Good news!

All four books are now available on Amazon.com for Kindle download! Nightchild: Book 1 of the Clans Saga, Sacrifice: Book 2 of the Clans Saga, Collected Stories and Collected Poems are all up and ready to roll!

Linkie:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=irish+horse+productions


Please, Crickets, if you know anyone who might be of a charitable mindset and might enjoy reading my scribbles and bibbles, please spread the word.

Wow, that last post was really depressing, wasn't it? Gotta love mood swings... It's all better now. Better living through pharmaceuticals. ;)

Sacrifice is now available as an ebook through Lulu.com and on Amazon.com, which is exciting. We have a little ad that pops up on internet searches (primarily through bing.com) about vampire books. It's all going slowly in the right direction.

If only I had massive amounts of free money sitting about, just waiting to be used for marketing... then I could afford a Facebook ad and a limited print run. Since I have yet to hit the lottery, though, that will all have to wait until later.

I'm back to retyping Nightchild, which I'm not totally hating. That's a good sign. I'm getting itchy to get back to Catherine's Wheel, but all in due time.

Dumb mistake

Q: What do you call two piers?
A: A pair o' docks

Yes, friends and neighbors, I have found a glaring inconsistency between Nightchild and Sacrifice. Naturally, this occurs after both works are published and allegedly finalized.

Madrid and Barcelona are the same place, right?

Right?

::crickets::

Yeah. I thought not.

This is what happens when you let ten years go by between books and don't bother to have the original at your elbow when you're writing the sequel.

I can fix it in the eBook version of Nightchild, but still... annoying!

Announcement!!

THE WEBSITE IS LIVE!!!!!

Sacrifice is available for sale on the website in electronic format, and there's a link to Nightchild on Amazon.com.

WE'RE IN BUSINESS, BABY!

Progress!

The ISBN numbers and SAN have arrived, meaning that this website and on-line venture is that much closer to becoming a reality. Soon, I hope, the first collection of short stories, the first collection of poetry, and Sacrifice will be available for download. This is so exciting! Now all I have to do is round up people who want to read it...

ISBNs

My fear of failure and my fear of success are busy choking each other in the corner of my mind, so while the girls are occupied, I thought I'd pop in and make a quick announcement. Pending the receipt and registration of the ISBN numbers, Sacrifice will be ready for release on 3/1/10. That's exactly three weeks from today.

I'm elated, but absolutely terrified at the same time. I'm hoping for a reasonably good reception to the work, somewhere between OMGthenewTwilightyay! and chirping crickets.

Final editing

After a lot of delays, I'm back to the final editing pass on Sacrifice. I've gone through the first eleven chapters, so I'm just a little bit shy of halfway through. It's not as good as I'd hoped it would be, but it's all right. I'm rarely happy with what I write. All writers are their own harshest critics.

I'm back!

Wow, has it really been two months since my last post? Time flies when you're not having fun, or something like that. Real-real has been occupying me for the last several weeks, but now I'm back to the final editing pass on Sacrifice and preparing to perpetrate more on Catherine's Wheel. My designer has finished making cover art for all seven books in the Clans series, and they're beautiful. I'm waiting for the US Copyright Office to finish registering the copyright on Sacrifice and on my collections of short stories and poetry. Once that's done - currently estimated to be in June 2010 - the website can open for business. In the meantime, it's back to combing through the writing I've done and preparing for the writing I'll do.

I just have one thing to say about my imaginary people: Tobyn thinks he's so smart, and he's just so, so wrong! He's forever scheming, and it's forever blowing up in his face. You'd think he'd learn...

eBook update

It's getting closer! My web designer and all-around IT go-to girl has shown me the rough draft for the eBook version of Sacrifice. It looks wonderful to me, and I'm so excited! The good news was perfectly timed, too...today was one of those low biorhythm/random depression days, and this was just the lift my spirits needed.

Just a few clicks of the mouse and a 3 1/2 month waiting period for a copyright certificate are all that stand between me and an actual live, functioning website. I'm so thrilled!

And so it begins...

Catherine's Wheel is beginning very well. I have my map of Europe carefully marked out and the plot has clicked into place in my head. The first chapter is finished, and I'm on a roll. I have a very good feeling about this one. Just judging from the first chapter, the writing is much better than what I perpetrated ten years ago in Sacrifical Lamb, the pre-editing incarnation of Sacrifice.

Accomplishment, but ever onward

At long last, I'm pleased to say that I finished the re-write on Sacrifice. I celebrated with dinner out, then came home to start researching for the next book, Catherine's Wheel. It's set in Berlin in 1870, and I confess, I don't know much about the Kingdom of Prussia or the North German Federation (which became the German Empire in 1871). I'm taking copious notes and need to obtain a map so I can get a handle on the geography of the place. I try not to bog my writing down with too many historical or geographical details, but it helps me to have a sense of place and time. I'll be doing a lot of reading and probably spending some quality library time.

Research is so much a part of writing, even if your work isn't technically a historical piece. I think it's important to try to ground even the most fantastical work in some breath of reality. Even if you're creating a new world, it should bear at least enough of a passing similarity to the real world to be understandable to the reader. Besides, history is filled with fascinating nooks and crannies where the seeds of many stories can be planted and eventually bear fruit.

So, until further notice, my brain will be living in a city I've never seen, in a country I've never visited, in a time long past. It will be vivid and alive when I return .

I love this part of the process.

Title change

The original title of the second book in the Clans series was Sacrificial Lamb, but when I began to re-write it to be truer to the main character, I decided to re-name it Sacrifice. There are people in this novel who are sacrificing themselves to their ambitions, to their pride, to their fear, to their self-delusion, and ultimately they sacrifice everything they love the most. Like a lot of second acts, it's rather sad.

I'm almost finished with the re-write, and happy for it. I think the new version is better than the old, and it fits better with Nightchild. The first draft was hijacked by a secondary character, and I lost track of the fact that this story is essentially a triangle: Tobyn, Dumas, and Ara. Everyone else is just ancillary, or sometimes just window dressing, and even if their impacts are occasionally profound, they serve mostly to trigger an action or a reaction in one of the three main actors.

Now comes the hard part, when the triangle has been blown apart. We'll see how this works out.

Awake too late

Once again, I've stayed up far too late at night working on Sacrifice. It's a little funny, really, how my normally diurnal self turns markedly nocturnal when I'm writing my vampires. I guess I need to be in the night to really feel them, as if the grainy quality of electric light vainly holding off encroaching shadows helps infuse the writing with a sense of darkness.

The ending, I think, will be strong, and it certainly sets up for the third book (working title for book 3 is Catherine's Wheel, by the way). I'm still uncertain about the rest of the book, but once I've finished the re-write and given myself a few days of mental quiet (characters permitting), I'll have a look and see what I think. It's very difficult to be truly objective about your own work, but I'm the only editor I have right now.

the shadow of a doubt

I think I'll be finishing the re-write on Sacrifice today. I'll then be in a position to get at least the poetry and this novel copyrighted and available on the website. Hopefully there will be some sort of a response to the website going live, and hopefully I won't drop off the face of the earth into a self-indulgent wasteland. I'm certain that I'll open the website for business with a big, "Ta-da!" only to be greeted by the sound of crickets chirping. I want this writing thing to succeed, and I have no idea if I'm making a huge mistake by going this route. I'm at least doing something with the writing, and hoping for the best. Maybe if I beg some people, or more likely pay them, they'll be willing to download a chapter or two.

I'm feeling very blue today, and by rights, getting so close to the finish on Sacrifice, I should be happy. I don't know why I'm not.

Work proceeds

I've finished retyping the first volume of poetry for the site, collectively entitled Songs Nobody Wants to Sing. It's the first of three sets, with 41 poems in all. Each poem will be available individually, or the whole volume can be bought at once (for a huge savings, I might add). The next two volumes, Kikilian Moon (poems from the POV of one of my characters - it's not as cheesy as it sounds) and A Trick of the Mist will be added next. Once I get them copyrighted, I'll send them over to my webmistress to be pagemaker'ed and prettified for sale. At long last, we might actually have some content on the site!

Sacrifice is still on hold for a little while longer while I deal with finishing the poetry retyping and coping with the Stupid Day Job. I'll be back to Tobyn and his mischief soon, though, and hopefully I'll get my mojo back in order to continue on to the sequels.

I still have to get the short stories compiled, copyrighted, and beautified for print, too. Busy, busy, busy...

At last!

At long last, and with great thanks to my truly fabulous sister, I am once again among the cyber-enabled. I'm so excited to be able to return to work on Sacrifice and A Trick of the Mist, a collection of poetry culled from volumes I've filled over the years. Yesterday was the first day of spring, and I feel truly renewed. Even better, the snow is melted, the robins are hopping in the yard in their search for worms, and I saw a pair of swans performing a beautiful pas de deux on my pond. It's a time for new beginnings, and not a moment too soon.

Frustration

My back-up PC is misbehaving, and my laptop is now well and truly among the departed. I'm sitting in the public library, surrounded by over a dozen chatty denizens of the greater South Lyon metropolitan area, trying not to pity myself for my lack of cyberability. All things change in time, I know.

I got derailed in the middle of chapter 12 of Sacrifice, with 12 more chapters to go. I hate this, because it's like I got interrupted in the middle of a thought, and I'm afraid to start another sentence for fear of losing the one I was in. I only have so many mental fingers to mark the virtual pages in my head, and most of those are currently consigned to my "day job", the curse of every aspiring writer.

I have vivid dreams and wake full of inspiration, but my stupid superstitions and my fear of losing the Sacrifice thread keep me from starting anything new. I don't know why my mind is so broken.

Superstition and the written word

I've had the opening line for another Clans book running in my head, but I'm afraid to start it until I have Sacrifice finished. My writing is a fragile thing, or perhaps I'm simply superstitious. I'm nervous to start something new in the middle of working on something else, for fear that the original project never gets completed. I've made a mental note about this opening line, but I can't bring myself to even put it on a page for fear of upsetting my muse's internal balance.

I used to describe the stories as I was preparing to write them, but that was disastrous. Once the words left my lips, they left my head, and I was never able to get them back. Now I have to hoard my words like a miser, keeping them a deep, dark secret until I'm able to reveal them in a finished work. I'm even hesitant to tell acquaintances the title of the work in progress. It's ridiculous, and I'm far too precious about it, but I've been so disappointed in the past...perhaps I'm going to absurd lengths to stave off more sorrow.

I wonder if other writers have superstitions about their work. I have more than my share. I'm convinced that if I take a break from writing a new book before it reaches page 15, I'll never finish. I'm equally convinced that if I can just finish three chapters, I'll finish the whole. That's not always the case, though (Knight of Sorrows comes to mind, and I still tell myself I'll finish that). Still, despite the lack of probitive evidence, I persist in these tics and foibles until I drive myself nearly insane.

Maybe I don't want to stop the madness. Madness is, after all, the mother of some really awesome stories...

Success at last

My computer booted up this morning and I was actually able to save the files for Sacrifice to a CD. Hopefully I'll be able to get my other writing saved, as well.

Computer! Argh!

Thank God for internet access at my "day job". Writing is so difficult when your computer dies in the middle of a chapter. Thankfully, I saved the first eleven chapters of the Sacrifice re-write, so I only lost chapter twelve. It was enough.



My laptop, which is the only computer I have with enough brain power to be internet-friendly, started making a sound like a meat grinder filled with gravel, then everything just...stopped. To say that I'm alarmed is a drastic understatement. It's a terrible pity that my writing has become so dependent upon digitized monsters. I wrote the first book in long hand, filling up two college-ruled, five-subject notebooks that I carted with me literally everywhere. Now it seems I've forgotten how to write without a keyboard. Based upon the self-mastication of my laptop and my currently woeful finances, I think I'm going to have to relearn.