Geetha Krishnan's Blog, page 12

New books and some thoughts

I have submitted Elitist Supremacy to this competition called ISFAB a few days ago, and my book has already been read by the judge it was allotted to, and now I’m in tenterhooks wondering if they liked it or not. I have been setting very moderate goals for each day on working days, so there’s not much pressure on me if I miss my target on a day.

I have finished editing and got formatted There’s Always a Morning, but it seems D2D is being an ass and not accepting my beautiful PDF. I’ve sent an email to their customercare and hope it gets resolved soon.

I got covers commissioned for Soul of Magic and Memories of Forgotten Waves. I also got a cover for Curse of Souls. I feel the books are going to be epic.

Set in Stone has also found a beta reader, and I’m so nervous about feedback. Hopefully, it won’t be anything impossible to repair.

I have started working on the long list of my unwritten ideas, because we all need more WIPs in our lives, right? Anyway, the reasoning was, if any of them seem like too much to handle while starting, perhaps it’s not worth pursuing. That seems to be backfiring since words have been flowing so easily!!

I have decided not to let my old blog die, so I will be posting snippets over there. Pop in and have a look!!

Happy New Year

Not yet, I know. I have three more hours to go here, and I can’t wait! Not necessarily because I think 2021 is going to magically turn things around, but hopefully it will be better than 2020. With a vaccine already out, there is reason for hope at least.

I have started two new WIPs and my WIP list is back to 20. I’m enjoying most of them, and have plans in 2021!

Bleeding Gold already got back the first beta feedback, and they loved it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that whatever work it needs can be finished before the scheduled publication dates.

2021 is the year where I’m taking a step back from just churning out books, and taking time to make my already finished books ready for publication. That means covers, editing, formatting, and whatnot.

I have bought so many covers last month that I’m so broke right now. However, I feel like it has been totally worth it. Think of all the beautiful books!

I also dusted up and sent out my newsletter. Yay for doing something productive other than just writing.

Wish you all a Happy New Year, and hoping 2021 will be kinder than 2020 at least.

 

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it, and happy holidays to everyone who doesn’t. The pandemic has fucked up our whole year, but hopefully next year will be better. The vaccine is here and perhaps we will all be able to gain some semblance of normalcy in our lives.

My week has been work and meetings and most days when I reach home, I am  a zombie with no energy or motivation to write or edit. I still managed words every day and I am so proud of myself.

I am still adding scenes to Soul of Magic. I do love the premise of the book and I want to do justice to it. Will and Duncan will never forgive me otherwise.

I spent the whole of yesterday evening translating songs in my playlist. I suppose that counts towards writing?

I started a new WIP today which yes. I am thinking of starting another, so I suppose my tendency to torture myself is reaching new levels.

On the plus side, I filed my income tax returns, so that’s something.

Once again I wish you happy holidays.

More Editing and a Video Trailer

I finished editing Bleeding Gold and also the first draft of Memories of Forgotten Waves. I know it needs a lot of work, but at least the first draft is done now. I also started the first round of edits on Colliding Forces and The Soul of Magic. Colliding Forces don’t need as much work, but Soul of Magic needs a lot of rewrites.

I am also writing Magical Mayhem in the meantime, and also started on a new WIP. I’m not sure just how much I’ll get done this month, but as on last reckoning, I still need to write almost 35k words this month.

I was not able to sleep one of these nights and so I made a Video Trailer for There’s Always a Morning.

Enjoy!!

Video Trailer

Vampires and Mermen

Ever since the idea that I should go ahead with publishing Bleeding Gold next year, I’ve been rewriting some of the earlier parts, adding new content. My first drafts are often summarised versions of my stories, and I add content during the subsequent edit passes. I’ve added 8k words to Bleeding Gold already. I’ve a feeling I’ve been indulging in some super lazy writing of late, and wants to change that. Bleeding Gold is changing plotwise, characterwise and PoV wise, and it is already looking a lot better. The main plot will stay the same, but there will be a lot more details and character development, especially with Alvin.

Memories are also going smoothly, and I have a feeling I can finish the first draft this weekend. I also plan to finish the first edit pass of Bleeding Gold this weekend.

I had set 30k as my target for December and I’m already at nearly 29k, and it is only the 11th. I was planning to take things easy. Maybe I am. Compared to November in any case.

I have been sick the last two days (no, not Covid, got tested and it was negative) so I’ve been making crappy aesthetics instead of writing.

This month, I do plan to see if I can get one more project edited, either Colliding Forces of Spell of the Gods, and maybe finish Magic and Mayhem. Let me see how my health, work situation and everything else pans out.

In the meantime, I apologise to all who subscribed to my newsletter since I couldn’t send it out the last two months. Mental health issues came in the way, but I should still have taken more of an effort. I definitely plan to send it out regularly starting January 2021.

Stay safe, everyone, and happy holidays to all of you.

A Hectic Week

This week had been unlike any other. I had a breakdown at work yesterday and had to leave early. Mental health issues are no fun, and everything is making me more and more convinced that my decision to quit my job next year is the right one. Whether I will be able to generate enough income from my writing or editing is doubtful at the moment, but that is future me’s problem. Present me just wants to get through today.

Highlight of the week was definitely finishing nano with more than a 100k words written. When I started the month, I wasn’t even sure I’d get to that 50k. There was zero motivation to write and none of the projects were doing anything. Instead, I ended up finishing Bleeding Gold, started and finished Colliding Forces and Spell of Gods, started Magic and Mayhem and Memories of Forgotten Dreams, wrote a few Destiel Coda fics, and got Fiery Magic and Death of Summer to really interesting places. If Memories of Forgotten Waves wasn’t consuming me the way it is, I would have explored those further this month.

I got a cover for Bleeding Gold despite swearing up and down I am not going to buy any more covers till January. Everything was on sale and now I have pretty covers for Colliding forces, Spell of Gods, Journey of Ages and Bleeding Gold and one more cover for which I don’t yet have anything, lol.

Getting a cover for Bleeding Gold is making me rethink my publishing plans for next year. Should I just postpone Stolen from a Dream another year and publish Bleeding Gold next year so it will be all vampires next year? I never knew I was going to love writing vampires so much I would end up writing four vampire books. Vampires have never been my favourite thing to read. They still aren’t, but I so enjoy writing them.

Life Remains is still my favourite of all the vampire books I’ve written, though I have no idea why. I want to think it’s because Frederick turned out so different from how I thought he would turn out. I love how each of my vampires are so different and their stories pan out so differently too. Bleeding Gold ended up so fluffy and that was a surprise too. I honestly didn’t think Alvin was going to get a happy ending, though he did deserve one.

Memories of Forgotten Waves took a twist late last night, and now I’m pantsing like mad, trying to figure out where it is going. Despite my love of happy endings, and how I end my books on a positive note, even if there isn’t always an HEA, I really want to end one book with some heartbreak, just to prove to myself I can do it. Is Memories going to be the one? Not with how Aderin is behaving lately, that’s for sure. Ellwood turned out such a sweetie too. Sighs in writer. I love it when my characters turn out different from what I thought they were like, and how they change during the course of the story, but there are times when I wish they wouldn’t surprise me so much.

But that’s what makes this whole thing fun, and them so relatable and worth investing time on.

Deathless Ones made it to the Cover Competition on Allauthor.com. So, if you can all pop over here and vote for it, it’d mean a lot. It is a cover that makes me swoon every time I see it.

Depressed pile of goo

It is one year today since I lost my son, and I’ve been in a funk all week, crying at work, snapping at people, moping around and writing till my hands hurt. Nothing really helps. Nothing can fill the emptiness left behind by him. I took his name as my pen name, and seeing his name on my books hurt too. I don’t know if anything will ever make this better.

I have also been splurging on covers for the Black Friday. Pretty sure my finances are in the red right now.

I think I will finish Colliding Forces today. On to Fiery Magic and Magic and Mayhem. The Spell of Gods will need a lot of work, and so will everything else I finished in October and November.

Right now, I’m going to stay inside my depression cave and not emerge.

After Nano, what?

Nano this month hasn’t gone as expected. I did get to my 50k on the 15th, but I’m back again to multiple projects. I started one more WIP which is at 10k words now, and I also started editing The Banished Secret.

Writing and reading has been the only two things that has kept me going this month. With all the covid scares, added responsibilities at work due to all the bosses testing positive, and with my main nano project fizzling out, this has been a weird month.

Just a reminder that Spaces of Silence is releasing on the 27th. Don’t forget that you can pre-order copies!!

I have been a zombie this week, pushing myself off bed and going to work and crashing as soon as I got home. It doesn’t help that my working week has been crazy hours with some days almost going up to 12 hours.

Can’t wait for the weekend so I can sleep till noon.

On a side note, the last episode of Supernatural absolutely destroyed me. Now, I’m eating ice cream and reading Destiel fanfics.

Another week of quarantine

My boss tested positive with Covid on Sunday, and everyone of us had to be in quarantine. Anxiety is no longer a fuel to my creativity, mostly because I’m so fucking tired all the time now. It’s like I’m brain dead, and nothing gives me the same kind of joy any more.

For all that I got in a lot of words in the three days I was in quarantine. Wednesday we all got tested, and 5 of my colleagues tested positive, but fortunately, I tested negative.

I also finished another WIP, a very short novella with vampires and werewolves and magic, and of course, gay MCs. It’s been a good year for finishing books. I think I must have finished at least 15, if not more. including short stories and novellas.

Nano is going on, not as well as I expected, but well enough. I’m at 41k words, and hoping I’ll be able to finish this weekend so I can relax the rest of the month. Okay, maybe not relax, but you know, maybe don’t push myself to exhaustion?

I finished the first round of edits of Flame of the Dragon’s Oath as well as Set in Stone, both of which needed less work than I’d expected. Set in Stone still gives me misgivings now that I’m away from it again, lol. Both are ready for betas, but I really want to get betas for Fractured Alliances and Changes in the Wind first.

I started a new WIP again, but frankly, I don’t feel any of my WIPs right now. I hope I’ll muster up the words to finish nano, but after that I’ll be focusing on applying the beta notes to Stolen from a Dream, and editing Rage of the Gods so it can be made beta ready,

 

Of Nanowrimo and other things

Unlike in previous years, I had a project all lined up for Nanowrimo this year. I had decided on it as early as July. I was finally going to start writing the second book of my Jaya! series, which is a retelling of the Hindu epic of Mahabharata with a twist. I was encouraged to do this by the response received for Prdayutita, the first book of the series in SPFBO 2020 where it was selected as one of the semi finalists.

I hadn’t read the Mahabharata in forever, and despite my love of the epic, and for Karna who is the central character of most of my mythology based books including Jaya!, I haven’t been feeling the same enthusiasm for the epic as I once did. Yet, I was excited to write it. The first draft of Prajwalita was going to be churned out during nano, and I started off well, writing the first 1k words in less than an hour.

And then I hit a snag, or rather my brain did. I am so used to working on multiple projects by now, that it seems my brain can’t really focus on one project alone. So, now I have Prajwalita, another WIP about aliens and magic that I started on Nov 1st, my vampire werewolf WIP as well as Clouds from the Past, a paranormal fantasy.

Let’s not forget that I also thought I should get around to doing the first edits of Flame of the Dragon’s Oath as well as Set in Stone, and they are both looking way better than I thought at the time of finishing them. The writing is good and engaging, and there are a few plot and world building issues that I’m fixing as I edit.

I have also been obsessively following news on the US elections. For a non American who lives in India, I have really been way too invested in those results, but I have friends over there whose well being and very lives depend on these results and I desperately need to find a reason to have faith in humanity.

I lost most of it today after the latest Supernatural episode, of course. I really want to yell at the showrunners, but anxiety brain is far too depressed for the effort.

I’m still on top of my nano goals and have crossed 15k words in five days. I’m planning to get to 20k this weekend.

Supernatural better do something before I start writing fanfictions, though.

Here’s the cool badge I got for Pradyutita which can be puchased here

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