3/17/14
The current projects list for my writing has gotten out of control. On one hand I feel like I should be excited; the more stories I write, the more books I'll eventually submit for publishing. At the same time it's really frustrating! If I were only working on one or two books at this moment then the chances of their already being done would have been high. It would be so much easier if I could cross off one or two from my list, but none are at a stage where I can just sit down and easily finish them. Four of my current projects are still in the beginning stages of character development and world building. Two are in the middle section where I'm working on a delicate weaving of plot and drama to get to the climax. Two are in the pre-planning stage of outlining the story. Lastly there's Magnified, which is lost in the lala land of 'I've never written a story this long before and I want to do it properly'. Here's the list of all the documents currently open on my computer with the expectation that I would be working on them this coming week:
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I've never been able to understand the will of my muses. They're fickle in what they choose to work on for any given day or week and sometimes the stories and plots we come up with together are so disparate that I struggle to keep up with what they want typed. Every once in a while they want me to use what I already have in my head to create something amazing, which is how my Road To series was created. Recently, however, my muses have been trying to stretch my writing towards plots and ideas I could never have conceived of this time last year. I think this means I'm growing as a writer by taking on new challenges, but it's also a struggle to keep working in my wheelhouse of fantasy. No matter how far away my muses want to go, I love fantasy too much to allow them to divert me permanently. I also want to finish writing all five (or six) books in The Oracle Series before I start working on a new series. Despite my wishes, my muses have other plans. Last summer my muses nudged me with a loveable, flesh-eating kelpie who just wants a hug and to maybe take a large bite out of your shoulder. Essentially, my muses were asking me to do research on the fae and Celtic worship of the creatures that inhabit the lakes and fields, like kelpies; it was a direction of study I had never gone in before. I was working four jobs at the time, was trying to get a couple of anthology submissions written, and was trying to get the edits for The Oracle's Flame completed. There was too much on my plate already, so I jotted down a few ideas for Kelpie Blue and forced myself to move on. I finished writing The Oracle's Hatchling, Road to Home, and all those anthology submissions this past autumn, after which Magnified came along and controlled my attention for nearly forty thousand words. There's currently still a very long way to go before Magnified is completed, but my muses perked up again. "Hey," they said to me. "If you can write about the Holocaust and vampires, why can't you write about a kelpie and horse racing?" I said no again. They were such different mythos and overlapping them would make writing either story at the same time very difficult. My muses acquiesced by sending me a different idea. They tossed me a stanza of song lyrics and told me to do something with them. I started working on a simple story titled If A Butterfly Don't Fly about Merridy, a mute boy with perfect pitch. He could pick up any instrument and play a song just based on the sounds he heard, but because he couldn't sing he could never get signed to a real band. Just as I got really invested in the story, my muses closed the trap. Merridy's dad was Lugh, his aunt the Morrigan, and he was a descendant of Danu herself. I was neatly caught in a position there was no going back from. The Out of Underhill series was born after I finished snarling at my muses. Extensive research commenced. Rather than the vampires and werewolves of European and Eastern European culture I'm most comfortable with, this series focuses solely on the magic that came out of the British Isles. I've been digging into the Celtic pantheon, researching minor earth deities that inhabit the land and waterways, and am trying to expand two new stories from ideas and outlines into major undertakings. Each book in the series is going to be totally unique; the characters and plots will not overlap at all. That said, this is a series so there will be similarities. These are stories of growth amid adverse circumstances. Growing up and finding a happily ever after while also dealing with strange magical creatures and heritages will add an extra dimension to the story that I'm really enjoying. I am looking forward to writing more in this series. At the moment I only have the two books planned, but, as my muses have proved, anything is possible. I do want to finish writing Magnified and The Oracle Series first, which means Out of Underhill is still technically second fiddle in my writing queue, but Merridy and Blue want their stories written too. I have a feeling that writing queues are going to be completely ignored in favor of the more demanding character and plot. I will continue to update my blog and my website as both stories and the series as a whole expand. At the moment If A Butterfly Don't Fly and Kelpie Blue are in their world building stage, which means they're still evolving and haven't quite solidified into a basic outline. They're going to change and expand, and it's going to be a ton of fun to write them. I only hope that my muses were correct and I'm ready and capable as an author for such large undertakings! Please wish me luck. The plan is to have at least one story submitted for publishing by the end of 2014. If you want the most up to date information on my progress in my Out of Underhill series, including summaries and a current word count, please visit my Current Projects page.
Road to Revenge is one of my favorite books that I've written. Is it odd to have a favorite among your own stories? It probably is, but oh well. It started off as a what if thought: what if I wrote something to do with my Masters degree. I lived for an entire year in Israel while I was studying counter terrorism and homeland security from experts in the field. I worked damn hard to get my education, but since the job market sucks I haven't been able to actually use it. So, what if I put together a story about fighting terrorism in Israel? At first the answer was clear. After writing exclusively fantasy how could I suddenly branch into contemporary fiction? My readers wouldn't follow me. Up to this point The Dragon's Hoard series was selling like hotcakes and everyone was cooing over Cleanly Wrong, my brownie story. I felt like I was stuck in a specific niche of writing and breaking out of that could hurt me as an author more than it would help. Chances were also very high that Less Than Three Press wouldn't take such an eccentric story since there was nothing else similar in their book market. I couldn't find any books centered around real world politics on their site. I refocused myself on finishing Melting the Ice Witch instead. Then LT3 posted an anthology call titled Kiss Me At Midnight. They were asking for a short story of less than ten thousand words along the theme of a new beginning. I had all sorts of ideas floating through my head: fantasy worlds, vampires, and maybe even another brownie. Yet none of those fleeting ideas went anywhere on paper. I sat down in front of my computer and just wrote, throwing all my ideas about magic out the window as I let my fingers go on the keyboard. Hadash Aviv was the result and I absolutely loved it. It was intrigue and mystery, coupled with the beginning of a love story and the end of a salvation story. I titled it Hadash Aviv, which means New Spring in Hebrew, and decided it was a perfect fit for Kiss Me At Midnight. But would LT3 take it? The love story was strong and central to the plot, but it had that tricky element of modern politics woven throughout. I was half-convinced that LT3 would reject it, but they are first and foremost a romance publisher. Hadash Aviv is definitely a romance book. I submitted it, thinking I was taking a chance on a long shot, and LT3 wholeheartedly accepted it. Hadash Aviv got the reception I expected from readers. None of my fantasy readers picked it up, but since it was part of an anthology people did eventually read it. The general consensus was: great book, but too short. I received no bad reviews. Hadash Aviv was even nominated for M/M Romance's 2013 Member's Choice Awards in the Best Law Enforcement category. In short, if someone read Hadash Aviv, they loved it. I just wasn't getting a lot of people to actually read it. Maybe, just maybe, a longer book with more plot and intrigue would draw in a larger reader base. I decided to take another chance and Road to Revenge was born. Despite having a Master's degree in Counter Terrorism Studies, I still had to do hours and hours of research to ensure every facet of the book was correct. It took me months to write Road to Revenge and it turned out to be as opposite of The Dragon's Hoard as any book written by the same author could be. There wasn't any magic, for one, but my main couple was already established. The story wasn't about their romance as they met and slowly learned more about each other. Rather, they were married and the honeymoon period was long gone. Love, however, had not faded in the least. When Mihi is hurt in a terrorist bombing, his husband Rafi can think of nothing else except taking revenge on the people who hurt the most precious thing in Rafi's life: Mihi. It's a love story about being so deeply in love that nothing else matters. Yet the terrorists are still out there and they're planning more attacks, which means that Rafi has to make the difficult choice between being with Mihi and saving the world. I eventually submitted it to LT3 with a warning that it might have what some would call delicate subject matter. Delicate is a polite way to describe current Mid-East politics, but LT3 wasn't daunted in the least. Road to Revenge was set to come out on July 3, 2013. Within a few hours of its release date it received a best-seller star on All Romance. It was selling! I couldn't believe it! Like Hadash Aviv, Road to Revenge received no bad reviews. It actually has the highest rating out of all my books on Goodreads. Road to Revenge is one of my favorite books because it challenged me. I was forced to use and expand on my education. I had to change my writing style to accommodate the difficult subject matter. Every bit of sweat that went into the book was totally worth it, which means a lot to me. I recently finished the sequel, titled Road to Home. In less than twenty four hours LT3 accepted it. They're not daunted by the series being different and neither am I. Will Road to Home be the final book in the series? I don't know. But I'm so glad I wrote Road to Revenge. That's really all that matters.
I'm working on so many different things at the moment. My muses won't let me take a few seconds to rest and relax. I'm unbelievably behind on my online reading, for example, simply because I've been writing so much. I know that my readers are probably rejoicing as they anticipate the next installments of The Oracle Series, The Oracle's Hatchling and The Oracle's Golem, being ready for publication. They're salivating over Road to Home, the sequel to Road to Revenge, or even over one of my stand alone stories, Ge-Me or Magnified. The truth is, I've been working on every single one of them simultaneously. For example, I'll write a thousand words in Road to Home, and then be compelled to switch over to Magnified for the rest of the afternoon instead of resting my brain and writing fingers like I had originally planned. Toss in the fairy tale I'm working on and I'm bogged down in plot heavy stories that need careful characterization and attention to detail. I was starting to get worried that I'd burn out and none of those stories would ever get published.
So I forced myself to take a break. To step back from writing and see what else I could spend my time doing. I eventually ended up on Dreamspinner Press' website, looking for something new to read. Then my muses kicked me again and I couldn't help looking through their submission page to see if they had any interesting calls open. The very first entry in their anthology submissions page was perfect. They were asking for a short story with a minimum word count of only 3,500, and for just the "Juicy Bits" of said story. They weren't looking for plot, just good writing and lots of sex. I hoped it would be just a bit of mindless fun to relax me and let me get back to my larger stories at a less manic pace. Then I looked at the due date, January 1st. I wanted to write my Juicy Bit. In fact, I already had an idea percolating. But could I write and edit it in just two weeks? It seemed my manic pace had returned through necessity, but I promised myself that while I was writing my Juicy Bit I would put aside all of my other stories. Somewhere in the writing process I would find a way to relax and reboot and therefore be able to return to my heavier stories with a better frame of mind. Two days later, and I've finished writing. The story is called Third Time's the Charm. It's short and there's a lot of sex, yet at the same time I couldn't allow the story to just be a snapshot of one day in my characters' lives. There's a promise for more, for that eventual happily ever after, that I couldn't help including at the end. After all, this is just a Juicy Bit, not the entire romance! So now I'm going to edit Third Time's the Charm and submit it. I've never worked with Dreamspinner Press before, so I really hope it goes well and they like my story. Should they accept it, the release date is April 2014. I'll definitely keep you up to date on the progress of this new story and hopefully I'll be able to return to my larger works and get something ready to submit early next year. I have written about magic before. It's an old hat for me, yet with every new story comes a different form of magic to play with. In the Dragon's Hoard Series I had dragon magic, magi magic, and witch magic, all of which had different methods of use (and abuse). They were fun to explore and expand on. I've written about brownie magic in Cleanly Wrong and vampire and witch magic in Bloody Kiss. Even Jack O' Lantern's Grin had a touch of werewolf magic. The magic in my newest book, The Oracle's Flame, is so completely different from any other magic I've written before that almost from the start I wasn't sure how it was going to read on a page. The main difference is the magic is solely elemental in nature. If something isn't from the Earth, Air, Fire, or Water Castes it isn't part of the magic. The second difference is each person has to specialize in only one element. The third difference is they aren't given a choice as to which element or to how strong their power is; they're tested by an unseen power and emerge from the testing chambers with a tattoo on their backs demarcating which Caste and how strong. Weird, right? I thought so, but I also thought that it gave a touch of struggle to the stories of my characters. A boy who loves the Earth, but ends up as a Water? A child who expects to be great, but is given little power with which to find his dreams? (I'll stop hinting about future books now.) The Oracle's Flame begins with a young man newly tested as The Dragon of Fire, the highest rank in the Fire Caste. He's struggling to figure out his new powers and place in the world, while everyone around him is suddenly treating him like a king simply because he emerged from the testing chambers with a fiery dragon emblazoned on his back. Dragon thought he would be part of the Air Caste, not the Fire, and losing that expectation while embracing his new life is one of the ongoing emotional struggles in the book. I can't go into too much depth on the magic in the series, because that would give away the ending. Instead I'll urge you to buy The Oracle's Flame and find out for yourselves! It arrives in stores on November 20th and is currently available for preorder with LT3.
The Oracle's Flame is the first book in my new series and I'm super excited for its release on November 20th. I will then have three series for sale with LT3. The Dragon's Hoard was my first series. It was also my first foray into published writing. I never expected it to take off like it did and I really appreciate every reader and reviewer who loved my dragons and pushed me to improve with every word I put on the page. The short story compilation I've been slowly working on is in honor of them. The second series I published is barely a series at this point. The first book, Road to Revenge, just came out this past July and book two, Road to Home, is only 50% written. I have a lot more work to do to make this a full series, but the challenge of writing such plot and research heavy books has made me love writing for the intellectual inspiration, a totally different reason than the Dragon's Hoard evoked. Road to Revenge doesn't have the same following as the Dragon's Hoard, but those who do read it love it. It's a spy thriller set overseas where the main aim is to catch the bad guy. The romance in the series is brief, but intense, and it ties the whole story together. Which brings me to my third series. The Oracle's series has a bit of both of its predecessors in it, but in a way that I hope is original and fun. The Oracle is a prophetess who can foresee the evil in the world and acts to combat it. She has a protective following of people who immerse themselves in learning the powers of one element--earth, air, fire, or water--called Castes. The strongest Caste member is given the title of Dragon thanks to the dragon tattoo that magically appears on his (or her) back when they come of age. The Oracle sends her dragons out on quests to save the world, which is the basic starting premise for every book in the series. Originally The Oracle's Flame was supposed to be a stand alone story, to be published in LT3's If You're Reading This anthology. LT3 rejected it, not because it was poorly written, but (if I may paraphrase the very lovely message they included with the rejection letter) because it had too much potential as a series. Had I ever thought of turning The Oracle's Flame into a series beforehand? Not really. I had flirted with the idea of a second short story for a future anthology submission, but Flame was supposed to be stand alone. The rejection letter started the wheels turning and everything changed. That elusive future plot for a future anthology became book two, The Oracle's Hatchling, and book three, The Oracle's Golem is in the process of being written. Readers of The Dragon's Hoard will appreciate the fantasy elements of The Oracle's Flame. I've created an entire world centered around the Oracle and the Caste members who follow her. But I remembered from writing Melting the Ice Witch how difficult it was to tie the entire series together with only the setting and characters to add depth. I knew I needed a continuous plot for The Oracle's series stemming from book one that could carry the series through to the end. You'll have to read to find out what the plot is, because I won't give it away here. Writing Road to Revenge taught me all about writing a plot heavy book and the way intrigue could be used to pull a reader in to an entire series, which is the only hint I'll give away. I've learned so much from all of my previous books. Similarly to how writing Hadash Aviv gave me the guts to put together Road to Revenge, having two engaging series from which to learn and grow made The Oracle's Series possible. I hope all my readers who loved The Dragon's Hoard and Road to Revenge will also enjoy my newest series.
I was writing a short story for LT3's If You're Reading This anthology call. The theme was a message in a bottle. My immediate thought was, what if I sent a message from beyond? As the plot began to unfold in my head I had images of the prophetess at Delphi, breathing in toxic fumes that made her high and possibly able to predict the future. That idea became the basic premise for the story I was writing. An Oracle receives a message from beyond the Veil of Time about a prince besieged by treachery in need of a little help to regain his throne. So I had a message received, which meant I had to figure out a way for the message to be answered. I turned again to Delphi, where heroes were given important quests to complete. Why couldn't I do the same? The Dragon of Fire was the perfect hero, a young man just coming of age with a thirst to prove himself. I added in a dash of magic, some pirates, and an evil king to give the story some depth, and voila The Oracle's Flame was born. I had written phrases like: "Message received" and "Message properly responded to" in order to fit with the theme and I submitted it to LT3. To my surprise, a few weeks later LT3 sent me back a rejection letter. I'm paraphrasing, but the email basically said they liked the story, but it wasn't a good fit for the anthology and they saw potential in it for a series or at least a longer work. I reread the email and I realized they were probably correct and my surprise was unwarranted. The added, theme based, phrases weren't doing much for the story and I did have a possible idea for a second story set in that world. So I agreed with LT3 that The Oracle's Flame should be released on its own, with no anthology connections. If The Oracle's Flame was supposed to be a series, then I thought I ought to start writing the second book, The Oracle's Hatchling. My fledgling idea began to take shape on the page--another quest dictated by the Oracle and another hero to bring justice to the world--but I realized that there wasn't any depth to the series as a whole. Flame and Hatchling were two disparate stories that just happened to be set in the same world, which doesn't really make a cohesive series. By that time I had an idea about book three, The Oracle's Golem, so I set aside Hatchling to start work on Golem while I thought about how to tie everything together. Then I got the first round of edits for The Oracle's Flame back from my editor. The first things that had to go in the editing process were those awkward "message in a bottle" phrases, but with those gone I didn't have any reason for the Oracle to send out her hero on a quest. As I was trying to figure out how to fix that rather glaring plot issue, a light bulb went on. The Oracle sent her Dragon of Fire out to combat evil, but what if his battle was only one fight in an entire war? What if Hatchling and subsequently Golem were other battles in that war, the fighting of which could carry the series to the end? So I started writing again. I eventually added an entire prologue to The Oracle's Flame and little tidbits here and there to really start building the series. With the plot-hole gone, The Oracle's Flame was ready for publishing. It arrives in stores on November 20th and is available for preorder right now. I hope you enjoy it!
9/17/13
I completely understand that sometimes it might be difficult to follow where Rafi and his friends are during the book, so I have compiled some maps from the internet that will hopefully help my readers out.
Road to Revenge is a doozy of a book, but it's one I'm particularly proud of. It is the culmination of years of travel and study that I have undertaken all in the effort to become an expert in Counter Terrorism. Am I an expert? No, not yet, but with a Master's Degree in the field and travel across the globe I feel I am growing closer every day.
I totally understand that not all my readers have spent years immersing themselves in the subject matter as I have. Therefore, to make it easier I've created this small glossary of terms to help.
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Coming Soon
Gifting a Dragon's Heart
March 19, 2024 Soul Bond
January 30, 2024 Twin Elements
October 17, 2023 Witch
April 15, 2023 AuthorMell Eight is an author writing with NSP. For more information about Mell and her writing, please visit her website: http://melleightfiction. Tags
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