First things first: May the Fourth be with all of you nerds out there. I wore my Rebel Alliance pendant and R2 earrings today in an attempt to stay in spirit, and I was blasting John Williams in the car on the way to work. It used to be that I'd whip up a piece of Star Wars artwork each year on May 4th, but the days of actually having time to do that are long gone....
...partially because I've actually been writing! Not a lot, but it's happening. I keep jumping around to different scenes and dabbling in them as they come to me; I've always done this to an extent, just because if I have a good idea for a scene that happens later, I don't want to forget about it. But I've never done it quite this...severely. To put things in perspective, the only parts of Fracture that are currently complete are a 1,200-word prologue and Chapter 1 (which is the excerpt posted here on the site). Chapter 2 is about 95% complete, Chapter 3 is probably 75% complete, Chapter 4 is about the same. Then I've got a flashback that probably doesn't happen until about 50% of the way through the book, followed by various other half-complete scenes. I've just been jumping around to whichever scene I feel most inspired to write, and it's actually sort of useful because I'm constructing checkpoints for myself. Then I'll know what I need to write in order to bridge the gap between point A and point B. Or in my case, point G and point... P. I don't even know.
You'll also notice that the Embers word meter over in the side bar has a (very small) wordcount now. That's a real thing. Like with Fracture, there are scenes I have in mind that I don't want to forget, so I've been dabbling in them a little as well. So far I've only got one of them (partially) written -- and it's one I'm really excited about -- but I have notes for others. I also contacted my Number One Critique Partner with a concern about a certain plot point (that more or less came to me in a dream -- don't you just love when that happens??) and was able to do a little brainstorming, and longish-story-shorter, I feel much better about the Plot Point™ and will attempt to go forward with it.
All of this secret-keeping sucks.
A couple of weeks ago, I started posting "character aesthetics" collages, collections of images that somehow represented or captured the essence of some of my main characters. It was a fun little game, and I got some fellow writers to play along on Twitter and Instagram. It's a great way to get to know your characters, because you're forced to stop and think about what defines them. Here are the nine (okay so I went a little overboard) collages I put together. Click to see larger versions. If you missed them on social media, try to guess which characters they belong to :)
That last collage is for Serenity Best, one of the new characters introduced in Fracture whom I mentioned in my last update. That flashback scene I've been working on is actually where she is introduced, and I'm already having a lot of fun with her character. She's a former doctor who's now using her medical/administrative skills in what you might call a vigilante capacity. She is described as having a harsh accent, and right away, she developed a sharp, clipped manner of speaking -- I totally imagine her having a New York or New Jersey accent (or the Ziva Payvan universe equivalent). In fact, here's a little snippet of that scene...with other involved parties redacted because I need to keep SOME secrets around here...
Anyway, enough about that, or I'll have spoiled the entire book by the end of this post.
The Dakiti 2-Year Anniversary 1-2-3 Deal
All month long, I'll be running a variety of promotions for my books in celebration of Dakiti's upcoming 2-year anniversary. I seriously can't believe it's been almost 2 years since I published it. I look at what I'm writing now and compare it to that story and it's crazy to see how far the characters have come since then. But I digress. The 1-2-3 deal works like so:
- Dakiti is $0.99 all month long. Grab a copy here.
- In the week leading up to the anniversary (so starting May 22), Nexus and Ronan will also be $0.99 and will remain that way through the end of the month.
- On May 29 (aka THE anniversary), all 3 books will be FREE.
This is a great opportunity to try out the series if you haven't already, or to grab the sequels for a great price if you've only read one or two of them. Sharing these stories with people has been incredibly fun for me and I can't wait to find more potential readers.
