Jamie Sullivan's Blog, page 4

Reflecting Back on NaNoWriMo

After years of watching friends and acquaintances freak out every November, I decided to join in, and for the first time I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

The goal of NaNo is 50,000 words in the month of November. I knew going in that this was an unrealistic goal for myself; the most I’ve ever written was probably while I was working in The Only Way, and I wrote about 30,000 in a month (1000 words per day is very prolific for me).

So, for this month, I set a goal of 40...

On “Real” Writing

A few weeks ago, I was discussing my edits for The Only Way with my mother, while my father puttered around in the background. Over the last two years, he’s overheard me talk about my writing quite a bit. He’s sat at the table while my mother and I talked about word counts, editing, character development, and more.

But this time he stopped what he was doing and looked over. “What are you talking about?”

“My new book,” I explained.

“Oh,” he said with a wave of his hand. “That online thing?”

I expl...

News Roundup!

In lieu of a real post (I’ve got one started, I promise!) here’s a quick news roundup:

Fairytales Slashed: Volume 5 is available TODAY as an ebook (print volume is coming soon…)!From the LT3 website:

Seven tales, familiar and new, where nothing and no one is precisely what it seems, and where it will take more than determination and magic to set all to rights again …

Part of Your World (Jamie Sullivan) is the tale of a man adrift, his dreams of music all but lost, and his only solace found in ta...

On Titling

Anyone who’s really stopped to take note of the names of my stories has probably noticed that coming up with titles is not my forte. I’ve heard authors say that the title comes first and the story flows from it. I’ve heard authors say that the initial idea and the title go hand in hand, inextricably entwined.

This is just not the case for me. I write my story, and then I polish it up, and then I get ready to submit it to my publisher, and then I realized, “Oh no, I still need a title.” And the...

On Writing F/F

I find the issue of F/F or “femmeslash” within the gay romance community fascinating. I know many women who actively read gay romances or slash fanfic, but most of them read M/M. I know several bisexual, pan, or lesbian women, the majority of whom still read M/M (I have one friend who is a lesbian and tends to read M/F exclusively, because that’s where she finds the most interesting romances involving women). For all intents and purposes, all the women I mentioned are good fits for F/F. Yet,...

Character Introductions: Part of Your World

In advance of the release of Fairytales Slashed 5,I thought I’d post introductions to some of the characters.

Ren

The water was deep and dark, cold and biting. Tangled seaweed rose up like grasping fingers, a dark forest on the ocean floor where someone could get lost if he wasn’t careful.

The light was dim at this depth, filtering down murkily from above, but enough to catch the shimmer of fins as a solitary fish swam by. It darted playfully between the fronds, deeper and deeper into the seawee...

On Editing

Editing is a tricky beast. Right now, I’m looking through the galleys for Part of Your World, for Fairytales Slashed 5 (announced last week). I’ve edited this story a (fitting) FIVE times now: when I first wrote it, before I submitted it to Less Than Three, when I integrated the editor’s suggestions, when I went through the galley proofs before the serial went live, and now.

Want to know how many errors I’ve caught so far?

Twenty-two in just sixty pages! Good grief.

Now, some of these are merely...

Fairytales Slashed 5

More news today! Some of you may have caught my stories Part of Your World and Beast when they ran as serials on Less Than Three Press last year. I’ve just been informed that they will both be included in the next Fairytales anthology: Fairytales Slashed 5!

I’m very excited about this because Beast is in the running for my favorite of my own stories (it’s neck-in-neck with Imaginary), and I’m thrilled people will have the chance to own it.

These two works are probably the most “me” stories out...

On Reading Reviews

I know some authors say they never read reviews, but I suspect they are lying. It’s actually addictive, checking Goodreads and seeing what people think of my work. I like to believe I’m fairly zen about these things – I try not to freak out, to whine, to wonder what I could have done differently to make that three star rating turn into a four, or even a five. Some people just don’t like my stories. Fair enough.

But beyond the nice high I get from a good review (and the inevitable low from the...

News Roundup!

I’m thrilled to start this blog off with two great pieces of news:

LT3 Press has decided to release some of its titles as audiobooks, and has asked that Imaginary be included!

It won’t be released for quite some time, obviously, but sometime in the future, you’ll have the option of listening toImaginary,as read by a professional. I’ll keep you all updated as I know more about the whole process.

And in my second piece of news, I’m beyond excited to report that LT3 Press has accepted my latest man...