'Gold in the Clouds' and the Sidekick

This book echoes Rose and Spindle in that I wanted to write a fairy tale retelling from the PoV of a side character, not the hero (or heroine in Rose and Spindle). And given how wild fairy tales can be, approaching the story through humor was a promising idea, and it worked. 

"Jack and the Beanstalk" ironically isn't one of my favorite fairy tales, but I really liked the idea of Jack having a best friend who's just as much of a natural slacker as he (they are teenagers, after all, and naturally would love to just hang out and have fun). And they go on a variety of adventures together until the fateful day Jack sells his cow for a handful of magic beans.

I loved writing Blythe and his family. I enjoyed making him a good kid who's just being himself but who also knows when to say when but still gets dragged into trouble. That he's also absolutely terrified of heights was probably the most fun detail about him.

image from Pinterest

But there's Jack as well even though he's relegated to the role of a secondary character. He, too, is really a good kid but with a wholly different background from Blythe, and while both boys are dirt poor, one enjoys a close family bond while the other is fatherless and sibling-less and so is always adrift. 

By and large, this book is a story about friendship and especially Blythe's adventures in learning the value of relationships, of honest work despite the odds being constantly stacked against people like him, and the dangers of taking short cuts (at least for him, not Jack). 

For a while, I was planning to write a series of other fairy tale retellings that focus on characters other than the primary prince / princess / peasant, etc. whom we know in all those classic stories. However, I eventually lost interest in pursuing that idea, though now I really don't mind dusting that off and playing around with possibilities for my current Grostesqueries collection.

Gold in the Clouds is one of the books currently on sale for 50% through the end of July. You can go here for the book page on Books2Read, and there you can find all the online stores where you can purchase a copy.  

'Desmond and Garrick' and Wild, Fun Pastiche-y Rides

My baby! So while I'm proud of every book I've written and published, some are closer to my heart than others, and Desmond and Garrick is one of those. The long and short of it is that this was the book that was as challenging as it was fun since I set out to write my one and only Regency romance that was also a pastiche, and I was able to sustain the dry kind of humor I've always loved from my favorite British sitcoms. 

See: Blackadder for my primary media inspiration.  

As for specific elements in the book, I played with tropes so popular in YA fiction in those days (not sure if they're just as popular now, though) and gave them all my own spin. 

What tickled me the most after my then-publisher released the book was some readers' initial reactions of concern about the possible romantic relationship between the titular characters (the age gap between them is pretty large with Desmond being only sixteen), but such wasn't the case at all. My purpose for choosing the title really was all about friendship developing between two people -- or one human and one vampire -- who at first don't see eye-to-eye but eventually find a middle ground and learn mutual respect. 

Desmond does fall in love, but it's not what you think just by looking at the title. The romance, moreover, is secondary to the main conflict since I really set out to focus on friendship over that. Ironically, this piece was my primary musical inspiration, which only added to the fun:

A bonus detail: all of the really terrible poems in the book are real, i.e., I wrote them all when I was an emo teen. Yes, I did. I ran across them in the course of working on the book and realized, yes, I can actually shame myself and put those ghastly verses out there for everyone to see. 

So, yeah. You're welcome.

Desmond and Garrick is currently 50% off in e-book format through the end of this month. Go here for the book page and the online stores for your copy.  

 

In the Works: 'A House of Profane Gods'

This book won't be out till after Camera Obscura, which may or may not come out next year. It's not that I'm pulling that book from my calendar; rather, I'm considering restructuring my calendar again and falling back to my old bi-annual release schedule. If that moves forward, next year's release will have Doppelgänger and The Shadow Groom while Camera Obscura will be out in 2026 followed by A House of Profane Gods afterwards.

I'm still way ahead of schedule with my current WiP and expect to have the initial draft done by the end of this month. All of next month (and sometime beyond) will be dedicated to revisions and edits, leaving the original release date of Nov. 1 untouched. It's what'll happen next year that I'm toying with at the moment because of, yes, advancing age and the growing need for self-care. I currently follow an extremely rigid schedule divided between work, writing, and everything else that's left (i.e., chores, errands, rest and relaxation, family, etc.). And while I've been able to keep up with it, it's getting increasingly difficult to maintain. 

So something's got to give, and I think a much more relaxed pace in my writing is needed. 

It's been a while since I've been bitten by the plotting bug, and things have stayed relatively stagnant for months -- until the idea for A House of Profane Gods came up. And I kind of like this slowing down of my inspiration and planning process since it allows me to give the new story enough time to sink in and form some roots before I commit to it. And this book is exceedingly commit-able. There are a few elements I'm currently on the fence about, but the story won't suffer if I were to choose to ditch them entirely.

Also I'm not as sold on the title as I prefer The House of Profane Gods over the current version. I've already published The House of Ash, but there's something more urgent and forbidding about the use of "the" vs. "a" regardless of a partial repetition of two book titles in my backlist. At least the second half of the title is good, and that's not changing, but I might be messing with it still. Or the odds of it changing is 40 - 60 (with 40 in favor).

And here I go again with overthinking things, yay! 

Double Whammy: 'Compline' Now Available and July Backlist Bonanza

Finally here! Compline is now available for purchase in e-book and print formats. Behold the blurb:

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 soon 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".

The book's very own gallery page is over yonder, and for a list of online stores, go here to the Books2Read page. The book is priced at 99 cents for the e-book and $9.00 USD for the print copy.

 

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And secondly, here we have July's Backlist Bonanza titles:

DESMOND AND GARRICK

Book 1: It's 1815. Garrick Mortimer is a starving genius, who agrees to sign on as tutor to Desmond Hathaway, the youngest son of a vampire family living in Yorkshire. When Desmond's older brother returns from Italy for a visit and brings with him a small group of talentless poets, life in Dryden Abbey turns upside-down, mainly when Desmond meets Leigh Blaise Sherbourne, a sullen vampire poet.

Book 2: As the poets continue their campaign of destruction in Dryden Abbey, Garrick struggles in the classroom, with distracted pupils eroding all of his hard work. And an unexpected love triangle further complicates things for Desmond. Through all these, Garrick and Desmond will realize that the chasm separating them as distinct species will forge a stronger bond of friendship than they expected.

GOLD IN THE CLOUDS 

After his fifteenth birthday, Blythe Midwinter finds himself in a bit of a pickle. It's high time for him to be a productive member of his family, taking up work he detests in order for his older sister, Molly, to follow her dreams of success as a talented baker. Though the three orphaned Midwinter siblings -- Molly, Bertie, and Blythe -- are lucky enough to work, they still earn only enough to keep themselves clothed and fed. Blythe desperately wishes for more, and it doesn't help that his best and only friend, Jack Wicket, refuses hard, honest work in favor of good luck as the only means for quick success and instant riches.

Blythe's dreams of a better life get more desperate when he attracts the attention of another boy, the youngest son of a rebellious old artist, whose family rises well above Blythe's in wealth and station. Embarrassment and shame muddle Blythe's perceptions of luck, work, and the promise of love -- that is, until Jack Wicket's foolish decision to exchange his beloved cow for a handful of magic beans forces Blythe to look past castles in the clouds and understand what it is that truly measures a man's worth.

Both of these books are 50% off in e-book format throughout the month. Click the book title links to get your copies. I'll be posting some fun behind-the-scenes stuff for each book in the coming weeks. 

'Eidolon' Being No More

I do think writers should go back and reread their books after some distance of time. I recently did that with A Castle for Rowena and found I'm extremely proud of that book (despite spotting a handful of surface errors that escaped me during edits). On the other hand, I've also reread Eidolon and was immediately reminded of my difficulties writing that book, and things pretty much escalated from there.

You see, I had high hopes initially for my Curiosities collection because the idea of desperate wishes being made on cursed objects sounded really promising, and I was swimming in inspiration when I worked on Dollhouse. Then the well started to dry up when I got around to writing Automata until I had nothing left to work with afterwards. 

I was foolish enough to purchase the cover image for Eidolon and even putting together cover art for it BEFORE any work could be done on it. So I basically trapped myself into a situation where I felt obligated to write for that book cover, and the story ended up suffering through the most number of false starts of any book I've written since 2008. Eventually I shelved the document and grieved over the fate of Curiosities until some time later when the nugget of an idea tried to push its way out, and I grabbed hold of it in desperation. 

And so there it went, another revamping of the document, and I thought I finally had it worked out. The story got written, but over the course of it, I eventually realized it was a mistake to resurrect a plot that wasn't working out. But I stuck to it because pride was on the line, and I also didn't want to leave the collection barely populated with only two books. 

In essence, I forced it. Then I finished it and barely gave the file the attention it really needed during revisions and edits. By the time it was published, I didn't have much confidence in it but was still pretty deluded enough to leave it be and not acknowledge the mistake of forcing it into existence. 

It was a story that didn't want to see the light of day, judging from the number of times I had to start over. It certainly fought me all the way to the end five chapters in. But I didn't care as long as I had something to add to the collection. So when I cracked the e-book open and reread it, I was embarrassed by all those errors in logic (and mechanics) that I allowed to slide out of exhaustion from dealing with the book. 

And I've had enough distance of time to be ruthless about my own work, and this will be a book I'm not hesitating to delist in both print and digital formats. It's also getting deleted from my backlist via Draft2Digital. 

It's inevitable in any creative venture that you'll end up with one or two duds (rude, I know, but I'm blunt that way when it comes to my own work), and this is a sore lesson I need to learn. It's okay to throw in the towel at any point if something isn't working. Don't force it. Don't overthink it into existence. Don't come up with flimsy justifications for it. And if a collection only has two good books, leave it be.  

Maybe -- just maybe -- down the line I might be able to reuse the first five chapters for a completely different story for the Grotesqueries collection, but I know better than to hold on to that thought. It's a shame, though, that things didn't work out the way I wanted, but it's all for the best, and I'm not just saying that to make myself feel better. I've already moved on.