Nicole Eatough's Blog, page 8

Happy New Year!

Happy new year!!! I’m so excited for 2024 and all the things I have planned for this year 🙂 

Inspiration

The Genie Whisperer will finish publishing in 2024 – and I actually plan to move up the timeline for releasing books 10-14. I’m not officially making that announcement yet, because I’m not quite sure what the schedule will be. But I hope this news gets you excited! 

My other big plans for this year are starting writing in a whole new world filled with several races of supernaturals. I plan for this world to be BIG, encompassing multiple trilogies following characters from the different races. The overall world will be called The Enchanted Races and the first trilogy is titled The Hidden Hotel. 

Here’s a sneak peek of the blurb for that:

Lia is down on her luck when she’s mysteriously offered a job she never applied for at a hotel she’s never heard of. The catch? She’s now the only human employee of a hotel catering to the supernatural. Does the captivating hotel owner know something about her she doesn’t? Or is she a pawn in someone’s schemes?

I’m SO excited for this series and am hoping for a release date of late summer 2024. The cover is currently being worked on, and I’ll have a preorder link available once that’s finished. 

I hope you all had a wonderful time over the holidays and have things you’re excited for during this new year too! 

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Outlining

Returning to my posts about my writing process, today I’m talking about what can be a surprisingly controversial topic in the writing community. And that is: To outline? Or not to outline?

Inspiration

There are authors out there who swear by having little to no plan at all for their stories. They claim that it makes it more fresh and exciting. Whereas those who advocate for outlining say that without one you’ll end up with a giant mess.  

Of course what it comes down to is that all our minds work differently, so what works best for some won’t work at all for others. For some people, crafting a novel without a real idea of where the story is going is the best plan. But for others, that would be a waste of time and outlining is the way to go. With me being a highly rigid person who has liked having a solid plan for my day since I was a teenager, I fall very firmly into being an outliner. 

But then you have the problem of there being so very many different ways to outline a book, and there will always be people who SWEAR you won’t have a proper story if you don’t follow a particular outline. While I agree that there are particular elements every book must have to be a good story, I don’t at all believe you have to follow a particular outline to craft a novel with all those elements. 

I tried out a couple different outlining methods before finding what works best for me, and what ended up clicking with my brain is the Inside Outline by Jennie Nash, and this is what I’ve used for every book within The Genie Whisperer series. Her outline method focuses on what happens in each scene and why it happens, which helps drive the story to the next scene.

It’s essentially outlining a story with the explanation of ‘this happens because this happened, then this happened because of that’ rather than a collection of random events that’s more along of the lines of ‘this happened and then this happened and then this happened.’ All the scenes of a story should be connected and lead to the next, which is what her method focuses on. 

Though I do adapt it for what works best for me. Her advice is to only write a few lines of what happens in each scene, whereas I sometimes write nearly an entire page outline for just one scene. It’s not uncommon for me to have a 20,000 word outline for an 80,000 word novel. But my detailed outlines are what allow me to be so productive and release new books every 3-4 months, so I’m definitely sticking with it! It’s all about finding out what works for you. 

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Merry Christmas!

Happy holidays! I’m so happy to say that I have a Genie Whisperer Christmas short story to share with you!

Inspiration

The other bonus stories I’ve offered so far have all been scenes from the books written from the perspective of the genies, but book three The Three C’s of Genie Whispering offered the perfect opportunity for a bonus story that technically took place in the book, but was never written out. 

Rajan, Garan, and Illan, in an effort to make Christmas special for Ali since she was down for the holidays, go out shopping for Christmas decorations for her since their magic wasn’t working properly at the time, meaning they couldn’t provide the decorations themselves (despite their best efforts). I debated writing out the scene of them going shopping, but it didn’t feel like it fit the flow of the story, so I left it out. Then I decided it would make an excellent bonus story. Even better, since it’s separate from the book, I could write it from the perspective of the store clerk, who is utterly baffled at the three handsome young men who can’t stop arguing with each other. 

Without further ado, here is the bonus story Christmas Cheer. I hope you enjoy!

The post Merry Christmas! first appeared on Nicole Eatough.

Book Package

Last week I posted about how before I start writing a story, I do an in-depth study of the main characters to figure out what they want, why they want it, and what’s in their way of achieving it (particularly how they’re in their own way of achieving it). While doing that, I also do any relevant world building, such as information about non-human species and cultural norms I should be aware of. After all that’s done, the next stage is to craft my book package!  

Inspiration

By book package, I mean all the elements that would go on the outside packaging of a physical book. The title, the cover, and the description. Some people find this backward. How can you write the summary before writing the book? And without the book created, how can you know what should go on the cover? 

But I find that by doing all that work first, it helps keep me on target as I’m writing the novel. If I have an idea of what the finished product will look like, I have direction for where the story should go. Sometimes it is intimidating to think of all this when I only have a vague idea of what will happen in the story, but it helps me firm up what shape I want my ideas to take. After all, once I have my summary, I know the gist of what should happen, don’t I? It also helps me get more excited for the book by seeing all of that laid out. 

I’ve also mentioned in a previous post about how coming up with the covers for books four and five of The Genie Whisperer (during the time they were stuck in the Archives) helped me come up with the story. I knew that they needed to go the Archives, and I knew that what they found there needed to point them to discovering how The Society came to be, but that was all I knew. I had no idea what else would happen. Brainstorming ideas for the cover gave me the idea for the doorways and pocket dimensions found within them. 

The nice thing about this brainstorming is that it doesn’t have to be the final product. Maybe after I finish the book, I’ll decide I want a different title, or that I should adjust the cover image, or that I need to tweak the description. The point isn’t to have something perfect, but just to give me some direction. Though I have to say that, thankfully, what I create during this stage usually contains a version I use on the final book. ‘Cause I’ve already done that work once and don’t want to do it again. And since when I’m brainstorming I write down multiple ideas for each element of the book package, there’s always a variety for me to choose from.  

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Character Study

Before I start writing a new story, I need to spend some pretty serious time with the main characters. Yes, I need to figure out their name, appearance, abilities (since I write fantasy), etc. But that’s not the really important stuff. To figure out what I have to know about the character before I can start planning out the story, I have to go deeper than that. 

Inspiration

The basis of what I use for figuring out the essentials about my main character come from Lisa Cron’s book Story Genius. (She has another writing book called Wired for Story that’s also excellent.) Too many character building sources out there advocate for silly things, like knowing your character’s favorite food, color, childhood memory, or their political opinions. And, depending on your story, all those things might be completely and utterly irrelevant. 

Have readers discovered a favorite childhood memory from Tavor? No. Does that mean they understand him less? Nope. Do readers know what Darios’s favorite food is? Again, no. Is this information important for them to understand his character? Absolutely not. 

So what is essential for both writers and readers to know about a character? What a character wants. What their goal is, why they want it, what they’re willing to do to get it, and what’s in their way of getting it. More than that, how are they getting in their own way and how will they overcome it? 

These are essential questions. I can’t write a story without knowing what my characters’ aim is and why they want it. And readers can’t enjoy a story if they don’t know the why behind a main character’s actions. It can be hidden for a while, but eventually needs to come out. Otherwise us readers feel cheated or like the character wasn’t true to what we’ve already learned about them. 

For example, Ali starts out The Genie Whisperer dead set on gaining her independence so she can escape her parents’ control and finally have a healthy relationship with them. We know both her goal and motivation. And her big issue is her belief that she can’t accept any help, because it will both mean that she’s not independent and that someone else then expects her to owe them. She needs to overcome this to achieve the deep, healthy connection with others that she craves. As the series goes on, she develops a new goal to help the genies be free, but also comes to realize that the connections she wants don’t have to be with her parents. She can forge those connections on her own with a found family, as she does with the genies. 

Something else Lisa Cron advocates for is for authors to come up with three specific scenes that led to characters developing their issue that they need to overcome. I’ve found this immensely helpful for crafting believable characters, though some of that backstory ends up in the book and some doesn’t. Ali’s had multiple flashbacks over how controlling her parents were, which are some of the scenes I thought up while developing her character, and Garan’s backstory of what happened during The Society wars are very relevant within the story for explaining why he was so lost in his mind. 

Some of the other genies’ backstories haven’t really been relevant and won’t be revealed in the same way within the books, but I might do a post revealing all those scenes after The Genie Whisperer finishes publishing 🙂 

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What Almost Was . . .

Fun fact: I had an entire plot line around Sterling Dixon joining Ali and her genies. Who is Sterling Dixon? He is the master of the intrepid transformation genie Gary, the one who set off everything in the story by ordering Gary to steal Tavor from the McMichaels while the universal was in between masters. So why did this plot line get dropped? Because of Tavor. 

Inspiration

After the events of book eight, The Stolen Truth, I planned for Sterling to join in on the mission to free genies. Not out of the goodness of his heart, but for his own selfish purposes – revenge. After all, it’s because of The Society that his brother died. In a matter of speaking, anyway. The technical culprits were the McMichael family. They wanted an ice genie to help with their arctic drilling operations, so faked evidence that Sterling’s brother had revealed The Society to someone outside their organization. This is a death sentence, and gave the McMichaels the right to take his ice genie (Illan). 

Following this event, Sterling ends up losing both his parents essentially because of their grief over the death of their oldest son. Hence leading to Sterling hating all The Society because he blames them for him losing his family. Because of this, he would support Ali’s mission not because he cares about helping genies but because he wants revenge against The Society and would love to take away all their genies. 

I wasn’t sure if he would ultimately be helpful to Ali’s group or betray them after realizing just how dangerous genies operating under free rein can be, so I had notes for taking the plot in either direction. But then I got to the end of writing The Stolen Truth and ran into a problem. Sterling had nothing to offer Tavor, therefore, Tavor would never allow him to join them. 

Our scheming universal genie is nothing if not practical and some Society master who doesn’t benefit Tavor is of no use to him. So that plot line got nixed. There are aspects of it I was sad to lose, but it ultimately made the whole series shorter (14 books rather than 17), so overall I’m relieved it ended up not working out. 

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Season Three Tropes

As I’ve mentioned previously, my study of tropes/themes came from reverse harem manga, since that was the tone and feel I was going for in The Genie Whisperer. The most prevalent tropes for season three (now that we’re FINALLY making progress with the romantic relationships) were that of romance and jealousy!  

Warning: This post contains spoilers if you haven’t finished books seven and eight yet. 

Inspiration

I used a fair number of tropes within this season, and nearly half were focused around romance and jealousy, with both heavily involving Tavor and Rajan. 

Tavor’s side leans more toward jealousy/concern, and I used the tropes:

Wanting to make a move because another guy is getting close to the main character.Fear of what jealousy could do to their ranks.Fear of what might happen if anyone acts on their feelings for the main character since multiple people have feelings for her. 

To be fair, Tavor does have some valid cause for concern. This is most likely their only shot at freedom, and jealousy is a very serious issue with genies (something Ali will learn more about as the series goes on). So Tavor doesn’t want anyone distracted or fighting because of their feelings for Ali. Though he also has a problem that he wants to be closer to her as well. This leads to him very nearly screwing up, thanks in part to his annoyance that Ali hasn’t connected with him yet when part of him feels he should have been the first one she connected deeply with. So then he decides to decree that NONE of the genies should get too close to her. This is for his sake – so that he doesn’t get too close and distract himself and so that he doesn’t get jealous over anyone else getting close to her – as much as for everyone else’s. At least, in his mind it is. 

On Rajan’s side of things, there’s also some jealousy, though he more leaned toward the romance side of things. I used the tropes:

Jealousy over seeing the main character with another guy. Being confused/afraid of romantic feelings, so pushing the main character away. Wanting proof that the main character deeply cares about him. 

Rajan, as I’m sure readers are well aware, has been pushing Ali away since book six. He was so pleased to be the first genie to connect with her on a level where she could summon his magic, but following that he was pretty terrified. First, power is king with genies, and he was sure Ali would think less of him once she experienced for herself how much less powerful he was than the other genies. Second, Rajan has never had feelings like this before. He’s not even sure what he wants from Ali other than to be close to her and to be special to her. This leads to him pulling away in an attempt to protect himself and to be less confused. 

But that, of course, doesn’t stop him from being upset when he sees Ali being close with any of the other genies. He hates how Garan hangs on her all the time, which he finally admits after making up with Ali, and he’s not really a fan of when the other genies can help Ali in a way he can’t. On top of it making him jealous, it also goes back to his insecurities about being less than the others, which didn’t vanish just because he decided to be close to Ali despite his fears. 

And then we have him wanting proof that Ali cares about him like he cares about her. It’s a trope that I think is adorable in manga, and I knew I wanted to use this one with Rajan, because it would be most important to him out of all the genies to have solid confirmation of Ali’s feelings for him. So we have the lovely scene where he asks Ali if he can kiss her. He’s not quite sure what kisses mean in general, and certainly doesn’t know what it would mean for him and Ali to kiss, he just knows that it can be a sign of closeness and that’s what he wants. 

I feel I’ve gotten a great deal of use out of my personal notes and research on common tropes within reverse harem manga, though I recently picked up a writing book on common story tropes. We’ll see if anything I read ends up in future stories!

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Story Inspirations: The Snake

Warning: If you haven’t finished book seven of The Genie Whisperer, The Lost Libraries, this post contains minor spoilers. 

Inspiration

When it comes to writing, I take inspiration from just about everything. When I was plotting Ali, Illan, and Garan going to the library of Pergamon, I needed a little something to put Ali in danger so Garan could save her and inspire confidence in Illan that Garan would (and could) protect her. And it couldn’t be something big, otherwise Illan himself would have done it. 

I ended up looking up whether Turkey had any poisonous snakes I could use, and it turns out they do have some nasty (and aggressive) snakes! It worked perfectly for something subtle, yet dangerous that would show that despite Garan not always seeming all the way there, he is absolutely attuned to Ali and her status. 

It was only later that I realized how I came up with the oh so clever idea of using a snake. And it was that I’d watched a documentary on the deadliest snakes in the world the exact day before I wrote this scene, giving me the perfect inspiration. 

I don’t often watch documentaries, but I had a tedious (and long) task I had to take care of at the time, so wanted something in the background I could listen to while only kind of watching it. It was mere chance that I ended up watching this documentary in particular, but it was certainly serendipitous for my story!

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Favorite Scenes: The Stolen Truth

I absolutely adore writing. Which is way, of course, I am an author. Otherwise this would be an odd career path, but while I adore writing in general, I can’t deny that particular scenes are more fun to write, and I do have my favorites. Multiple of these favorites happen in book eight, The Stolen Truth. 

Warning: If you haven’t finished The Stolen Truth yet, this post contains major spoilers. 

Inspiration

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I originally thought up the idea for The Genie Whisperer nearly a decade ago. I worked on it a little bit back then, then decided I was too busy with college. I came back to it in 2021, but it remained in the back of my mind in the meantime, and I kept a Word document during that whole time to keep track of my thoughts and ideas for the story. 

One idea that was on that document from nearly the beginning was Ali and Tavor discovering the truth of genies’ history. I knew it was going to be in a desert with hidden records and I knew Tavor was going to be so livid at discovering the truth that he would hurt Ali without meaning to. Having that scene in my head for so long, it was such a treat to get to finally write it. I adore that scene – though admit I didn’t write it perfectly the first time. At first, I didn’t have any of the genies getting mad at Tavor over Ali getting hurt. A beta reader pointed out that didn’t make any sense, so I adjusted that. And set up Garan not being so pleased at Tavor not taking more care with Ali . . . 

And now I’ll move on to avoid spoilers for book nine 😉

Another scene from this book that was such a treat to write was the one that has one of my absolute favorite lines in all of the series. Which is Ali saying, “Shadow, I grant you free rein.” That in and of itself isn’t an impressive line. After all, Ali has said it five other times to most of her other genies. But as readers are well aware, saying this to Shadow is immensely different than saying it to the rest of them. And it was such a perfect moment with Ali and the other genies with her – except for Darios – trapped by wizards.

I definitely have a Darios bias, since I love a good enemies to lovers story and slow burn romance, and Darios firmly fits into both categories. I did originally hope that Ali and Darios would grow even closer in this book, but it didn’t end up working out. Mostly because Darios is too stubborn, but I still love how their relationship changes in book eight. 

The last of the scenes I really enjoyed writing in both The Lost Libraries and The Stolen Truth are Gary the transformation genie’s scenes. He’s a bit more comical than some of the other genies due to him looking at life with a lighter viewpoint. This made it quite fun to write from his perspective, especially with him being around for things like genies harming wizards and Ali’s relationship drama. 

I love how Gary reacts to all these things, though he finds Ali’s relationship stuff significantly less entertaining after he realizes she’s his granddaughter. After that, he’d rather the other genies not get so close to her, though there wasn’t really space to cover that aspect of things in book eight. But now that he’s sticking around, he’ll have plenty of time to stew over his granddaughter having not just one, but two genie boyfriends. 

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Writing Mistakes: Overpowering the Genies

Warning: If you haven’t finished reading The Lost Libraries, book seven of The Genie Whisperer, this post contains spoilers. If you have finished or don’t care about spoilers, read on!

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So this mistake wasn’t a mistake in that I did something inconsistent with something I had already established within the world of The Genie Whisperer or something that flat out was incorrect or didn’t make sense. But it did cause issues for the story down the road, which I thankfully caught before I got too far. 

What is it I did? I made the genies too powerful. In the book The Lost Libraries, the genies discover that, thanks to them being tied to Ali, they can hide their presence from wizards. I also originally had them able to hide their use of magic itself from wizards’ senses if a wizard was nearby. But when I was writing the next book, The Stolen Truth, I realized that made the genies way overpowered.

With genies both able to hide their presence and their magic from wizards, that basically meant wizards had no way of either finding or stopping genies. The genies could just arrive, kill the wizards, and move on with their lives. As much as Tavor would have loved that outcome, overpowering the genies like that would have led to a boring story, so I had to go back to The Lost Libraries and rewrite is so that genies couldn’t hide their use of  magic from wizards’ senses. Which is a very important fact in The Stolen Truth.  

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