Sarah Scheele's Blog, page 18
November 15, 2018
Faye and Helene: The Gal-Pals
In Bellevere House, there are a number of women characters and the first two that jump to mind are Faye Powell and Helene Carter. Faye is the main protagonist of the story and we spend a lot of time in her mind, her perspective on things. Helene, on the other hand, is a newcomer who’s just arrived in this pleasant, provincial little place called Parkdale. She’s come with her brother and there are several things that he does while he’s in Parkdale. But Helene immediately sort of attaches herself to Faye and never lets go, in a sense.
The two end up being really good friends and I wanted this to be a positive message and an alteration from the original book. When I was going through it, I noticed these areas with a lot of tension and undercurrents—a falsity, if you want to call it that—between the original counterparts to Faye and Helene, Fanny Price and Mary Crawford. There’s all this jealousy that Faye feels on account of Edmund, her cousin, and there’s an insensitivity to that in Mary, to the point where she just doesn’t get a good feel for Fanny’s personality at all. And the friendship, of course, is like a cracked glass from the beginning.
The negativity that comes from this threads its way through the whole book. It’s a wonderful book, of course and just amazingly realistic at times. But I didn’t care for this particular relationship between the two women at all, frankly. Also, if we take away the conflict, we get to see a lot more of Faye’s relationship with Ed and how their dynamic really springs from each other and not from an outer irritant like this girl swooping in to maybe interfere with their romance. And Fanny and Edmund are of course one of the things people remember from the book, so diminishing all this quiet sort of catfighting between the girls made me able to bring Ed and Faye to the forefront and clarify what’s going on in a way I really liked. I went through several drafts before I quite pinned down what that relationship was, but not viewing Helene as a problem was a big first step.
And there will be more updates.
The two end up being really good friends and I wanted this to be a positive message and an alteration from the original book. When I was going through it, I noticed these areas with a lot of tension and undercurrents—a falsity, if you want to call it that—between the original counterparts to Faye and Helene, Fanny Price and Mary Crawford. There’s all this jealousy that Faye feels on account of Edmund, her cousin, and there’s an insensitivity to that in Mary, to the point where she just doesn’t get a good feel for Fanny’s personality at all. And the friendship, of course, is like a cracked glass from the beginning.
The negativity that comes from this threads its way through the whole book. It’s a wonderful book, of course and just amazingly realistic at times. But I didn’t care for this particular relationship between the two women at all, frankly. Also, if we take away the conflict, we get to see a lot more of Faye’s relationship with Ed and how their dynamic really springs from each other and not from an outer irritant like this girl swooping in to maybe interfere with their romance. And Fanny and Edmund are of course one of the things people remember from the book, so diminishing all this quiet sort of catfighting between the girls made me able to bring Ed and Faye to the forefront and clarify what’s going on in a way I really liked. I went through several drafts before I quite pinned down what that relationship was, but not viewing Helene as a problem was a big first step.
And there will be more updates.
November 13, 2018
Technology in the World of Palladia
When dealing with anything set in modern times—today for instance—you have to start taking computers and phones and medical equipment and transportation and all that sort of thing into account. It’s going to impact the character’s lives in a personal way, and in a way it wouldn’t if you were writing, say, historical or fantasy.This is even more true for a futuristic world.
As I worked on Palladia—and as I’m still working on it, since there’s going to be a third book you don’t know anything about yet—what was foremost in my mind was creating a sense of realness, of normal daily life, to this very advanced kind of society. It’s several hundred years in the future, so you’ve got lots of devices these young people and their families have around them that we don’t have to deal with or think about at all. I want Palladia to feel like a real place you could live. That instead of being an expansion of all kinds of technology for the future, from our point of view, this is just ordinary life for these kids. They have to make schedules, fill out paperwork—wouldn’t it be fun if a societal collapse could get rid of that by bringing on a simpler time? But I doubt it will happen.
And in the midst of all this abundance of what is slick and gadgety and high-powered, they’re jumping off of little starships to go into an old church and practice plays based on moldy classics. They have this symbiotic relationship with the past too. They aren’t self-conscious about what surrounds them and that’s important to me to show about the characters because they wouldn’t be. Self-consciousness shows our minds poking into the story and going, “oh wow, look at their weird world!” But they wouldn’t feel that way. It’s daily life in a fantastic world, so it feels daily as if you were living there yourself.
And there will be more updates.
November 7, 2018
Working and Working
As the process goes from completing books to zoning in on a readership for each one, I'm straightening out all sorts of tiny details. I'm not going to make the mistake of not knowing who each book is for before I start marketing them. In short, I've learned this interesting lesson--when presenting books to the world, it is best to have a plan. (Who knew, right? haha)
So I'm getting the books labeled genre and age-wise (except for Bellevere, still working on that.) Victoria is going through a pretty big rewrite to pull some of melodrama down and make Victoria's personality blend more with Alyce--or what used to be Alyce's, now the two are combined that's no longer a useful way to put it. The Prince's Ball is retitled to Temmark Osteraith.
I'm going to do a different print of Birthday Present. Old Facets (containing Jurant) and Ryan and Essie still on Amazon, but taking a back seat. Blue Facets has three stories and I like their vibe together.
So I'm getting the books labeled genre and age-wise (except for Bellevere, still working on that.) Victoria is going through a pretty big rewrite to pull some of melodrama down and make Victoria's personality blend more with Alyce--or what used to be Alyce's, now the two are combined that's no longer a useful way to put it. The Prince's Ball is retitled to Temmark Osteraith.
I'm going to do a different print of Birthday Present. Old Facets (containing Jurant) and Ryan and Essie still on Amazon, but taking a back seat. Blue Facets has three stories and I like their vibe together.
October 23, 2018
Unanswered Questions: Facets of Fantasy
Now that my active phase with all the books I’ve published is over, they’re a thing of the past and I look at them mostly to see if there’s still something that isn’t explained. Why did I write it that way? What does this character mean? Things I didn’t think about when I was actually writing.For Facets of Fantasy Collector’s Edition, there were a lot of character dynamics that are noticeable. Brynea and Ferdinand’s relationship and why it’s in the story; why Violet is unusually solitary and doesn’t mind having almost no friends, which is strange for a teenage girl; and the whole odd social setup of Milland, its outdated, shady politics and a charmless king with unexplainedly poor manners.
The truth is that Brynea is trying to alert Karl to something, but she's not a very good communicator and she can't get anyone to understand her. She's also a scaredy-cat about revealing things that might jeopardize her job at the court and so she often reverts to talking about her boyfriend instead.
Violet isn't a typical girl. That's the reason for her behavior. She likes to drift into places with an intention of supervising them, especially if people are up to mischief. Probably a useful person to have as a daughter if you own a huge old house with huge gardens that are hard to watch over. Of course she won't admit she's that bossy and prefers to describe herself as shy and having little social ability.
And Alyce . . . well, I still don't have an explanation for Milland. A lot of it is very fishy, you know. :)
And there will be more updates.
October 16, 2018
Victoria 2.0
The five published books on my website are all the same length, about 52K, except for Consuela. It's a little bit shorter. At first I presented many books as novellas, individual longer short stories, long collections of stories, or even the occasional novel. But as I worked with the books, stories took a more mainstream shape. Novels got cut. Novellas merged with each other. Extra stories that padded out books disappeared. All of them became a very similar page count (250-280 pages) and suddenly all the little random "stories" had been replaced by streamlined books. I didn't start out with this in mind, because although my stories were often an awkward length, I've read and enjoyed books of any length and I didn't plan to add or crop words just to fulfill someone's idea of a book. But I'm glad it happened. Nowhere is this new streamlined kind of book more visible than in "Victoria." It started as a novella of 30K words, then it shrank to a much shorter story. Then it blended with "Alyce," an even shorter story (about 18K) that had been once released as part of the same series. After I went back to the old, longer version of Victoria--keeping the merge with Alyce--I had to rewire my mind to realize this is a novel now. I'd become programmed to automatically think of Victoria and Alyce as short. But together, they became a full novel.
How nice!
A Year with the Harrisons shrank to become a similar length and when two of the Facets stories were removed, Facets of Fantasy was also comparable. And so is Bellevere House, which started longer, but after a special rewrite just about Ed and Faye's relationship, became exactly the same length as the others.
Yes! My books, like tangled hair, got themselves straightened out.
And there will be more updates.
October 11, 2018
Winding Down
Whew! It has been one busy year. I've gone from having a handful of scattered ebooks and paperbacks, mostly out of print, to a nice trim set of 6 books on the website and all the others properly disposed of. I feel much less like writing than I ever have in my life. Maybe a bit of burnout, but I don't think so. It just isn't meaningful to me in the way it used to be. It's just . . . a job and a lot of the time a really boring one. Not that I'm not good at it, but a lot of people are good at their work. It doesn't mean they care about it.
I'll be systematically promoting the books I'm currently pushing (fortunately, book promotion on Kindle can easily be almost on automatic pilot these days) and I do have a couple of ideas after The Prince's Ball. But I look at the books on the website and I'm like, "6 is enough." Maybe it will stretch to 8 or 10, although probably I'll just drop a couple of the ones on here to make room for new ones. My books have never had a correct marketing push and now they're ready to have one I feel a bit flat, as if all the personal aspect has gone out like air in a tire.
The books are ready to move on to readers in a way they haven't been before and are no longer my property. I don't care about them as I used to and it's really weird feeling. They're truly somebody else's concern now, someone else's interest, and after almost fifteen years spent fighting to get them out there, it's odd to realize they're no longer central to my life. Or even much part of it.
But I will, of course, not forget about them completely.
And there will be more updates.
I'll be systematically promoting the books I'm currently pushing (fortunately, book promotion on Kindle can easily be almost on automatic pilot these days) and I do have a couple of ideas after The Prince's Ball. But I look at the books on the website and I'm like, "6 is enough." Maybe it will stretch to 8 or 10, although probably I'll just drop a couple of the ones on here to make room for new ones. My books have never had a correct marketing push and now they're ready to have one I feel a bit flat, as if all the personal aspect has gone out like air in a tire.
The books are ready to move on to readers in a way they haven't been before and are no longer my property. I don't care about them as I used to and it's really weird feeling. They're truly somebody else's concern now, someone else's interest, and after almost fifteen years spent fighting to get them out there, it's odd to realize they're no longer central to my life. Or even much part of it.
But I will, of course, not forget about them completely.
And there will be more updates.
October 2, 2018
Romance In My Writing
Among the many things I wanted to correct this year--along with formatting, book organization, marketing, website design, blogging consistency, and unconstructive conversations with people--was the perception of romance in my works. I've never included much of it. When I read books, they tend to be children's, some Christian devotional, a little memoir or book about crafts and fashion--very rare YA. Romance isn't common on my periphery and that is because I TRULY do not usually find it an interesting aspect of a story.
But in a market saturated with this topic, it became easy for people to assign this silence to the reverse--a great deal of interest that I was concealing. After all, people often find it hard to talk about something they really care about. They feel personal, lacking in confidence, and very much involved. For many years I've experienced snaps, snipes, whiplash remarks, and accidental slips that have revealed people assume romance is on my mind. I'm "really" a romance writer. One person believed I wrote romance for literally no reason and seemed nonplussed to find I wrote fantasy. Another accused me that my work was "really" 50 Shades of Grey and sent me endless skits that were "spoofs" of what I really wrote, supposedly. Another naturally told me one of my characters must be really me because, although this character was a small child, she was set up in opposition to a boy for most of the book. The message was clear--I was writing "romance" and hiding by making the characters children. And on and on and on.
Because lack of clarity might have led to some errors about what my position is, I'm taking care to adjust book descriptions to hint what the character relationships might be. Who is in a relationship or might be interested in being in one. Because I am now talking about them, it will be impossible to assume I am concealing them, and you will also notice that the focus is always on broader themes.
And there will be more updates.
But in a market saturated with this topic, it became easy for people to assign this silence to the reverse--a great deal of interest that I was concealing. After all, people often find it hard to talk about something they really care about. They feel personal, lacking in confidence, and very much involved. For many years I've experienced snaps, snipes, whiplash remarks, and accidental slips that have revealed people assume romance is on my mind. I'm "really" a romance writer. One person believed I wrote romance for literally no reason and seemed nonplussed to find I wrote fantasy. Another accused me that my work was "really" 50 Shades of Grey and sent me endless skits that were "spoofs" of what I really wrote, supposedly. Another naturally told me one of my characters must be really me because, although this character was a small child, she was set up in opposition to a boy for most of the book. The message was clear--I was writing "romance" and hiding by making the characters children. And on and on and on.
Because lack of clarity might have led to some errors about what my position is, I'm taking care to adjust book descriptions to hint what the character relationships might be. Who is in a relationship or might be interested in being in one. Because I am now talking about them, it will be impossible to assume I am concealing them, and you will also notice that the focus is always on broader themes.
And there will be more updates.
September 27, 2018
All About Bellevere
I won't deny that Bellevere House hasn't always been the most fun to write for me as an author. I took it on as a challenge, not for fun, and I was surprised myself at the direction some arcs of the story took. If this book surprised me at first, it continues to do so. The initial reaction to Bellevere left me in little doubt that it had no future and no audience. It had fallen flat on readers and was to be discounted as an ignominious member of the Jane Austen collection. Since I had written it exclusively for this collection, I will say I was more than a little ticked-off by this because it seemed to me all my effort was being wasted.
I planned to keep it only as long as was necessary, since no one would ever want to read it again after the collection's first run. By this time I was already involved in other projects and more than happy enough to do this. In fact, I didn't have time to devote to Bellevere anymore and I had even written a contemporary version to give the story a chance since one of the biggest sources of concern was how I handled the vintage era. It's dialogue, slang, pop culture, and cliches. However, Bellevere-vintage-version (annoyingly, I now felt) just got consistent reads on Amazon. The pageviews on my website were steady tending towards high and often jumped by 1000% if I mentioned Bellevere or even if I did not. If I talked about another of my books, the Bellevere page soared.
I really felt like tearing out my hair.
I'm not sure why people look so much at a "rejected" book. I've often tried to send sunken books afloat again and it doesn't usually work. It's an uphill task at the best of times if you try. While I'd like to think this is just an after-thought as people come from another VJA book and sort of try Bellevere out of a sense of duty, I'm not sure. If I didn't want to read a book I'd skip it whether it was in a series or not.
And there will be more updates.
I planned to keep it only as long as was necessary, since no one would ever want to read it again after the collection's first run. By this time I was already involved in other projects and more than happy enough to do this. In fact, I didn't have time to devote to Bellevere anymore and I had even written a contemporary version to give the story a chance since one of the biggest sources of concern was how I handled the vintage era. It's dialogue, slang, pop culture, and cliches. However, Bellevere-vintage-version (annoyingly, I now felt) just got consistent reads on Amazon. The pageviews on my website were steady tending towards high and often jumped by 1000% if I mentioned Bellevere or even if I did not. If I talked about another of my books, the Bellevere page soared.
I really felt like tearing out my hair.
I'm not sure why people look so much at a "rejected" book. I've often tried to send sunken books afloat again and it doesn't usually work. It's an uphill task at the best of times if you try. While I'd like to think this is just an after-thought as people come from another VJA book and sort of try Bellevere out of a sense of duty, I'm not sure. If I didn't want to read a book I'd skip it whether it was in a series or not.
And there will be more updates.
September 25, 2018
The Final Cut
For now, the books I've decided to move forward are A Year with the Harrisons; City of the Invaders; Victoria: A Tale of Spain; Bellevere House; and of course the upcoming The Prince's Ball. "Keep" is a relative term, inasmuch as de-emphasizing the other titles doesn't mean they are unpublished or eliminated. I put work into each one for a good reason and all will remain available on Amazon (and Facets of Fantasy; Ryan and Essie; and The Test of Devotion will also be wide on other platforms.)
But these 5 books are the ones that draw the most attention and have consistently done so. Victoria contains the much-yelled-about "Alyce," A Year with the Harrisons has always had a spot in people's attention, and whether I like it or not, Bellevere House was viewed as interesting for its place within the overall VJA collection. City of the Invaders has kept a very under-the-radar, but very consistent following, and all promotional mention of The Prince's Ball seems to indicate a level of excitement.
On the other hand The Birthday Present and Consuela have had lukewarm reactions, The Test of Devotion was in general rejected, and Ryan and Essie--in spite of its imaginative ideas--is the only book of mine to have never sold even one paid copy. That baffles me, but it's true. Facets of Fantasy is a bit harder to gauge because there was a lot of interest in it at first, but I wasn't sure what the interest consisted of and it might have worn off for a book that's a decade old. I also got so much vagueness in reactions to The Amulet of Renari that I'm not done dealing with it, because I don't know how it fell on readers.
And there will be more updates.
But these 5 books are the ones that draw the most attention and have consistently done so. Victoria contains the much-yelled-about "Alyce," A Year with the Harrisons has always had a spot in people's attention, and whether I like it or not, Bellevere House was viewed as interesting for its place within the overall VJA collection. City of the Invaders has kept a very under-the-radar, but very consistent following, and all promotional mention of The Prince's Ball seems to indicate a level of excitement.
On the other hand The Birthday Present and Consuela have had lukewarm reactions, The Test of Devotion was in general rejected, and Ryan and Essie--in spite of its imaginative ideas--is the only book of mine to have never sold even one paid copy. That baffles me, but it's true. Facets of Fantasy is a bit harder to gauge because there was a lot of interest in it at first, but I wasn't sure what the interest consisted of and it might have worn off for a book that's a decade old. I also got so much vagueness in reactions to The Amulet of Renari that I'm not done dealing with it, because I don't know how it fell on readers.
And there will be more updates.
September 18, 2018
Books in More Stores
As of now, my expansion into more stores is only limited by how rapidly I can complete some more rewrites/new cover assignments. The more I do with my books, the more things spring forward that need to be done. Getting a story articulated in a way that will make readers understand why they should pick it up is hard, but I'm getting better at it.
As I examined A Year with the Harrisons, I realized it had been a variation on Little Women all along. I started the book years before I began doing my other "retellings," and so I didn't spot that it was a retelling at first. But as time went on, the characters began to look familiar--Meg, Jo, Amy, Laurie, Mr. Laurence, Aunt March, Marmee and Mr. March. I really did leave out Beth. The story started with 3 sisters and though I sometimes considered adding a fourth, it just never really happened. So there are still just 3. Aunt March (Brenda) also gets a lot more screentime than in the book and I enlarged on her immediate family as well as her relationship to the "Marches" (the Harrison family.)
The Birthday Present is now a small prequel to The Prince's Ball and helps to set up its futuristic world. After using Alyce-type characters several times in a historical sort of setting, this story needs a fresh new look and futuristic should shake it up in the right way.
Pricing now ranges from $2.99 to permafree. One GREAT thing about getting in more stores is that Amazon can be forced to make a book permafree to compete. A Year with the Harrisons and Bellevere House will be permafree, but I need to do small tweaks to both beforehand. Facets of Fantasy will be taken off permafree. I considered and felt this was best.
And there will be more updates.
As I examined A Year with the Harrisons, I realized it had been a variation on Little Women all along. I started the book years before I began doing my other "retellings," and so I didn't spot that it was a retelling at first. But as time went on, the characters began to look familiar--Meg, Jo, Amy, Laurie, Mr. Laurence, Aunt March, Marmee and Mr. March. I really did leave out Beth. The story started with 3 sisters and though I sometimes considered adding a fourth, it just never really happened. So there are still just 3. Aunt March (Brenda) also gets a lot more screentime than in the book and I enlarged on her immediate family as well as her relationship to the "Marches" (the Harrison family.)
The Birthday Present is now a small prequel to The Prince's Ball and helps to set up its futuristic world. After using Alyce-type characters several times in a historical sort of setting, this story needs a fresh new look and futuristic should shake it up in the right way.
Pricing now ranges from $2.99 to permafree. One GREAT thing about getting in more stores is that Amazon can be forced to make a book permafree to compete. A Year with the Harrisons and Bellevere House will be permafree, but I need to do small tweaks to both beforehand. Facets of Fantasy will be taken off permafree. I considered and felt this was best.
And there will be more updates.
