One of the most exciting parts – next to getting the book in your hands, of course – is revealing the cover of the upcoming book. And that time is ALMOST here! I have been having a good time teasing out little bits of info over social media, getting everyone ready for the big unveiling.
The big day is almost upon us: COVER REVEAL DAY!
Want to see it FIRST? First reveal will be for my supporters on Ko-fi. Because of their help even before my book is here, they’ll get to see it before anyone else. [want to be one of those people? https://ko-fi.com/threeravenspress is where to go!]
The next folks who will see it are those who are signed up for my MAILING LIST. If you sign up there, you’ll get an email on the big day with the image and some exciting news!
Or you can come here to see it on Saturday, April 3rd, anytime after 1pm EDT! As mentioned above, I’ll have some BIG news to go along with the cover reveal, so you won’t want to miss this. [best to sign up for the newsletter, just to be sure…]
aka: What parts of Baltimore are fiction in your novel, Christiane?
Using a real city as the setting for In Sleep You Know was a fun challenge! I am a firm believer in building off of what I know when it comes to writing – even if it’s Fantasy that I’m crafting. I also believe that Baltimore is a treasure trove of undiscovered magic, often overshadowed by its reputation. [Ask me how I feel about The Wire. I have opinions.]
There was no question in my mind that I would be using Baltimore as the backdrop for where my Fae, the Eleriannan and Gwyliannan, lived. But trying to decide on what version of the city I would build from? That took a bit more thought. When I started writing about these characters originally, it was the late 90s, and the way I saw the city in the story was built on my memories from the 80s and 90s. Looking over the story as the platform for In Sleep You Know, I realized that I needed to unmoor the tale a bit from a specific time in order to give it the feel I wanted. It also meant that I could blend experiences, fashions, music from different eras and have it feel cohesive and timeless.
Some of the places mentioned in the story are based specifically on real-life analogues – the nightclub is definitely based on a well-known club that caters to specific subcultures in Baltimore [one that I DJed at for a while, shhh] – but it also draws from some other clubs with which I’m intimately familiar. I wanted that feeling of familiarity for readers who have haunted those sorts of clubs. Same for the Frisky Bean – if you’ve been to this sort of non-corporate community coffee shop, the kind with comfy chairs and bookshelves piled with tattered paperbacks to read and board games, you will picture it in your mind right away. The Frisky is also built on the memories and experiences of so many coffee shops like it, in Baltimore and other places I’ve lived in and visited.
There are other places featured in the book In Sleep You Know that are actual locations, but may not quite resemble the Baltimore of this consensual reality. I talk about the Gwynns Falls area, for example, but I paint the scene with a bit of a muted brush, leaving the exact location unidentifiable. It is absolutely based on a few houses hidden away there, but none specifically. Maithe House is indeed exactly as advertised, but only on the outside. I have a lot of tidbits about The Maithe, but I’m saving them for a future blog post. 😉
The first place we go in ISYK is a party at a big house. Traveling outside of the city, down Falls Rd – which runs from close to where Club Marcada is located in Midtown, almost to the Pennsylvania border – it’s obvious that the house isn’t a place one can just stumble upon, it is off the beaten path. I’ve again softened the border between our reality and book reality when it comes to exact location and the ease of getting there without a vehicle. If you’re in the know and driving around the Greenspring Station to Ruxton Road area, you might find yourself traveling the road that Merrick takes to crash a party.
Both Merrick’s apartment and Lucee’s place are based on places where friends lived, in the Mt Vernon neighborhood. Sousa’s place isn’t too far from there. The pic above shows a little of what that area looks like. It is a great neighborhood for artsy types, though perhaps a little more affordable in the fictional version of Baltimore!
Using a real-life place, even one I’m familiar with, gave me some things to think about before I proceeded. I’ve seen it done really well, and also not quite as well. It can be easy to let the setting overwhelm the story by putting the city’s character and descriptions too far forward. For me, Baltimore is an important part of the tale, but not the most forward part. I wanted it to lurk in the background in some ways – interesting but ignorable in detail until the right time. And of course, it is all about timing!
I can’t wait until you travel to my version of Baltimore, and you get to meet the folks that live there.
They say that good things come to those who wait, and I am taking that advice to heart as I get through the final processes of getting In Sleep You Know ready for its big debut! The chances are good that you don’t really know what it entails to get a novel from idea to manuscript to proof to book. Add in all the various forms in which one can release a story – hardback, paperback, epub/mobi, audiobook – and the work really starts to stack up. And if you aren’t versed in this, it can feel like a daunting task… especially if all you really wanted to do was write stories for people to read.
I’ve found that I already had some of the “extra” skills that one needs to publish a book independently, which gave me a good start. I am used to creating my own graphics, marketing copy, and press, thanks to my other job as a fiber artist at Three Ravens Studio. I can also take passable photos, thanks to years of shooting my yarn and fibers. That’s definitely more than a lot of writers have in their skill sets when starting out.
The key to success, in my mind, is getting an understanding of what I don’t know, and then either learning how, or hiring someone skilled in those areas to be on my team. In this case, I am both taking my time to learn more about formatting and proper setup/layout for printing and publishing, and I hired a fantastic designer and book coach to help me through the process. I can’t say enough good things about Leesa Ellis of 3 Ferns Book Design and all the work she’s done to make In Sleep You Know go from a weirdly formatted .doc* to [almost!] finished book. If you are an aspiring author looking to self-publish, do yourself a favor and invest in hiring someone like Leesa to help you though these steps. You need editors, advisors, designers, and other professionals on your team. It’s important that these people are not you! Getting that outside input is vital. Trust me when I tell you: you are too close to your work. You need a team. Even if that team is Beta readers and trusted friends – though don’t rely on them to do your heavy lifting. You truly do get what you pay for. *I add a lot of extra paragraph breaks and spacing when I write, because it can be difficult for me to differentiate dialogue, etc in my working manuscript otherwise. Finding all those things to fix them later is a pain and my editing team are saints.
When I get stuck, creatively, I often go to the Sovereign Oracle and expansion packs for a kickstart. It never fails to apply to the situation!
In the coming weeks, I’ll talk more about the tools I use, what I’ve been doing during the pre-launch-countdown time to prepare, and of course I’ll be sharing some more short works. By the way! I am writing a short story that goes along with In Sleep You Know and will be offered for FREE to those who join my mailing list! It won’t give away the story, but you will learn more about one of the characters and get a feel for the world of the Eleriannan before In Sleep You Know hits the shelves. Want in? Just sign up for the Mailing List and as soon as it is ready, you’ll get it in your inbox!
So here I am, talking to you like we’ve just run into each other in the halls at a con, or waiting in line to get into a show, or wherever you might see me and feel bored enough to ask a bunch of questions about who I am and what makes me the person I am. Why? [Why not!]
I’ve got a Bio page, but that’s just got the “writer” stuff on it, and I’m a big believer in connection as a full contact sport. No, not like football, more like jumping into the pit at a punk show.
So that’s a great place to start, actually – I DO NOT do sports. I always say: if you see me running, then you should run, too, because something is definitely chasing me! However, I not only love dancing with every fiber of my being, I actually minored in Dance in college. [Theater major, because I am obviously into things just for the money, right?] I’ve talked at length about how I got into being involved with the Goth/Industrial/Electronica subgenres and built myself a small career as a DJ and promoter for a while that way, so I won’t go through the whole story now. But you need to know that my direct progression involved music and dance in school > discovering the joy of going to punk shows and the freedom of everything it brought > finding alternative dance nights at clubs that gave me the confidence to really pursue the things that give me joy.
I’ve always loved writing, music, and performance. For someone who spent a great deal of time in her own head while growing up, I managed to still excel at being dramatic – to the point where I knew that I wanted a public-facing job when I grew up. I played at being a radio DJ, introducing the 45s I’d play for myself as I recorded my own mixtapes, learning bits of trivia about the bands I liked to “reveal” to the audience. I also made my own dramas and musicals, did my own costuming, and wrote my own scripts, all to be performed by and for myself in my room. [I liked sheets for sweeping togas, capes, and skirts.] And I dreamed about fronting a band, and probably shook the house at inappropriate hours while practicing my vocal stylings. Come to think of it, I still do.
So falling into Theater was obvious, and I pursued that and music and dance, and found myself more and more frustrated as I ran against what I was expected to be, rather than what I am.
Punk was the antidote.
When I discovered punk, I learned that there was a world where it was a lot easier to be who and what I wanted to be. There was still pushback to some degree and plenty of -isms, but the culture was set up in a way that gave me more freedom to speak out against them, and show anger in general. In the 80s, it was still tough to be an angry woman, an individual, a rule-breaker, and not be penalized in every aspect of life. Punk mostly didn’t care. I thrived in that scene, and I grew comfortable in my own skin.
Posing with my beloved friend Faron, 1987ish? Fully feeling myself here.
That led me to finding more Post-Punk and Alternative music and going to clubs that played those genres, too. Suddenly, I was at a show or a club every week, absorbing even more music and being exposed to a wide variety of culture and art, and I loved it all. My outfits got more dramatic, slowly verging into a decidedly Goth aesthetic, which then blended with my everyday look forever. Seriously, I’m still basically wearing the same stuff, just the more casual versions. Long black skirt and band tee, with a hoodie or cardigan and Docs? Yep, that’s me.
And that phase, my friends, shaped everything else in my life. I found the people who appreciated my aesthetic, my words, and eventually the music I wanted to make. I started publishing ‘zines and contributing to others, and I became a small time club DJ around the East Coast of the US, centered in VA/DC/MD.
A lot of In Sleep You Know is fueled by these experiences. It references clubs I went to regularly, music I love, and the subcultures of which I’m a part. It also reflects the wonder I felt when I started coming to the city and discovered a place where I belonged, and all the magic and weirdness I learned to see and accept without question. Merrick Moore, the main character, is in many ways who I was when I first roosted in Baltimore City: a aimless dreamer accepting of the beautiful and odd people randomly met along the way. Someone game to roll with strange happenings, because deep in our heart, that was we always hoped to find.
Me and Merrick, we’re the dreamers here.
In the harshness of daylight, we might have a harder time buying into the weirdness than we did under cover of night. But those experiences changed me, shaped and reinforced my sense of whimsy and wonder and possibility, and gave me a lot of fodder for the things I write about now! And now you get to see how they shape Merrick, too. *
If you like reading true tales of my strange adventures that are 100% unvarnished and often ridiculous, let me know. I have so many shareable snippets! Not everything is going to make it into my books, right?
* NotASpoiler: it’s a bit different than how things went down for me. ps: Post Title is a snippet of song lyric from “Baby Doll” by Ruin, a Philly punk band that meant a lot to me back in the day. pps: I updated this post a tiny bit in 2026 but only to reflect that ISYK is out
I am traveling tonight under cover of darkness – I know that I am asleep, dreaming, yet I make no effort to wake.
I clutch a pouch in my hand. It is made out of black leather and it is filled with something heavy.
I step under a street lamp, and the city glitters around me like rhinestones and tinfoil. I empty the pouch’s contents onto the white marble steps at the last doorway before the street corner. A thousand crystals fall out, in every color imaginable; arcane jewels made tawdry by the artificial gleam of the metropolis.
I cannot stop myself from reaching down to pluck a clear, green stone from the pile, and I carefully place it in my mouth. Incredibly, I can feel the hard substance turn soft and melt away on my tongue.
And briefly, I am surrounded by verdant forest, breathing in the smell of damp earth and fresh leaves, before I jolt awake in my bed.
For more about my Oneiromantic series, start here: Oneiromantic
Oneiromancer: someone who reads dreams and divines from them
Oneiromantic: made up of two words – Oneiros, the god of dreams, and Romantic, one who readily demonstrates love, a person with romantic beliefs or attitudes. Romantic can also pertain to having no basis in fact, being imaginary, and that also seems appropriate.
Long ago, I started using Oneiromantic as an umbrella term to describe the short stories and poems that I was writing based on the dreams that I had. I even used my Oneiromantic works to create some of my lyrics in my work with The Violet Dawning. I planned on making a chapbook with all the collected works written under that concept, but it hasn’t come to fruition. So I decided to share some of those works here, over time, a small gift from my sleeping brain to you. Some of these have been posted, performed, or published other places, others have never been seen before now.
Some of these words follow a dream exactly, and you may find that the narrative is as disjointed as one might expect from a dream. Other pieces are more direct, as the subject might have been dream-inspired but the writing explores onward from that launching point.
Do not believe what they say, the tales are all exaggerated – there is magic to be found, sure… for the right price.
No one sleeps at night here. The dusty streets are filled with the wraith-like folk from dusk to dawn, and no one ventures forth into the sunlight. There are too many truths to hide.
We are desperate here. You can see the once-finery; splendid jewel toned stained glass now obscured by filth, awe-inspiring architecture eroded by the ill-educated hands of the rabble. Once fine storefronts are now boarded over, their wares abandoned for cheaper pleasures.
Receiving advice and criticism isn’t easy. I like to say you need a Teflon-coated ego if you’re going to put yourself out there in any creative field. And if you’re a sensitive soul [like me, I fully admit it] that can be difficult to achieve. How do you get there?
“Knowing Who You Are” is the key to everything: that’s how I interpret and take in the advice and criticisms given to me in a way that doesn’t break me, and that allows me to actually glean the important, useful parts.
Being able to gracefully take advice and criticism is one of the most important skills that any creative person can possess. As someone who finds herself in creative roles that have thrust me into the public eye over and over, being able to roll with the punches when it comes to how people receive my work has always been a battle, but one worth waging. You just can’t get up in front of people, on *any* platform, and put yourself out there without expecting razzes with the praise. It’s what some people just do. In fact, I recommend preparing yourself for the possibility that the jeers will outweigh the good words! I firmly believe in the idea that it’s easier to be prepared for disappointment with the hope to be pleasantly surprised, than the opposite. Not everyone is going to like or appreciate your work. That doesn’t mean your work is bad!
The trick is to be able to separate valid criticisms from a general “this is not my jam” reaction. Same goes for advice, especially advice that goes against your instincts or raises a pushback reaction. That’s when it’s important to sit with those words for a while, and really take some time to reflect on why they are triggering that response in you.
I’m going to use myself as an example here, because that’s how I roll, and I have no problem sharing my vulnerability and ego weak points. [please do laugh here!]
I threw a piece of writing out there recently to get some editing advice. I read the suggestions returned to me and my heart sank. The editor I was most interested in took my writing and ripped it apart.
Except… they really didn’t. They ripped into it, sure – but not to destroy it, rather in order to point out all the places where mercilessly editing it would tighten it up and make it a better read overall. Was it brutal? Sure, to my ego, for about five minutes. Then I got over myself and paid attention to what was being suggested. Some things I didn’t agree with, but I earmarked them to revisit in a bit while they tumbled around in my head. Other things were “duh” revelations, like a continuity problem here or there, or an overlooked grammar mistake.
After I sat awhile with those suggestions that I didn’t agree with, I went back and re-read with the edits in mind, and with a sincere effort to read the story like it hadn’t been living in my head for a while. Did I end up using all the suggestions? No, I did not – but I did use some of them, and the whole experience caused me to go back and look over the rest of my story again with fresh eyes, and make changes in other places. I came away feeling that my writing was improved, but still felt like mine. It’s still not perfect, and I don’t think I’ll ever be the writer who is 100% satisfied with her work, but that gives me glorious room for improvement, yes?
That’s what I mean when I say “know who you are.” I know what I want in my work. I am pretty confident in knowing my strengths and weaknesses – and I’m also aware that I have both of those that I might not see because I’m too close to the material. That doesn’t make me a bad writer [musician, artist, whatever] – it makes me a human one. I know who I am, what I want out of my work, and what I’m capable of; knowing that gives me the space to allow others to offer words that can help me improve. And knowing who I am also gives me the strength to reject or ignore the criticisms that aren’t designed to be helpful.
Does it always work? Hell no! But keeping grounded in that knowledge can help me weather the worst and keep growing. And that helps me to improve my craft, as well. Win-win.
Next in my “What’s In A Name” series [WIAN for short, please], I want to talk about how I choose character names, including some of the meanings behind them.
Of all the parts of writing a story that I find the most fun, yet the most challenging, it is finding the right names for my characters. The right names can tether your characters to the qualities you’ve given them. A bad name choice can knock readers out of a story.
Speaking for my own preferences, I’ve encountered character names that have made me put back a book, because they are cliché, unbelievable, or just awkward – and not awkward in a way that fits the character’s narrative. Obviously, this is my personal preference, and not necessarily global opinion; but I figure that if I’m noticing/feeling it, I am probably not the only one!
That being said, choosing a character name can be a complicated process. I have a couple of methods that I use:
Intuition. Sometimes, characters “tell” me their names! I might have an idea of who they are and what they are about, and while I’m sketching that out, a name will just appear. Instances of this are rare, but in my upcoming book In Sleep You Know I have at least two major characters where this happened: Lucee Fearney and Joseph Sousa.
Serendipity. I collect names for future characters and keep those names in a list. One might pop out in a scan as the perfect name for a character I’m envisioning. Or I might be doing research on names for one character, when a name for a completely different character introduces itself. Examples: Merrick Moore, Camlin of The Grimshaw.
Research. As I mentioned above, I do a lot of research when it comes to names. For my Eleriannan books, I want characters with meaningful names, so I took a list of attributes and did an online search for names that reflected those attributes. I also do things like check name origins, so that those names make sense for the characters that will carry them.
I’m going to take a moment to expand here about name meanings. I like names with hidden clues about characters and places. If you want a fun exercise, you can go through all the ones I use and get insight about personalities or potentials.
Examples:
Cullen – handsome
Merrick – fame, leader
Fallon – superiority, descended from rulers
Sheridan – untamed, wild, to seek
… By the way, this carries over into the faction names – the Eleriannan and Gwyliannan, for example, found their names from the Welsh concept of the ellyllon and gwyllion, benevolent elves and “frightful fairies” – I developed the name changes to hint at that reference, while keeping their own unique feeling. I’ll admit that they’re a touch easier to pronounce, as well. Go ahead and drop “Gwyliannan” into the Google translate for Welsh and see what you get!
Hopefully this gives you some background as to how I work with names and use them to build layers in my stories. I’d love to hear from you about this! If you are a writer, how do you choose your names? If you are a reader, what are your favorite character names, and why?
I’ve always written what I consider Urban Fantasy – even before the term became commonplace. It makes sense to me to set my stories in the neighborhoods that I know, because I’ve seen plenty of magic there. And if I know anything, it’s that magic is adaptable! Wikipedia says of Urban Fantasy:
Works of urban fantasy may be set in an approximation of our world in which fantastic exists secretly or in a world (such as an alternative history) in which it occurs openly (or some combination of the above). Elements such as magic, paranormal beings, other worlds and so on, may exist here. Common themes include coexistence or conflict between humans and other beings, and the changes such characters and events bring to local life are the mainspring. Many authors, publishers, and readers distinguish them from works of paranormal romance, which use similar characters and settings, but focus on the romantic relationships between characters.
I also might use the term “Low Fantasy” – where magical events “intrude” into the normal world. [Urban Fantasy can be considered a type of Low Fantasy.] I probably wouldn’t, but it’s a term that’s available!
I look for the liminal spaces.
Looking over where the Fantasy genre has changed and morphed, I think I’d be comfortable explaining that my work is more like a classic Urban Fantasy than a lot of the modern types available. My works are about magic and mythos, but also about community and growth – and always some music and subculture, because that’s the heartbeat, the driving force.
As with any label, it’s only as effective as the understanding of what it represents. I want to be clear what I write about, so readers understand what sort of journey they’re signing up for before we depart. Of course, any trip can have unexpected twists and turns – that’s what I’m counting on.
In coming posts in this series, I’ll talk more about names and why & how I choose them. It is a very thoughtful exercise on my part! Look for posts tagged #whatsinaname for more entries with this theme.
