Leah R. Cutter's Blog, page 19

When the Moon Now Available!

My latest novel, When The Moon Over Kualina Mountain Comes is now available!

When the red moon rises directly over Kualina Mountain, madness follows.

–Southern Islands proverb

Centuries ago, fate forced the witches to move from the mainland to the Southern Islands. The peace-loving people there accepted and welcomed them.

Now, centuries later, the gods begin to make their will known again.

Ephanie, a young northern witch, waits impatiently. The certainty of youth fills her, assures her that she will do important things in her life. Then her destiny finds her, but it isn’t what she thought it would be.

Jahaka also waits, but for a sign. As head priestess of the northern witches, she despises the changes she sees in the witches, the corruption of their magic. How can she lead her people back to purity?

Mahina lives in the jungle, unclear which dreams come from her and which belong to her sisters. Until the goddess gives her a sign and the southern witches come back into their power.

Each of them must follow her own destiny to the bitter end, despite the cost.

All the while, war surfs toward them, carried on western winds.

A name is just a vase for the girl until it overflows into the woman.

–Northern proverb

Available for $5.99 as an ebook, $14.95 as a trade paperback from Createspace.

But wait! There’s more!

The Forestal is also available!

The War is eternal.

Gods, Dragons, Heroes.

Lovers, Betrayers, Defenders.

The Great Wyrm. The Blacksmith. The Earthmother. The Forestal.

All together in an epic poem that sings of a war older than the world, as well as the greatest clash of all between good and evil.

Available for $5.99 as an ebook. It will also be available for $12.95 as a trade paperback from Createspace.

Createspace link coming soon!

There are new goodies over on the free content page as well.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Story Inspiration Sunday

I blog about inspiration both here and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either here or over there!

This week, I’m afraid, is again going to be about a different type of inspiration.

However, this week was also very different.

I hadn’t planned it this way. It was my choice.

This week turned out to be the last week I worked my day job.

Let me explain.

I went on sabbatical for the day job for three months, visiting New Zealand and New Orleans, as well as writing a bunch.

I went back to the day job, assuming that I would adjust eventually.

By the end of the first week, I was not adjusting. Period. My fiancee had to talk me off the ledge more than once.

By the end of the second week, I was in hell.

At the start of the third week, I gave one week’s notice. I had only been back at work for two weeks. Better to not get deeply entangled by leaving quickly.

So Friday was my last day.

I have now officially changed careers. I am a full-time, professional fiction writer.

Another way to look at it – For the last few years I’ve had four jobs: Fiction writer, publisher, inn keeper, and day job. I’ve finally dropped one of them!

This does not mean I’ll have more time. What I learned while on sabbatical was that while I wrote more, I also ended up doing more. I suspect this is going to be my life for a while – reading, writing, publishing, and working. Then working some more. Then working a bit more. Maybe taking a break, then working even more.

I’m so excited about my change of careers. And nervous. And overjoyed. And anxious.

I have no regrets about my decision, though. It was the right choice.

In general, I work at being practical and responsible, not a flighty artist.

This time, the artist won. I had to go. I couldn’t stay.

So how does this tie into inspiration? Once I made the decision to go, boy did I get focused. I wrote, worked day job, did publishing stuff.

Despite this being an emotional roller coaster, I’m writing. I have deadlines, beta readers who are expecting the next novel. Short stories to submit to anthologies. So much to do!

Monday morning starts “the new normal.” I’ll get up at 7 AM, walk at least a mile to wake myself up, then write. Eat breakfast, then write some more. Take a break, then write some more.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this next phase of my life. How inspired I feel. The sky’s the limit – and the only person who can hold me back is myself.

So what big change have you faced recently? Has it inspired you to do more?

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Beyond the Mirror now available!

Back in 2011, when I first formed Knotted Road Press, I knew that I wanted to publish authors other than myself.

Today, that vision has come to fruition!

Beyond the Mirror: Fantastic Worlds a collection of short stories written by Blaze Ward, is available at all the major outlets, including paper back.

Here’s the blurb:

Wizards, warriors, professional adventurers, and actors trapped in a role. Here is a collection of fantasy short stories set in fantastic worlds: From an Imperial Rome that never was, to forgotten towers on the edge of the Wastelands, to a magical mirror, and beyond.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be publishing this work. I’m linking to the collection, but all the short stories are also available individually. (And yes, more than one of these stories is also available in paperback.

Enjoy!

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Story Inspiration Sunday

I blog about inspiration both here and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either here or over there.

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing this week. Instead, I’ve been focused on covers for books my press is releasing next week, as well as a new home page.

Revamping the web site has been daunting. I’m redoing all the book pages, adding buy buttons, and generally slicking up the place. (An example of a new page: The Popcorn Thief page.)

I just have to keep reminding myself that I only have to take one bite at a time. There are a ton of things that I still want to do for the web site. But I’ve done a lot of the major things at this point.

One of the major things that I did the last week was to test two products for creating my catalog of books: MyBookTable and WP-Catalogue.

Both of these products have pluses and minuses. I spent a lot of time studying both. If you’re not tech-savy, I would recommend MyBookTable – it has a lot of functionality out of the box that’s great. (Here’s an example of a site with MyBookTable implemented.)

I ended up choosing WP-Catalogue for my site mainly because of the greater flexibility in categories that it gave me.

So how does this tie into inspiration?

This week hasn’t been about “laying fallow” – not really. I’ve still been creating. But I’ve learned over the years that I need to be creative in more than one aspect, regularly. Just writing isn’t enough. I need to do artwork, or knitting, or painting, or making music, or something else, some other form of art, to fill the writing well more.

Next week I’ll be back on the writing train. I have a novel to finish, after all. But I needed this “break” as it were, to do other things, fill the well.

How about you? Do you do other art or creative endeavors? Do they aid in your creativity and writing?

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Cataversary

I kept Kiera in the bathroom when I first brought her home. She hid from me under the bathtub for the first couple of days.

Eight years ago today, I brought my kitty Kiera home from a no-kill cat shelter. They guestamated she was about one-and-a-half years old at that point. They'd given her the name Little Miss. She'd been abandoned in an apartment by the people who had owned her before me.

Kiera early days

It took over a year for her to really trust me. She's still afraid of my feet, but not as freaked out by them as she once was. She still likes to play, and races around my house like a crazy thing on a daily basis.

The princess with her sparkly balls.

She's my constant companion, hanging out with me much of the day, as well as curled up against me purring all night. She's really only my cat--she barely tolerates anyone else, though she has warmed up to a few people. Then again, there are still days when she barely tolerates me.

The Olympics of Sleep - Twisted back lunge

So here's to you my Little Miss, my purring companion. The last eight years have been fabulous. Let's go at least another eight.

The princess in her castle

Of course, she still sometimes sleeps with one eye open...

SFWA reading series event

Next month, I’ll be participating in SFWA’s Pacific Northwest Reading Series! And no, I have no idea what I’ll be reading. Possibly from the newest novel, “When the Moon Over Kualani Mountain Rises.” Or maybe a short story, written for the event. We’ll see.

On Tuesday, April 29 in the Seattle area, we’ll have Nebula- and Hugo-winning writer Nancy Kress, accompanied by Jack Skillingstad and me. The University Bookstore will be on hand, selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM

Where: Wilde Rover Irish Pub & Restaurant, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

On Wednesday, April 30 in Portland, we’ll have bestselling writer Mike Moscoe, along with Ray Vukcevich and me again. Wrigley-Cross Books will be selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM

Where: McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211

See http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/ for more information on both readings.

I hope you can join us! It should be a lot of fun. Tell your friends!

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Two more short story sales!

I sold two short stories to the Fiction River anthology series! One to Past Crime and one to Pulse Pounders! More details to follow later when I can brain again.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Story Inspiration Sunday

I blog about inspiration both here on my blog and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either here or there.

I’ve spent the last week on the Oregon Coast, at a writing workshop. It’s actually been more business than craft, as I’ve been attending the anthology workshop.

After listening to six different editors opinions on 40+ professionally written stories, I can tell you that this post is absolutely true. You could have five editors all say, “Loved this story. Would have bought it.” Then the editor with the checkbook, who could actually buy the story, say, “Nope. Didn’t like it. Doesn’t fit.”

One of the things that was also very interesting was hearing an editor say, “I don’t like X in my stories,” such as carnival stories, stories where children are endangered, stories with magical snowmen, etc. Which would prompt me, the writer, to think, “Okay, don’t send that type of story to that editor.”

Then the next story, that editor would say, “I don’t like X in my stories. This one was so well done I would buy it anyway.”

One of the other interesting things was hearing stories about editors who reject a story, and then, two-three years later, receiving an email that says, “I just can’t get that story out of my head, have you sold it? Can I have it?”

So again, I agree with this post. There is no perfect story. You are never going to write a story that is a guaranteed sale to a market. For that matter, even if you are invited to write in an anthology, there’s still not guarantee that the editor won’t reject the story and tell you to rewrite it or submit something else.

But beyond the networking that I’ve done here, and all the things I’ve learned, one of the reasons I come to these workshops is because these people are my people. This is my family. I adore these people, and despite the exhaustion, they’re still clever and fun.

And that’s the inspiration part of this post. (See? I knew I could get there.)

Writers can be very witty. And at something like this, they generate inside jokes as well as lots of pithy sayings.

So I will leave you with a few of the key phrases that may or may not inspire some kind of story idea in you!

–Ringo Starr: Serial killer (Detective noticing connection between all the cities the Beatles toured and a string of mysterious deaths…)

–The Attack of the Lurking Theme

–Rejectomancy – Authors studying rejection letters to determine patterns in order to predict future behavior

–The Invincible Monkey Tailor

–Zombie Husband? No problem! Just break off the good bits.

–The Snark Muffin

–The Nicest Evil Dragon

–Strangling the Pink Rabbit

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Story Inspiration Sunday

This week’s inspiration is a bit different. Okay, so most of these posts are a bit different. This one s a little bit more so.

I’ve been writing full time now for a few weeks. And by writing, I mean standing (or sitting) at my keyboard for most of the day making stuff up and writing the next novel.

I’m pleased with the progress: I’m a bit over 40,000 words into a 60,000 word novel. I achieved that in about eight days.

But how did I do that? I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have an outline. I had a few vague clues about what the novel would be about. Didn’t know where it was going. Didn’t know how it was going to end.

Still sat my butt down (or stood) and wrote. And kept writing. And then, wrote some more.

I found that I had to keep asking and answering two questions:

–Who speaks next?

–What happens next?

This novel has nine POV characters. It’s been quite a juggling act, going from one to the next to the next, making sure that the plot is moving forward on each story. Every one of these POV characters is the center of their universe, and 100% convinced and certain that what they’re doing is the right thing. They are completely justified, even if it means whole-scale killing of a bunch of other people.

I keep coming back to–who speaks next? It’s been interesting that the question gets answered pretty quickly. I didn’t always understand why the next person was the person to speak. A couple of times I believed the scene should be told from a different person’s POV. But by the time I finished the scene, I knew that my muse/subconscious/inner writer had been correct: This scene had to be told from that particular POV, because it had to reveal X, which would become important or was already important.

But how was I inspired to keep writing? To keep coming back to the keyboard hour after hour?

A big part of it was curiosity. I had no idea what’s going to happen next. I won’t until I write it. I can kind of see the ending at this point–still not sure how I’m going to get there.

Another part of it was that even if I took a longer break, like over night, the next POV character would be talking to me. It was their turn, damn it! They’d been waiting long enough through all these other POV stories. Now it was their turn.

This novel hasn’t always been easy to write. There have been times when the words flowed like manna from heaven. Other times–not so much.

I can’t really tell you where all the inspiration for this novel came from. Where that next line, that next scene, that next character were born. Somewhere in the depths of my unconscious is this story. I’m directing it, a little. But mostly the inspiration is just there, flowing from me, like the words and the scenes.

So as I said at the start, this post is a bit of non-inspiration inspiration post. I’ve been trying to tease apart how I’m inspired to write as I have been, and it boils down to: Because I am. Because I must write. Because I am a writer, and this is what I do.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Travel Research – The Popcorn Thief

One of the advantages that a writer like J. D. Horn and The Line has while writing about Georgia and Savannah is that he was born in rural Tennessee. I am a mid-western girl, I wasn’t raised in rural Kentucky.

There are things I can do to overcome this, however, and in general, to write about areas that I (used to) know nothing about.

For example, I spent the summer listening to farm reports from Kentucky on an internet radio station, to get the accent in my head.

I also firmly believe that I should travel to areas I’m writing about, if possible (and then write off as much of the trip as I’m able to as a business expense.)

So this summer I went and spent time in Kentucky, doing research for the novel The Popcorn Thief.

The blurb for the novel:

Franklin loves popcorn.

He used to love his mama more. Then she died, but didn’t pass on, and now haunts him like all the other ghosts. Only popcorn brings him solace.

Every year, Franklin competes against Karl for the Kentucky State Fair blue ribbon prize for the best popping corn.

When an angry ghost leaves an ear of corn–stolen from Karl’s crop, with Franklin’s fingerprints on it–at the scene of a murder, Franklin knows his troubles just started.

–

While I was in Kentucky, I spent an entire day at the Kentucky State fair. Of course, I spent a lot of time admiring the blue ribbon prize for the best popping corn:

As well as admiring the most perfect ear of corn:

After the day at the fair, I spent an entire day driving through the countryside near Louisville, going down back country roads, looking for the town that Franklin would be from. I found Harrodsberg. A lot of the descriptions of the town of Katherinesville (which is Franklin’s town) are based directly on Harrodsberg.

The building that’s the second from the right used to be a Kroger grocery store, which is where Franklin works.

I even found the judicial center, which is just up the street from the Kroger.

Could I have written the novel without traveling to Kentucky? Of course. But by doing a research trip, I felt as though I was able to get a much more authentic piece of fiction, as it were. Plus, the trip inspired me, giving me great details to add to the book.

Read the first two chapters as a PDF.

The Popcorn Thief — available for $5.99 as an ebook, $14.95 paperback

From Book View Cafe

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From CreateSpace, as a trade paperback

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.