Moody, Broody, and Tropey

The title does not refer to yet another remake of Snow White. I’m pondering the genre referred to as Dark Academia. I’ll say off the bat that I’ve found more references to clothing and décor than literature, and that some of it looks a bit like All Creatures Great and Small had a love child with The Munsters. All the same, I get (and adore) the overall preponderance of antiques, leather-bound books, mugs of tea, autumn rain, and resplendent classic fashion. Add a little string quartet music in the background and one is ready to think deep thoughts and get all moody and Byronic.

But, material trappings aside, what tropes define the literature? This isn’t the “high school for vampires” academy stories. This skews older and generally unhappier. Romance may or may not be the central theme. My favorite entry in the genre has so far been Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House series, which has paranormal elements, but many Dark Academia books do not.

So what’s common to most of the genre? To start with the obvious, a school. Preferably an old one with appropriate brick-and-ivy trappings. It should have a Classics department or an arts focus, definitely a lot of quotable literature about the place. Astronomy would be acceptable, but modern technology—y’know collider thingies or genetic whatsits—would require special handling. Mad botanists is one thing, but leather elbow patches just look odd on lab coats.

The characters are important. There’s usually a mentor figure—the resident Dumbledore—and close-knit friends. The protagonist is often an outsider, whether a newcomer to an elite group, or a super-brilliant person in an elite group, or an elite person with deep dark secrets in an elite group or—did I mention that there is an element of elitism here? Probably because those are the only social strata who can afford tuition at one of those old schools.

And secrets. Always secrets, and the unveiling of guilt, and squishy emo everywhere. Sometimes that means murder, corruption, and the explosion of the friend group. The protagonist—typically a young adult—learns that the world is a cruel place and their innocent little heart just got stomped. But fashionably, and with excellent black coffee, and while quoting Jacobean poetry.

I love this stuff. It’s aspirational and ridiculous in equal measure. Best of all, it slides into my steampunk world with ease. Olivia attends the University of Londria, so creating a Dark Academia adventure for her—complete with murder mystery—was a perfect fit in Queen’s Tide. I’m having a ball. Watch out for the sea monsters.

Mysterious Mysteries

The newbie author is told to a) write to market and b) develop a unique brand and c) pray that these two directives do not collide in a shower of exploding adverbs. How is it possible to be unique and replicate a niche trend at the same time?

I’ve pondered this for a while. As a rule, I write a mashup of paranormal romance, steampunk, fantasy, and a pinch of horror. It’s all the niches at once and definitely not written to market. However, after the first 20+ books, my writing style doesn’t change much from book to book. My voice is solid, even if my marketing sense is on a bender.

That said, every so often I get a bright idea to try something new. Most recently, I thought I’d try writing a classic mystery. Properly. Following an outline, and all that. It was time to learn new chops.

Hunting down a cheat sheet with the requisite outline made sense. Writerly how-to can be gold or complete twaddle, but a basic series of plot beats was easy to adapt to the characters and setting I had in mind. In fact, the structure felt comforting while I was trying something new.

What I wasn’t prepared for is the amount of up-front detail a mystery requires. Not only did I have to know exactly how the murder happened and who did it, but also the suspects and their means, motive, and opportunities. On top of that, I have to keep a running record of what’s been revealed and to whom. All writing has its difficulties, but mysteries require monumental attention to detail. So far, I’m loving it.

What’s the same is all the things that make my writing my own: character development, setting, theme, and the quirky madness that lurks within my mental landscape. I think that’s the answer to the paradox of niche and brand—know your own writing so well, so intrinsically, that you can pour it into varying containers without changing its essential nature. And if the container feels wrong, discard it. The writing comes first, every time.

Trying different tropes and genres can be tricky for new writers. It’s easy to be a chameleon at that stage. I used to sound like the author I’d just read and had to avoid certain voices lest they creep onto my pages. Even now, I avoid Dickens unless I’m writing a period piece.

So, to go back to the writing advice at the top of this piece:

1. Know what piece of the marketplace you’re aiming for. Know the tropes, expectations, and structure of the genre.
2. Know who you are as a writer and think about how well that niche will work for you. Remember that you can adore something without having to write it, but the reverse is hard to pull off.
3. Try it and see how it works. Make magic. If it’s not for you, there are a million other genres and sub-genres to check out. Smash a few together and make something new.

That’s as close to advice as I’m qualified to give. Oh, and watch out for exploding adverbs.

Dragon portraits

Many cover designers begin their work with stock photography. This presents a distinct problem when your cover requires, say, a dragon. They’re notoriously hard to photograph.

Now, I know it’s getting easier to ask software to generate an image, but I went another route when I recently recovered the Dragon Lords series. A wonderful designer who had helped me in the past (doing the original designs for this website and its predecessor) came back into my orbit at just the right time. I knew Rowan, the artist behind Windloft Workshop, to be an exceptional dragon portraitist, and put in my request tout de suite. These are rendered by hand, although done with digital tools.

For those curious about the process underlying this kind of illustration, I asked about the process. Here is Rowan’s answer:

Next comes the blending and modelling of the various shapes and forms of the beast to make them look 3D, usually using a soft tool to make nice smooth gradients. Hard edges are left in or reapplied as necessary to create sharper transitions, texture, etc. I generally take it very close to completion at this stage, adding airbrushed shadows and highlights overtop where needed, and adjusting contrast to push the values further if I went too conservatively with them.

Once Upon a Time is Now

It’s not often that I can pinpoint a specific inspiration for a story. Usually, it just lurches from the swamp of my brain and lands on the page with a muddy splat. But the spark of the Camelot Reborn series had a very clear beginning, even if it sat dormant for a very long time.

I remember standing in Salisbury Cathedral when I was about twelve, staring down at the stone face of a knight. Although it was August, the medieval building was cold, the only light filtering through towering windows of stained glass. The vaulted ceiling created echoes that went on for days, and my imagination went into overdrive.

The statue was life-sized and in full armor, an effigy stretched in eternal sleep upon his tomb. He grasped a sword against his chest, and a lion curled protectively at his feet—a symbol of courage.

Who was he? Could I wake him with a kiss, Sleeping-Beauty style? Would he sit up and look around at the new modern world? Of course, he would be devoted to twelve-year-old me, infinitely grateful to be revived. And, naturally, there would be an equally interesting villain just waiting in the wings. What fabulous adventures would follow!

I’ll pause to add that I knew very little about knights when I was twelve. If Sir Whatever had awakened in good health and sound mind, I doubt he would have been happy to learn his estates were now a warehouse grocery emporium. Furthermore, no, he could not use the longsword to emphasize his opinion on the matter. And even further furthermore, I doubt he’d understand a word anyone said. The English language has changed dramatically since the Crusades.

But I digress. My tender tween heart was an innocent thing.

When I began the Camelot Reborn series, I remembered my knight in his lonely sleep. What if the Knights of the Round Table—enchanted into sleeping stone—had been scattered to museums and private collections? If they had to be awakened one by one to reunite with their brothers and defeat a threatening enemy? What if Sir Gawain, a hot-tempered, dangerous, and devastatingly handsome knight, was roaming about town, eager to fight or carouse or sweep my heroine off her feet?

Apparently, I liked that notion and stuck with it. My heroine is a thoroughly modern historian named Tamsin Greene. She’s the key to finding the other knights, but she’s also a powerful witch—and if there’s one thing that Gawain refuses to trust, it’s sorcery. But he’s not going to get the maid without her magic, and little does Tamsin know that Gawain holds the key to an ancient secret that changes everything she believes about her own past.

Not even Merlin can prevent these fireworks and, yes, he gets a few of his own.

Want to learn more? Check out Enchanted Warrior here.

Bees With Attitude

Writing engages both emotions and intellect, but it’s primarily a mental exercise. Sometimes I need to get out of my head and back into the physical world. For that, there is nothing as satisfying as dirt. Dogs roll in it. Children make mud pies. Adults are just as entranced, but they call it gardening.

My fondness for grubbing in the yard intersects nicely with character research into herbalism and the healing arts. Many of my stories involve magic, witches, herbwives, or even just medicines from a period when people brewed their own tinctures and syrups. Sensory information—the touch/taste/scent of plants—is excellent detail sure to pull readers right into a scene.  Plus, I can use the results in the kitchen. It’s a win/win all around, especially since I’m all about creating an oasis from the concrete and chaos of the urban environment.

It’s impossible to garden without forming an acquaintance with pollinators, especially bees. We tend to think of honeybees as the main event, but they aren’t native to North America and in fact have pushed out some of their native cousins. A few years ago, I began hatching mason bees, which are small critters local to my area, and got a bumper crop of apples as a thank-you. It’s March, and I’m still eating last year’s produce—a significant savings at the grocery till.

Mason bees build their nests with mud walls between each egg (hence the name). They’re also called orchard bees. They’re active from around April to June and do most of the fruit tree pollination. Their range is only a few city lots, so it makes sense to put up a bee house to guarantee their services.

Where I have trouble is encouraging them to nest—I put out the cocoons and they hatch just fine, but they never stick around to lay their eggs. The sense of failure is real. It’s like getting one-star reviews from your spa visitors. This year, I’ve put up a house built by a local expert who has far more experience in bee accommodations.

The other thing I’ve considered is the menu. While dandelions are plentiful, they aren’t native and don’t have enough nutrition. Good-for-bees flowers will vary widely depending on geography, so I went to an indigenous plant nursery. This was fun—the place had very little I was familiar with, even though the seedlings on offer actually belong to this part of the world.

I came out with Sea Blush (Plectritis congesta). It’s a pretty purple flower from the Valerian family that grows wild in the Pacific Northwest, and it will feed the young mason bees when they hatch. Hopefully it’s a crowd-pleaser!

Yes, that’s a lot of random information about bees, but gardens need them. It’s estimated that one out of every three bites of food we eat depends on bee pollination.

Another cool fact about mason bees? Every female is a queen.

I love the attitude.

Medieval to Modern

I love a good historical romance/adventure/fantasy. I love the swords and the sorcery, the tournaments, the gowns, and the oh-so-buff knightly knights. But I love them in my imagination, where I can omit the mud, disease, and bad dentistry. My standard response to those who chirp, “Oh, wouldn’t you just love to go back in time?” is a hard nope.

I have similar discussions with a good friend who loves camping and periodically tries to tempt me into the great outdoors. Yes, I adore nature, as seen from the patio of a quaint wine bar with a view of rolling vineyards. But that’s another rant …

Back to the hazards of time travel. It took me a while to shake off an inexplicable sense of guilt because, as a writer and lover of history, I SHOULD want to embrace the authentic past, chilly toes and all. But I don’t.

I have slept in an actual castle, and let me say cold and damp clings to ancient stone like a spectral lover. Should Guinevere encounter central heat and hot water, she would have mounted a crusade of a whole other kind to get it installed at good old Camelot.

Maybe it was this brutal truth that inspired me to set my Arthurian romances in the present day. There are occasional romps in the past with Ye Olde Authentick Mudde, but for the most part the Knights of the Round Table get to shower and order take-out. They also have jobs in a medieval theme park, because their skill sets are pretty specific. It’s a fun-to-write combination, where my imagination gets to play in two worlds at the same time. Enchanted Warrior, the first Camelot Reborn novel features Gawain, the hot-head of the bunch. He’s courageous and studly and, well, has a few things to learn about modern women. Fortunately, he’s one fish-out-of-water that’s worth the catch.

What’s not to love, when one can have all the swashbuckling drama and modern comfort both? That’s a fantasy I can get behind—and if there’s an occasional misplaced wizard, oh well. Merlin always was the outlier, whatever time period he was in. That gives his particular story a very special twist.

Keeping Dragons Busy

Idle dragons are an invitation to trouble. They’re often guilty of overeating—cattle, cowboys, firetrucks, whatever. There’s the inappropriate hoarding of shiny objects (really, they’re just big crows). And the WorkSafe complaints by disgruntled knights. Don’t even mention fire insurance.

You can see why, as an author, it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep the Brightwing dragon clan busy, book after book. It’s the responsible thing to do.

Lately, Telkoram has been the most underfoot. I just released Glitter to my reader community, which is chronologically the first of the Crown of Fae stories. He goes from his starring role there to reappear in Flicker, along with his love interest, Caliste. And now, here he is again, popping up in Quake.

A smidge of backstory: Between the events of Glitter and Flicker, the Shades win a significant victory over the fae. The high king of the fae disappears in the aftermath and without him, there is little hope of defeating the Shades. So, Telkoram goes in search of the errant monarch and disappears from the main action for a time. Finally, in Quake, he returns with the results of his quest.

What I like about his character is that it shows there can be many kinds of heroes. There are the flashy rogues, the mighty captains, and then those who quietly keep the wheels on the bus. Telkoram falls mostly into this last group: he has a job to do, sets aside his personal needs, and gets the work done. Full stop. He’s the kind of guy to have on speed dial when the car dies or the roof springs a leak.

It’s been my pleasure to keep our dragony hero fully occupied. Of all the characters (except John Barleycorn), he knows the most about what’s really going on because he’s been working the hardest. I’m going to owe him a really nice happy ever after.

And hey, keeping him on the hop is far better than having a dragon chewing the furniture or chasing the food delivery guy. I haven’t been able to order my favorite curry since The Incident.

Now I have to do something with those wolves ….

(PS, you can get your free copy of Glitter here)

Image by MythologyArt from Pixabay

Glitter and the Crown of Fae Series

The first words of the first chapter are a careful choice.  We’re told to launch the narrative at the moment when everything changes, withholding any background explanation until such time as the reader is thoroughly hooked by the drama. Building an entire fantasy world and figuring out where to start is even harder. Or, in the case of the Crown of Fae series, starting when the end of the world begins (and figuring out how to end that beginning).

Initially there were four orderly novels, then a prequel (Flicker) and now a prequel to the prequel (Glitter) designed to fold in all that backstory we’re not supposed to tell. I blame the Brightwing dragon shifters, who keep invading my carefully plotted history with yet one more family member wanting a story of their own. First it was Fliss and her boarding school adventure. This time it was big brother Telkoram and the school’s headmistress, Caliste. I won’t say they have a meet cute, but they definitely meet and are about as cute as a dragon can manage.

About that backstory. Those who have dipped into the books may remember the four groups of elemental fae wish to summon their High King to rescue Faery from the Shades. Quake features the earth fae—especially the wolves–and also the outcome of the quest for the High King. The seeds of this story are sewn in Flicker and Glitter, where there was more scope to detail the history of the story world in an entertaining way. In other words, sometimes a prequel of a prequel is entirely necessary and not the hyper-indulgence it first appears.

No wonder Tolkien had entire volumes about all the stuff that came before Bilbo and the gang. It takes a very large canvas to paint an entire universe.

Glitter is exclusive to my reader community. If you’re interested in joining and receiving that story for free, sign up here.

Out of Winter

January and February are such odd months. If we get snow here, it’s usually now. On the other hand, my yard is full of early blooms. We’re stuck in a half-and-half holding pattern, ready for spring but not yet out of winter.

This season leaves me restless. The bright sun draws the whole city outside, so on my walk this bright afternoon, the park was crowded. I witnessed a cricket match, wandering peacocks, and ducks in love. A few people sat outside, bundled up to their eyebrows but still eating ice cream sundaes. It seems everyone else is ready to shake off winter, too.

The same impatience infects my writing. My work in progress is so last year. I finished the rough draft of Glitter last night and of course there will be plenty of editing to do, but my heart is already leaping toward the next adventure. I can hear the characters’ voices luring me on. They have secrets, and I must know what they are.

Every new book is different, but there is always a dance, a courtship with the essence of the story. The tale has to be unique, and there must be a challenge to keep my interest—a new technique or unknown subject matter. I can’t write the same book time and again any more than a reader wants a repeat.

Equally important, the characters must be willing to surrender—not all of them are—and be ready to spread out their loves and heartbreaks like wares in a hidden market. If I must be worthy of their trust, they must woo me as well. I won’t weave just anyone into a tale.

Which is why I’m always intrigued by new voices in my imagination. I’m ready to be seduced. It’s time to leave my creative winter even if the real-life season isn’t done. A new story is demanding to bloom.

A goal is a target, not an action

The superhuman effort required to be an adult in this world is profound.  I’m serious. The struggle to get out the door every morning in some semblance of a public-ready mindset (not to mention clean socks) cannot be overstated.

Still, some of us try to run an author business on top of whatever other icebergs we navigate on a daily basis. Proof of insanity? Case closed.

That said, I’ve come across some good practices that make the journey easier. No, this isn’t another productivity post, because heroic writing sprints aren’t that much fun when you’re actually doing them, and after a certain point at least I stop making sense. As far as how fast you put words on the screen, you do you. This isn’t about how much you do, but how to work smarter.

Am I on track? Do I know where the track is?

Organize whatever tools and ambitions work for you into something actionable. In January I plan where I want to be in December and how I’m going to get there. Yes, I consider productivity, but realistically. Do I want to release three more books in my series this year? Then I need to work out how many words a day I can write, and how many days a week, and mark on the calendar when that adds up to a book. So, if a writer writes a thousand words a day every day, it will take (roughly) three months to finish a manuscript. Add a few weeks for unforeseen interruptions, then a few more for an initial review before it goes off to an editor. Repeat that three times, and there are my three books in a calendar year. I don’t plan to accomplish more than I can actually do.

However, I can monitor my progress through the year. Some don’t like to feel pressure on their creativity, and that’s fair. I’ve had periods like that, too, when it’s not the right time for deadlines. Yet sometimes it is, and I can always change a due date. I never feel the least bit guilty about protecting my well-being—but I’d rather know if I’m off course, because then other timelines need to be adjusted.

Scheduling a release without hurting your brain

Once a book is written, it should come out when it makes the most strategic sense. Uncoupling writing and releasing makes a big difference. Sometimes it makes sense to stockpile stories for a rapid release, coordinate with a particular holiday (hello Christmas books), or build excitement in a slow part of the year. Don’t rush. Ideally, one should give reviewers at least three months to read and review an advanced copy of the book. A longer pre-order also allows for more promotion and (hopefully) a more successful launch. Plan accordingly and schedule launch and pre-order activities on the same calendar as your writing progress because one may impact the other in terms of available time.

Don’t forget marketing and promotion, even if you want to

The third calendar layer is marketing beyond just book launches. This includes content marketing (the cool stuff we put out into the world beyond “buy my book”), newsletters, social media, and paid promotions such as sales on backlist books. Put all those dates on the calendar, too, along with the lead time you need to start working on the material.

How micro one gets is a personal choice. Just the highlights? Or every Instagram reel? Either way, planning a few weeks ahead helps coordinate content topics with release events, newsletter dates, and social media content. Whether this happens on a spreadsheet or in the margins of a date book doesn’t matter, as long as it happens.

There’s always more… and more

My calendar covers writing, releasing, and promotion, but that’s me. It could list podcasting, personal appearances, research dates, or anything else. Any planning calendar should include whatever make sense to the individual.

Goals are good, but without some step-by-step directions, they can sit there like a china shepherdess on the mantelpiece—just another pretty thing collecting dust because they have no real function.  When goals have action items on paper and accounted for, then magic happens. It’s dead easy to figure out what needs to be done in a week, budget the necessary time, and address all those authory “shoulds” that never get attention.

Or that’s the idea, anyway. Yes, plans unravel, and my work calendar is no exception. I run out of hours, slack off, or plain forget stuff, but I do get closer to where I want to be. I’ve done the steps that need to happen before crunch time, whether that’s getting the ISBN before last-minute uploading or discovering all the promo sites are booked up long past launch date. Yup, I’ve done both. I needed a method to save myself from myself.

Put another way, I’ve done the dumpster fires so you don’t have to. I’ve learned the hard way. My takeaway was to focus long enough to make a plan, even if it was only once a year.