If you’re going to be at Balticon 57 this Memorial Day weekend, please stop by for the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading on May 27th!
It’s happening at 5:30pm in room 7029 and includes Randee Dawn (moderator), Morgan Hazelwood, Roberta Rogow, D. H. Timpko, and myself. It’s my first RFR with Broad Universe so I’d love to have friendly faces there!
I’ll be reading an excerpt from Cast a Shadow of Doubt and giving away some books and bookmarks/postcards.
One of my pledges to myself this year was that as soon as I was stable enough, health-wise, I was going to start making up for all the things that I’ve missed out on thanks to being sick – and to be brave and bold and go for opportunities, even if I’m unsure how they’ll work out for me.
It’s not that I’m risk adverse. In fact, I’m laughing as I type that, because anyone who truly knows me absolutely knows how bold and occasionally rash I can be. As the Eleriannan might say, “audentes fortuna iuvat” – and that’s been proven true for more times than I can count. Being brave and bold gets you more than sitting around waiting for things to fall into your lap, y’all.
All this is my long winded way of saying that I entered In Sleep You Know into the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off or SPFBO 9, which is a contest designed to put a spotlight on, as the title suggests, self-published fantasy novels. It is organized yearly by Mark Lawrence, and this is the ninth year. Three hundred book submissions are divided amongst ten blogs, who read, review, and eliminate the selections until they find the one book they’ll put into the final round.
The second round is where all the judging blogs get the finalist books to review and make a decision between. At the end of the process, a winning book [and also a winning cover, in a separate, concurrent contest] will be chosen and crowned the winner of SPFBO. Yay! The entire process takes about a year, so expect occasional updates as things progress.
I’ve gone into this with zero expectations in any direction other than finding some new reads, getting some exposure, and making some new writing and reviewing friends/contacts. The experience is worth it! [though of course I want to win, but truly that’s not the reason to enter]
If you want to see all of the entries and what blogs will be doing the reviewing – which I highly recommend, get you some new reads – you can go here [there’s also stats about SPFBO and other interesting info] and here [a gorgeous visual layout where you can see all the covers and click easily on each story’s link].
In other brave and bold news:
What brave and bold things have you done lately? I want to know! Hit reply and leave a comment so that I can cheer you on, too. 💜
Hello friends! It’s time for an update on my writing progress, and it’s great news – I am SO CLOSE to getting the first draft of this book finished!
That’s about five chapters, to put it into perspective. I know, right?
Some things to know about the whole process:
Expounding on that last point – my whole writing process slows down when I get to the last parts of the story. And it makes sense, of course, because there’s usually so many things to carefully weave together, making sure nothing gets left behind. Plus, this is where the “big action” of the story takes place, often with physical scenes and a lot more character interaction that all has to be carefully plotted out and sometimes even acted out by me to make sure that it all makes sense and reads properly.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to pose myself to make sure what I’m describing makes sense and works the way I want it to, ha. Or research things like, I dunno… sun angles, location maps, names of specific armor, animal facts. The list goes on and on. Recently I got sidetracked by a search of specific nautical terms.
Once I’m finished with the first draft, I’ll go in for revisions, round one. Some people pause between phases of writing their book, and I like to pause between revisions and editing. I prefer to revise while the story is fresh in my head, and while I remember exactly what I knew I’d need to go back and rearrange or pretty-up. Sometimes, you just need to get the scene down on the page, you know, before you lose that spark.
So I’ll revise, then I’ll rest the story for a short period and work on other things, so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes and mind for the editing process. Once I’ve gone over it approximately ONE MILLION TIMES I’ll send it to a professional editor. Then they’ll go over it a bunch and then it comes back to me for changes and EVEN MORE CHECKING.
I’ve probably read my stories more times than anyone ever will. Not because I’m my #1 fan or anything, but to fact-check, to re-immerse myself in the storyline, to look for quotes, and… sometimes just for fun. THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID IT. I read my own books because I like them! 🤣
I love my characters. I mean, they live in my head, I’m close to them! I also love the settings in my books, and they’re detailed enough that I have to go back and check “Was this on the left or the right? Where exactly is the door to the courtyard in relation to the kitchen?” Trust me, those little details matter. Someone will notice if I screw it up! I actually recently wrote out a long walk-through of The Maithe for that reason. Maybe one day I’ll share it!
That’s my update for now. Once the first draft is finished I’ll talk some more about it and start giving you more thorough introductions to the characters and what they’re all about. But for now, thank you for reading, and if you have any questions about my process, please do reply below!
