and green tea. Recently I went into a depressive phase where I couldn't write for two months or so, and I almost slipped back into it after publishing Storm of Masks, but writing Iceblood knocked me back on track, so I'm feeling optimistic about getting lots of work done this month!
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Like my blog? You can check out my published works here!
I rearranged my book shelves and I gotta say, they're looking better than ever. Last night I noticed I'd lost my copy of Night Myst, the first Indigo Court book, so I bought the ebook on Kobo because I wanted to reread. It cost me fucking ten dollars. FOR AN EBOOK. I mean, it's traditionally published, but still. It's makes me mad that publishers expect readers to dole out ten dollars or more for a digital file they consume in less than two days. I will never charge more then five dollars for an ebook, and that's God's honest damn truth. (Fun fact: Divinity is on sale for 99¢ right now!) I mean if I'm ever working with a publisher, they'll be in control of that, but still, all my self-published ebooks have been and will be under five dollars. Look, for ten dollars I could buy three paperbacks on Amazon or at a used bookstore. For ten bucks I can get a to-go combo of the best Chinese food in the city. I can buy new headphones and a fancy candle or body lotion. I don't need to spend ten dollars on a fucking ebook I'm gonna blow through in two or three sittings. I'm telling people fun stories with romance and action and swords and explosions - I don't think it's fair to charge an arm and a leg for a story. I mean, there are exceptions, sure. If it's a box set or a super long book. Like, as an author, if I'm writing a book and it turns out to be this 200,000 word epic, yeah, I expect to get paid fairly for that. But even then, at least to me, for how fast I write, yeah, that's still only gonna be an eight dollar book, you know? Maybe it's me - maybe I'm cheap and skeptic because I grew up poor and even now, ten or twenty bucks that I get to spend on myself instead of essentials is a rare treat that I want to squeeze every penny out of, because it's rare, but most of that money goes to books. And I think it's kind of unfair to charge a reader that much. But I'm off on a tangent; the point is, I'm rereading Night Myst so I can devour this whole series. The covers are beautiful and the story, from what I recall, is so much fun. Definitely worth a read. Meanwhile I'm drafting Atrocity (gah!) and making plans for a bunch of other fun stuff I can't wait to share. I'm also working on an anthology set in the menagerie world (Shadows of Ourselves, Maelstrom, et-cet) and it's so much fun. It's called City Magik, and I'll probably be fairly hush on it until the day it comes out, but it's great and the cover is a beauty. In the meantime I'm listening to a lot of Tinashe and mainlining coffee. And watching Eye Candy, which I never saw and should not have been cancelled. I can't get over how good this show is. Also, I really wish I could pull off the same angles as Victoria Justice. Damn, those cheekbones. Color me jealous.
I've been compiling a lot of good writing music lately. I should probably make another 8Tracks playlist but I'm lazy, so I'm gonna share some of it here instead. I listened to a lot of these while writing Divinity...
I really, really need new candles, but the only kind I want are Bath and Body Works 3-wicks and I worked at the local one, so. I don't wanna go back to shop, because, awkward. Also I'm technically supposed to be saving for a new laptop. Working at a desk is my normal method, but I hate desktop computers. Like, with a passion. This one is secondhand, really slow, and Scrivener keeps crashing on me. It takes like 2 or 3 tries to restart it, too, which is not optimal. Another thing is, I do all my own cover design, and I have a lot of variations of large files for those, so it cramps up space, but I need them all. I really want to get into music production, even if I'm just learning basics, and I need a new computer to do that work on. I know this one can't handle it. I think if I tried, I'd fry it. I want another touchscreen laptop, because I fucking adored that thing, but I need to save a lot if I want one. Plus I'm also trying to find a new living situation within the next few months, so it's going to be tight... I like to think I'm fairly tech savvy. I mean, I was basically raised by a computer and I learned to use them by breaking a long string of them, learning to fix a few of them on my own. I think I spent more time reading troubleshoot tutorials and computer forums in middle school than I did my actual assignments. I missed like 50 days of school each in the 7th and 8th grades, and most of that time, when I wasn't reading gay Harry Potter fanfiction in a blanket nest on the floor, I was fucking around with my computer and testing it's capabilities and exploring new programs. In a blanket nest on the floor. And yet, I go through devices like a falling skydiver hitting tree branches on his sorry way down. I'm telling you, I have lost count of how many desktops, laptops, and notebooks I've gone through in the past decade. It's SCARY. At the same time, it keeps me on my toes having to readjust to new shit all the time. I've been getting back into traditional art lately. I got my start in art doodling anime and shit in the sides of my notebooks in grade school, because I'm a Mary Sue like that, and I was really into the DeviantArt scene in, like, 2011, and I got fairly decent for my age, but then a bunch of my tablets broke and I stopped doing digital art for like three years. I reverted to scribbling on loose leaf and stopped producing finished pieces, and now that I'm trying to get into it again... I hate my tablet. The new one is this little square thing with like, barely any surface space and the pen settings are absurd. There's this shitty double-click feature that makes it impossible to draw in web-based art programs, and Paint Tool Sai is really annoying. I've been using it to do photo-manipulation and make book covers, which is not what it's for, but I've set it up for that and it's what I know how to do best with it now, so it's not like, tailored toward digital painting for me anymore. And I don't want to fuck up my current settings because I love them so I'm not changing them, but I also can't find another program I like. I despise Photoshop, I just do - it feels very rigid and I don't like the interface whatsoever, but other shit mostly sucks too. I liked Open Canvas for a while but it was only good for like, messy kind of junk art, which was cute enough but not what I was going for... So what I'm saying is, if you have any good art programs, send them my way and I'll check them out. Anyway, what it boils down to is that when I get a new computer I'm gonna go nuts downloading music software and synth programs and shit and make a noisy little Soundcloud-bound mess of an ep. I think it will be mostly instrumental, because I don't love my singing voice. I am not the worst singer in the world or anything, but still. I wanna make the musical version of fortune cookies, if that makes sense. Like it's small and simple but you crack it open and there's strange wonder inside. I also like circus sounds. But less Melanie Martinez (although I love her) and more Amanda Jenssen... But at the same time, more robotic? That's not the right word, just more techno trash. Glitchy, that's the word.
~glitchy~
Aside from that I just really wanna get Divinity out. It turned into this strange poetic abstract thing, and it's darker and kind of more mature than I'd intended. I set out to write a fun Kiera Cass-type book, that you could read in one sitting and be like "That was cute, that was fun," and just be light, fun escapism. Instead I think I wrote one of those, "What the fuck did I just read?" fantasy stories. I still think it will be fast and fun to read, since it's just a bit shorter than Blood of Midnight, so far, but it's not what I expected it to be. I think my biggest complaint with so much urban fantasy and paranormal romance these days is that we get this fascinating mythology and world, and it never goes anywhere. Like, it's 300 pages of high school and family life and two straight white teens falling in ~true love~ with a couple scenes with magic or the paranormal sprinkled throughout, and it makes me go, "Is that all?" Even rereading Blood of Midnight, I see that in it, and I'm like, why did I hold back on this world? And so now in the sequel I get to go back and show it through a more mature, worldly version of Dru's perspective, because it's two years later. So I'm peeling back and showing more of that world and making it less contemporary, less focused on the relationships and more on the world changing around them. I don't want contemporary with fantasy trappings - I want actual urban fantasy. Whenever I try to write like a simple, straightforward book like that, those magic scenes expand and twist and end up taking the whole of the story. And I like that, so I've embraced it, and I try to cram as much magic and power and action and strange beauty as I can into the books. In Shadows of Ourselves, the draft was like 73,000 words, and the finished book that's out now is like, 126,000 something, because in editing so much of what I did was bring the world forth and make it clearer and sharper. I added in new scenes and new locations and went through the ones already there to make them stand out more and add a bit more magik in there. I think when you have that big intense world full of like, hot immortal beings and ancient devices and a big cast of paranormal stuff, you should use that, you know? That's what your reader wants! I love Leigh Bardugo and Marie Lu and Laini Taylor and Lev Grossman because of that, you know - they recognize that their readers and enticed by these magical worlds, so they let them become characters, they explore them in-depth and turn over every part of them. They don't say "Oh, well we'll have two or three mediocre scenes about the magic so that doesn't take away from the stale development of this romance!" I love romance. It's where I got my start reading more mature, darker books. But if you hold back on actual plot and world development to force a predictable romantic plot on us, it's going to backfire. It's going to hurt the book and the romantic subplots. I think very few writers can keep the focus on the romance and have their work not suffer for it. You have to be really good at romance to do that, and that's people like Rainbow Rowell who make masterpieces with the simplest building blocks. (Carry On might be my favorite novel in the world. That still has a lot of magic though, so it might not count. Fangirl is also fantastic.) Like, when you're reading a Lev Grossman book, you know that's going to be like 300+ pages just crammed to bursting with magic and spell craft and history and the settings come to life. It's amazing. So of course as I've been writing Divinity, the world has kind of grown up like a hedge form this really basic premise into this strange, creepy, kind of fantastical world, 'cause those are where my heart is, and it gets bigger and weirder the more it goes on. It starts as this kind of predictable, conventional kidnap-romance, like, "Oh no, I'm stuck in this hot billionaires lavish penthouse, but not all is as it seems!" and I try to just really quickly throw a wrench in the way it seems things are going and twist them in a different direction. I'm kind of surprised how my outline has changed since it's first draft, too. Some stuff has surprised me. Here's a really quick teaser, complete with redacted spoiler and all:
(I think you can click to enlarge it, if it's hard to read!)
And now I'm going to get back to it, and hopefully finish this book tonight or tomorrow!
The other day I went on a walk and learned that I'm even awkward in the woods. There's a river I like to go to near the house, and it's maybe a twenty five minute walk. Right next to it, though, there's this nice house where these two tiny, angry dogs are always in the yard, barking, and when they bark at me their owners come out and like, snap at them, and it makes me so awkward. Like, let your dog bark itself out without reminding me of your existence. Human interaction messes me up. I think mainly I just wasn't prepared to see so many people out, since it's the middle of nowhere and I was in the mood to be alone (hence the walk to the secluded river and all) but overall it was still nice, even if walking by people doing yard work is cringe-worthy to me for some reason. And I worked through some plotting issues while I was walking, so that's a plus. When I got to the river I was walking across the rock wall that stretches across it, like a damn or something, and someone had caught and decapitated a fish and left it's head there, and a swarm of flies was buzzing over it. It wasn't exactly pleasant. But it will probably make it into my next book, nonetheless. It's weird to think it's almost summer again. Like, it's been an entire year since last summer. I am twenty. So much has happened - I've put out my first couple full-length novels, I've started on anti-depressants again and quit drinking. I've lost a lot of weight. At the same time though, things are mostly the same. This winter was really hard in a lot of ways - there were a lot of times where I honestly didn't expect to make it through. But now that the warm season is here and things are slowly but steadily getting better, I feel like I'm reclaiming pieces of my identity every day, and coming back to myself. It's nice. And I keep reminding myself that I'm not in that place I was, but it hasn't fully sunk in yet that I got through it. The thing is, every time you fall into that black well of depression, there's a part of you that doubts you'll make it out. I'm learning to tell that part to shut up. And, in other news, writing a bunch. I want to do a blog every day in X one of these months, I just haven't picked the one yet. I meant to blog a lot more once Shadows of Ourselves came out, to promote it, but I haven't had the time as I jumped right into drafting the sequel to Blood of Midnight. The thing is, Shadows has been doing pretty well on its own (thank you to everyone who's bought the book!) and it's even gotten some good ratings on Goodreads, which is nice. I actually just got a new writing desk the other day that I kind of love. It's made the idea of sitting down to work a lot more appealing actually. So when I haven't been being awkward in the woods, I've been listening to Astrid S and writing this vampire book. You can check it out on Pinterest here if you like pretty pictures, and I do: https://www.pinterest.com/writerlyprince/tears-of-sunrise/
Did the new Ariana Grande song nearly kill anyone else?
Aside from listening to this on repeat I'm getting ready to go to my cousin's house and planning Shadows Of Ourselves release stuff. Because I'm really excited for it to come out this month.
I'm going into workaholic overdrive trying to finalize everything. I wanna get paperbacks out within a few days of putting out the ebook because I want to host a few giveaways. I still need to sort out royalty info with the paperback distributor first, so I'm gonna stop by the bank today and deal with that.
Overall I'm just excited to have a longer book out. The longer the book, a better. I love really big stories, and Shadows of Ourselves is the longest book I've written to date. Blood of Midnight (which is free today!) and SOSAS are both novel-length, but they're still short books.
Also I genuinely think Shadows of Ourselves is the best book I've written, yet. I think it's got a nice flow and it's a pretty exciting adventure.
Plus, there's hot boys.
It's also set in my home town, Saint John, because it's a pretty magikal city, and because we need more books (especially hot New Adult romance books) set in Canada. The book is set in November, 2016, and it's a big romp through the city and a bunch of magikal landscapes.
It's also got a really diverse cast, because I wrote the book I wanted to read, and I'm sick of reading a book where everyone is cisgender and white and able-bodied. I want to write diverse characters in a way that they're not just coming out stories or coming of age or learning to cope with being othered by mainstream society - I think we should be able to see ourselves in books about werewolves and superheroes and detectives. Genre fiction where diverse characters are allowed to just exist and have stories and go on adventures.
I really loved City of Bones when I was fifteen because it was the first book I'd ever read like that with gay characters in it - not even just gay main characters, but gay characters period - and I think there's something wrong with that.
I really adore Amanda Sun's Ink trilogy because it has a gay character in its main cast, and I devoured half of the House of Night series in one week when I was sixteen because there were gay characters. (Token-ish ones, albeit, but still).
Rainbow Rowell's Carry On is (in my opinion) a masterpiece and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is brilliant.
In real life, non-white teens and kids in wheelchairs and queer youth, they all do extraordinary things and there are so many facets to their lives - they deserve diversity that isn't shoe-horned in or gimmicky, and those are the books I want to write. Books where genderfluid kids get to take on super villains and teens in wheelchairs embrace their magical bad-assery and save the day, just like their counterparts do in other ya and na genre books like these. Because if stuff like giant robots and evil mermaids really existed, that's exactly what would happen.
It also deals with some pretty dark stuff like mental illness and substance abuse and, you know, death and murder.
I just didn't want to write a perfect, well-adjusted main character with a good attitude. I feel like there's so many young adults and college aged kids who are sick of seeing perfectionists who never mess up in their books. So many of us deal with mental illness or trauma or abuse, and even aside from those things, so many of us are a bit jaded and bitter, or emotional withdrawn. I wanted to write about and deal with those issues. Sky is pretty damaged.
I'm really fond of the book, though, and I'm hoping some other people like it, too. I'm just excited, in general.
So, I have a lot of things to say. First, I pushed back the Maelstrom release from late 2016 to early 2017, so if you see 2016 attached to that book anywhere, that's wrong, and it won't be out until after the new year, most likely. Second, I revamped the covers for Rage & Frenzy, and updated the interiors for both those, Dreamseeker, and Blood of Midnight - just rearranging back matter and cleaning up the formatting and stuff. Here are the new covers for Rage & Frenzy:
Someone whose opinion I trust told me the font was too gaudy, and I agreed, so I changed them. I added the leaves just to bring more color variance to both of them and make them feel a bit more magikal, because they are.
Those aside, I'm almost finished with edits on Shadows, and I think that will be out around the end of this month or the beginning of next, depending on how much time that leaves me to come up with a marketing plan, because I want people to know about & read this book, a lot.
I also have a few tiny side projects to work on before jumping into Dreamwalker & Dreamkiller, which I'm going to draft back to back, so those should be fun (and ready to be shared, soon) but I'm not going to say anything official because I don't want to jinx myself. Pun intended.
Anyway, that's all I've got in the way of announcements, I think, but later on I'm going to use this blog to foist more of my music on you all, because I love everything I'm listening to right now.
I haven't mentioned these on here (I don't think) but I make playlists on8tracks all the time. There's one for Dreamseeker, and one for Shadows of Ourselves. There are also some for writing in general.
