Carving my Niche in the World

So. I have an actual website now. I feel all grown-up, having such a thing, but I'm still playing around with it because I have no clue what I'm doing. It's been around since January, but I hate empty websites, so I haven't been telling anyone about it. Just randomly populating it with content and erasing the spam-bot comments that offer to send more web-traffic my way. The website's not totally empty anymore, that means.

The address is katestradling.com. Y'know, if you wanted to check it out or anything.

Maybe I'll cross-post to here from time to time as well. I dunno. I've lovingly referred to this as the "placeholder blog," because more than anything else, it was a point of contact for me to put on my copyright page instead of my email or physical address. I've done a terrible job keeping up with it, but I've got some skin in the game with the website (i.e., I'm paying money, so I feel responsible for making something of it). I have a goal this year to be more diligent about shifting my writing hobby towards a writing career, and having a website is part of the branding. So there it is.

Anyway, that's the update. When I'm ready to announce this year's book project, it'll probably appear over there first. In case you were curious, I mean. So, like, in the next couple of weeks or something...

April 1st is coming awfully quick. I've got a lot to do between now and then.

Book Update: Goldmayne

So, I hit the "Approve" buttons today. Createspace told me it would be 5-7 days before my newest book was on amazon. Kindle Direct Publishing was more optimistic with 12-24 hours. They both came in under their estimates:

Print edition, list price $13.95: Click here.

Kindle edition, list price $0.99: Click here.

There's also my little Createspace eStore, just in case anyone wants to pay that full list price plus shipping. For whatever reason, Amazon's offering a 5% discount right now, though. Just sayin'.

As usual, I've opted out of DRM on the digital file. That should make it transferable/convertible for other devices. It can also be borrowed from the Kindle Owners Lending Library for free if you happen to have Amazon Prime. (And they are nice enough to pay us indie authors a kickback every time someone borrows it, so please feel free to do so.)

...And right on schedule, my mom just called to tell me she found another typo in the original proof. Because it couldn't have been found prior to the edits and resubmits and whatnot that I was doing over the past couple of weeks. 'Course not.

Oh, well. I've corrected it in my master files, and I guess that's all that really matters.

And here we go again...

It's that time of year again! Time to dust off the manuscript-monsters under the bed and choose one lucky soul to go out into the world! Dance with anticipation, my minions!

No, not really. We're all serious business here, so there's no dancing required. What is required is a little backstory for this year's emissary; I was playing on someone else's playground when I wrote it. So, here goes.

The Magic Tree and Other Tales by Marius Barbeau (retold by Michael Hornyansky) is a hipster motherlode when it comes to fairy and folk tales. The book is out of print, the stories are French-Canadian, and most people have never heard of them. And boy, are they missing out.

This was my absolute favorite set of tales when I was growing up. While the tales use many common fairytale tropes (particularly the Rule of 3), they still offer a different flavor on the general fairytale themes, and have a great deal of fun in so doing.

My favorite story within this collection is actually a pair of stories, "Scurvyhead" and "Sir Goldenhair," which were placed successively in the book and share a protagonist. Petit Jean, the hero, gets himself into a tight situation but maneuvers his way out of it with the help of a talking horse, who then guides him to greater glory. I always wanted someone to write these two tales as a novel, but, to my knowledge, no one ever did.

Well, until now. My philosophy on writing is that if someone sees a gap in literary canon, it's that person's responsibility to fill it. And really, no one else was going to write this particular fairy tale to my liking. Doubtless my version won't live up to the standards of the 5 other people who've read the original. Oh well.

I wrote the first draft of Goldmayne in Summer 2011 and gave it to my mom for her birthday (uncompleted still at that point, and she hounded me for chapters until I'd finished it about a month later). As a stand-alone story, it was a contender for getting published last year, but Kingdom of Ruses won out simply because it was older. A couple of my nephews have specifically requested it for this year, though, and who am I to say no to them?

So, without further ado, I present to you the preview summary (with lovely title plate!):

Evil witches, cursed royalty, heroes by happenstance, and happily ever after: Duncan does not believe in fairy tales, but when he runs away from his father's farm, he tumbles headlong into one. Old Dame Groach recruits him as caretaker of her crumbling estate, where he must tend her poisonous garden, beat her white horse daily, and keep far away from the mysterious closet beneath the stairs--and that's only the start of his fantastical troubles! A retelling and shameless embellishment of the French-Canadian folk tales, "Scurvyhead" and "Sir Goldenhair."

I still have a couple of minor edits to perform, and then I have to recruit some poor patsy willing soul to perform a final read-through for grammar/typos. After that there's the formatting, typsetting, table of contents, and cover to worry about. (The above doodle is just for giggles, and because I like doodling.)

My deadline's the same as always, of course. Expect it sometime around June-ish. (Why does that suddenly seem so much closer than it really is?)

And no, this is not an April Fools announcement. I'm not that funny. (Although, if I miss my deadline I could claim...)

Building Frankenstein's Monster

Of late, I've been thinking a lot about my writing process. I don't know how the chaos of creation unfolds for other authors, but I've decided that for me it's very much like building a Frankenstein's Monster. Only, unlike in Frankenstein, my monster comes alive the moment I start working on it and proceeds to give me critiques throughout the construction.

It goes something like this:

Me: Yes! My plans are perfect! Awake, my creation, and LIVE!

StoryMonster: GRRawRawRawRgurgleHuRFaDerf*cough* ... Wat? Y m i so ncompl3t?

Me: Oh, um, you're just a draft. I'll fix you as I go, I promise.

SM: But u nly outlnd 3 chptrs.

Me: (shoves outline under chair) Pay no attention to that. I know what I'm doing.

[3.2% Target Word Count]

SM: You've given me too many ribs.

Me: You're going to need them.

SM: I am? Or my twin sister is?

Me: (breaks out extra structure and tosses it in "Unnecessary Sequel" bin) Happy now?

[8.5% Target Word Count]

SM: You forgot part of my spine.

Me: I'll add it later.

SM: No. I want it now. Now! NOW!

Me: FINE.

[17.6% Target Word Count]

SM: What's with these dangly bits?

Me: I'll fix them later.

SM: But they're all... dangly.

Me: I'LL FIX THEM LATER!

[24% Target Word Count]

SM: Hey, remember that character you thought you'd add right around here?

Me: Yeah...

SM: Doesn't work. You'll have to add him somewhere else.

Me: But... fine. I'm writing his first scene anyway.

SM: It won't fit right.

Me: I'll splice it.

SM: But it won't--

Me: I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING! (muttering) Maybe.

[52% Target Word Count]

SM: This isn't going the way you wanted it to, is it?

Me: ...I'm gonna go watch some cat videos on YouTube.

SM: Yeah, yeah. See you later tonight when you try to make up for lost time.

[76% Target Word Count]

Me: Oy. When did you get so boring?

SM: I'm boring? You're the one recycling bits from Harry Potter*.

Me: Take it back!

SM: Look! Here, here, here!

Me: Those are common fiction motifs! You can't just... GRAH! (yanks out various monster parts and throws them in the rubbish bin)

[89% Target Word Count]

Me: You're putting on too much weight.

SM: Not my fault, you hack.

Me: I'll show you hack.

[EDIT Mode ON]

[85% Target Word Count]

Me: You're still too fat, and you're boring.

SM: Cry me a frickin' river. Nobody asked you to create me!

Me: Cat videos it is. (wanders off)

[94% Target Word Count]

SM: Hey, did you ever check to see whether these characters' names have been used together before?

Me: ...no?

SM: What if they have been?

Me: No one author gets to lay claim to specific names or name combi--
Aw, fer cryin'--! (spends next 5 hours on Google)

[103% Target Word Count]

Me: Why won't you just resolve yourself?

SM: Maybe if you had outlined me from start to finish from the very beginning--

Me: You veered from your original plot-line within the first five chapters. We both know you never would've followed an outline from start to finish.

SM: Well, it's still not my fault you've painted yourself into a corner, plot-wise.

Me: I didn't.

SM: Then resolve it, Hemingway.

Me: Right. (enters Google search term "adorable cats")

[111% Target Word Count]

Me: 'kay. I've tweaked about fifty things now. You should be running a whole lot better.

SM: Holy crap! I am! Look at me!

Me: Holy crap. Let's not get carried away. But at least I can see where you need to go next.

[125% Target Word Count]

SM: Ooh! Ooh! Don't forget this detail here!

Me: Ooh! Nice!

[133% Target Word Count]

Me: Done! Finished! Every last bit has found a place! HALLELUJAH!
...You are not at all what I expected.

SM: H'yeah. I'm AWESOME.

Me: You're bloated.

SM: Can it. You love me and you know it. When can I go out to play?

Me: Ooh... probably never.

And then I shove my newest creation under the bed with the rest of my monsters.

Three to five days after this, I fall into a post-writing depressive state, wherein I realize that my whole world has been wrapped up in this one project and I can't remember how I lived before that. The agony of slogging through the creative process is too fresh to begin a new novel, but I desperately miss the purpose-driven high I was operating on for the last thirty pages of the just-completed manuscript, when all of those ridiculous loose ends came together.

This in turn causes me to focus my attention on some odd non-writing tasks in an attempt to feel productive without the mental stress of creating something original-ish from nothing.

And that's how I wound up blanching and peeling four cups of almonds this morning.

The End.

*This interchange is in no way meant to disparage Harry Potter. It's just that I've seen basically every YA fantasy novel since then get compared to that series and nothing measures up, obviously. (And yet, I still feel this inborn compulsion to write...)

An Update from Our Crack Team of Researchers

See all the books? We've totally been busy!

No, I kid. That's a picture from when I was writing my thesis, back in 2007. But the book in the center is my very marked up Klaeber (isn't it pretty?), so it's at least slightly topical to what I'm going to discuss in this post.

Fine. I put the picture there so that you'd have something to look at, because people like looking at pictures. Happy?

We now pause for a short message from our sponsors*: The Kindle Edition of Kingdom of Ruses is officially available! What are you waiting for? You totally know you've spent a dollar on more foolish things than that! (And now we return you to your previously scheduled blog post, already in progress.)

Today's post is, technically speaking, an onion-peeling post. (As an aside, the only picture I had of onions--that was legitimately mine, that is--was not as attractive as the above research picture, so I spared your pretty eyes the sight. You're welcome.) The topic: The Nifaran, from Kingdom of Ruses. I'm not going to tell you about them. Just their origin in my creative process.

I've long had a fascination with medieval bestiaries. It always intrigued me how the writers could juxtapose perfectly legitimate animals with perfectly... er, non-legitimate ones, and also how even the legitimate animals would have non-legitimate descriptions presented as truth. Did the writers actually believe what they were writing? Or were they trolling their audience with misinformation? And what if they had actually been right about all those mysterious (and not-so-mysterious) creatures? What sort of a world would that be?

When I first conceived the story for Kingdom or Ruses, the main character was a boy who worked for a group of government types that sat around making up creatures of rumor to promote their own purposes, as government types are wont to do. The boy, sick of the deception, was to unwittingly summon a sprite or elf of some sort, which then in turn would go around mischievously making all these fake and fantastical creatures appear. Mayhem was to ensue.

This is not the story I wrote. On further reflection I decided that I wanted a girl protagonist. The government types became her family. The mischievous sprite or elf became a mysterious stranger on a quest for knowledge. And thanks to that last development, I found myself needing to create a fantastical creature of my own.

A bit of etymology now: the word "elf" comes from Old English ælf and in OE denotes an elf, sprite, fairy, goblin, etc., a creature responsible for disease and nightmares. The modern word carries distinctive brands of its own, thanks in great part to Tolkien, numerous RPGs, and our favorite tree-dwelling cookie-makers. The OE creature was one of mystery and terror. The modern one... meh, not so much. I wanted that sense of mystery and strangeness in my creature, but labeling it an "elf" as originally conceived was right out. So I went in search of another Old English word. And I found one.

The term nifara means simply "stranger" or, more literally, "newcomer" (ni- fara, where, presumably, -fara would be the same root as modern "-farer," as in "seafarer"). It's a weak masculine noun (pl. nifaran). As best I can discover, it occurs but once in the Old English Corpus, in the Paris Psalter, 38/15 (which corresponds to KJV Psalm 39:12, by the way): "Forþam ic eom nifara hider on eorþan beforan ðe, and ælðeodig swa swa ealle mine fæderas wæran."

So basically, it's a legitimate term, not one I made up off the top of my head. I simply took and added my own meaning to it, for my own purposes, just like my scheming government types were meant to do, and just like the Moreland family does in Kingdom of Ruses. Haha. Life imitates art.

(Or is it the other way around? No matter. It's all meshed together around here.)

*I am my only sponsor. And I'm not a very good one at that.

It's still June. So there.

I love this book. It's brain candy and somewhat inane in parts, but I love it nonetheless. This was my very first NaNoWriMo novel, from 2008. I wrote it in three weeks, after having spent all of October dreaming up the plot and the characters. It has its faults, of course, but sometimes I'm still amazed that my brain could produce something like this at all, and in such a relatively small space of time.

I feel a need to say a word about the title. The country of Lenore is always referred to as a "kingdom" but because it's ruled by a prince I think technically it would be a principality. I always think of a principality as being subordinate to some other host nation though (whether this is universally true or not), and my Lenore is quite independent. Besides that, "Principality of Ruses" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, (nor does "the principality of Lenore" as opposed to "the kingdom of Lenore"), and I certainly wasn't going to call its ruler "the Eternal King," because that would have felt vaguely sacrilegious to me.

So the long and short of it is that we have a kingdom ruled by a prince. I apologize to any literalists out there that might have a problem with this, and I do hope that you don't mind that, in this case, my apology takes the form of a thumb to the nose.

(Where exactly does the term "thumb one's nose at something" come from, anyway? Add that to my list of Things to Google.)

I also feel the need to say a word about the format of this book. Originally I intended to write it in first person, but I ran into a slight snag when I realized that my intense loathing of first person would be an obstacle to the writing itself. (In my defense, I originally chose that point of view because I feel that I should at least partly understand anything I'm going to take the trouble to loathe.) There were certain events that I imagined from Viola's first-person perspective, and I didn't want to give up that perspective. However, the further I progressed in my plotting, the more I didn't want to be stuck in her head all the time.

And thus was born the Most Troublesome Format Ever. The originally intended first-person point of view has been preserved in journal entries, which begin every chapter. For the print version, this means a lot of italics. I justify this because I have a copy of Jane Austen's Emma published by Barnes & Noble, where all correspondences, including Frank Churchill's monstrosity at the end, are formatted entirely in italics; Frank's doesn't even use paragraphs, so if B&N can get away with such a magnificent Italicized Wall O' Text, this little indie author with her own formatting guide can do as she pleases. Nyah.

With those two caveats firmly in place, I present to you Kingdom of Ruses, my own little fairy tale of sorts.

To purchase at CreateSpace, click here.

For Amazon, click here.

The eBook is forthcoming. Just a few little formatting quirks to work out still.

Deadline Schmeadline.

I do keep my promises. That's why I'm so reluctant to make them. Without further ado, I give you the links to my newly available eBooks:

A Boy Called Hawk

A Rumor of Real Irish Tea

Amazon told me it would take 12 hours to publish. It's been 8 since I uploaded the files, but I was able to find them easy-peasy.

I tried to upload A Boy Called Hawk last Friday, but for whatever reason, the conversion process decided to place my "start" bookmark at the end of the book and the cover file in the same place. (The original file had it correctly marked. I still don't know what could have triggered it to jump to the end.) It also screwed up the formatting royally in a couple chapters near the end. So I deleted the whole thing and put it off until today.

I spent a couple hours this morning working on it. I had to tweak things here and there, but it looked mostly good in the preview. I say "mostly" because I found one paragraph late in the book where both a hyphen and a space were missing. They were clearly in the source file (you know I checked), so I've let it slide. Doubtless there are other formatting errors. Hey, for $0.99, you get what you paid for. (Sorry for any errors you might find.)

The conversion process for A Rumor of Real Irish Tea went much more smoothly, but that book didn't have many formatting boondoggles to begin with (like, say, an entire chapter that revolves around a series of emails).

The files are DRM-free. They are also available in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, so anyone who has Amazon Prime can borrow them for free (and please do - I get a kickback based on the number of times the books get borrowed per month*).

I haven't downloaded them for my Kindle Fire, mostly because I can't bear to look at them. If I find a mistake at this point, I think I'd bash my head into a wall. So instead, I'm crossing my fingers and looking the other way. That's so mature of me, I know.

*One borrow per month per Prime member.