C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 46
July 25, 2020
#WriterlyWiPChat: July Q&A Week 4 (and a bit!) Part 1
Days 22-25
Do you edit as you go, or push through that first draft?
It honestly varies. I do a little bit of editing as I go through, but the first draft will morph and shift under me through weeks of experimental writing until I get the plot and outline right, figure the characters out and get to grips with what I actually want to say. But pushing through to the end gives me a better idea of how to improve it, so I might bash out a first draft straight through and then sit on it for ages until I’m ready to revise.
Is anyone getting hitched in your WiP?
Thirteenth is not even a ‘kissing book’. Wes is already in a stable polyamorous relationship, Katy’s college crush is unrequited (or is it? for now, we won’t know) and Ricky’s … at most demi/greysexual and demi/greyromantic.
Eldritch Girls is a slasher-romance but will they/won’t they [survive their love affair]? That would be telling.
How much effort/detail would your MC put into planning a wedding?
THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter would have a Pinterest board, a whole aesthetic, and a lot of input from her friends (especially Rachel). So: a lot. A whole lot.
– Wes Porter would hire someone to do that for him.
– Ricky Porter wouldn’t be planning a wedding. At all.
ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw is a full-on Bridezilla. She’s not even sorry.
We’re looking for Summer Reads! Any suggestions?
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ANTHOLOGIES
Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology, edited by Celine Frohn, can’t choose a stand-out favourite story from this anthology!! Loved them all!!
From Ashes to Magic, edited by Mikki Noble – my personal favourites were by A. Denner and Nita Pan [one major reason why I wanted to work with her on the Eldritch Girls project!]
The Testament of Cthulhu by Mark McLaughlin and Michael Sheehan Jr., some fun short stories in the Weird Fiction vein here, a light easy read.
From The Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury, really loved this collection of shorts tied together as a novel.
Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman (see my review here)
FICTION NOVELS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
Victorian Mistress [and the sequel, Nine Shillings] by Jesse Stuart
Kinship and Kindness by Kara Jorgensen, on my TBR
The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco (see my review here)
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng
Three Star Island by Kat Caulberg
Black Dog Rising by Kat Caulberg (I’ve received the ARC and it has now been released!)
Widdershins (the whole Whyborne & Griffin series, in fact!!) by Jordan L. Hawk
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski
The Truth in Lies by Gemma Cartmell (see my review here)
Spectred Isle by K. J. Charles
Stoker’s Wilde by Stephen Hopstaken and Melissa Prusi (see my review here)
Dragon’s Treasure by Maya Starling
Soul’s Choice by Kerri Davidson (CW for disordered eating, parental bereavement, suicide, and abusive relationship)
I quite like most Golden Age Detective novels, so I’d recommend Ngaio Marsh, but also Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie.
Hopeless Maine Vol. 1: The Gathering by Tom and Nimue Brown (I love all the series)
Men-an-Tol, a bilingual Cornish/English comic by Joana Varanda and Tania A. Cordoso
NON-FICTION
Body Gothic by Xavier Aldana Reyes (see my summary/review here)
July 23, 2020
NEW!! Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea
Buy from Amazon (you can just change .co.uk in the URL to .com or .fr etc manually, and you’ll land up on the same product)!
Buy from Smashwords!
Add to your Goodreads Library!
A very short companion book to the Pagham-on-Sea ‘verse, Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Vol. I is now available across all major digital platforms. Get it for 99p (GBP) /.99c (USD) or equivalent conversion rate (GBP) in other marketplaces.
Some of the content is available in some earlier form here for free: check out Jennet, Jenny and Pinnie-Pen, The Eleusinian Mysteries, The Punch & Judy Man, and the Meteorite Crash for an idea of the style. Never-before-seen tales include The Greenlad, or, The Girl Who Saw Herself, and Farisee Stones. The new (and older) content includes notes by Rev. J. D. Allardyce (1832-1920) and his commentary on the tales and how he collected them, but his full critical edition of local folktales is yet to be released.
If you’ve read The Crows, be on the lookout for smol easter eggs.
If you subscribed to my newsletter, you’ll be getting this as a freebie – I’ve sent out emails to ask you if you want it, and if so, to get in touch and let me know which format you’d prefer! I can send it to you as a .mobi, .ePub or .pdf file. If you’re not sure, mobis are Kindle-compatible, and ePubs are for loads of other readers – just let me know if the file you request doesn’t work. Enjoy!
If you missed out this time, sign up here for future freebies, exclusive updates and more. I only do a newsletter when I have something to say, so it’s not monthly… and I don’t spam or share your info. Enter your email below to sign up!
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July 21, 2020
#WriterlyWiPChat: July Q&A Week 3
Days 15-21
Share a line from your WiP [Work in Progress] or make one up!
THIRTEENTH
p. 22 ~ Beta Version, no context
Wes grinned, smoke wreathing between his teeth and scrawling his vice across the dark, cold street. He took another vicious, glowing drag. “Still want to know what I’m doing this evening? Cos it still ain’t you.”
ELDRITCH GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN
Draft 1:: Sasha Shaw POV from Chapter 6: She’s Just My Kind of Girl
[Paragraph for context]
Moving into the main bit, her heart wasn’t in it. She marked it through first, making sure she’d nailed the steps, but drilling into the dummy was useless. For a start, plastic shavings were a hazard without protective goggles, and she wanted to drill into the abdominal cavity so she needed to know what would spurt out and if she could still dance on the floor in her heels after the fact. She might have to wear shoes with better grips – special rubber soles. They’d be heavier, and she’d need to adapt some of the moves for the timing. She gave up and hacked the plastic piece of shit to bits with a hand axe.
“This is bullshit,” she yelled at the two-way mirror, raking her hair back in annoyance. “Get me a real fucking person.”
If you had to publish your WiP right now, as it is, how many stars would you rate it?
I’d give them both 3. Thirteenth needs a lot more work but I’m hoping that betas will help with that, and I need to do line edits. Eldritch Girls is half-finished, with scenes missing from the middle of chapters, and the whole thing is unedited. Plus we’ve decided to axe a side character and merge their role with a more interesting side character to get an enemy-lovers subplot going on and a love triangle to complicate and add tension to the main (straightforward) romance plot. I think it’s got potential and love what we’ve got so far so that would save it from being 1-2 stars, but it’s so unfinished that I couldn’t give it 4-5 if I was being totally fair.
It’s world emoji day! Make a #FF list with emoji reasons!
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If you could dedicate July to anything, what would it be?
National … Video Chat Month?
Make up a holiday and tell us how people celebrate it!
This is how the Pendle clan (comprised of the Porters, the Shaws, the Wends, the Wend-McVeys and the Foremans) celebrate a Changing…
Extract from the beta-version of THIRTEENTH pp. 195-6::
They hadn’t had a single birth followed by another spawning in so many generations that everyone was expecting something spectacular to happen, even Wes. He’d avoided going to the shrine to ask for special consideration, that wasn’t cool, but he descended the cellar steps in full stupid regalia anyway.
At least, he’d thought it was stupid when everyone else wore it. The wool itched, the robe too short on him, but that meant he wouldn’t fall flat on his face or fuck it up with clumsiness. Tonight, his night, he wore it with a strange, unfamiliar sense of pride.
…
Wes was hemmed in by relatives and their robed forms, humming low and muttering a chant Gran claimed she had heard emanating from the Outside. He was blindfolded, Gran tying the wide woollen scarf tight behind his head, nearly catching his hair. They slipped a hood over his head for good measure, the robe supposed to cover everything else and keep it hidden until the big reveal at the end. They marched him around Gran’s garden, the chanting gathering momentum as he lost track of who was who and who was where. He could tell at first by their voices, but then they all merged into one.
It was like labour pains, some said. You felt them where the Changes would happen – usually in your head, your throat, your chest. Some had it all over. Some described it like needles, others like knives. His mother said hers had been like contractions, but in her spine.
Wes had been feeling an odd numbness all over, creeping across his skin and eating into his larynx, for three weeks. Gran said it was coming, they couldn’t delay anymore. But there wasn’t any pain. He thought it always came with pain. I don’t think it’s the Changes, he’d said, but been over-ruled when Gran examined him properly. I don’t think it’s time yet, maybe it’s the overture. But Gran knew better.
Wes wasn’t ready.
He liked his face, his pretty-boy face, didn’t give a toss that the lads said he was ‘metrosexual’, he bought into it with skincare and hair gel, wasn’t ready for extra appendages and gelatinous ooze.
They pushed him through the back door, into the kitchen. He worried about leaving traces of mud on Gran’s kitchen floor, stomach cold and somersaulting with each shove, each step forwards. He tried to picture the room, arms raised slightly to feel his way across to the cellar, but he was hemmed in by relatives in front and behind, someone at each elbow, too many for the tight space. How were they all fitting in? Someone was manipulating reality again. Nothing was where it ought to be. The tiles crunched under his soles like sand. He breathed through the scarf, inhaling the heat of a volcanic desert.
There were steps. Someone took his hands.
Wes descended, the darkness total. Now there was a humming, the tug in his chest irresistible, physical, like a meat hook on a reeled-in string. It was starting to hurt, a strange ache all over. Could skin ache? Was it muscle- deep? Bone-deep? He didn’t know: something was sucking at his face, like he’d stepped in front of a vacuum cleaner. The suction pulled him faster down the steps and he nearly tripped. Recoiling, it felt like some invisible force was ripping his face off. Wes stumbled, trying to press his hands to his hood, hold his skin on, but he was pulled and grabbed by so many hands and thrown down to the cellar floor.
Wes landed with a hard thud on his hands and knees, not on the flagstones, but on hard grit baked by a sun that wasn’t theirs. He dug his long fingers deep into it, let it trickle through them, the heat on his back. His ears rang, but there was nothing to hear but the hum and the chant, far away.
He was alone.
How often do you print out your manuscripts?
Never, I can’t afford the ink!! I used to print out the completed copy for editing, but I’ve learned tricks for changing the font and font size so that I can do it better on-screen. I also turn it into mobi/ePub files and read through each version, so I can catch errors in different setups, and my eyes aren’t looking at the same format and missing things.
Whatcha reading?
[image error]Books in my Currently Reading tab on Goodreads
I’m also enjoying the Romancing the Gothic book club picks! Check out the Bookshop page for book club-recommended paperbacks.
July 18, 2020
#EldritchGirls Character Art & Goremance Musings
We did a reveal on Twitter and Insta a while ago, but failed to introduce our murder-babes here, so I’m rectifying this. Nita Pan and I commissioned Jenn St-Onge to create a coloured bust of our villainous murder babes, Tosh Haraldson and Sasha Shaw. If you want to sign up to beta this project when it’s complete (currently it’s about 2/3ds done with 57K words on the page), contact Nita @NitaPanWrites on Twitter and Insta, or via her website www.nitapanwrites.com, and she will sign you up.
Here’s a few Twitter teasers relating to our project…
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWhat if the hero was a villain all along too? #EldritchGirls #amwriting #WritingCommunity https://t.co/XYhsPWE9Kb
— Nita Pan is taking a writing break. (@nitapanwrites) July 14, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsCurrently writing a dark slasher-romance (forbidden love, workplace romance, blood & guts, eldritch horror, enemy-lovers in lust triangle, fake dating, chaotic bi hitman falls for burlesque dancer who kills ppl on camera in snuff films) with @nitapanwrites called #EldritchGirls
— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) July 8, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWell, @CMRosens and I do have something in the works… #amwriting #EldritchGirls #darkromance #pulpfiction https://t.co/VunOVepKrW
— Nita Pan is taking a writing break. (@nitapanwrites) April 13, 2020
Meet Tosh & Sasha
[image error]Art by Jenn St-Onge – https://www.jennstonge.ca/
Twitter: Princess_jem4
Insta: Princess_jem4
So, to recap:
-morally bankrupt MCs
-villain/villain romance
-no redemption arc, instead you get a [devolving further] corruption arc
-pulp fiction style with spare, lurid prose and OTT everything
-goremance / slasher-romance / dark romance
-cannibalism
-chainsaws and scissors
-homages to various slasher franchises
-forbidden workplace romance
-sex and violence / violent sex / sexy… violence? *shudders*
-gangsters and organised snuff film productions
-eldritch abominations and related body horror
-fake dating, including meet-the-parents-under-false-pretences
-a Ferris Wheel ‘date’/date
-lust-ridden triangle
-drunken confessions
-pain/fear/knife play kink
-ABBA soundtrack
DISCLAIMER: if you read Eldritch Girls, please don’t go out and kill people and say the book made you do it. Ideally, don’t kill anyone at all. We’re not actually advocating the cannibal lifestyle.
Goremance Musings
Well… as romance subgenres go, this one is not exactly mainstream. There’s no clear definition available if you just do a basic search, so you have to dig a little further to find tags and examples.
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Here’s a fun example: Clockwerk Pictures’ indie horror, Roses: A Goremance, a short (under 20mins) film incorporating all the gore of a horror short with romantic themes.
Goremances are out there, and there is a growing appetite for them. Just search ‘villain romance’ in Twitter and see a range of writers and readers weighing in on why they want more, and what they’re currently working on. There’s a lot of vampire fun in this mix, of course, because blood and romance works so well with this particular horror monster staple.
It’s a search term that yields results on Wattpad, certainly, with 2.2K stories if you search with this term alone. Refining results by adding #romance and #gore tags filters that down to 346 stories (this search was conducted 18/07/2020). However, if you search #Goremance (rather than just ‘goremance’ as a term not a tag), you get… nothing. If you search just #romance + #gore together, you get 9.5K story results. So it’s clearly more that the term itself isn’t widely used as a tag, even in the indie writer community, rather than there’s no audience for a gory romance tale.
Reviewers use the term too: M. K. Hobson’s Veneficas Americana series is described as a Goremance in one review of Book 2, The Hidden Goddess, but the series isn’t sold or marketed in this way.
It does seem to be a term that’s on the rise, though, and hopefully we’ll see more books falling into this category! I might do a longer post musing more on goremance later.
What do you think about goremances, and do you have any recommendations? Pop them in the comments!
July 17, 2020
Summer Holidays in Pagham-on-Sea
Look what arrived! I’m pointing at roughly where Pagham-on-Sea is in the second pic.
FUN FACT: There is a real Pagham (!) near Chichester (West Sussex) which I completely didn’t realise when I came up with the name. I already had a plausible etymology for mine too…! O.o pic.twitter.com/Cwn7VBeGU8
— Overheard in Pagham-on-Sea (@OverheardPos) August 14, 2019
C. M. Rosens via @OverheardPoS
The Town Map
[image error]The town itself has around 12,000 inhabitants and the Queen Mary and Jubilee Estates (top right) have roughly the same number in the flats and council houses.
Obviously I haven’t got the middle of town right in this draft. It’s meant to be sort of pedestrianised in the middle but the roads connect up too. It’s basically sort of where Norman’s Bay is in real life, but you have to imagine it reeeeealllly hard.
Read the book and want to visit? Only when restrictions lift, wear a mask and keep 2m apart. Here’s the Good Pub Guide! BEWARE of sex demons, make some undead friends, get in on a bit of dark tourism, openly rock werewolf fashion, be careful around the estate, and play it safe.
Want to know what all the fuss is about? Read the first book set in this quirky town today!
July 14, 2020
#WriterlyWiPChat: July Q&A Week 2
Days 8-14
Something you like about your characters that’s not necessarily the popular opinion.
Oooh a tricky question, glad I’m not having to constrict my thoughts to 240 characters in a tweet…
~
THIRTEENTH
– Ricky Porter was one of the most popular characters in The Crows, and he’s a gift of a character to write. I’d expected him to divide opinion more drastically than that, but only 1/2 people so far have given feedback that they didn’t like him very much or said they found him unsympathetic. So I kind of like that he can come across as a character people dislike, and I wonder how his development will be seen in this novel by those who’ve read the first one.
– Katy Porter… I’m not sure what people will make of her, but I kind of like her development as a family-centric serial killer, by which I mean, only bumps off members of her own family. This may prove to be a popular opinion since her family are pretty awful.
– Wes Porter… I gave poor Wes a few of my own emotional hang-ups to work through within his own polyam V relationship, where he feels kind of the interloper between his girlfriend Charlie (bi, is also casually seeing recurring character Tina Harris off and on) and her (gay) best friend Hugo. He struggles to communicate things and so they tend to do the talking first and then sit him down to discuss their issues, and he often feels like they’d be better off without him, or can feel left out and wanting to do better but not sure how to go about it. That said, it’s a stable relationship and that gives him a safe space to work out these issues. I quite like that he tries.
ELDRITCH GIRLS
– I actually like a lot of things about Sasha Shaw. What I hope comes through with her is a (toxically handled, admittedly) sense of vulnerability and insecurity, and I like the way that contrasts with her being the type of serial killer who sees murder as performance art, and thinks of her victims as ‘props’. Sasha is deeply lonely and seeks deep and meaningful connections with people, which she interprets as ‘having their undivided attention’. I kind of like that as a contrast to the hard, emotionless ‘murder lady’ type.
If you handwrite your story, how would you get it into digital?
Argh. I hate going over and over things and for me, copying words out is so mind-numbing. I really struggle with it. I’d probably invest in some gadget to scan the handwriting and turn it into a digital format. I’ve always wanted one for my notes when I take them longhand, but due to the cost of a lot of these magic pen-scanner things I ended up getting into live-tweeting. So I still don’t own one.
What’s your method of keyboarding?
Haha! I type fairly fast but I’m not a touch-typist. My Gran tried to teach me that on her typewriter, and as we didn’t have a PC in the house until I was 11 (yeah, 90s kid), I learned to type on the typewriter first. I can type without looking at the keyboard too often, but I don’t have the knack of putting my hands in the right places… then I just get into the zone with it, pretty much.
Your story settings: inspired by real places, or totally fictional?
It was really important to me that Pagham-on-Sea felt like a real place, and would be the kind of setting that people might recognise parts of and even think they may have been there (or somewhere very like it). I drew on Hastings, Eastbourne, Torquay (England) and Newport (Wales) for the feel of certain parts of it, especially how I wanted the pubs and cafes and streets to feel. The street map looks more like Dawlish in places. It’s the kind of town with its back to the sea, which is very West Wight (e.g. Freshwater, Brighstone). But I hope at the same time it does have a Sussex feel to it.
Eldritch Girls has a scene in Pagham-on-Sea, but mainly takes place in two real-life settings: Brighton and Bexhill-on-Sea.
[image error]Draft version of Pagham-on-Sea street map
Time to relax. What does your MC do to unwind?
THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter goes for runs, or reads.
– Wes Porter goes to parties, takes recreational drugs, and sometimes goes to health spas
– Ricky Porter used to let himself into the library after hours and read/sleep there. Nowadays he still reads to relax, but also does maintenance and repairs around Fairwood House and grounds.
ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw unwinds by going clubbing and drinking too much. She doesn’t like staying home by herself – she gets lonely. She does enjoy getting lost in small projects with some background music, though, like fixing anything electrical, or planning new gorelesque routines and rehearsing new ideas. Sex is also a good de-stressor for her, and it’s not that hard to find someone up for it. She very rarely calls anyone back.
How old will your MC be on their next birthday?
THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter will be 18 in June (the story takes place in January).
– Wes Porter will be 30 in July
– Ricky Porter will be 30 in September
ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw will be 27?? I think she’s 26 in EG, and Tosh (the MC whose POV is written by Nita Pan) is a couple of years younger than her.
What does your MC wish for when they blow out their birthday candle?
THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter wishes for a way to control her List. This is the ‘kill-list’ of relatives which gets added to in her night terrors, and she can’t control who she dreams about. She has dreamed her favourite brother Wes onto the List, so when she turns 18 and Changes, he’s going to be one of the casualties of the Eldritch Monstrosity she’s going to become. She wishes this every year, but sometimes she wishes certain relatives would be or not be on the List, too. Wishes so far have not worked.
– Wes Porter doesn’t wish for anything. He’s too cynical and doesn’t believe in wishing when you can make your own luck.
– Ricky Porter knows better than to wish for things. He knows the future is set in stone, and that wishes can come true but often not in the ways you would like.
ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw wishes for fame (or at the very least, notoriety), though as a performance artist she is willing to push any boundary, break any taboo, and work her arse off to get it. Sometimes she wishes for a pretty trophy boyfriend as part of that package. What she’s going to end up with, of course, is Tosh Haraldson (written by Nita Pan) who is not so much a trophy as a responsibility, like when you adopt a particularly vicious wild animal who adores only you, and bring it home.
July 7, 2020
#WriterlyWiPChat: July Q&A Week 1
Days 1-7
Introduce yourself!
Hello! CMR/Mel – your friendly local Gothic eldritch horror writer. My life is a Gothic Horror bingo card with a bit of creative flair and a lot of soft things. Wander with me through ancient evergreen forests of bone and smoke until you reach the signpost that says ‘Milton Keynes 5 miles’. Then know that we have wandered too far.
WIP Intros! What are you working on?
Here’s a little run down of my current big projects! #AmWriting, Honest!
I have written a short story for submission this month, called ‘The Sound of Darkness’, currently being edited. Thirteenth has gone off to beta readers. I’m re-outlining Real Meat, my werewolf noir thriller, and really enjoying writing Eldritch Girls with Nita Pan. If you’re not familiar with her work, check out her short story ‘Life and Death’ in From Ashes to Magic.
How would you celebrate a big milestone like a book or movie contract?
I’d be pretty pleased. I don’t really celebrate things like this: I might go out for dinner. Not sure I’d tell many people.
It’s BBQ time! What would your MC [Main Character] indulge in?
THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter has a burger and salad
– Wes Porter goes for the vegetarian option
– Ricky Porter eats the meat patties raw because he hates BBQs, doesn’t want to be there and can’t be bothered to wait
~
ELDRITCH GIRLS
– Sasha Shaw drinks a lot and goes for salad, bun-less sausages and all the dessert options
What holidays factor into your WiP [Work in Progress]?
Thirteenth takes place in January (after New Years) so no holidays.
~
Eldritch Girls takes place in the Spring of 2016, before the Brighton Wheel was dismantled, and there aren’t any holidays explicitly mentioned there either. There’s a family Sunday lunch, which is a set-piece / midpoint of the story that might count as a ‘holiday’ in that it’s a day off work for the villain protags and Sasha’s awful family.
[Note for readers of The Crows: this branch of the Shaws are not awful in the same way the Porters are awful. They are very similar though.]
What are your characters’ favourite holiday foods?
THIRTEENTH
– Katy Porter loves her Gran’s cooking. Granny Wend would make her casserole after school, but her roasts were infamously good. Yule roast in particular. Katy also really loves Yule for the chocolate log dessert.
– Wes Porter’s whole life is a holiday, but his favourite holiday food is a cheese board with grapes, crackers and paired wine. Only kidding, that’s what he tells his posh rich friends at their Christmas parties. Wes (currently a vegan/vegetarian due to the fact he has two human partners and you never can tell what or whom the meat is at family events) misses his Gran’s roasts so much.
– Ricky hates all holidays, they are miserable affairs and full of bad memories. He was never allowed his Gran’s gingerbread once she figured out he could see the future better if he wasn’t focused on the present. Bland food and hard asceticism is the order of the day. He still doesn’t eat dessert, but he’s taken a liking to things Carrie makes for him all year round.
ELDRITCH GIRLS
Sasha’s favourite holiday food is chocolate, so Easter is her favourite time of the year. It’s secular for her, of course.
Backstory. How do you find the line between too little and too much?
With difficulty! I do a lot of experimental writing that may end up canon (or may not). Some of it might end up in the actual story, but most won’t. I might allude to it, but if it’s not necessary and breaks the flow of the story rather than helps to underline a theme or provide foreshadowing for character development, then it will probably get cut. I don’t think all backstory should serve a purpose, necessarily – some of it is good for showing the character’s personality and How They Got Here, and that’s all, but that has a place too.
For Thirteenth, I drop the reader into a situation where there’s a lot of complicated family drama and backstory that’s all relevant to the plot. When I was happy with the first lightly edited version, I handed over to two first-pass readers who gave me comments on it. Some of that was about pacing, backstory/memory/flashback balance, plotting, and so on. The draft got edited again to take on board the comments, then again when I’d taken a few weeks off. It helped to read it all the way through and try to see it through the eyes of someone who hadn’t read the first book, and even if they had, what would they make of the new characters and their stories? It’s now with beta readers (10) so I’ll see if those comments give me more of an idea about what to do with the backstory elements or if I have the balance right this time.
June 30, 2020
Fan Art!
I’ve had some awesome fan art from ‘trie, a concept artist who discovered The Crows via the Romancing the Gothic book club. I’ve shared it on my Twitter and Insta but sharing here as well with the original illustration by Tom Brown, the artist who illustrated the eBook and paperback versions of the novel.
Ricky Porter was a very popular antivillain character among book club folks and featured in the Saturday lecture “BE GAY, DO CRIMES: QUEER GOTHIC REIMAGININGS” by Dr Sam Hirst, who organises and facilitates the Romancing the Gothic network and events [for free]. Support Sam here: https://ko-fi.com/samhirst
Sadly, the recordings of this lecture weren’t useable for uploading to the YouTube Channel, so GOOD NEWS! The lecture is going to be repeated, probably in August. So if you missed it or just want to hear it again, you can sign up to get RtG newsletters and info on the site (www.romancingthegothic.wordpress.com).
Ricky and his role in The Crows features with minor spoilers in Part 4 of the lecture which considered asexual/aromantic representation in Gothic fiction.
Dr Hirst discussed the relationship between the main characters [Carrie, Ricky and Fairwood House itself] in terms of a queerplatonic polycule, and how decoupling a sexual motive for murder from Ricky’s serial killer identity centred the complexities of his character and the development of the platonic/queerplatonic relationship within the plot!
If you’re intrigued, you can meet Carrie, Ricky and Fairwood House (also known as The Crows) in this extract of the novel: the first 5 chapters are available for free on Wattpad, and there’s a shorter snippet post introducing Ricky here on my blog. You can meet Carrie in this fun short (non-canonical?) post, set before the events of the novel, and get to know the house in this one.
If you want to know more about the topic in general, stay tuned! I’ll let you know when the date for the lecture’s repeat is announced and also post the link when the recording goes up at a later date.
Here’s Ricky as imagined by Tom Brown the illustrator (top), and as reimagined by ‘trie (bottom)!
[image error]Ricky Porter by Tom Brown, detail of illustration in both eBook and Paperback formats
[image error]Reimagined fan art version of Ricky Porter (in colour) by ‘trie blasingame, tentacle-made studios
‘trie blasingame || tentacle-made studios | | conceptual mixed media artist, illustrator, and writer
where to find tentacle-made studios:
quixotism and curiosity: from tentacle-made studios
tentacle-made studios on instagram
tentacle-made studios on twitter
online portfolio (housed on flickr)
tentacle-made studios on tumblr
tentacle-made studios’ facebook fan page
tentacle-made studios on youtube
where to support and buy tentacle-made studios’s art:
tentacle-made studios commissions
tentacle-made studios on redbubble
tentacle-made studios on patreon
other projects ‘trie is involved in:
conversations from the north woods (podcast)
the adventures of squid & barnacle (webcomic)
June 20, 2020
#AmReading: Spectred Isle by K. J. Charles
Spectred Isle by K.J. CharlesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brilliant
I loved this book. We read it for a Gothic lit book club and I loved the world of 1920s London and the lost generation worked so well for this. The depiction of the War and the various experiences of those who survived it was done well, and the side characters were just as intriguing as the two MCs. I never used to read romances often until I joined this book club, and I have yet to be disappointed with the selections.
The m/m romance is done so well, and both Saul & Randolph are so well fleshed out as people that they really pulled me through the story. I was intrigued by each of them, how their worlds would intertwine, and how each would respond to the backstories of the other as they unfolded.
I loved the arcane elements, the uses of folklore and Old English, the way the story is rooted in the fens of East Anglia and the city of London, and the ways in which Charles embeds the reader (as well as the story) in the time and landscape. I also loved the references to pulp fiction and other popular fictional series, scattered throughout. I might pick up more on a re-read!
I’m looking forward to reading more by this author.
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June 14, 2020
#AmReading: Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk
Widdershins by Jordan L. HawkMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have been looking for some fun Lovecraftian fic for a while, and this hit all the buttons for me. I loved the Gothic elements of the setting and the characters, the reimagining of and/or nods to one of the better Frank Belknap Long short stories (papyrus! Egyptology! Museum setting! Strange man!), and the way it intertwined with Lovecraft’s mythos.
Whyborne is of course an alumnus of Miskatonic University, Arkham, and Widdershins is not far from this delightful university town… not too sure about New England geography so not sure where Innsmouth is in relation to this on the fictional map, but I am hoping for a future reference in the later books…? I really liked the dock scenes for these references though, and the Lovecraftian descriptions. There is a secret society and the threat of those from the Outside, as well as abominations conjured by acolytes and occultists in this reality.
The pace didn’t let up and I enjoyed the story too much to notice continuity errors mentioned in other reviews.
Central to the plot are two characters I shipped hard and very much enjoyed reading about. Yes it gets explicit and erotic in the middle, which was gratifying even though I don’t classify myself as a romance fan/reader. I found myself relating very strongly to the pining and suppression going on with Whyborne for various reasons, and the family dynamics and conflicts worked well to build up a picture of a man who was far more resourceful, resilient and interesting than he thinks he is. Without spoiling it, I really liked the way key aspects were resolved to propel him forwards, especially at the highly enjoyable climax, and am excited for his development in the series.
Griffin Flaherty, ex-Pinkerton, is an interesting character whose own backstory I’m looking forward to uncovering further in future books. If this was a spoilery review I’d discuss him further but! I will save those thoughts for book club…
I loved Dr Putnam (Christine) and appreciated her no-nonsense attitude, and female-in-academia struggles.
I bought the first 3 books as an eBook bundle and have 0 regrets. Moving on to Book 2 now and wondering how many of the series I’ll get through before book club on Thursday this week!
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