Category: Thoughts on Writing

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international womens day

So, today is International Women’s Day and it makes me wonder what exactly that means and what is the best way to celebrate it?

I mean, some of the stuff I’ve read this morning sounds good: we’ve got women walkouts in Spain, shutting down major commute options, we’ve got protests and such all over as women demand equal pay for equal work and other such things.

I know I’ve been pretty lucky as a woman.  I haven’t dealt with sexual harassment or discrimination, I have always received pay equal to the job I do.  For a long time, that blinded me to the fact that these things happen to other women.  But, here we are in 2018 and we’re still fighting something that should have been defeated years ago.

Can you imagine if women just stepped out, really stepped out…all over the world, for one day, not a single woman did anything to benefit anyone but themselves.  Every woman: every government official, every female on any board, every C-level executive, every manager, supervisor, every garment worker, every transportation worker, every teacher, nurse, doctor, lawyer, judge, every line cook, chef, waitress, receptionist, administrator, every janitor, cashier, delivery person, every wife, mother, sister, daughter…can you picture that?

Look around you for a minute, and imagine your world without women.  We are everywhere. We work hard.  We play hard.  We rise to the occasion.

So ladies, let us rise.  Let us lift up our sisters instead of tearing them down.  Let us fight with them, not against them. Let us rejoice in their victories.  Let us demand, with one voice, that we receive our due: equal pay, equal protections, equal education, adequate healthcare by doctors who will not dismiss our pain because we are women, equal protection from crime and equal investigative power when we are victims of crimes, equal representation.

Power is not give, ladies.  Power is taken.

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where shadows fall

The final book in the Shades and Shadows trilogy has been a slow go for me, not because I was bored of the story or anything like that.  In fact, I still love this story a great deal.  However, in the process of re-writing the first two books several times there were a number of significant changes in the plot that needed to be carried over into the final book.

Making sure I got all of that right took some time, and then I had three possible endings in mind, so I had to make some decisions. This weekend, I wrote the ending, and the “zero draft” as it were, is finished.

That’s not to say that Where Shadows Fall is ready for the editor.  I have a lot of work to do on it before that time. I have at least two pages that contain notes such as “Insert description here” and “needs better dialog” and other such creative bits, and the word count is far below what it needs to be as a result.

Still, it’s a big thing to finish a trilogy.  With any luck I’ll be able to tell you how to get Where Shadows Fall this summer!

But for now, I’m off to the day job and a second cup of coffee.  Happy Monday, Readers!

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dystopia

When I was a teenager I loved dystopian fiction.  I was obsessed with the idea of the end of the world as we know it and how the people left after catastrophe would survive. I wanted to visit all kinds of different worlds with different types of societies and different means of living.

Part of that, for certain, was caught up in my religious outlook and my internal self doubt that I would slip up somehow and miss the rapture so as to be stuck behind on an earth that was living in the tribulation period, but aside from that, I was drawn to the plucky upriser, the person who stood up to the dystopia they found themselves in and rather than submitting to their fate, they fought back, they carved out their own place or stood up to an unjust system, rebelled against a corrupt government.

I guess I still am.  I just never suspected that dystopia would be so easy to establish.  No global calamity was needed, just a government run by people more concerned with money than the well being of its citizens.

Heh, when I first wrote the first draft of Through Shade and Shadow almost six years ago now, I considered it’s political plot to be too far fetched.  No one would believe America could be torn apart that fast, even with an outside influence at work behind the scenes.

Now, here we are in a land where the president and congress are more concerned with corporate welfare and the well being of millionaires and billionaires than they are for the rest of the citizens, where safety regulations are swiftly becoming a thing of the past, where cities can poison their own people with lead with no consequences, where children can be mowed down with guns no other civilized country allows in the hands of its citizens and over the grieving of their mothers we as a nation shout about our rights to own these death machines.

But, just liked in all of those dystopian stories I read as a teenager, someone is rising up. Heroes are emerging. Resistance is beginning.

And just like in those stories, those heroes are teenagers.  I know this plot.

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working writer at work

Some days it’s hard to be a writer who has a day job.  Inevitably, my muse gets chatty while I’m trying to write some technical instructions or what have you.  Today is one of those days.  The main character in my blood witch story has been really chatty the last few days and if I could be home writing, I would be.

Instead, I’m in the office. You know, the daily struggle to pay the bills.

Speaking of paying the bills, do you know about www.patreon.com? It’s a nifty little place for people who love art (music, words, visual arts, more) to help the artists they like.  You pledge to pay a certain amount per month and in return, you get various goodies that can stem from behind the scenes looks at work in progress, blog posts for patrons only, and up to actual physical books.

As I build audience, I’ll add in some fun video clips (maybe me reading snippets or short stories), and other fun things.  If you’re interested in supporting me, my patreon can be found here: www.patreon.com/natalie.  Special access begins at only $3/month, though once a month I will also give the $1/month folks a sneak peek.

And, with that plea for your support, I must go back to my cup of coffee and the day job.  Those bills need paying!

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haunting history

Anyone who knows me knows that I love old cemeteries.  LOVE them.  I have ever since I can remember.  My first real memory of a cemetery was when I was around 5 or 6, I think.  It might be the summer before I turned 6 (my birthday is in September), or the next summer.

My family did a lot of camping in the summer.  On this particular occasion, we were trying out a new campground.  Across the street from the entrance to this campground there was an old, civil war era graveyard.

I was drawn to it. At one point while I was playing with a bunch of other kids on the playground, which had a clear view of the cemetery.  Eventually, I wandered away and across the VERY busy highway to look at the graves.

It wasn’t a very big plot. I’m guessing, based on 40 year old memories, that it held maybe 100 graves, probably less.  But I had to read each and every one.  Gravestones were more descriptive back during the Civil War (and before) than they are today.  You can learn a lot about an area by reading it’s older gravestones.

My mother came and found me. I don’t know how long I’d been gone, but she found me standing amidst a small cluster of graves.  There wasn’t a person buried in that group that had reached puberty.  They were babies and children.  It had stopped me in my frantic scouring for knowledge.

I remember telling her that they were all babies and I didn’t understand that.  The dates on the graves told the story though.  They had all died during a flu epidemic.  I remember that I spent a long time during the rest of that camping trip thinking about that.

When I went to England, I knew I had to spend some time in some graveyards that dated far further back in time than the Civil War.  At High Gate cemetery in London (where I took the picture above), I was enticed by the long stories etched into ancient stone; the stories of lives lived long, long ago, the stories of a place as much as a person.  It was an incredible day and I look forward to going back someday to spend more time.

You’ll see that love pop up in my writing.  In Through Shade and Shadow  (which is currently on special for $.99 for Kindle, today through 12/4) you’ll find it in the Shade traditions, the reverence they afford their dead, and the fact that the gravestones themselves hide the books that keep their history.  And of course, it’s obvious in Forever, where graveyards actually save Amara’s life on more than one occasion.  I don’t know yet if we’ll see my cemetery love manifest in the new book I’m working on, but it wouldn’t surprise me!

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who needs sleep?

Happy Saturday, Readers!  I hope you survived the Friday the 13th madness.  Little trivia for you: I was born on a Friday the 13th.  I’m sure some of you out there are thinking, “oh, that explains a lot,” am I right?

You know, October is my favorite month. I love Halloween, and wish my living situation allowed for some outdoor decorating.  Alas, I would be the only one to see it, since my porch doesn’t face the street.  I was cleaning out my sock drawer yesterday and discovered I have twelve pairs of Halloween socks!

I also celebrate Samhain, the Pagan celebration for the end of summer, the final harvest of the year.

But I’m rambling.  That happens when you’re working on 3 hours of sleep.  I actually came here to let you all know that In Gathering Shade is now 100% good to go, both paperback and kindle.

I plan on doing a giveaway, but probably not until November.  I’m crazy busy the next few weeks and I need to get a shipment of books to have on hand.  I’ll even include both In Gathering Shade and Through Shade and Shadow (with it’s new glorious cover art).  And maybe I’ll throw in a few other goodies too.

The coffee pot is calling me now, so I’ll leave it here.  Drop a note in the comments to say hi or ask a question. I love to hear from people.

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early morning coffee

Lately, the pain from this pinched nerve gets me up and out of bed around 3am every morning.  Today it’s the tightness in my shoulder muscles and my forearm muscles.  Some mornings it’s the searing, stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder joint.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s much better than it was a week ago.

I’ll wake up, possibly needing to go to the bathroom around 1 or 2 am.  I’ll shift around, take the middle of the night pain pills, then toss and turn and doze a bit until I give up because I just can’t get comfortable.  That’s almost always right around 3am.

I get up, get the cats their morning treats and start a pot of coffee.  Then I sit and play silly Facebook games with my left hand working the mouse while I let gravity help loosen up my right arm.  Usually by the end of the first pot of coffee, I’m mostly functional, though typing isn’t usually on the agenda this early.

Because I’m on limited duty for work, and am largely working from home, this means I have a little time to kill before I start my work day.  Yesterday that meant working on my short story for the second anthology, and that’s probably what I’ll do today too.  Either that or I work on the third book in the Shades and Shadows series.

Speaking of which, have you gone to get your copy of In Gathering Shade yet?  The kindle version is available now.  Paperbacks coming soon!

You can also get Through Shade and Shadow and In Gathering Shade together as a bundle on Kindle.

books Wallpaper

Once you’ve read them, I’d really appreciate a review.  It only takes a minute.  You don’t have to say much.  I really hate how much we rely on them to get our books into recommendations, but we do.

I’m putting together a giveaway package that I’ll probably award in December.  It will include autographed copies of both books in the series, as well as some fun things you’re going to love, so stay tuned!

On that note, my coffee cup needs refilling and my arm needs a rest.  Happy Tuesday, Readers!

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introducing Raven Ivany

We met Raven briefly in Through Shade and Shadow, as one of the agents that Mason Jerah works with at the unnamed government agency, but in the next book, In Gathering Shade, Raven comes to the foreground.

We first meet her when she is helping an instructor teach hand to hand skills to a group of new recruits, before Adam Darvin pulls her aside with a job hunting down a killer that might be a Shade.

We learn a good amount about Raven in that short scene.  She’s a decent fighter, hand to hand.  She’s smart, worried about Mason, despite the fact that she doesn’t really know him and she is wary of working with others after being betrayed by her previous handler.

Raven is in her early thirties, and her family background is not entirely clear.  In the course of the story we learn about a sister who died, a father who is clearly no longer around and a grandfather who helped to raise her.  She learned what a Shade was capable of from a young age, unlike Mason, and is well trained in using those skills, both to heal and to harm.

Also, unlike Mason, Raven isn’t afraid of those darker skills when the occasion calls for it, and while it’s never stated outright, she has used those skills to kill at least once.  We get the sense that through Darvin’s influence, she is probably more educated on the other tribes than many others.

There is also some history hinted at between Raven and Darvin, a friendship that extends back before she came to work for him, which might be something interesting to explore some time.

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othering others

When I first started writing the story that would become the Shades and Shadows series, I began with the idea that as a nation, the United States had a tendency to not only other people, but to foist our fears and anger onto those others and I followed it through to what I thought could be the outcome, if ever it were discovered that there were people who could heal and kill with some kind of power that we normal folk didn’t have.

But once I’d gotten the story written, albeit in a much shorter form than it exists today, I looked at where the political aspect of the story had gone as a result of that original premise and I considered it to be too unbelievable.  I looked at where we were at the time, where we had a person of color in our highest office and we had abolished (in theory at least) the othering of LGBT people and women were making gains politically and otherwise.  I thought to myself, who is going to believe a story that takes all of that away now, shoves it into a dark corner and returns us to the darkness of our own past?

I set the story aside, and went on to work on other things.

It wasn’t until the election in 2016 that I realized I was wrong, and that the othering hadn’t stopped at all, in fact for some of our US citizens, othering was still the lens through which they saw the world and those others were where they laid the blame for everything that they thought was wrong with their lives.

Since the release of Through Shade and Shadow, so much has happened that makes the politics in this series nearly pale in comparison.  This saddens me in many ways.

I hope we, as a nation, can navigate our way through this hurricane and come out stronger and better on the other side.

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the hard work of writing

I used to think that writing a book was a big accomplishment.  Then it became writing a good book was the hard part.  Of course, both don’t begin to compare to the work that comes after the writing is done.

You have to find a way to summarize the entire plot of your 300+ pages into a single paragraph, then a single sentence.  They have to tell enough of the plot to hook people, but not so much to give the whole thing away.  They have to be intriguing, exciting even.  Here you’ve spent a year or more of your life telling this story in detail, and now you’re expected to sum it all up in a as few words as possible in order to get an agent or a publisher (or if you’re lucky both).

I’m fortunate to have a publisher for In Gathering Shade already, but I still need to summarize the story for the back cover of the book.  Generally, this takes quite a few attempts for me.  This will be my third book with Creativia, my seventh book overall (I have four under a pen name in the M/M Romance genre), and it doesn’t get easier.

The blurb on the back cover of  Forever took something like 10 different iterations to get right. Through Shade and Shadow took at least that much work.  So, now as I anticipate getting In Gathering Shade back from my editor, I’m filled with an icy dread at the thought that once again, I need to distill my story down into a paragraph that will invite readers to come into my world.

But, I’ve never been brief.  I spent the better part of my junior year of high school learning how to cut my essays down to size for the Regents exam at the end of the year.  My pre-test saw essays between 1000 and 2500 words, and I was required to cut that to 500 words.  It was a year filled with tears and frustration, but I did it and when my exam was done, I had turned in two essays of 500 words (almost exactly), though I was convinced they were crap.  I scored 95% on the exam overall, and got full marks on the essays.

I learned then how to boil sentences down to their bare essences and use precise words, but that isn’t as easy when working with creative work.  *sigh*  I suppose there is no cure for it, I should just get on with the work of it.

But maybe a cup of coffee first.  For strength.