A ton of my friends encouraged me to check out Book Tok and since I was already on TikTok, I decided to check it out.
Please, no politics and raging in my comments, social media constantly has backlash from people who dislike certain platforms and I’m old enough to remember the rise and fall of many of them. Suffice, anything and everything can be exploited for attention/misdirection or to earn a buck, the responsibility falls on you to do your research and participate with moderation and intelligence.
SO!
The Ever King by LJ Andrews has a fantastic book trailer that caught my attention. And I devoured that book in two days only to discover it had a major cliffhanger at the end. Which.. fair. It’s a marketing strategy and it worked well on me since I went out and grabbed Curse of Shadows and Thorns by the same author whilst waiting for the next book.
Which is a roundabout way of saying how I stumbled into the Broken Kingdoms Series, but there you have it. The books are on Kindle Unlimited, which is good because I have a husband who loves me and wants me to be able to read at my own pace (often quite fast) so we have a Kindle Unlimited account.
Say what you want about Amazon, Kindle Unlimited is brilliant. One price every month and I have access to millions of titles? This. Saves. Me. Heartache. And it makes authors money who would otherwise have been passed over because my book budget would only allow for X amount of novels that month.
Anyway, Curse of Shadows and Thorns is the introduction to the Broken Kingdoms series by LJ Andrews and I adored this story. Yes, it’s adult. So walk in with your eyes open. Yes, it’s romance. It’s Vikings meet Fae, full of wonder and hope and tragedy.
Now, I will admit that I saw the twist coming in Book 3. Yes, there are tropes and some predictable elements by the time you hit books 4 and 5, but at the end of the day… I had so much fun reading them.
Just… fun.
And really, as much as I love books that open my heart and mind to other cultures and ways of life, sometimes you just want a girl to see the good man beneath the monstrous exterior, and for love to conquer all the ugliness that came before it.
My first post about Character Growth dealt with Nora Grayson in particular. She is the main protagonist in the Nora Grayson Adventures and my focus was on how she has grown over the past several books. Currently I’m drafting Book 3 and outlining Book 4, so I have a pretty good idea what she looks like at the end of the series compared to book 1.
Today I’m looking at other characters in the books, which might have some mild spoilers but I’ll try to lean on the HINTING side instead of the outright telling you side of things. Because we all know I’m not big on spoiling books.
First, I’ll say that some of the comments from Werewolf Wedding have been about the team in the CEB. That’s Lieutenant Eucilla Norwind, Derrick King, Elliot Cade, Gretchen, and Sam Witters.
Basically, people want to know more about them.
And I get it.
Because I do too.
I should preface this with saying I am a kind of hybrid author. I do a basic worldbuilding bit to start, and then the story surprises me with the details as I move forward. Which means I take a LOT of notes as I write. And I have a Story Bible that is constantly being referenced to make sure I haven’t broken canon already set in stone.
Fun note: the Story Bible is the messiest thing you’ll ever see. It’s my creative brain at its finest, handwritten in multiple shades of ink with circles and highlights and extra punctuation. The outlines are done in here. And the read-through notes when I prep for editing.
Why is this important?
Because it means I only had a hint of who these people were when I started. They grew with the story and told me who they were mid-draft.
Now, this won’t work for every author out there. Some need to know everything from which kind of peanut butter their character prefers to how many times a day they think about their mother. And that’s fine. That works for them.
It does not work for me.
Drafting is a conversation between me and the characters. It’s where they show me who they are and tell me their story. If I knew everything going in, I’d get bored and stop writing.
Now, writing in a series means I have to keep a tighter grip on things. Each of them have to grow, have to show a little more of who they are, without breaking what’s already established. So… I do a weird thing, and maybe it’ll work for someone else but… here it goes.
I have Scrivener. And Scrivener has this amazing tool where you make character sheets. Before I start each book, I go through that messy Story Bible and type up what has already been established for each character. It’s my Filtered Download of the character, if you will. And then I go through my outline and put what I call CBP — Character Beat Points — at each chapter.
CBP’s are comments and/or questions aimed at each character. Things like; How does Gretchen feel about the pawn shop? or Don’t forget Sam is still new to Earthside and doesn’t get a lot of the customs.
And then, you know… I draft the first version.
The CBP’s are mostly there to instigate questions that can be explored as the narrative unfolds. Oftentimes they lead to more interesting questions that get fleshed out between draft one and draft four.
Anyway, that’s what I do. Maybe it’ll help someone else.
Given how much I have enjoyed Sarah J Maas and her worlds, it should come as no surprise that this Romantasy has been on my radar for a while. I was lucky enough to be given a gift card to Barnes and Noble for Christmas and immediately set about snagging this book.
MILD SPOILER ALERT — Only read on if you don’t mind a smidgen of talk about THINGS.
First thing to note — I loved Xaden. Like, from moment one of him entering the stage, I quite enjoyed him. All the stuff I heard about this novel, I thought I would have moments where I didn’t like him but truth is… everything he did made sense. And everything about the world this girl was raised in had all my red flag alarms going off.
Which means that the big reveal at the end didn’t really hit me the way it might have hit others.
You mean the militaristic society banning certain books and allowing kids to plunge to death on Conscription Day just to see if they’ll have the wits to get across a parapet is hiding something evil? Who would guess?
So the entire book I’m mostly watching Violet to see when she wises up, and munching popcorn while the emotions fester between her and Xaden. But I really dug into the narrative the moment we meet the dragons, because I love stories where dragons bond/speak/get on the level with humans. Tairn’s exasperation was excellent.
I will say that Andarna probably shouldn’t have been so puppyish if they were trying to keep her age on the down-low from authorities. Any adult watching that scenario would be stroking their chin about the true nature of feathertails, and that’s based on maybe three interactions they get to see from afar.
Next up…
Having been through Basic Training, I thoroughly enjoyed the militaristic aspects of Violet’s training. Outside of the very real threat to the lives of these kids, I was right at home with the physical demands they placed on her and the struggle she had to overcome them.
The romance built nicely, but as always, I warn Parents that there are explicit scenes in this book. Which, to be fair, I keep meaning to have a longer conversation about explicit scenes in books because they are so popular. Before I do, let me clarify by saying ‘kids’ in this book are consenting age, I’m just showing how old I am in calling them kids.
My very conservative upbringing blushes at a lot of these scenes. If I feel they are gratuitous, I pass them over. My eyes literally skim the page hunting for the conversation that comes after because, quite frankly, while intimacy is important to keeping a romance healthy, its the vulnerable moments after that truly define that relationship.
Because I am constantly trying to improve my craft, I did read a book recently that describes what makes a good intimate scene, and when I remember the title and who wrote it, I’ll be sure to update this post, but for now I’ll make note of what truly stuck out to me. What was explained was that you had to be able to say why only these two people could be having this scene at this time, what it reveals about them as individuals as well as them as a couple. And this makes so much sense to me that I have to wonder why I didn’t notice it before.
Suffice, in this book, the intimate scenes made sense. I mean, some of it could have been put behind a closed door, but you don’t pick up a romantasy without certain expectations so… fans might have murdered Yarros if she closed that door too soon.
The story was fun and I get the hype that surrounded it. The characters have stuck with me, even if some aspects of the world haven’t, and I’m excited to see what happens next.
SO, I have been reading and I have a backlog of reviews I need to post up here. My husband recently introduced me to BookTok on TikTok and I have discovered a ton of books that I want to read.
Six Scorched Roses was one of the books that kept popping up and it caught my attention. I should preface this review with a disclaimer — This is a romance novel. It has explicit scenes.
I knew it was “Romantasy” when I picked it up but I had no real knowledge about what world I was walking into, so color me surprised when I discovered vampires were still going strong. I have strong feelings about vampires in the romance genre, which I haven’t been shy about in the past. There are some discussions to be had about the psychology behind death and sex walking hand in hand, but I never saw the appeal of a predatory half-corpse giving me the come hither look.
Necrophilia, much?
That said…
I loved this book.
The vampires were not the undead – not that I could tell anyway? Her other books may delve deeper into the worldbuilding behind them. They had two distinct species (feathered wings versus bat wings) and while they did feed on blood and have weakness to the sun, they did not fit neatly into the cookie cutter stereotype we’ve come to know for vampires.
This was enough of a difference that I was able to move past the idea that Vale – our curmudgeon antihero – was a vampire. I enjoyed him as a character. And I enjoyed how Lilith – our protagonist – interacted with him.
But what I really enjoyed was the language.
This book is beautifully written. And the story itself – outside of the romance – is just classical enough (scary vampire in the manor at the top of the hill) without crossing into cliche (we have a medical crisis that has to be solved and a loved one on the line if it isn’t solved soon) and… yes. I loved it.
Again, this book has spice. Explicit scenes. So if you prefer clean romance, this might not be for you. For everyone else, I do recommend it.
I absolutely love Nora and her books. She is a lot of fun. And the world she is in is a lot of fun to write. Writing her first book took longest because I was worldbuilding a lot, but her second book took me 4 months to draft. And because I’m editing in preparation for next year’s publication date, I just re-read it and still love it.
These books are like Jim Butcher’s Dresden files meets Sarah J Maas’s Court of Thorns and Roses and I really am having a blast writing them. And it’s showing in the work. I know because of the feedback I have been getting from readers. They are having fun reading Nora, which tells me I’m doing something right.
I don’t know how other writer’s work but for me, if I’m not having fun then the work crawls along and I often don’t finish. I move on to something else that is fun and then I dissect the old book and implement the elements I enjoyed into the new work. Which is a legitimate means of morphing your craft, but the point still stands — You have got to be having fun.
If you’re not having fun, if you’re not engaged and lying awake at night wondering how your character is going to make it through the obstacles in front of them, then I can guarantee that your readers won’t be either.
This isn’t to say there have been no roadblocks.
I spent four days grouching about a menu because I had no idea what to serve on board a dirigible.
I spent a week trying to figure out the ending of Werewolf Wedding. (My husband helped me brainstorm during one of our drives. You guys can thank him for like… everything that happens there.)
I spent two months revising Werewolf Wedding to make it steampunk 1890’s, and then another 4 months returning it to contemporary urban fantasy.
But from start to finish, I have been having fun with the story. Even in the middle of the roadblocks. And I am excited to see what comes next, which motivates me to be at the computer long after I should have closed it for the day.
There are some books that I’ve written that were a grind from the mid-point to the end. Some halted completely for months. In these cases, I have to start from the beginning, remind myself why I started the story in the first place, and ignite that joy again before I start writing. Because readers can sense when you’ve lost your way too and no amount of professionalism is going to cover that.
So here is me, diving back into Nora’s world to get Book #3 Drafted. In the meantime, the first book is out August 9th! And here’s the placeholder cover for Book #2.
But other platforms are used for my professional self – Twitter, Instagram, etc. – and unless the weekend trip included a eureka moment for a work in progress then, quite frankly, I doubt anyone truly cares. Everyone has struggles. Everyone has opinions. NOT everyone wants to hear about my struggles and my opinions.
Side note: Opinions change as new information is absorbed and thus I find it rather silly to blast what I think at any given moment. Often I am wrong. Often that opinion changes drastically. I would prefer to give myself the grace of being able to change in private rather than get strangled by society.
All of that said… I have one moment when social media went right for me.
We were having a weird chat about mashups that we would love to see. I believe the conversation derived from the Lucifer television show and how amusing it was that the devil had a therapist. And then, somehow, we wound up with supernatural creatures needing a marital counselor. And Nora Grayson was born in my head. She just showed up.
Gentle. Quirky. A little lost. Chocolate loving. Sassy. And an empath.
Because I love Deanna Troi from Star Trek and I did, in fact, wish to see her in a story of her own. So I snagged the empath ability and shoved it into Nora’s already mildly neurotic mess and wham!
I had a story.
Now, I will admit that the original intent was straight murder-mystery with supernatural creatures. In my head it was Clue meets Fairy creatures, but what ended up on paper was a little bigger. Because… c’mon. If Fairy creatures are living next door, wouldn’t you want to investigate a little more than one book would permit?
So now I’m sitting with two books written and a third getting outlined and I owe it all to that original conversation on social media. I have to put a major shout to the writing community on the Twitter platform. Whatever your opinions are about the swap of ownership, the writing community got me to Nora and for that I am grateful.
Pre-Orders Available for Kindle, or you can snag the book in Hardback or Paperback from Amazon!
This month we’re unveiling the topic of Character Backstories, why they’re important, and how we manage to get the information onto the page without a snooze-worthy info-dump. Because nobody likes an info-dump. Even if it’s told in a snarky voice in the narrative, readers recognize an info-dump when they see one.
So… how do I convey important information on the page?
First, let me express that not everything in a character’s backstory is necessary for the narrative to move forward. So the very, very first thing I have to ask is if this information is relevant. If it isn’t, it’s tossed. Maybe one day it’ll come out in an anthology somewhere, but if it has no bearing on the current storyline it can be set aside.
Yes, even if it explains why Character A is so emotionally closed off.
The truth is, sometimes a little mystery is good. Readers are smart, and creative, and allowing them to wonder is a good thing.
The character of Johanna Rorry – also known as Jorry – stars in my Tapped series and she is complicated: she’s commanding, overbearing, and too sharp for gentler company. Granted, she’s in charge of a starship and everything in outer space is designed to kill humans. She is also a veteran who has been through a galactic war. Just knowing those two pieces is enough to explain some of that overbearing behavior away, without diving into a major info dump.
You know there’s trauma hiding behind her, even if it isn’t expressly explained.
What I do give are small snippets of memory.
People are the sum total of their experiences. Memories crop up in the natural course of the day. It’s no difficult thing to imagine such happening for our characters on the page. So if the information is relevant, if it hints toward something I’m going to unveil later on, I go ahead and put something in the way of my character that brings out a memory.
For instance, in my upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding we see an empathic wizard coming to terms with how different the cultures are between living in Boston and living in Fairy. There is some trauma in her past, which I reveal through tiny snippets of memory, the first of which can be seen below.
–SNIPPET — Nora and the Werewolf Wedding —
Except for the occasional hairdresser, no one had brushed my hair since I was a child and for a heartbeat I was distracted by the gentle scrape of bristles across my scalp. Memories uprooted, unbidden but clear, and I could almost hear the melodic hum of my mother’s voice as she helped prepare me for bed. I could not have been more than seven, hugging a doll whose name was something like Regina, and basking in the attention. She was all warmth and light and gentle teasing, with a soft chuckle that seemed to echo into the quiet room.
But on the tail of that memory a dark staircase leading down, my own voice sounding small as I called for mother. I could feel the chill of the basement reaching for me, long shadows pooling at the bottom of the stair, and dread crept up my spine.
Grief pricked fresh and I blinked back the burn of tears, shoving hard at the memories. Meredith was not my mother, she was performing a service, not providing comfort, and I needed my wits to survive whatever dinner was waiting downstairs.
SO!
Readers can glean that Nora remembers her mother a little, but thoughts of her mother turn to a shadowy staircase and a strong sense of fear. We know something important happened in the basement, and there’s the promise that eventually this part of her backstory will come to light, but we keep a little mystery in the mix because there are things happening and Nora needs to concentrate.
Memories like these are an organic means of adding backstory into a narrative without clogging the page with an info-dump. The majority of my books use them and until I learn how to be better at it, I’ll probably keep adding them.
Check out how my fellow authors manage Character Backstory!
Alright, so we all know I loved the first book in the Crescent City series. I got it for Christmas and lived in that book for three days, so it should come as no surprise that I picked up the second book in the series, House of Sky and Breath.
Now, I don’t give spoilers in my reviews because I don’t like being given spoilers myself, so I’m going to hedge the line a little here and say it does end on a cliffhanger. I don’t mind cliffhangers occasionally, I really don’t, but given the length of these two books I wouldn’t have made that choice. There comes a point when you’ve crossed a threshold of several thousands of words and people deserve a HFN ending so they can sleep better at night. And I am still quite nervous about how this cliffhanger came about, but I can’t get too much into the reasons why without shoving spoilers at people. Suffice, I will walk into the third book with no small amount of trepidation.
However, I understand this is my personal opinion and thus it doesn’t count for much beyond my preferences when I’m reading, so don’t let it deter you from reading the book.
This book comes with a STRONG CONTENT WARNING for those of you with young adults who like to read. Admittedly, there were some conversations between the romantic characters that left me feeling awkward, but I am also a blushy-conservative-prude. Which, hey, my husband finds endearing and really he’s the only one who matters when it come to those sorts of conversations. I only mention it as a warning to those of you who might be like me. Reading is cool in that you can glaze over the spots that make you blush a lot.
For the plot of the novel… There is quite a lot of it.
I did enjoy this book, but it felt like we were keeping a breakneck pace and there just wasn’t enough room for Bryce and her companions to actually, truly, sit down and process everything that had happened in the first book. What made me fall in love with this author was the SECOND book of Court of Thorns and Roses series, when her main character had to sit down and actually deal with what she had done in the first novel. Trauma wasn’t just shouldered, it was confronted and eventually overcome. This wasn’t the case in House of Sky and Breath.
Sure, we’re told that the two main characters cried on each others shoulders, but you don’t really get to feel it.
So here’s the plan… Last Child of Winter is nearly complete. It turned out longer than I intended, which I think is probably good because it means I have more I can edit out come the revision pass. In any case, my beloved husband got me a Planner for Christmas and I have plotted out the first several months of 2023.
Why am I telling this to you, gentle, kind, lovely Reader (or listener, if you prefer the podcast version)?
Because those plans include a release date!
On May 9th, 2023, Nora and the Werewolf Wedding will be out for sale. And, fingers crossed, I hope to have an audio version released at the same time. It’s a learning process with audio rights and things, but hopefully we will see them both available on the same date.
Nora’s stories are my first real leap into Urban Fantasy, and for those who have been following along, I’m sure you recognize her name. She’s only been stirring around my creative brain for three years now, after a Twitter conversation gone awry. I started her story as alternate history fantasy, based in a steampunk version of our world but her voice was too sharp and by chapter four of the rough draft I had to change it.
This was the right call because her story opened up as soon as I made the choice and it’s grown enough in my head to be an entity of its own. In fact, her second book was written in three months flat and her third is being outlined.
And really, it makes sense since Nora’s character was inspired by Deanna Troi from Star Trek the Next Generation. (More on this in a later post.) Trying to shove Nora into 1820’s Boston stymied my creative Muse, as it were, and I came to a standstill. So, even if I think Nora doesn’t wear enough leather pants to truly qualify for Urban Fantasy, this is where we are.
I suppose it does have werewolves, and that seems to be on the Urban Fantasy Checklist these days.
This is vastly different from the recent release – Paw Prints on the Wall – which is still doing fabulous and I keep hearing from readers who enjoyed it. Thank you, forever and always, to everyone who has picked up a copy.
Nora’s book is a popcorn novel. Which means it’s a lot of fantastic adventure and fun, something you can enjoy while munching on popcorn or nestled in for a rainy weekend. I poke fun at a couple of tropes, lean into some cliches because, I mean, werewolves, guys. All around, Nora’s stories are great fun to write and I am looking forward to digging into the book once more as we prepare for that May 9th release.
P.S. Totally a placeholder cover. I have another cover in the works. A better cover. The best of all covers.
We are coming up on the holidays and I am about to take a step back from Blogging so that I can concentrate on family and reading and winding down, so this will be my last real post of the year. That means I get to talk about all the amazing things I managed to get done this year AND what I hope to accomplish next year.
This is my happy post because I get to brag a little.
And I do enjoy making goals for next year, even if I don’t manage to get them all done.
DRAFTS
We will start with the number of drafts I got finished in the year because honestly, this is what takes up the most time. I started the year with The World Beside Us, the second of the Nora Grayson novels. The first draft is completed and I managed to run it through the first revision pass, but it still needs another two or three passes before it is up to par and will be ready for publication.
Then I picked up Melody of Bones again, which I know I promised was a “little darling” that had been slain but let’s face it, an entire book as a “little darling” is hard to accept. It was literal years of my life I was trying to kill off and that didn’t seem at all fair. So I found a serial novel place called Novel Cat where I was able to sign the book and it is presently available in completed form. There are some charges you will have to pay to read the whole thing, if you’re interested, but it is relatively cheap. You can find my dragon Pru and her story HERE if you are interested.
Then we come to Paw Prints on the Wall, which went through several drafts before it became available for purchase in November. This story is near and dear to my heart and I am so pleased that people have been enjoying it. There are already a couple of reviews out there and I am hopeful that more people can find something that touches their hearts in the story. You can find it HERE if you are interested.
And to wrap up the year I have written (am nearly finished with) Last Child of Winter, which is a tale about a fairy talent show that I am super excited to see out in the world. It’s got fae folk as refugees on Earth and is a kind of mystery/love story/horror story all bundled into one. I adore it.
Or at least, I haven’t been working on it so long that I’ve hit the point where I hate it yet. Because that’s part of the writing process too. Don’t worry, by the time the editing process is done I’ll love it again.
BEYOND WRITING
Also this year I started podcasting this very blog. Which means you can read it OR you can have me read it to you. It has been interesting learning how to get all this done. I’m still a little wobbly when it comes to vocal editing and annunciating every word the way my high school drama teacher always taught me to do, but I will get there.
For those curious, this is the first step toward audiobooks. I have had several requests for this, and I have some vocal talent lined up for Tapped and Enemy Souls, but it is a process. With any luck, the first audio version of Tapped will be ready about the same time that the third book in the series – tentatively titled Tango Five – is ready for publication next year.
Which brings me to NEXT YEAR…
The first three months of 2023 are going to be dedicated to the completing Last Child of Winter, which is turning out to be bigger than I thought it would be. After this I will turn my focus to producing the audio version of Nora and the Big Werewolf Wedding. I am hoping for this to take no more than 6 weeks out of the year, so by the middle of May I should have something decent to present for Beta-Listeners. And then there will be announcements for a release date of the audio and print versions of the book.
For my second novel of the year I want to dive back into science fiction and get the next Tapped novel finished. Right now it is tentatively titled Tango Five, but that is likely to change mid-draft.
Titles are hard, alright?
I would also like to have edits for The World Beside Us completed, and to have a rough draft of the third novel in her series done.
I’ve learned that three major projects a year is plenty for me. It is an achievable goal and I do so enjoy achieving goals. But here are some things I would also like to complete, and/or at least begin working on:
The Little-Big Book of Testimonies – Christian Fiction
Nora and the Minotaur’s Wife – Short story
Fantasy Anthology – Possible Christmas 2023 release because I only need a couple more short stories to fill the pages. This is basically because you cannot get Torven in print anymore thanks to new guidelines/rules at Amazon. You can still get that book in digital format on Kindle.
The Debrief – Prequel Novelette for the Tapped series. This one’s been waiting in the back of my head for several years now and just needs a clear conclusion.
And that’s it. We will see what 2023 brings because I am old enough to know better than to think it will all go my way.
Happy Holidays, everyone. I hope you stay warm and safe and I look forward to seeing you all in the new year.
