'Renfred's Masquerade' and Music as the Ultimate Muse

This book was one of those inspired by a very specific song and a very specific performance or interpretation of that song. It was a purely orchestral recording of Offenbach's "Barcarolle" from a cassette tape I got for myself as an undergrad. It was a time when I was discovering classical music and used whatever money I had saved from my part-time job to buy cassettes to listen to. This was way back in the late 1980s.

I found the piece not only romantic, but melancholy, and I used it more than once as a prompt for short stories when the time came for me to pursue writing more seriously. For this book I took to vocal performances of the aria for my muse. It's one of those songs that conjure so many images in my head, and Renfred's Masquerade actually started with one single image: that of a gondola sailing off in the night and two people sitting in it. But the very, very strong impression I had wasn't one of romance, but tragedy. 

It didn't help that I also bought a copy of E.T.A. Hoffmann's short stories, which included "The Sandman" and was one of the works that also found its way into Offenbach's opera. So double the muse-whammy, and eventually more appendages sprouted from that one image of the gondola until I ended up with extensive notes for Renfred's Masquerade. 

This book is a pretty elaborate fairy tale with a tangled backstory. I wrote it specifically to read like a gay YA fairy tale that takes place in an AU Venice. 

Every song mentioned or described in the book is an actual song I listened to. Offenbach's "Barcarolle" is the primary one, including the final notes of music toward the end. 

Other songs I used are Khachaturian's "Masquerade Waltz":

And Shostakovich's "Waltz No.2":

And, finally, for the penultimate ballroom scene with Davide and Nicola, I used Smetana's polka from The Bartered Bride. As with the other pieces I specifically inserted into the book via descriptions, the actual scenes were also written to fit each composition. For the polka scene, it's a rousing and terrifying moment for Nicola, who faces his shame and allows himself to be finally seen as he is. The final minute and a half of the song, in particular, influenced that scene the most. It's still so easy to picture poor Nicola panicking while Davide whirls him around and around to an upbeat polka.

None of those compositions are accurate for the time period I had in mind (maybe Offenbach comes closest), so I never referred to them by title or anything like that. Just descriptions of the individual songs and how they influence the dancers and the main characters. 

Renfred's Masquerade is currently 50% at all online bookstores this month, including Smashwords and Kobo. For a complete list of these stores and the blurb, go to the book page at Books2Read. 

The Next Book, 'Tis Underway

I didn't expect this, but The Twilight Lover has turned into a hybrid of sorts. My original plan -- one I came up with months ago, in fact -- was of a serious ghost story with a contemporary setting. But after going through a pretty challenging time working on Compline, which turned out to be much heavier and darker than expected, I decided to switch gears and turn the new book into a comedy for balance. 

I do, however, tend to have a more difficult time making ghost stories work in a universe that's swimming in so much information and technology. And I'm not just talking about the cynicism that usually affects our perception of things and of events. I'm talking about the ease with which we're able to access information via so many devices available to us. Unless I turn the setting into a full-on urban fantasy, which I'm not interested in, it's hard to justify the mystery of a haunting without automatically debunking it in my own head. 

I've even been watching ghosts on camera type of videos on YT, and it's pretty obvious where some clever editing's been done in a majority of those "paranormal" events supposedly captured on video. It really does hamper inspiration, and I can't get myself out of that mentality when I attempt something like a straightforward ghost story in a modern setting. 

Even accounts such as the ghosts reported in Fukushima after the tsunami disaster are explained away with trauma responses and not actual supernatural phenomena (at least among certain writers and researchers, anyway). That said, accounts from survivors who claim to have encountered the ghosts of tsunami victims FEEL more genuine than what's shared on social media via videos and stuff. But they're also very limited to the catastrophe. 

What I love about writing a historical fantasy is the limitation of knowledge and technology, and characters' reactions to the inexplicable are always fun to explore. I can make it serious and dramatic or off-beat and funny, those limitations helping a great deal in forcing boundaries the characters are fighting against. 

And so The Twilight Lover is now a humorous ghost story set in the distant past, and I'll be making full use of anachronistic language to pump up the comedy.

Another thing about this book is that it's also turning into a retelling of the myth of Narcissus and Echo, which I didn't realize was happening until I actually sat back and inspected my notes. It's really weird how a lot of things we read find their way into what we do -- in my case, some of my favorite myths and legends impress rough sketches of stories in my head without me realizing it. Mind you, it didn't start out that way, but I can see various elements in my notes that mirror key things in the myth. 

But we'll see how things turn out as I work some more on this new book. I am glad I went with comedy, though. I needed it.

May Backlist Bonanza: 'Renfred's Masquerade' and 'The Twilight Gods'

New month, new sale. 😃 Also behold my newly discovered ability to insert emojis into my post. Okay, granted that feature's always been there, but I never really bothered. I love the one I'm using, though. Happy derp.

Anyway, a couple of books from days of yore are now 50% off in e-book format from all online stores:

RENFRED'S MASQUERADE

Young Nicola Gregori has always wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a brilliant clock-maker who's famous for his wild, fantastical designs. But his father instead sends him to school to learn more practical matters. Nicola, stricken with infantile paralysis that left him with a deformed right leg, becomes an object of mockery and cruel jokes in school. He learns that in order to survive his daily ordeals, he needs to vanish in the crowd, to stop aspiring, to stop dreaming, and above all, to believe himself unworthy of respect and love.

Tragedy strikes when Nicola turns sixteen. Gustav Renfred, an old friend of his father, takes on Nicola as his charge and whisks him away to an isolated islet filled with empty mansions and bordered by a bluebell forest. There Nicola slowly learns about the tragic story that tightly weaves together the fates of Jacopo Gregori, Gustav Renfred, and Gustav's twin sister, Constanza.

Magic, impossible dreams, and unrequited love come together in Ambrosi, the Renfreds' mansion, where Nicola is caught up in a world of haunting portraits, a ghostly housekeeper, and the mysterious disappearance of Davide, Constanza's adopted son. When Nicola's invited to one of Renfred's magical masquerades, he discovers the answers to riddles as well as the mounting danger that the Renfred family faces with every passing hour.

With the masquerades' existence depending on the physical and mental strength of an ailing Renfred, the task of solving the mystery of Davide's disappearance before time runs out falls on Nicola's shoulders, and he has no choice but to depend on things that he's long learned to suppress: courage, self-respect, and the desire to aim for impossible goals.

 and

THE TWILIGHT GODS

London during the Great Exhibition of 1851 is a new world of technological advances, eye-popping inventions, and glimpses of exotic treasures from the East. For fifteen-year-old Norris Woodhead, it's a time of spectral figures mingling with London's daily crowds and an old rectory in a far corner of the English countryside -- a great house literally caught in time, where answers to curious little mysteries await him.

Confined by his family's financial woes, Norris suffers a lonely and unsatisfying time till the day he (and only he) notices "shadow-people" in the streets. Then a strange widow appears, rents a vacant room in the house, and takes him under her wing. She becomes his guardian, slowly revealing those shadows' secrets, Norris' connection with them, and the life-altering choices he has to face in the end.

The Twilight Gods is a retelling of the Native American folktale, "The Girl Who Married a Ghost." Set in Victorian England, it's an alternative perspective on a gay teen's coming-out experience, with Norris' journey of self-discovery couched in magical and supernatural terms and imagery.

Click on each book title to go to its respective page on Books2Read, which will lead you to the list of online stores where you can get a copy for yourself. Of course, I'll also be posting more stuff about each book in the coming weeks, so watch this space. Both books will be 50% off throughout the month of May.

Damn Those Epigraphs

Just got my ass handed to me by an epigraph. So as my own way of sweet revenge, I just deleted the damn thing completely from my manuscript and submitted it to Draft2Digital in less ambitious form. You're not losing anything from this, by the way. I thought at first that it would be an interesting touch to prepare readers for a pretty dark take on the Pied Piper legend (not that it needs to be darker if you've read up on it). 

And I've also been back on the sly, tweaking the book blurb for the past few days, and what we now have in this post is the final version, which I also submitted to D2D. 

Funnily enough, the final formatting and so on turned out to be as troublesome as the actual writing of this book. I found myself going back repeatedly, fixing things because I forgot to do this or that, and re-uploading the file then reviewing the final layout. Of course, I'd find something I forgot to take care of again and it was another round of shampoo and rinse. I think I spent around two hours just uploading, testing, fixing, and re-uploading until I finally got everything right.

Edits are done (yay!), hence the submission for the book's July 1 release. I was able to find the time and energy (a miracle, I tell you) throughout the week for editing work, and things wrapped up this morning. That said, I'm in dire need of a nap, which will have to wait till after all errands are done later. 

And so I have another book under my belt, and I'm looking forward to getting started on The Twilight Lover, which I've already decided to turn into a humorous ghost story. It's a good palate cleanser, if you will, after spending months writing a pretty dark book. And Compline is easily one of the darkest stories I've come up with. It also helps that I recently listened to an audio book of a funny ghost story, and that really inspired me to move forward with it. 

At any rate, I'll be doing a lot of resting and plotting for the rest of April as I plan to get going on The Twilight Lover in May. Also maybe I can work on the gallery page for Compline. I shouldn't drag my feet like I did with The Perfect Rochester, and while I'm happy with the way that page turned out, I kind of wish I did more for it. But it's no use wallowing over a gallery page.

So to get more humorous inspiration pumped through my veins, here's a great video I ran across weeks ago:

I must be doing something right on my visits to Youtube because the algorithms are filling my home page with videos on art, ghost stories, cats, and short documentaries on how things are made. Oh, and bookbinding and book restoration. 

'Compline' Blurb

As I'm currently still working on edits, not much else has happened that's worth noting. The day job's the day job, and we're hitting our cyclical slow season (Spring is always slow in our business). So things have been relatively chill but also are starting to drag. Once Mother's Day hits, things will begin to pick up and will ramp up from that point on as we hurtle toward the holidays. 

In the meantime, I was able to put together the blurb for Compline. As always, keep in mind that this can still be tweaked the closer I get to finishing edits on the book. I've never scrapped a blurb entirely before, but I almost always change a few things as time passes. 

So, anyway, this is it:

In a quiet corner of Prussia, late night peals of a ghostly bell summon select victims to a gruesome and otherworldly death. It’s a dark event that’s haunted the land for five centuries, and the truth behind it is made all the more elusive with superstition shrouding its history.

Lukas Geiger assists his uncle, a country doctor, and will do everything he can to unravel this mystery. It proves to be difficult, however, with doors being shut in his face while many young patients exhibit signs of physical abuse and neglect, and their tormentors succumb to the spectral bell’s calls. Surviving adults simply refuse to speak and leave their doctors frustrated and helpless.

Herrick Shriver returns to his birth country after finishing his studies in England, reuniting with the beloved uncle who helped raise him. Wide-eyed hope, however, crosses paths with dark secrets that refuse to stay silent. A strange bell tolls, and the night feels wrong. A silent figure stands on the moonlit drive, watching the manor house. Occasional nightmares about a long-dead friend trouble his uncle—as well as the doctors who look after him, one of whom catches and holds Herrick’s attention.

As their paths converge, Lukas and Herrick quickly learn that the truth lies in a long-abandoned church and its eerie collection of statues. That every step toward discovery is guided by a faded journal once owned by a nameless priest. That past and present might be more hopelessly entangled than they believed.

Set in an AU 19th century Europe, Compline is a gothic reimagining of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”.

My blurbs tend to max out at around 250 words though I've gone past that before. Seriously, when writers complain about how much harder it is to distill their novel-length fiction into a handful of words, believe their pain. No matter how many books I've written and published, the torture stays the same. It SUCKS. 

EDIT: The blurb's word count has been updated to 265 because I can't shut up. This version is now closer to the final one.

EDIT 2: I'm still working on the blurb, btw. Ha. Once I decide on the final version, I'll post it separately from this.