Karalynn Lee's Blog, page 2

Sea Gifts

The latest on the publishing roadmap



"Unsilenced" sold

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, an online fantasy magazine with some lovely creative and production values, has accepted my novelette "Unsilenced." I'm excited to have found such a great home for this story, with its theft of voices and all the loneliness that comes with power.

Sea Gifts re-released

I've taken the self-publishing plunge with Sea Gifts, a novelette with sea-dragons and witches and betrayal. Drollerie Press previously published this one; the rights have since reverted to me, but it's difficult to find markets that accept reprints, so I thought it would be worth offering it on its own. It was a fascinating journey through potential cover images and formatting guides. Currently it's available from Amazon in Kindle format; other formats and sales venues will follow.

New title for the forthcoming book

Through All Four Seasons has been retitled to Heart of the Dragon's Realm. Just looking at the two titles side-by-side tells me how different they are in marketability — you get a much stronger sense of genre from the second. Naturally, more than the title has changed; I've finished developmental and line edits, and the folks at Carina Press are working their production magic.

Current writing projects



A third story in the world of Hellsgate

I'm almost done with a draft of Let Slip Glory, and now I'm writing its sequel, And Loose the Hound, with a hellhound hero. I'm envisioning the two as a duology with different sets of main characters but a single overarching story, so I'd like to have both of them finished before I submit them — that way I can't plot my way into a corner in the second book because of something irreversible I set up in the first book.

Gamebook scribblings

Inspired by the Windhammer Prize, I'm working on a short fantasy gamebook tentatively titled "Sigil-beasts," where YOU are a mage who must resurrect a dragon to defend your homeland. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the uppercase. It's traditional.) I've played with branching fiction before, but it's a whole new world when it comes to figuring out mechanics and statistics. Bring on the dice!

Recent reading



Erotic fantasy by Janine Ashbless

I stumbled across a recommendation for the Arabian-flavored Heart of Flame, a setting that always intrigues me. The richness of the culture and some lovely writing and characterization drew me in, and I've gone on to read some of her other works. One of her short story collections (Dark Enchantments) is particularly impressive in terms of its range; Ashbless moves from horror to romance, always while painting a vivid sense of another place. I'd avoid her if you mind very explicit works or demand romance in your reading, however.

A gentle, bittersweet fantasy short story by Ken Liu

"Paper Menagerie" (links to a PDF) is an award-winning story of astonishing grief, beauty, and delicacy despite its hard look at cultural divides. I don't think that you need to be a regular reader of fantasy to appreciate this one.

Gamebook Adventures on iOS and Android

I thoroughly enjoyed playing An Assassin in Orlandes, a gamebook on an Android engine that makes even dice-rolling pleasurable. Some lavish illustrations are incorporated as well; the entire user experience was just dreamfully smooth. I downloaded it to my phone out of curiosity and found myself playing it obsessively until I found my way to a successful ending. Fun times investigating a conspiracy in a city.

Miscellaneous updates



A plurality of word processors

I've been trying out Scrivener, a word processor mostly acclaimed for its friendliness to writing in segments and being able to organize those segments easily. I suspect this is part of a trend toward outlining that seems inevitable for me as I start writing novel-length works. However, I'm still using Microsoft Word for some older stories, and there is ever and always the faithful text editor (TextEdit).

Opening post

The latest on the publishing roadmap



New contract for a fantasy romance novel

I've signed another contract with Carina Press for Through All Four Seasons, my longest work to date (although that's not hard, given that I've only published novellas so far). The relationship in this story is sweeter than my norm, and I found the heroine so engaging that this story zipped to the top of my working queue. It'll be released in the fall of this year. Check the Forthcoming section of my site for more information, including an excerpt.

Current writing projects



Back to the world of Demon's Fall

I'm working on Let Slip Glory, which is set in the same world where Demon's Fall took place. Hellsgate can be an unexpected refuge...

An unedited excerpt

"I'd say you look lovely, but it isn't the gown that makes you so."

She wasn't sure what to make of that. "Thank you?"

He laughed softly, and some of the stiffness left him. "I don't think you like court life any more than I do. You'd go back to the stables in Hellsgate in a trice, wouldn't you?"

Once she would have agreed. "It isn't that simple," she said now.

"You'd have Caleb with you, of course."

She didn't ask, What about you? She didn't know whether it would change her answer, but she knew that it mattered. She'd never had more than one friend before. It tangled her plans.

Recent reading



The Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series by C.S. Harris

I'm thoroughly enjoying these Regency-era mysteries, centering around a nobleman with a quick mind and a willingness to ask questions. I'm a little reminded of the Gilded Age/Nell Sweeney mysteries in that there's a slow-building romance that takes several books to develop. Both Harris and P.B. Ryan (author of the Nell Sweeney series) have also written historical romances; I'm quite curious about how this might have influenced the relationship arcs in their mysteries.

In any case, the first book is What Angels Fear. I found it a little exasperating because the hero seems to have preternatural abilities (explained as a genetic condition), but once I made it to the second book, I was won over by his sharp observational skills and the very human tangle of relationships that become unwound with each murder investigation. Add enough action to make Sebastian's valet despair over the state of his clothes, along with gritty details that contrast the aristocracy's airy social maneuverings with the cityfolk's gritty lives in the streets, and you've got yourself an engrossing read.

Miscellaneous updates



Website rehaul

Introducing: a cleaner design and a mobile-friendly version of the site. Let's not speak of how much time I spent prowling through stock image and font sites or tweaking stylesheets, especially given how simple the result is. Many thanks to stackoverflow.com and php.net for helping me figure out the behind-the-scenes scripting bits.

Because I've been abysmal about updating my blog, I'm archiving it and will instead add occasional updates to the "News" page of my website.

Influences

I'm reading way too much Regency romance, apparently; suddenly my story's dealing with characters dressing correctly and acting like proper nobles. I need some grit here!

Off to resume the latest by George R.R. Martin as an antidote…

(Now watch all my characters die off. Heh.)

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Explosions and kisses

Taking a gasp of air from all the stuff that's been keeping me busy–

I've read somewhere that when a story's stalled, the writer can insert a sudden explosion or a kiss to jump-start the plot. Instant action! (Of possibly either sort.) With romance, you probably lean toward the latter.

I don't usually insert random kisses right at the stuck point. But one of the problems I have with my preference for a single point of view* is that I have a firm handle on the POV character…and in romances, you obviously need to  have a good feel on both members of the couple. So I might be in a Vulcan mind-meld with the heroine from the first paragraph, but since I never explore the thought-space of the hero, he's a cardboard cut-out, and it's hard to summon chemistry with one of those. I don't have any motivation to get the two together.

What I'll do is skip forward to the scene of the first kiss. There'll be emotional overtones to this kiss, of course, and I can reverse-engineer those feelings to figure out how the pair got into such a compromising situation. And knowing the shape of the developing relationship will usually offer insight into what kind of people are involved in it.

I love non-linear drafting.

When I get around to my next science fiction work, though, I'm going to try writing a future boom! scene and see where that takes me in a backwards fashion…

 

* I think this preference may stem from reading too many epic fantasy series that visit various characters' heads.

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Slip Point released

My first science fiction romance! Complete with another gorgeous cover from the astonishingly talented Frauke, who perfectly captured Shay and Jayce's relationship. I must also thank Rhonda Helms for making the book both prettier and stronger on the inside, and Alissa Davis for prompting me to finish this story. Also my brother, for not collapsing in laughter when I called this one "science fiction."

I was a little nervous about my foray into this genre, but the key ended up being to treat this story like any other, one I would write for fun. I had to consciously back away from worrying about valid science and just enjoy being able to use words like "capsids." And, as for any romance, the characters led the way.

Here's an excerpt showing how Shayalin becomes a pirate:

(...)

Read the rest of Slip Point released (276 words)

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Interview and a new story

Heather Massey, science fiction writer and reader extraordinaire, interviewed me at The Galaxy Express about Slip Point (which is coming out tomorrow). Even if you don't read the interview, take a look around her site; she has a hound's nose for genre news and a ton of thoughtful posts about the industry and her experiences on both sides of it. Also a burning love for space pirates, which we all should have.

Edited to add: I totally forgot to mention that there's a giveaway of a copy of Slip Point over at The Galaxy Express. But you were going there anyway to check out the cool articles, right?

I've also added a free read to my site, which is science fiction with a hint of romance: "On the Eve of War."

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Still nibbling at sf ideas

My mental prompt was "big stompy robots," although I ease my way into it.

(...)

Read the rest of Still nibbling at sf ideas (409 words)

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Rereading

I used to reread books out of necessity — English-language spec fic was hard to come by at the time, and I read fast. New books would get acquired, then finished: ding! Next! Nothing? So I reread each book on about an average of once a year.

Now in the land of plenty, I have books on my shelves that I haven't read even once. (The culprit: library book sales, where a quarter will garner me with that title someone recommended but I never bothered to track down, and this way I can pick it up whenever I want…except that I never really wanted to read it in the first place. Someday I will learn and properly hoard my quarters for laundry.) I don't actually own a TV, and the focal point of my living room is a lovely wide bookcase which is devoted to hardcovers and trade paperbacks.

My mass markets have been exiled to quarantine until I'm positive the silverfish manifestation is forever vanquished. This may take a while, as my local farmers market includes a fabulous sorbet stand which constantly stocks my freezer, and I'm hesitant to introduce silverfish to the same habitat as delight. The sorbet is mine! All mine!

Result: I reread my hardcovers more often than my paperbacks, even though I usually read while holding the book in one hand, and this is slightly more straining with a hardcover. It's the same reason particular items get stocked on eye-level shelves. If you notice something more, there's more chance for you to actually pick it up.

The real consequence I've noticed is that I practically never reread my ebooks. Generally I read them when I buy them, and it's never a problem to acquire more. (Or rather, it's a problem that I can acquire more so easily. Certain online bookstores are very friendly with my credit card. Downright intimate, even.) And I don't have them organized at all: they're scattered across four devices, five formats, and countless download folders. So there's nowhere for me to go to just browse through them and rekindle that fond feeling I once felt for certain ones.

Sadly, I'm not particularly motivated to go back through them all, either. Because buying an ebook is often cheap and easy, I have quite a few that I wish I hadn't read once, never mind multiple times. But because I bought them and storage space is bountiful, I never deleted them. So these lumps of coal continue to dwell in my ebook mines.

I'm curious as to how others keep track of their ebooks and whether it differs greatly from how their physical books are treated. My print books are divided by size and nonfiction/fiction, then alphabetized by author; my ebooks are scattered about in approximately the same pattern you'd get after a squirrel learned to operate a BB gun. (At the same time, I'm utterly horrified by people who keep documents on their computer desktops. Go figure.)

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Researching by doing

I read once about a fantasy author who traveled to foreign countries and lived there while he wrote novels based on the history of those locales. Even with centuries separating him from his target time period, no amount of library or interview research would have imparted the same flavor as being on location surely did. People notice different things about the same experience, and those unique little details are often what are most convincing.

Since I write a lot of traditional medievalesque fantasy, my characters engage in archery, sword-fighting, and horse-riding. So far I've managed to write about these activities because I've read so many other fantasy novels with characters who did these things — but since some of those authors were likely faking it themselves, this inevitably leads to the writing of scenes that probably cause Judith Tarr to despair. (She raises horses and blogs about the reality of dealing with them.)

So when I was offered the opportunity to take some free fencing classes, I leapt at it. Would it be anything like actual sword-fighting back in the day? No, but it would be closer than, say, tennis, which was the only one-on-one competitive sport I'd played where you held an instrument.

Next up: a Groupon for indoor archery instruction. And then horse-riding lessons, I think.

I'm not looking to become an expert in any of these things — don't expect me to start galloping around with a bow slung over my shoulder and a foil in my hand, performing martial feats. But even brief experiences will let me observe with five senses, and hopefully bring those observations to the page with a ring of authenticity.

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Relationships that rock in sf

Science fiction couples this time:

Theodora and Ran in Doris Egan's Ivory trilogy. She's an anthropology student stranded on his planet; he's the heir to a powerful noble house who wants her to read his fortune. Cultural hijinks ensue. I particularly loved the long wedding period, which required certain rituals to take place at specific intervals, something made difficult whilst the two are off having unexpected adventures.


Cordelia and Aral in Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold. Two remarkably capable people on opposing sides open each other's eyes: she discovers that under his horrifying reputation is a man of honor, while he comes to admire her competence and compassion.


Kerk and Jalci in "Blood" by Sharon Shinn (find it in her Quatrain). He's calm, she's confrontational; they live in nearly separate cultures, and yet his search for family and her stalwart defense of her people cause their paths to intersect. I loved how Shinn brought them inevitably closer and closer despite their differences.

Sadly, this was a harder list to compile, mostly because I've read less science fiction than fantasy. I must work on that.

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