Catherine Fitzsimmons's Blog: Jinxed, page 18

Enduring Chaos cover reveal and giveaway!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present the cover art for my next book, Enduring Chaos!

Cursed with fearsome eyes and a dangerous gift, any chance of Damian Sires having an ordinary life was dashed the moment she was born. All her life, she has hidden her abnormalities and fought for acceptance behind the shadow of a veil and her respected merchant father.

When Damian’s power spirals out of control and casts her out alone into the world, she finds herself caught up in plots as old as the gods themselves. Bitter exiles, deposed nobility, clandestine knights, and a divine being with an ancient grudge all close in on the unstable power radiating from Damian.

Desperate to keep that power contained, she sets out with mysterious allies in an attempt to find someone who can help her in a world that fears magic. Yet the source of Damian’s ability is far more deadly than she imagined.

View Enduring Chaos on Goodreads.

In addition to the cover reveal, I am offering a giveaway to win a free e-copy of Ruins of Change by J. R. Dwornik, the first book in the world of Elderra! Simply comment on this post by October 25th and you will automatically be entered into the giveaway.

Word on the Street

Just a quick note to say that I will be at Word on the Street in Toronto tomorrow! Look for Brain Lag in the Fringe Beat section, just south of Wellesley St. on Queen’s Park Crescent East. Hope to see you there!

You have your entire life to write your first book, and six months to write your second

Someone told me that quote once. I don’t remember to whom it is attributed.  It is undoubtedly a comment on output, as one will quickly lose readers, as well as publishing contracts, if one does not continually produce more books.

To me, however, it is a matter of completion. When you are an unpublished author, you can spend forever editing and tweaking your manuscript. Once you have submitted it and it hits the presses, however, it is final. It cannot be altered any longer.

Any good writer will constantly improve. As a result, likely many look back at their earlier works and see things they would have done differently. That is, if they don’t revisit older work with revulsion.

I recently reread Halcyon, possibly for the first time since publication. While I still enjoy the story and even felt better about my writing after revisiting it, I now see some things that I would change if I had the opportunity. It is inevitable and I am discovering more and more that distance is the key to seeing a work with some measure of objectivity.

Enduring Chaos is very much distant from its origins. It has been fourteen years since I began writing the first draft of this story. Aside from the core concept of the story and some of the main characters – in name and appearance, anyway, and even those have changed somewhat – nothing is the same from that original draft. The current revision is not even very close to the original third draft, which is how I have, increasingly inaccurately, been referring to this revision.

The ultimate result of so much time passed and so many changes to the story is that I am more comfortable with altering this story, even parts of it I like. I might also be maturing as a writer, but I am not crediting myself that much yet.

What I find interesting is that as I start on my final edits to the story, I find myself more willing to accept corrections and make changes after only a couple months of letting it sit while I waited for feedback from beta readers.

It is the distance. Distance is important. Do not be in a hurry to get your fresh new novel out into the world. Take a step back, let it sit for at least a few months, perhaps even a year or more, and it will be easier to look upon the manuscript more like a potential investment than as one’s baby. And you want to be able to do that, because of course, every writer wants to put out the best novel one can create.

Because once a novel goes out into the world, it is complete, and anything you might notice later is impossible to change.

Indiegogo campaign a success!

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to the fundraising campaign to create a live action trailer for Enduring Chaos. Thanks to your generous contributions, we surpassed our fundraising goal! I’m really looking forward to creating the trailer for my next book and seeing how it all comes out. I’ll be sharing progress updates here as it commences.

Also, one final reminder that I will be at the Pirate Festival in Milton, Ontario this weekend, Saturday through Monday. Look for Brain Lag in the Local Authors booth, or come out for a reading on the stage from 2:30-3:00 p.m. each day of the festival. I will be reading from Aurius on Saturday, Halcyon on Sunday, and I’ll be giving a new advance reading from Enduring Chaos on Monday. In addition, I’m very excited to say that I’ll have a sneak peek of the cover art for Enduring Chaos to share during the reading. So come out and have a look. Hope to see you there!

Final countdown

Huge thanks to everyone who has contributed to the Indiegogo campaign to create a live action trailer for my next book Enduring Chaos. We’re in the home stretch now – just two days left to fund the project. Please visit the campaign page today and help me make this dream a reality!

We’re also one week away from the Pirate Festival, where I will have a booth with other local authors. I will also be giving readings on the stage from 2:30-3:00 every day of the festival, including an advance reading from Enduring Chaos.

Other development with Enduring Chaos has forestalled updates here, and I regret to say it may be that way as we get into the final crunch time before its late November release. I will, however, be updating the Sisters of Chaos website regularly up until the release of the first book, so be sure to follow that for new material.

Also, I am pleased to report that I have made progress on the cover art for Enduring Chaos. Stay tuned! I hope to be able to reveal it soon.

Thanks for watching. This is an exciting time for me and I hope you’re as interested in the progress of Enduring Chaos as I am.

Introducing Sisters of Chaos!

The official website for my upcoming fantasy trilogy is now live! Check it out today for more information on the books and the world where they take place. I will be updating it biweekly on Fridays with new information on the world and even brand new short stories up until the release of Enduring Chaos.

Among the new material added to the site are two videos taken by fellow author Stephen B. Pearl. The first is an interview Stephen did with me at Ad Astra in April:

And the other is a recording of an advance reading I gave from Enduring Chaos at Faery Fest in Guelph two weeks ago:

Finally, please don’t forget about our Indiegogo campaign to produce a live action trailer for Enduring Chaos. We’ve made some great progress toward reaching our goal so far, but we still need your help. Contribute today for pre-release copies of the book and help spread the word!

Help me bring Enduring Chaos to life!

I’ve been keeping it under wraps, but the cat’s out of the bag now: I’m producing a live action trailer for my next book Enduring Chaos! I’m very excited about this. We already have a great crew gathered together and things are starting to come together for what looks to be a dramatic and exciting book trailer.

But I need your help! Please visit the crowdsourcing campaign on Indiegogo to help us fund the project and bring Enduring Chaos to life. Any amount you can contribute and any way you can spread the word about the trailer will help. And I’m offering pre-release ebooks starting with $10 contributions, and paperbacks from $35!

Please contribute today!

Expanding horizons

Trying to write a well-rounded and thoroughly developed fantasy world can really open one’s eyes to points of view and beliefs one might not give much credit otherwise. There are different sides to every conflict and whether one can objectively classify one side or another as wrong, each side fundamentally believes in the validity of its stance. And if it is portrayed right, there should be sympathetic or at least understandable reasons for those sides to feel that way, even if the actions that arise from those beliefs are vile. This can, of course, result in moral ambiguity even on the author’s part, which isn’t easy to address, but is a fact of life.

I’d like to think I’ve become fairly good at opening my mind to other ways of thinking as a result of this. I don’t like to write conflicts as black and white and I don’t want to create a villain as a plot device for the heroes to overcome. People and conflicts are complex. Generally, my desire to portray that in my writing has made me at least want to be more open-minded to other points of view. I’ll admit I still have a hard time coming to terms with some things I come across, but my guiding philosophy has always been ‘to each his own.’

Some issues and the way we feel about them, however, are so ingrained into us that trying to think outside of that norm involves a huge jump in ideology.

Case in point: sex.

My thoughts on this topic can pretty much be summed up by saying that I don’t really like to talk about it. At least on a personal level, which is more or less the focus of this whole rant.

But that’s the issue. For many or most people, it seems, opinions about sex are such fundamental and strongly held beliefs that often, if not usually, one cannot discuss it without it turning into a political or religious issue. These are beliefs that, even if one is not religious, are ingrained into us since birth, and many people believe in them and defend them so powerfully that challenging what is ultimately a subjective subject can lead to hostility. While I try to be more open-minded about the topic, I admit that I am still heavily influenced by the way society views sex. In fact, because of the way I have been raised – consciously or not – to look at it, which is likely the reason I generally don’t like to discuss it, I found it quite difficult just to write this much on the subject. This is just the way life is and stepping outside my own beliefs on the topic is very difficult.

But I must if I am to write a story and world the way it should be, not the way I might like it to be. Sex is a fact of life and it comes up within the world I created. More to the point, I am about to introduce a people who hold fundamentally different attitudes toward it. And being such a basic part of life, these attitudes have a far-ranging impact on the society as a whole. Ultimately, this means thinking a lot on the subject.

Sometimes, it just feels weird. It helps that there is historical precedent for beliefs like this that I can look to, but it’s still so very different from what seems the entire modern world feels that it can be discomforting to look at this fictional culture adopting attitudes that most people, perhaps even most of the people who will read this, could find distasteful or even offensive.

It is easier to address the issue in an unbiased manner in my own thoughts, however. And ultimately, whether I agree with their beliefs or not, this is the way this society works, and I must learn – and have, I think – to get into their world and their heads, to leave my own preconceptions behind and understand what it is like to live in their world.

… but I still don’t want to talk about it.

Has anything you’ve written challenged your way of thinking about a subject? Have you written something that needed to be written the way it did, even though it made you or someone else uncomfortable to do so?

Themes

A good book leaves an impact on you after reading it. Perhaps it sheds light on a social issue that you don’t often consider, perhaps it makes you re-evaluate your actions or beliefs, or perhaps it’s as simple as making you feel richer for having read it, to feel more complete or want to get more out of life.

Do authors intend to leave such a mark on readers when they write? Probably.

As for me, I never go into a book with that in mind. Not that I’m claiming anything as regards to the quality or effect of my works; that’s up to readers, as is the interpretation itself. The ‘theme’ of a novel is not something I necessarily define beforehand and stick to throughout the book. I might have a message I wish to share that presents itself fairly clearly – as was the case with Aurius – but it’s more a result of the writing rather than the other way around. My focus when I’m writing is on the story. Naturally, this involves character growth, which ultimately defines the theme of the work, but it’s not something I have in mind when I begin writing.

Consequently, the message of the story can surprise me sometimes.

Enduring Chaos has proven particularly interesting in this case. I’ve learned a lot over the years of developing the story and ending up with my final draft. In particular, fleshing out the characters has resulted in some eye-opening truths for me.

With Aurius, the message/theme was fairly simplistic, as were the characters – a pretty safe move for a debut novel. I tried to explore the concepts in more detailed ways, but it’s still a pretty simple concept. As for Halcyon, I didn’t spend too much time developing the characters at all. The story itself was the focus there.

In that regard, Enduring Chaos is a much more sophisticated work than those two. The characters are complex with varied motivations, and the way the story unfolded as a result of those personalities resulted in some things I didn’t expect.

When you like your characters, it’s very easy to want to let them win. Sure, they have to face and overcome obstacles along their path, but when they’re dealing with something outside the plotline through which they grow, I want to let them have the upper hand. With this story, that manifest a few times in letting a character have the last word.

Had I not developed these characters so thoroughly, I might never have questioned the scenes in which a certain character has the last word in an argument/discussion. But when I came to one of those scenes fairly early in the story while editing, I realized the other character in the conversation wouldn’t agree with the first character’s method of ending it, and the dialogue took a different turn from there.

That one change ended up impacting the story, and those characters’ relationship, throughout the rest of the novel and even lays down the foundation of the theme of the entire trilogy. And it’s something that still affects me personally and has me thinking frequently about my interactions with others. Just because that’s the way the characters reacted to each other.

Other aspects of the story that have grown organically simply based on how the characters interact have left an imprint on my consciousness. One event that I added in during my edits that was meant as development for a secondary character, upon rereading and fleshing out reactions, has left a much greater impression on a POV character, in a way that affects said character throughout the rest of the trilogy. It even entirely changes the meaning of one of the character’s closing lines in the book, one that was already full of meaning. And the actions in that plot point – and its repercussions – are frequently on my mind since I developed that.

Writing this story, and this draft in particular, has been a very profound journey. I can’t say whether this book will have an impact on readers, but it certainly has left one on me.

What books have left an impact on you? Do you carefully plan out the theme of your work before you begin writing? Does it change as you go along? Does your writing ever surprise you in a fundamental way?

Micro art

Alas, I still have done little art of late – hardly any, in fact. But the art bug has bitten me recently, and I have done a few things on a smaller scale.

For one thing, I’ve been playing a lot of Draw Something. And while most of my drawings there are stick figures, occasionally I get the urge to create something a little more advanced. So, here is a compilation of some of my better turns:

(My personal favourite may be the pancakes.)

I also recently discovered a painting app for Android called Fresco, and while I haven’t even taken much time with it lately, I have done a little playing around with it:

These were both done on a 4.2″ screen using a dollar store stylus. The first was done in about an hour, the second in about twenty minutes. This is art for me these days.

Is more coming? Hard to say. I’m still feeling inspired at the moment, but as was proven to me once again, I get a little too absorbed in making art to do any while watching a little one. We shall see.