Rae Hachton's Blog, page 3

Update on Black Satin's Progress

Picture from Pixabay—Free of Copyright. CC0 Public Domain 

Update on Black Satin’s Progress

 

Okay, so here is the uber crazy part:

 

In one document, I have a total of 81, 251 words; some of those scenes are completed, and others aren’t because I can’t write a book unless I write it out of order. The majority of my process (because I have ADD) involves me hopping, skipping, and jumping around my Manuscript and writing parts of different scenes in quick bursts and then returning to them later to complete them and flesh them out. I usually start with what I call my “Candy Bar” scenes, the ones I’m dying to write first. Which more often than not are the romance/kissing scenes! But in Black Satin it was the Steampunk scenes!!

 

And all of the fantasy elements. Oh, and I’m having loads of fun figuring out how to describe my gargoyles and such because like, there aren’t that many gargoyle books out there, especially in YA. (At least I don’t think? I couldn’t find many.)

 

There are lots of vampire books and myths in circulation, which can serve as reference points, but gargoyles? I couldn’t find any mythologies on them really which is a GOOD thing because now I can be as inventive with it as I want! The sky’s the limit.

 

The thing I love the most about this book is the gargoyles, most definitely, and then the new world building for the Land of Naught. I love how it’s different than Nevermore—which is stuck in the medieval/dark ages—they use candles, no electricity, etc—but the Land of Naught and the gargoyles have clockwork and gadgets! Still dark, but awesome in an entirely different way.

 

Wow, okay, so I just went totally off tangent here. Back to the point I was trying to make.

 

I have 81, 251 words in one document and in another, there are approximately—give or take 10 or 12k—49, 634 words, all of which are scenes lifted straight out of the original that I am (mostly) keeping.

 

So . . . technically, I have reached my word count and my work is cut out for me. Complete all the scenes in document #1 and blend and mix them with the scenes in document #2.

 

Sounds easy enough. If I can get my ADD to comply. I have about a week and a day and I really wanna finish the rewrites of this book by the end of March. If I can keep my butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard, I know I can do this.

 

But it looks like the Manuscript is going to surpass the cap of 120,000 words after all. Giving a guesstimation, I’d say it might bounce closer to 160,000. 

My Secret to Not Quitting—a Post on Writing, Rewriting, and Perseverance

My Secret to Not Quitting—a Post on Writing, Rewriting, and Perseverance

I’ve heard that Writing is Rewriting and it’s also been phrased as Rewriting is Writing. But I don’t think I ever fully comprehended what that concept meant until now.

Rewriting is where all the magick truly happens. But getting there—to the magickal part—isn’t always so pleasant and it’s certainly not at all easy. It requires a tremendous amount of patience and belief in yourself and your story. It requires me to push forward and keep going even when I want to quit, which happens at least once every day.

Right now, even as I’m writing this post, I want to shove every page I’ve written into the shredder and forget that it exists.

The thing is—I can’t allow myself to do this. I’m almost halfway there now. Once I nail the rewrites on Black Satin then I get to torture myself with my new envisioning of Raven in the Grave.

I’m ready to finalize the new version of Pretty in Black, but I can’t yet because I’m battling myself on its completion. There are scenes from the original which I love and want to keep; I’m attached to them, but I know that they have to go. And then there are newer ideas in my head for other scenes, but at some point, I have to let go and allow the story to be. To breathe on its own. There are even a few missing chapters from Marcus’s POV that I haven’t written yet and there are BLANK pages where those chapters will be inserted.

Man, it’s so hectic.

And as I’m rewriting Black Satin there are scenes I’ve invented that I LOVE the hell out of, and then there are scenes from the original that I know I have to slash apart, murder, kill. It’s going to take time to figure out how all the new pieces fit with the older ones and how to weave it seamlessly.

I have to make sure the tone/atmosphere/voice remains the same as the original and that all the elements, whether added or deleted, make sense as a whole, and that the new books are the same, but different at the same time.

I don’t want the story/plot steering too far away from the original story because then things will become way too confusing for everyone who has already read the books so far.

If anything, the new scenes should be icing on the cake and serve as extras so that way all my readers stay on the same page, plot wise. I can’t just start changing everything around. The overall goal when I began this was to flesh everything out—my characters, the plot, the world building, the setting, etc.

Yes, writing has never been more challenging than it is right now for me. And I hate it and love it equally.

But I have a secret—a secret I’ve never shared before until now. It’s the secret of not quitting, and it all begins with a dream I had years ago when I first decided that, yes, I wanted to be a writer.

You see, I pretty much knew at the age of 12 that I wanted to be an author. The burning desire has never left me and I can’t imagine ever wanting to do anything else. But the thing is, I never thought it was possible because I couldn’t write.

Yes, I could write, but not well. Not even good or mediocre. I was worried that my dream of being a writer would never be possible. And then, one night, like any other night, I fell asleep.

I entered a place—I imagine it was a mall, because there were lots of other shops nearby—but on my right, a wall of glass, and books were behind that wall of glass. A bookstore!

It came as no shocker to me that I found myself dreaming of a bookstore, and just like in real life, I was beyond excited to be here. I floated toward the glass door and stepped over into my heaven. A nice and friendly blonde woman greeted me as she led me over to the many shelves and shelves of books, asking me what I liked to read. Of course, my answer was Young Adult.

And Oh! Look at all the pretty covers!! I started grabbing every book off the shelf that caught my eye and the lady laughed.

“Here, let me help you with those.” She smiled and then placed my books in a cart. A shopping cart for books! How genius! Every bookstore needed these, I thought.

I eagerly began flipping through the books, ready to read all the exciting stories inside. But there was only one major problem.

“There aren’t any words in these books,” I complained.

“I know,” she said with a glimmer in her eyes. “You are meant to provide the words; all the books you chose will become every book that you will ever write.”

I couldn’t believe it!

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And I’m your Muse. I will provide you with everything you need— creativity, inspiration, everything—if you will trust me.”

This was the best dream I’d ever had. And then my Muse and I took a dark detour.

“The trick,” she explained as we climbed the stairs, “is to always imagine the book that you want to read, and then write that book. Stay true to it.”

At the top of the stairs, we entered a glass elevator.

It lifted us incredibly high and then even higher into the air. Way above the bookstore was a graveyard of books—abandoned manuscripts. A devastating place with stacks and stacks of pages yellowed with age, half baked ideas, bleeding words, crumpled to pieces, burned to ashes, caked with dust.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

“You needed to see. Don’t give up. You’ll want to, but don’t ever give up. Books come here to die.”

“Then . . . show me that I am meant to do this.”

Suddenly . . . I was somewhere else. A library? A book signing? Another bookstore? I was unsure. My exact surroundings were unclear.

But here is the part that gets me every time. In the dream, there was a shelf full of my books, side by side, and I lifted one of them, at random, and flipped to a random page and read a small excerpt of the book—The Secret Garden scene from Pretty in Black.

And back in 2011, when I wrote that scene for the very first time in real life, it gave me chills. I had deja vu. I’d read the scene in my dream before I’d ever written it.

All I knew, was that at the end of the dream, I was happy and successful. And I had a lot of books on that shelf. A lot.

My Muse never promised me that this would be easy or that I would get it right the very first time.

But what she did promise me was that I would want to quit and she made me promise her that I wouldn’t. She promised that if I listened to her, to that quiet voice deep down within, that this would happen. It would be real.

And it is sort of real, but it’s not as real as I’d like it to be. It’s not as good as I want it to be. But I know I’m on my way there, because I’m not giving up.

I’ll just take out my red pen and hack it all up again, but I’m not giving up.

I call this place that I visited the Muse Mall because I think all creative people go here—musicians, artists, designers, etc—we all go there, and sometimes, we just don’t know it. I think I got lucky, or that I was blessed to have been able to remember it.

I had that dream sometime between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two and I remember every detail of it.

On some days, it feels like I have more ideas than I can handle, more books that I’m itching to write—ALL of which are blessings, gifts, I can’t complain—but it feels like I’m reliving 2012 while everyone else is moving forward. Thinking about the readers I’m collecting that want to read Evermore and how I’m detaining them from doing that is giving me anxiety.

But every time I want to quit and turn away, I think about those dusty books. I think about the readers who’ve stuck with me through all of this, and I know I can’t let them down. Not now.

This is my journey and it’s imperfectly perfect. Those books are mine and they will be there for me when I’m ready to write them, whether that’s this year, or next year, or ten years from now. I won’t let them end up on the abandoned shelf.

The Muse Mall—a fantastic place we can access in the creative mind. I really do believe we all go there.  

All images used in this post are from Pixabay and are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. 

We're at the halfway mark!

We're at the halfway mark on the Black Satin rewrites! 

I'm aiming for 120,000, and although it may go up and be more words than that, at least I know I'm halfway there and not only that, but this rewrite has already surpassed the original word count of 56, 423. 

60371 / 120000 words. 50% done!

The quicker I get these rewrites done and on the editing desk, the quicker I can fly through my outline of Raven in the Grave in April which means I can knock out a quick rewrite of Evermore in May! 

If everything goes well, and I do mean everything, and I get to have 5 glorious months of hardcore formatting and editing after May, we could get a November 2 release date on EVERYTHING. 

I'll do my best, but I won't rush it. And I'll keep you updated as promised. 

 

Author Bio—One Liner

I wanna be your queen of all the creepy things. 

A Beta Reader on Wattpad told me and I quote 

Wow this is so weird yet sounds so good! I think only you can turn something odd into something beautiful :3

My day = made. 

Because I'm repetitive and have no editive

Pretty in Black will be a brand new, re-imagined series by 2017, complete with detailed world-building and inventive settings to further distinguish it from the Twilight series, and it will re-branded and marketed as such—an originally envisioned Young Adult Paranormal Romance ¦ Dark Fantasy.

 

I am thrilled to have kept my favorite scenes from the original books so I could blend and remix them with never before seen content that will eradicate any and all Buffy the Vampire Slayer “similarities” while, interestingly, managing to keep all original elements from the original text. It has taken approximately a gazillion volts of brain-power and a thousand cups of tears to reframe my vision that my younger naive self established, incidentally, without realizing the repercussions of vitriol and digital hatemail—all of which I expressively appreciate as much as fanmail, if not increasingly more, for it has made me a much better writer.

 

And it will take time, and blood —if necessary — but I will not stop until I get where I desire to be with this series and make it all that it deserves to be. And I have time and blood, so here we go.

 

Evermore is being withheld from publication —until further notice — while Pretty in Black, Black Satin, and Raven in the Grave undergo major and significant rewrites.

 

It does not have a publication date. I do not know when it will be releasing. I will tell you as soon as I do.

 

To my Wonderful and Amazing Fans,

 

Thank you for supporting me and this series; I know this is a long and drawn out wait for Evermore, but I cannot apologize for making this decision for it is the most suitable for myself and all readers involved—currently and forthcoming.

 

Marcus Marble fans will appreciate the new edition— it is my gift to you!

 

Positioning myself as my own publisher and editor, I will release books with content and word counts that I deem necessary for both my readers and myself who are Marcus Marble and vampire starved.

 

Word Counts are expected to be as follows:

 

Pretty in Black: possibly clocking in at 188,000-200,000

Black Satin: will try to cap it off between 120,000 and 150,000 so we can get back to Marcus Marble as soon as possible (ahahaha, inside joke between me and an amazing blogger/author friend of mine; she knows who she is!)

Raven in the Grave: 150,000 (if at all possible)

Evermore: 200,000 or +

 

Which means that it will surpass the Twilight series word counts.

 

Yikes!

 

When romance joins fantasy, we (writers) must have thorough relationship building and fantastical world-building to justify our fictional worlds or else we are accused of insta-LURV and/or lack-luster imaginations from the literary police which means I have big literary shoes to fill and thus walk in— albeit—I am opening new possibilities of being verbally arrested for which I am excited! Because I am armed with love for my stories and my characters which I didn't have (like this) until now.

 

And before anyone (who is not already fangirling or fanboying at the new word counts) has a freaking cow (LOL), allow it to be noted that Simon & Schuster published Anna Todd's After series—a contemporary New Adult Romance—with these word counts:

 

(Roughly Guesstimated)

 

After: 188,000

After We Collided: 200,000

After We Fell: 245,000

 

When taking in consideration the amount of fanmail I have received asking for more Pretty in Black, I have taken an educated guess that it will be viewed by my fans as more than okay to do the same with my vampire romance/fantasy series.

 

—Raises glass in toast to Anna Todd and S&S for setting a new precedent. Lets do this shit—

 

Which—ding, ding, ding—higher word counts could become a new trend if authors are willing and/or capable to break the word count rules which modern publication standards have set in place.

 

Asides from praying, hoping, dreaming that my readers/fans don't blast me with WTF or GTFO messages upon republication of this series, I have no specific reason to reel in the word count because

 

as my own publisher, I am taking a chance on myself

Hello, e-books! I will not have to worry about retaining shelf-space or breaking spines, and when creating paperbacks, I will creatively squeeze it all in somehow or complain, beg, pray that my POD service gives me higher page counts and cheaper printing prices per book.

 

Not all books need such extensive word counts, but some books DO for REASONS.

 

Ahem, —vampires, romance, fantasy, —YES PLEASE give me MOOOOORE.

 

A book is a book is a book is a book . . . but I don't want to create a book; I want to create a world, and hopefully deliver a fulfilling experience.

 

In closing, I extend my everlasting gratitude to my fanbase and readership for their ongoing support and encouragement because I could not do this without YOU, dear readers.

 

Yours, eternally,

Rae Hachton

 

PS: Heres to Marcellie or Mellie (whichever you prefer) being the OTP of your ship. 

How to obtain the New Editions of Pretty in Black

For everyone who has e-mailed and asked, I've decided to write this post several months in advance so there will (hopefully) be zero confusion on release day about what's going on. I want everyone to be on the same page :) 

THIS IS HOW IT WILL ALL GO DOWN IN THE NEAR-FUTURE. 

PLEASE READ

 

PAPERBACK—If you're on my mailing list, I will provide a discount code so you can snatch the new editions for a fraction of the cover price. (LIMITED TIME OFFER) 

GOOGLE PLAY—Y'all have zero worries! Google Play is SO AWESOME that once I upload the new edition, there will be an AUTOMATIC OVERRIDE. BOOM! 

NOOK—(March 11, 2016) PLEASE VISIT & READ THIS ARTICLE and THIS BLOG POST.  If it is no longer March, I hope you took a Screen Shot of your purchased content. If you DID, E-mail me the receipt (s) on release day. If not . . . there's really nothing I can do at this point. 

AMAZON—The update SHOULD appear and be available within a week via MANAGE YOUR CONTENT AND DEVICES on the Amazon.com dashboard underneath "Your Account." 

KOBO (still looking into it) I think Kobo also allows updates. When I find out how it works, I'll post that information here. 

Apple i-Books—Also will have update available. The update bar should appear beside the book and you'll be able to click and update as you would do an app. 

SMASHWORDS—Man, it's been a looooong time since I used Smashwords for distribution. I no longer publish there and I have maybe like 10 readers who I know bought copies from there between 2012-2013 and I know exactly who each of them are. E-mail me :) 

WATTPAD—The new editions will, unfortunately, not be posted on Wattpad. Original versions will remain for those who've enjoyed them and for those who wish to make comparisons for Creative Writing purposes. 

I will designate 3-days to allow FREE downloads of the new edition of  Pretty in Black #1, (which I'll announce in advance when those days will be) and then the new edition goes back on PAID. 

Thank you! 

Dear NOOK Readers

In case you haven't heard the news, and I quote 

“Come 15 March, Barnes & Noble will be accelerating its digital retreat from the NOOK experiment, leaving customers with a week to salvage their purchased content.”

— http://diginomica.com/

I'm not sure exactly what is going on, but it basically means that my NOOK readers, if you want to keep the books you've already bought and downloaded, PLEASE SAVE YOUR CONTENT WHILE YOU CAN. 

You can read more about it here NOOK

But MORE IMPORTANTLY 

Please SCREEN SHOT, if at all possible, your digital purchase receipt for the items you bought. If you bought Black Satin, Raven in the Grave, or the Pretty in Black Omnibus Edition, SCREEN SHOT THE RECEIPT. 

Why? Because there will be new editions of these books releasing soon and I do not want you to have to repay for them. I will personally replace all copies IF YOU HAVE A VALID PROOF OF PURCHASE STAMPED between 2015-2016. 

No receipt to e-mail? No book. 

You can black out any personal information, (credit card number stuff, etc.)  I've never seen a B&N or Nook receipt so I have no idea what it even looks like, but I'm going to assume logically that there is an e-mail or proof of purchase involved somewhere after one buys a digital book. 

I will not replace the Pretty in Black copies and this is only fair because a lot of them I've given away for free, but what I WILL DO is designate a 3-day time frame, announce it ahead of time, and allow readers from ALL DEVICES EVERYWHERE to download the NEW EDITION of Pretty in Black #1  for FREE, as I've already planned. 

SO I suppose this means you'll have to make a new device selection for your reading, or something. I'm not sure. 

But please make sure you grab that screen shot ASAP. 

 

 

Run Mascara Run

THE RAVEONETTES are making MORE MUSIC! NEW TUNES! And as you know, The Raveonettes are my FAVORITE FAVORITE Band. There's simply no other band on the planet as amazing as they are—Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner. 

They inspired the Pretty in Black series, (And three of the book titles and Walter's middle and last name, haha) and they've inspired MY LIFE. So you HAVE to listen to this new song! It is EVERYTHING GOOD. I've listened to it like a hundred times already. 

I've yet to go to one of their concerts—I MUST DO THIS BEFORE I DIE!!—and I want to go soooooo badly! Their music is LIFE. 

On a different note, my mascara probably would be running right now if I was wearing any because I'm trying to get back into Black Satin after a short hiatus and getting there isn't exactly easy. I'm having to force myself to write words so I can reach the goal of completing this rewrite which should've been completed last month. Sigh. 

The GOOD news is that this book is gonna be 10x as better than it originally was, and for that, I am ecstatic. 

So I just wanted to let you know that my favorite band in the entire world is making new music, and that I'm still here, wrestling with myself to see the new versions of the Pretty in Black novels through to completion. I hope that in my next post on my blog I can squeal that I've finally completed the first draft of the new Black Satin Manuscript, because that definitely needs to happen. 

 

The Elevator Pitch for the Pretty in Black series

When the new books in the Pretty in Black series release, and Evermore, I will be posting the shorter versions of the blurbs on the sales page because readers need quick, bite size, snappy information that catches their attention, not epic paragraphs they have to sift through. So here goes, the loglines or "Elevator Pitch" style blurbs for all four books! 

Can't wait to use these! The only changes I'll probably make are swapping "A girl" and "A teenage girl" for "Eleanor" in the sequel loglines. 

The longer blurb will follow directly after, of course.

Pretty in Black: A teenage girl meets a vampire in a cemetery who saves her life.

Black Satin: In the sequel to Pretty in Black, a girl races against time to save the vampire she loves while fighting emerging feelings for the gargoyle who is helping her master newly discovered Parevermore powers.

Raven in the Grave: A girl and her immortal friends fight in a vampire battle, unaware that a war is awaiting them.

Evermore: A teenage girl marries her vampire sweetheart knowing that she may not get a happily ever-after, but she is determined to challenge, and possibly fight against, the odds. 

Pretty in Black's Official Blurb

The New Blurb is here! 

However, the release date is not. I'm aiming to have this book out by October 1, 2016 though, along with the rest of them, but it's not official. 

VelveTEEN—a Teen Pulse Imprint will be publishing the new edition of this book and get ready guys, wait for it, wait for it . . . it's an estimated 640 pages. Yup. A nice word count floating somewhere between 160-200k. I'll post the final count before release day. 

Damn, some of you might say. That's tooooooo many words. 

Baloney! 

I could decorate an entire wall or two in my house with the emails I've gotten from readers saying that my books are always too short and that they want MOOOOOOORE, especially from Pretty in Black and Marcus and Ellie. 

Be careful what you wish for! 

The Cover will be unveiled later this year. 

You can add the new version to your Goodreads Here

HERE IS THE NEW BLURB! 

I could hear him calling for me—I felt him in my blood. The possibility that Marcus could be a vampire had never occurred to me. Why would it? Not when everything about him seemed so utterly and breathtakingly human.

From this darkly romantic world of raven and crow shapeshifters emerges a different take on the classic vampire.

Eleanor Piper never thought that the day her life almost ended would also be the day she found true love, but she’s a little more than used to her life being turbulent, especially ever since it has fallen apart.

Her sister was murdered, her parents divorced, and her boyfriend and best friend abandoned her when she needed them the most.

When she meets the mysterious and charming Marcus Marble in a cemetery, her life begins to change for the extraordinary. But unknown to her, this dark prince has descended from an Underworld and he is hiding the vampire that is inside because his kind—the Evermores—are never to indulge or partake of the red gold.

Determined to be with her, he finds himself walking on the edge of desire where every kiss could become a bite.

Enchanting her, he soon whisks her away to the world of Nevermore and her dreary life becomes dreamy, but she is about to discover that he is a vampire . . . with a burning desire to do anything to make her his.

Set in the southern Gothic town of Pine Hills, South Carolina, with the beautifully haunting backdrop of drooping Spanish moss and crumbling overgrown cemeteries, the world of reality and fantasy are about to collide, and Eleanor just might realize that the boundaries between life and death are closer than she ever imagined.  

 * * * 

The new version will be told in alternating POV with both Marcus and Eleanor as the narrators!