Tag Archives: fantasy

Current Projects

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The bane of a writer’s life is all the ideas that bubble up inside the brain. So many stories, all limited in getting on the page by how fast I can type. At this point in my life, I really, really wish I had taken a typing course in high school or something. I didn’t. So now my stories are prisoners until I can liberate them slowly. In the meantime, I can use a pencil like a ninja. So I guess that would make me pencil ninja. Able to sharpen my tools and take copious notes in a single bound. So what if my superpower is that I can outline like nobody’s business. In the end, even with notes and outlines, I type like molasses.

Normally the speed of my typing isn’t too much of a problem. It takes my ideas a little while to percolate and become grownup enough to need to be told. At some point, they are so ready and ripe, they won’t leave me alone. I think about them when I am awake and I dream about them when I sleep. They hammer and hammer at me until they become the black on a white page and get told.

The problem right now though is that I have four stories in progress. And I feel a little schizophrenic. They are all clamoring to be told. Each one is yelling that it is more important than the other. As they yell over each other, I am finding it hard to listen to any one of them because I can’t hear just one clearly. I need them to take a number and stand in line. Otherwise, I fear that madness is not too far off. Okay, I am already a little crazy. But these four stories that I am in the process of writing are so not helping by being the crazy-making stories that they are. Each one feels like it is the most important. None of them want to take a backseat to the others. Unfortunately, I am only human and can only write one story at a time. Slowly. So very slowly.

I think the one that is winning out currently is my contemporary romance. It is going to be the first in a five to seven book series. I didn’t know it would be a series until I started writing it. But shortly after I was properly introduced to the characters, I realized that some of the secondary characters needed their story to be told. Those secondary stories aren’t even more than glimmers of thoughts. Yet. I have a feeling once I am done with the first story, one of the others will start making itself known in ways destined to bug me until I do what it wants. So this contemporary romance is winning out right now because even with all the yelling in the background, I can hear the voice so clearly. I can see the story in my mind.

I put my May-December bdsm story on the back burner. I started writing it and realized that the idea wasn’t quite ripe. It was hard for me to. see the story line clearly. And the writing was coming slowly, not because of my typing speed but because the story wasn’t completely mature. It was hard to put it away because even in the early stage, this story wants to be told. And it is a compelling story with some great characters. Plus, I don’t like stopping the story telling in mid story telling. If that makes sense. I feel a certain amount of pain when I stop. But it’s not ready and I can’t force it. I can feel that it will be ready soon though. Really soon.

The next book that I have partially written is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/urban fantasy combo. Yes, yes, it is crossing genres (but not really). Which I don’t think is as bad a mixing metaphors but what do I know? This tale is going to be told in three parts. It came to me as a trilogy and it has remained that way. In fact, a lot of my stories come to me as trilogies. I don’t know why. In the end, I am glad. Because sitting down and trying to write a 300,000 word single title would really take me around the bend. I couldn’t do it. I won’t do it. I think this project is in three parts because it is a classic tale of questing. Only the main characters don’t know they are on a quest. Not yet. They will by the end.

My last current project is a middle grade/young adult space opera. Really it is more like a space western. It started off as a request to write something everyone could read cause I normally write naughty things. No smut in this one. At all. Just lots of shoot outs and action. Good guys versus bad guys, lots of ingenuity and some math and science thrown in for good measure. It is is the far future, unlike my PA Sci-Fi/UF which is in the near future. The far future has brought a lot of changes to Earth. A lot. But the basic stuff is still the same because no matter how far in the future you get, underneath it all, we are still human. With all our human greatness and all our human failings. Good to know, right?

While all these full length stories are battling each other for supremacy, I have lots of little projects as well. Teasers, pleasers and short-shorts. I need to write the second of three novelettes that are loosely affiliated to the novelette that was recently accepted (did that even make sense? it did in my brain). It is going to be about shifters and will be MFMM menage. Then I have the second of a two part story that is novella length. This is also a menage but it will be a MMF menage about a witch, a vampire and a shifter. I have another short I want to get out about a dominant woman as well. Not a lot out there about Dommes. More needs to be. So that will be my contribution. See how giving I am? lol There are more little projects but until I can get the ones already outlined done, I really can’t even spare the brain cells for even thinking about them.

It’s a good thing that I am able to multi-task. Because if you think my real life has stopped to let me write, you would be sadly mistaken. My real life hasn’t even slowed down. Then again, I didn’t really expect it to. Life NEVER works that way.

Smutty Sunday 4/14/13

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It is Sunday again and here are a round up of books I like.

Science fiction/Fantasy winner this week is Piers Anthony’s Geodyssey series. These rock. If you’ve ever read Michener’s books and like how they are, you will like how these stories are told. Anthony starts in the way past and goes into the future. The timelines are awesome. Like a picture through time. He usually focuses on one subject and works it throughout the time period. These books delve in the why shit is the way it is and how we are screwing it up. They normally end at an apocalypse or right after. This series is not really like his other series. But they are great if you care about our world, want to think about why it is the way it is and have serious reservations about the eventual outcome of being the way we are.

Smut reading should be mandatory. I think it makes you smile. Or maybe I am the one that smiles. So this week, I have been rereading Jo Goodman. Her historicals are some of the best that I have ever read. They are spot on in historical details. And the stories are subtle and sublime. Careful word choices. Awesome characters. Vivid stories. What else could you want? I have favorites to be sure. But even still, my non favorites are still a recommend. Because they are just that good. My favorites are The Price of Desire and To Marry a Lawman.

I have been reading menage cause I have been writing menage. And Sophie Oak writes some of the best menage stories ever. There is a whole series of them in both her Bliss series and her Siren series. Just awesome really. Not many people portray menage realistically. Her books come darn close. The storylines are believable. And her characters are great. She doesn’t recycle heroines and heroes over and over again in her books. The people you met are fresh and different from the books before. It just works out that way cause she is a good writer.

For some nonfiction reading, might I recommend Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods? It is funny and wonderful storytelling even as it is nonfiction. And it is about the Appalachian Trail and hiking it. With Spring in the air, not only will the book make you laugh but it potentially could cause you to dig out your hiking shoes and see if you too can have an outdoor adventure that is both educational and hilarious. This book is laugh out loud funny. You will be giggling so much that people will stare at you if you read it in public. You have been warned.

Smutty Sunday

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So I thought I would start a regular feature. A wrap up of the week by giving some suggestions about reading material. Books I like. If you like them too, well there you go.

For my SF/F fans, I’ve been digging on Kate Elliot. I first read her Crown of Stars books a while back. They have stayed with me. She had such a nice pace in her works. I haven’t read her newest Spiritwalker books but I’m going to. Not a lot of sex in her books. Just great world building. Which takes no small amount of talent. She also has great pacing. When I read, there is in invisible metronome that ticks in my brain. Good books have a certain pace. Words are carefully chosen to make that come alive on the page. Like poetry almost.

I’ve been on a motorcycle kick lately. I don’t know which came first, my love of bad ass dudes on motorcycles or Kristen Ashley. Cause her books have a lot of them. I just finished her first Chaos series book and it ROCKED. As usual. Can’t wait for the next one. Her mountain man series had a motorcycle rider in one of them, Sweet Dreams. And then Motorcycle Man had the ultimate bad boy rider. AWESOMESAUCE. Her books are contemporary romances with a lot of drama. And now she has a whole series dedicated to badass boys on their toys! Shew, color me a happy happy girl.

For the people that like a little paranormal romance, I read and reread Nalini Singh’s Archangel books. It just has a whole lot of goodness in them. Lots of magical realism. Magical realism is concept that is being bandied about a lot in writerly circles. It just means that the world building in the book just accepts the supernatural elements regardless of what they are without question or explanation. Kind of like an alternate reality that just is the way it is no matter how much it looks like our reality in the here and now. So in her books, angels and vampires and hunters just are. Always have been, always will be. But her angels and vampires aren’t the sparkly kind- thank christ. They are just smokin’ hot alpha-y and the back stories ROCK.

To break in with a book about spirituality might be a little jarring. But I am going to do it anyway. Hey, a girl can’t live on smut alone. Ya know? So if it isn’t offensive to you, your god, your beliefs or whatever. Check out Ram Dass’s Paths to God. The book rocks. Lots of insights that aren’t particular to one kind of belief system. It is broad enough to touch on lots of different areas. Cause there are a multitude of paths. And really none of us know which is the right one. Besides, what if there is really more than one. It could happen.

Now on to my smut rec for the week. Been thinking a lot about Tymber Dalton’s Reluctant Dom book. Yes there is sex in it. Yes there is bdsm in it. Yes there is menage in it. A trifecta of goodness in my opinion. But there is also a sad story. A journey of discovery. And an evolution of character. Happiness comes to all of us when we can take such a journey with the characters in the book. And while there is kink in there, there is more than kink. Which to my mind is the best kind of kink book. Even a book that is about sex has to have more than just sex. Ya know?

Now that’s a wrap. Have a great week.

Sex in Books

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Yesterday  I posted a little something something on a writers’ forum about sex in books. Yup I said sex. The questions that was asked was who my reader was. I am reposting my answer below:

 

People who don’t think that sex should be excluded from every genre but erotica. And people who don’t think that just because people are sexing it up in a book, it is erotica. It can be erotica. But it can also be the adult version of sf/f, horror, mystery, etc. It amuses me that whole weirdness that exist by genre writers. Ummm, people in the old west had sex. It’s a western whether the sex is portrayed. But now all of a sudden because we put some sex into it, it’s an erotic western. Ummm, okay. I’m actually good with that. I can then choose those books that have adults writing them for other adults to read doing adult like things. Okay, I’ll confess I was a pervy teenager as well. I probably read those adult books back then. Okay, Okay. I did. Hmmm, maybe that’s why I like to write sex in all my fiction regardless of genre, well except those that are actually targeted for kids. Cause that would just be gross.

 

So I guess, I’m the target audience. Perverted adults that like to read about sex in all genres. lol

 

Now, there are a lot of things to talk about in that post. One, authors are weird. And so are the people that categorize books. Sex makes people feel all CRA-CRA in western culture. Well, in a lot of other cultures too. I promise, weirdness about sex is not limited to America or Japan. Lots of people in lots of different cultures have lots of weird hang ups about sex. In print and in real life. Genre fiction writers are as prone as everybody else in the whole my crap is better than your crap and I want to point that out so I can make myself feel like I am superior to you or make you, at least, feel inferior to me. Cause, they whisper, you write dirty things. I write in the great genre of mystery, sci-fi, etc. etc. etc. insert genre of your choice here. Just another form of discrimination peeps. That’s all it is. So move long. Yeah?

And two, not all books with sex in them are erotica. Seriously. Erotica to me is if sex is the main theme throughout the book. The genre is secondary. While genre books written for adults have whatever the genre is as primary with the sex as secondary. The sex happens in those books um, cause, um, there are adults in those books. And adults have sex. I promise it is true. Adults have sex. Including it in writings is just more honest. To me at least. Getting squicked out about sex in a book whether you are the writer or the reader is really juvenile. Seriously.

I mean how do you think we have kids in real life? Sex. How do you think little aliens can crop up in fiction? Sex. In every genre, to even have characters to talk about, there first was sex to make that character possible. And if there are adults in the books, they are probably having sex too. Cause it is a biological imperative. It really, really is. Food, shelter, sex. I promise there are lots of studies on the biological imperative of species continuation. So really, it’s not just erotica, it’s science. lol

Alrighty, talking about all this smex, smut, and borderline porn, as erotica is portrayed, is making me want to go write. Laters.

Rinse and Repeat

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So I was thinking about genre fiction and all the tropes, cliches and repeats that go on with it. There are so many stereotypes when it comes to books and writings.

Like Literary fiction is by smart peeps for smart peeps. And it is usually about nothing. Nothing happens. It’s just a telling.

In Romance, there are certain story lines that get used over and over again. Like secret babies or marriages of convenience or boss-secretary. There are certain things within the story line that gets reused like dish rag. Like virgins who are old enough not to be or motorcycle gang members who are really misunderstood heroes.

In SF/Fantasy, there is usually a quest. To find something or someone without which or without whom the world would end as they know it.

Nothing in fiction, or in real life for that matter, is new. It has been done a thousand times before. But for some reason, novels cycle these in great numbers. Like a thousand books about rock stars. Or a gazillion books about millionaires who fall in love with broke waitresses. Or orbs that must be found at the end of the quest.

I get that repeating verbatim, aka word for word, another person’s words is plagiarism. But what about all these recycled and repeated themes, tropes and story lines? No, I am not saying that using such is considered plagiarism. What I am saying that using such is a necessary part of writing fiction. I bet google searching will find your book has already been written. Your story has already been told. But, and this is a big but, I hope that you have written it better. That in your telling, something fresh and something new emerges. Even though it has been done a thousand times before. I also hope that your characters are the ones that are memorable. Fresh, new and defines that particular trope, cliche or theme.

I like reading genre fiction. I see the patterns in the writing. But I like it anyway. What I don’t like is laziness on the part of the writer, falling back on the trope and not making it theirs. Even if a theme has been written a thousand times, I appreciate that certain something that takes that trope and makes it their bitch. Now that’s talent. To take something old and make it new.