Archive for the ‘Demon Girl’s Song’ Category
I am thrilled to announce that my YA epic fantasy THE DEMON GIRL’S SONG is being published by “>Dreaming Robot Press on September 25th!
More than anything, Andín dal Rovi wants to escape her small town life, helping her father in the store, watching her younger brother prepare to take the place at University she’d longed for.
Instead of escape, she gets a thousand-year-old demon stuck in her head, and she loses everything – her home, her family and her country.
In the quest to regain her identity, she finds herself racing against time to uncover the secrets of her world – and save it from utter annihilation.
Take a peek at the gorgeous cover!
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Halloween Updates
Posted on: October 31, 2013
It’s Halloween! And here is a black cat for you:
That’s Molly, by the way, and she is the nicest, shyest cat of all. But this is her special day!
On to the updates:
Things in production
There’s a short story upcoming in THIS MUTANT LIFE: BAD COMPANY which should be out in a few weeks. But that’s it for right now.
Things I’m working on
Here’s a list of books, etc., I’m writing/working on at the moment:
THE SEEKER STAR (Grayline Sisters #2): Violet’s story. Submitted to publisher.
THE FALLEN STAR (Grayline Sisters #3): Beth’s story. First draft in process. Slow but steady work being done.
THE BELLS OF VALEN (Extrahumans #4): In which Jill gets everything she ever wanted, and it almost kills her and everyone else. Stalled in revisions as I think of how to make it not suck.
THE DEMON GIRL’S SONG: Revising, again. And again. I’m going to make this book good if it kills me.
RAMONA’S MIRROR: Ramona comes face-to-face with herself and blinks. Stalled in the first draft, because of everything else going on.
Plus various short stories, etc. I’m writing a lot of short stories and essays.
In the meantime, NATIONAL NOVEL AVOIDANCE MONTH is upon us again. Get ready to avoid those novels, everyone!
Belated List of Updates
Posted on: February 28, 2013
Yes. I am awful. I do not blog much.
But in a previous life I blogged A LOT, so I think that counts for something?
Okay. Here’s what’s going on:
Appearances
I did a reading of “Ramona’s Demons” with the awesome Topside Press crew at the Kelly Writer’s House at Penn in Philadelphia last week. It was incredible! I had a blast with everyone, and was so amazed by the outpouring of love for THE COLLECTION and for my story. Philly, you are the best.
I keep thinking we’ll do some sort of reading/appearance thing for my other books at some point. I’ll keep you posted.
Announcements
Hey! Do you like “Doctor Who” more than pretty much anything? Me, too! Which is why I’m super excited to have an essay appearing in “Queers Dig Time Lords,” which will be coming out from Mad Norwegian Press this June. Did I mention John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) will be doing the intro? Yeah!
Books in Production
The cover for THE DAUGHTER STAR is done and ready for a reveal next month. It is AMAZING, and I’m thrilled about it. The book itself is due out in May, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Works in Progress
THE BELLS OF VALEN: I finished up the rough draft of the fourth Extrahumans book yesterday, and now I’m completely exhausted. Revisions loom, but I’m not touching the book until at least May. I need to let it settle, plus there’s way more to do.
THE SEEKER STAR: I’m about halfway through revisions for this book, which is the second in the Grayline Sisters trilogy. It is slow going. This book has been interrupted by so, so many other things.
SIPHANE AND THE WHALE: This rough draft of a grumpy robot and her weirdo human pal figuring out life, love and unusual food products during a terrifying interstellar war is collecting dust, waiting for me to have time to revise it. Maybe by April?
THE DEMON GIRL’S SONG: Look what’s back in rotation! I’m trying to fix this poor, unloved book about a young woman being possessed by a demon emperor up some. There were so many issues with it, and I’d love for it to see the light of day at some point… but I only have time to work on it when I’m not busy with other things. I also have no idea how to fix a lot of it. Argh!
THE FALLEN STAR: Grayline Sisters #3. I have a few pages written and have outlined some of the rest.
THE LAST EXTRAHUMAN: Outlined. Haven’t started. Really want to start. Wanted to start months ago. Holding self back.
FURY’S STAND: Byzantine gender fantasy, with goddesses. 18k or so written. It’s stalled out while I work on other things.
Reviews
There’s a bunch of reviews of BROKEN out there which I need to post. I will get to it. Promise.
And that’s it!
Hi everyone! Quick update post here. I’m putting together lists of reviews of Fly Into Fire. There haven’t been a lot yet, but here’s what there is so far.
If you don’t see one that you know of, let me know! I add all the reviews I can gather, positive or negative.
- The Book Smugglers
- Obligated to Exaggerate
- GameVortex
- Publishers Weekly (starred–was also a featured review there last week)
Plus many more at Goodreads and Amazon!
So far people seem to like the book as much as they liked Broken, which is wonderful!
Other things going on… I had a guest post about writing a sequel over at fellow SF writer Liana Brooks’ blog which kind of got lost in the general chaos of release week, but go check it out anyway! It’s still good. I should be having a few more guest posts here and there over the next few weeks as well, which I’ll post here and especially in my Twitter account.
I’m also working on new things while polishing up older stuff. I’m making progress with Demon Girl’s Song, and it’s slowly but surely turning from a pile of hideous malformed mutant sludge into something resembling a decent story. I’m also outlining a few new projects, and trying to get myself to a place where I can really dive into them.
I did a little revision work on The Daughter Star, which I hope made that story better. And I am nervously awaiting the arrival of revisions for The Spark, which will arrive at some point. Plus political columns, day job, cat wrangling, the works. I’ve barely had time to read anything!
Thank you all for following along, and for reading!
I’m in a funk. I can feel it.
Maybe some of you who are just done with NaNoWriMo know this one. Maybe you’re feeling it right now. It’s the back side of the mountain that is a huge project, the slide down towards the earth.
There’s this manuscript sitting on my computer, and I don’t know what to do with it. I have no other good ideas for fiction projects right now. I feel burned out and tired. The thought of writing another word of fiction is excruciating.
After a few experiences like this I’ve become smart enough to realize, in my foggy way, that this happens every single time. This funk feels a little different, though. I’ve written three first drafts of books this year. Two of them are sitting in my editor’s inbox. This is the third, this half-formed, patchwork beast of a thing, and it seems out of place. Right?
It doesn’t sing to me. It just sits there. The words don’t have life. I don’t want to re-read more than a sentence or two. I’ve been considering storing it somewhere and coming back to it in a few years, or, better, ripping it into tiny digital shreds.
If you’re at this point: don’t.
What’s going to happen in a few days or weeks is that I’ll come back to it, see it with eyes that haven’t been strained into a blurry headache by a two week, 20,000 word sprint. I’ll think, hey. That’s not bad. I like that. Maybe there’s something I can do with this after all. It’s happened twice this year already, and it’ll happen again. I hate my stuff, then I fall back in love with my stuff and make it better.
There are already some ideas floating around my head for how I can make this manuscript better. They’re ambitious. But why write unless you shoot for the moon, or, better, Mars?
So yes, I’m in a post-project funk. I’ll un-funk myself soon, and that’s when the work begins again.
Last night I pushed through, got about 9,000 words written, and finished the sh*tty first draft of THE DEMON GIRL’S SONG. This draft clocked in at a little over 67,000 words total, making it the second shortest draft I’ve completed (only BROKEN, which is about 59,000 words, is shorter). It’ll get a bit longer, maybe as long as 75,000, in revisions and additions. It feels like a very bare-bones draft, but that’s okay.
It’s also one of the most planned-out drafts I’ve done. There actually was an outline, though I don’t think I’ve opened that file in months! I had a clear idea of where I wanted the main characters to end up pretty much right from the start. This could mean that the book feels much more like a unified whole, or that the characters are being dragged through the plot by the horn, like so:
This is the third rough draft of a book I’ve finished this year. I finished both THE DAUGHTER STAR and THE SPARK in the early summer, and started on DEMON GIRL in late June. It’s been an astonishingly productive year.
I’d love to say that this is one of those stories that I never intended to write, and that sneaked up on me while I wasn’t looking, but that seems to be true of all of the stuff I write. So. What’s it about? An attempt at a blurb:
Andín dal Rovi wants to go to University, read books and live the life of her dreams, but what she gets is a thousand-year-old demon stuck in her head. For her trouble she finds herself exiled from her country, in danger of losing her mind and her identity, and desperately questing for answers.
Lynde Shevariat was supposed to become a sailor’s wife, but everything derails when her betrothed comes home with strange tales of holes in the sea and an ancient sword that sings to her in the night. She steals the sword and runs to the Temple, only to be tasked with an impossible quest: return the sword to its rightful owner, a woman dead for a thousand years.
Now Andín and Lynde must race against time to unlock the secrets of their world–and save it from utter annihilation.
That’s the gist of it, anyway!
The next step is to let the draft sit for a few weeks, maybe less, and let it settle in my head. Then I’ll start making editing passes. I usually do two major ones and a minor fix-up one, though that could change.
In the meantime, there’s always other things to write!
Song on repeat for the whole time: “Rusalka’s Umbrella” by Jenny Dalton
The Extrahuman Union 