Rani Divine's Blog, page 23

World-Building

Hey guys! Today I have something really fun that I want to show you. If you’ve joined in for the fun over in Divine Reads, then you’ve seen a little bit more of this, but I really wanted you guys to see what it’s like when you’re world building. It’s more than just creating a set of characters and a setting in which for them to live—I also had to create the world itself, which meant creating a map for my druids and humans to live out their lives.
It all started when I was writing Cedwig. I realized that I had no idea what this world really looked like, in terms of a map. I didn’t know where everything was, in relation to the other. I knew Coetir took place on an island, but what existed beyond that? Obviously, there was more. The world couldn’t only have one tiny little island as its only land. That wouldn’t do. Besides, Cedwig was already in the works. Dwr was conceptualized. There was more to be done!
So, I opened up the Paint program on my laptop, and I made this: 



My mother refers to it as a turtle going in for a piece of lettuce. Some of the information on it isn’t even correct, and nothing is to scale. It was only a way for me to remember which direction everything was, and to not confuse myself when it came right down to it.
Well, then I took up drawing. I even worked on the map for AC Schafer’s The Wraith and the Wielder, after a while. But this was what I got, the first time I started working on my Druid World Map:


Again, I had scale issues. Part of the world, part that I really need to be there, didn’t fit on the page. But I was also drawing on a smaller size paper than I probably should’ve been.
See, Anialych needs to fit on the bottom there. There’s a whole book based on those people, but their land didn’t even fit on the page. How rude of me. And I really hated drawing trees like that. After a while, my hand cramped, and I decided that there had to be a better way. (check out Schafer’s map, if you want to see what I eventually landed on doing)
Here’s what I ended up with next:



Well, at least the scale is mildly better. Nothing else really is. Things aren’t in the right places, the lake looks like a bean, and I went color happy with my markers. Things aren’t done with the right pens, and some things just don’t make sense the way I drew them, when you take the stories into account.
Oy, more work to be done.
And I’m still not finished, if I’m being honest. I still need trees, and I screwed up a cluster of mountains on my latest version, and I *still* haven't fixed the lake. But hey, the mountains are a more appropriate scale and the islands look good. Besides, I’m a work in progress too, and I don’t need the map to be completed for another year. It's just been a fun project for me to get into when I need a break from staring at a computer.
I just thought you all might like to see how something goes from an idea to a scribble, and from a scribble to a halfway completed project, something like this:


I'll get better at this, I swear.
Stick with me and I’ll show you the final before its released to the rest of the world, but if you want better updates, don’t forget to join in the fun at Divine Reads!
[love]
{Rani D.}

Reading and Writing

Well, good Tuesday to you!
I don’t think that’s a thing… but it is now. Good Tuesday. Every Tuesday is a good Tuesday, wouldn’t you say?
And today, I want to answer yet another of your questions. If you’ll remember, this month is our catch-all month, of the topics too short to be focused on for a whole month, and basically all the little ideas I got in 2017 and couldn’t talk about because they wouldn’t make a cohesive series. Well, take that! It’s not cohesive at all, and I planned it that way!
…I digress…
If you follow me on Goodreads at all, you’ll know I have a fairly… eclectic reading list. I’ve been reading everything from Agatha Christie to the Witcher novels, and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. But there’s something a couple fans have noticed, which I thought I should take a little bit of time to answer.
“Why don’t you read in the same genre you’re writing?”
First off, if you check my Goodreads out right now, you’ll think I must be joking. It says I’m reading Artemis by Andy Weir and Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian, and you all should know very well that I’m currently off the fantasy kick and writing in good ol sci-fi these days. But Artemis is sci-fi. So… that confuses things.
So I’ll just say that though Goodreads says I’m reading it, I haven’t actually made it past page one, primarily because every time I pick it up I get an idea for my book, and every time I pick up M&C I’m enthralled and can’t put it down.
But, I do not generally read books of the same genre in which I’m writing. It’s something of a rule of mine, and I stick to it almost exclusively. I very much dislike when I’m reading a book in the same genre of the book I’m currently writing.
Which is probably part of why it’s been hard to get past page one on Artemis as well…
Here’s why, though:
I don’t like to be distracted. I like to maintain a certain level of focus on the books I’m writing, and somewhere along the way I started to blur lines between reading and writing. That means that from time to time, what I was reading would find its way into what I was writing. And it happened not infrequently if the genres were the same. 
So right now, I’m writing a space epic and reading a nautical fiction from the 70s. The two have very little in common, and I like it that way. There’s no way for me to blur the lines and cross over from one to the other, so it’s safe—and actually, I tend to enjoy my reading more, if the genres are different.
If I’m reading the same genre I’m writing, sometimes it all feels like work.
Remember, if you want to keep a better eye on what I’m reading, or want to keep in touch with what I’m doing as a writer, be sure to join in on Divine Reads and follow me on Goodreads!
[love]
{Rani D.}

Shorter is better?

We’ve almost made it through the week! We’re so close, can you believe it? And I have an amusing little tidbit to share with you today, that I noticed over the holidays and couldn’t find a way to properly express… so I’m sharing it now.
Sometimes, I like short stories better. But understand me here: I mean both that I like writing them, more than I like writing novels, and that sometimes... I'd rather read them.
*gasp*
Blasphemy! I’ve always preferred writing novels over short stories. Shorts are harder to do, I’ve said. They take more effort to be concise and pristine in a small number of pages. You’re confined, unable to be free with your story and take it wherever you want to go, I’ve whined.
Well, in December I realized what’s so great about short stories.
Like I always say, it’s important that we’re writing. As writers, it’s just what we need to be doing. Duh. If you’re a writer and you’re not writing, something’s very wrong. Make sure you’re writing, all the time. Doesn’t matter what you’re writing, just make sure you write.
That’s been my mantra, for years. And I realized last month, that I’ve never honestly followed it. I said it, I recited it, but it didn’t hold true in my life. I always wanted to be writing novels, nothing more, nothing less. Just novels. If I wasn’t writing novels, then I wasn’t writing, and that wasn’t good.
Last month, however, was insanely busy. I didn’t get to write in my novels. I got to write short stories. And I actually really like them. They’re great, they were a lot of fun to write, and one of them I think I might be able to expand into a mini short story series, which could be cool. Never done that before. But I also discovered that short stories are easier to read when you're super busy, too.
Here’s the thing:
Short stories are easier to digest, easier to find time for, and sometimes all we can make ourselves do in a given month.
Here’s the kicker though:
For a lot of people, short stories is all they have time to read.
So, maybe short stories aren’t so bad after all. Maybe they’re just a great way to reach a new set of people with these amazing things called words. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not something we should shy away from at all, but something we should embrace with gusto.
Let’s write more short stories.
Submit them to Mavguard, while you’re at it. ;-)
But don't worry, I'm still working on a new novel right now, and I don't plan to stop. But I'll hopefully be pushing more interesting short stories out too. 
[love]
{Rani D.}

Rapid-Release

Hey guys! How are you doing? Well, I hope.
This month, as you well know, we’re talking about anything and everything. It’s catch-all month, and I’m actually finding this to be a lot of fun. It’s a great way for me to get to talk to you guys about topics I don’t usually get to mention, and tell you a little bit more about me and my writing as a whole.
Today, I’m answering a question that’s been put to me many times in the last few years. "Why don’t you rapid release?"
I’m sure you’ve heard of this, especially if you’re a follower of any indie authors on Kindle. Everybody recommends rapid release, because “it’s the only way to get people to see or read your books on Kindle.” Well, fie, I say. Fie! I disagree completely. Rarely ever is there only one way to do something.
But really, primarily, the reason I don’t rapid release is that I respect my readers more than that. I know my books are long, and that this is why I have to price them a little higher. It’s a waste if they were to be priced any lower, but I also can’t expect you all to drop your money on books when you have life to live as well.
Also, because my books are so long, I want to make sure you actually have the time to read them. I understand that life happens, that sometimes a longer book takes more than a week to read, and I respect you too much to demand that you read all six of my 200,000 word novels in the Druid series in six weeks flat.
Seriously, I just couldn’t do that.
But then again, it’s more than just that. 
200,000 words is a lot of words. That’s a lot to write, and it’s a lot to edit. It takes me the better part of a year to edit a single novel for release in the following year. That’s a long time. I can’t push myself any faster than that and expect the books to be on par with what I’ve already released in the series. I can’t. It’s simply not possible if I want to retain the caliber of release I’ve attained.
Never fear, however! For those of you who do read quickly, and for those of you who do want to see more of my books hitting the shelves in a year, there will come a time when I intend to make that happen.
It still won’t be rapid-release, but it’ll be better than one a year. And it’ll start with my next series, currently titled Earth-Space.
Unfortunately, that series won’t be coming out for a few years yet. But, fortunately, that means I have more time to start editing and getting them ready for release.
See, Earth-Space is unlike the Druid Novels. It’s not a series of standalone novels that link together to make one masterpiece. It’s a traditional series that flows one into the other—which also means I’ll need to edit the whole chunk at once, before I can release any of it. And that’s my intention.
This year, I’ll start editing the first book in the Earth-Space series (no, it doesn’t have a name yet), alongside Anialych. The series is only four books so far, so I could potentially release the whole thing in two years if I released two in a year (likely one in spring and one in late fall). Then I’d have more books on the shelves, and you guys would have even more reading to do—but I’d also be able to reach extra people, and the people who do like to read several 200,000 word novels in a year.
So there’s your answer. You won’t see rapid-releasing out of me at all, but hopefully you will see more than one book in a year when the time comes.
But that time is not now. Be patient. ;-)
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Write the whole thing first

I’m back! And on time! Be proud of me. Seriously. I have so much going on today it’s not even funny (I say that, and yet I try to always laugh through my longer and harder days…).
Today, I actually have something writing-related that I want to talk to you about. It’s something that I learned while releasing the Druid Novels, something I’ve now seen done by a lot of other authors, and something I really wanted to pass along. A piece of advice, if nothing else.
Write Your Series Before You Release It
Again, remember, it’s advice. You don’t have to listen to me. I suggest that you do, but you don’t have to.
See, it’s really annoying for readers, when authors take forever and a day to release the next book in the series. I’m actually one of those who will completely give up on the series if it takes the author more than two years to get the next book out. I will. I have no problem with that. I have a lot of other books in my to-read stack, and I don't have time for that. But, I also don’t want that to happen to any of you.
The best way to avoid it?
Write the whole series before you start releasing it. That way, you already have the books done before you start getting them out to the public, and there won’t be any fear of taking too long to get the next book on the market.
I’m not saying that you have to have all your books edited before you start releasing (though honestly, I think that’s sometimes a really good idea as well), I’m just saying that you should have them finished or at the very least mapped out before you start releasing.
I’ll be honest with you again here, guys. I didn’t have the whole Druid Novel series figured out when I started releasing. I actually just finished writing it last year. And I struggled through it, because the writing between all six books had to be at least semi uniform, and it had to read like they were the same story, even though each book is a standalone novel (except the last one). I wish that I’d written the whole thing before I started releasing it. I really do. Actually, right now, I wish I’d written the whole thing and edited it before I started releasing it. You have no idea how much easier that would’ve made my life. But I didn’t… and so now I’m passing on what I’ve learned, to you.
Write the whole series, or at the very least have a good idea of where you want the whole thing to go, before you publish the first book.
It’ll make things easier on your readers, because they won’t have to wonder when the next book will hit shelves, and it’ll make it easier on you—because you won’t have to stress over how the rest of the series is going to go, and whether everything’s going to come together the way you want it to.
It’ll already be done, the weight will be off your shoulders, and you can focus on getting the books out and giving them all the attention they need once they hit the shelves.
Trust me. Seriously.
[love]
{Rani D.}

Newsy

Hi guys!
Sorry about the mixup again last week. I’m determined to get things back in order this year, so it won’t happen again. I hope. Actually, it’ll probably happen again at some point, but thank you all for sticking with me through it. My schedule for posting is 1:00 (my time, MST) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but sometimes Thursdays get a little crazy for me. Oops.
Anyway, as you know, this month is the catch-all month, full of topics not long enough to make a full series out of. So, no real rhyme or reason to it. And the perfect opportunity to talk about…
The RAD Writing Newsletter
I try to give you guys the best and most current information I can about upcoming releases and what’s going on over at RAD, but really, the best thing you can do is get on their mailing list. Most of the time, those emails you get will be compiled by me, so it’ll just be like hearing from me a little more often. We send stuff out once a week, to let you know what we have going on at the store, what books we have coming up, and what’s going on with our authors. Not a lot, so you don’t have to worry about being spammed by yet another company.
I highly suggest signing up for the newsletter, primarily because they’ll be able to give you more current information on my books than I can. I know, it’s weird, but I can’t even tell you my release dates until they make it public information—which is usually done through the newsletter.
I also cannot for anything keep track of what I’ve said there and what I’ve said here all the time, so if you want to keep in the know about absolutely everything to do with Rani Divine’s writing, please go sign up over there.
You’ll get emails about deals, new releases (did you know we have another chapbook coming out this month?), and stuff we have going on. If we have events going on, they’ll be announced there, we’ll give you tidbits about the publishing world, and we’ll let you know what’s going on with Mavguard Magazine too!
So, lots to see and learn if you sign up. Click here and you’ll head over to the signup page.
Seriously, I’d be super thankful if you signed up, and I think you’ll like what you get from us when you do.
Oh yeah, and we give you a discount on your next order when you sign up. So there’s that. *wink*
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Divine Reads

Have you checked out Divine Reads yet?
I mentioned it a little bit on Tuesday. I actually posted about my New Year’s goals there, before talking about it anywhere else. And that’s what you can expect out of Divine Reads in the future as well.
It’s my new Facebook group, where I’ll be a little more vocal than I am in here or on my standard Facebook page. Why? Because since it’s a group, you’ll be better able to see what I’m posting, to see that I’ve posted, and to keep in touch with what’s going on with me and my writing.
Divine Reads is where I’ll be sharing with you about what I’m reading, what I’m writing, and what releases I have coming out in the near future.
There, you’ll be the first ones to know release dates, the first to see excerpts from my books and shorts, and you’ll get to see what I’m reading and whether or not I like it.
It’ll be fun, I promise!
What I want to do with Divine Reads is make a place where we can work together, where we can write and read, where we can share ideas and talk about what it’s like to be a writer. It’s also where RAD Writing will be hosting a special writing month later this year, for those of us whose Aprils and Novembers are just plain too busy for NaNoWriMo.
My Facebook page, if you hadn’t noticed, has become more about Too Many Books to Count and links to where you can get my books than anything else. Divine Reads, on the other hand, is where I want us to get to know each other. I want hang out with you, get to know you, share with you the struggles and joys of writing, the fun times and the hard times of doing the thing I love to do.
I want you to be a part of it.
Please, Click Here to check it out. If you want to join, join! If you don’t think it’s for you, that’s fine too. But if you know someone else who might like to be in on this, I’d love for you to invite them. It’ll be a lot of fun, especially once we really get going.
We’re a little smaller right now, yeah, but we’re only getting bigger. Things are only looking up.
Join the conversation. Join Divine Reads.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Gooooooooooaaaaal!

Happy New Year, everyone!
I hope you all had amazing weekends, stayed safe, and had a grand time ushering in the New Year. As for me, I got to spend it with my family and best of friends, so I’d say it was a great time all around.
This month, I couldn’t think of a theme. In fact, I thought of a bunch of topics, but no grounding theme to set them together… and I figured that was good enough. So, for the month of January, we’re talking about topics too short to make a series out of. 
It’s hodge-podge month, here in Too Many Books to Count.

If you’ve joined my DivineReads Facebook group, then you already know that I don’t really like setting resolutions when we come to the New Year. Most of the time, we don’t meet them. We don’t succeed. They’re just a thing that we tell ourselves we’re going to do, at the beginning of the year, and by the middle of February we’ve decided it wasn’t worth it.
Well, last year I set myself a goal, instead.
I wanted to start reading again. And I figured twelve books was a reasonable number of books to start with. One a month. Not too hard. I’d still have time to get everything else done, too.
Here’s what I ended up reading:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Tolkien)The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Tolkien)Corridor: A Novella (Parrish)The Last Wish (Sapkowski)Sword of Destiny (Sapkowski)Blood of Elves (Sapkowski)The Time of Contempt (Sapkowski)Ender in Exile (Card)Speaker for the Dead (Card)Xenocide (Card)Children of the Mind (Card)Murder on the Orient Express (Christie)World War Z (Brooks)Adam (Dekker)White Plague (Abel)
(I actually only finished White Plague on Saturday, so just barely squeaked that one in)
In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s more than twelve books. Yeah, that’s sixteen. Only technically, since one of them was a novella, but still! That’s better than what I set out to do. That’s four more books than I thought I would have time to read, and fourteen more books than I made time for in 2016.
And I’m not planning on stopping there.
No, 2018 I’ve set a marginal goal of eighteen books. That’s six more than my goal for 2017. And yeah, I know it’s only two more than I read in 2017, but you know what? I have a lot more I have to do this year. I have more work duties this year than I had last year. But I think I can make time for eighteen books, and I hope I’m able to exceed that number.
So that’s my goal. And here’s some of what I’m hoping to read:

Artemis (Weir)Master & Commander (O’Brian)Baptism of Fire (Sapkowski)Tower of Swallows (Sapkowski)The Lady of the Lake (Sapkowski)Death on the Nile (Christie)Pirate Latitudes (Crichton)The Wasp’s Nest (Norris)Dragon Teeth (Crichton)Beren and Luthien (Tolkien)

And that’s only ten. I have at least eight more slots to fill, so if you have any books you think I should check out, send me a link! And don’t forget to join Divine Reads if you want to keep in the loop about what I’m reading (more on that next time).
[love]
{Rani D.}

Bye, bye, 2017...

It’s the final post of the year, in Too Many Books to Count! I can hardly believe January is just around the corner. Honestly, I don’t think I’m ready for it, at all. I was having too much fun with Christmas, wore myself out, and now the end of the season is here. The holidays are almost done, the year is almost through… and I find myself wanting to say a few final words, before we say goodbye to 2017.
2016 was a year that I felt I had to defend. Everyone was angry at 2016 (or so it seemed), while I thought it was a fabulous year. 2017… I don’t honestly know what I should say about this year.
It’s been an interesting year, without a doubt. It was the year I got promoted to assistant editor, the year I released Dwr and Letters from Hell, the year of so many great and fun things—but it was also the year we suddenly and unexpectedly said goodbye to my grandmother. None of us thought that would happen so soon. We thought we had years and years to go, that she was the strong one who would live on well past others who now live on without her. And so she is, living on, just not where we can see her. But sometimes I do feel her looking at me and laughing, especially when I remind people of exactly what she would say in a given situation.
2017 was predominately a good year. Many amazing things happened in my life. Things put themselves in order, got themselves to where I both needed and wanted them to be. I grew and developed relationships, I expanded my writing, I learned things about craft that had been eluding me for years, and I finally got back into reading. I started new books and scrapped them, I finished writing the last of the Druid Novels, I laughed until my sides hurt, I cried until I couldn’t breathe… but it was a good year.
As 2018 approaches, I find myself wondering what it will behold. What amazing things, what sorrowful things, what beautiful and tragic things will take place in the coming year? What will we all become, by the end of 2018?  We’ll have to get there to find out. But the thing I really want to remind you, is this:
If you go into something with positivity, you’re only one step ahead of most. Keep your positivity, keep your optimism, don’t let the world drag you down into its uncertainty. Don’t let anyone else define you or tell you what you’re supposed to be. That’s up to you. Your year is what you make it, your year is what you mold it to become. And yes, some of the things that make up this year will not be under your control, but your response to those things? Yeah, you get to decide that.
So keep your head up. Your year is what you want it to be.
Let’s make it a good one, shall we?
[love and cheers to 2018]
{Rani Divine}

PC?

Hey guys!
How was your Christmas? 
You know how, when you grow up with one thing, it’s hard to conceptualize something different? Like, I grew up with Christmas, just Christmas, so I sometimes have difficulty even remembering that other holidays exist, or that some people would choose not to celebrate Christmas. I don’t mean that in an ignorant way. No, I know there are other holidays, and I know that other people celebrate them, but I don’t celebrate them, so sometimes they don't occur to my slightly childlike mind. I don’t have a need to remember on them, to focus on them. For instance, I’m not Jewish, so I don’t celebrate Hanukah. I think it would be presumptuous of me if I did, because, again, I’m not Jewish. But if you’re Jewish, I will wish you a happy Hanukah (if I know you celebrate it, anyway). But then, why would you wish me one, if you know I don’t celebrate it? Wouldn't that be silly?
I’ve gotten off on a topic I didn’t intend. 
I don’t like political correctness. I don’t. I don’t think we should all be careful what we say, so that we don’t offend anyone. I think that we should all grow a spine and get used to the fact that if you live in the real world, surrounded by real people who have very different beliefs from your own, you’re probably going to hear something that offends you, every so often. In fact, you’re probably going to say something that offends someone, without even knowing that it’s offensive.
It’s a product of the different ways we were raised, and there’s really no way around it. We all just need to get used to it. And while, yes, we should be cautious so as not to outright state something with the intention of offending others, we should also be aware of the fact that parts of our lives will be offensive to others—and that parts of their lives are offensive to us. Deal with it. Nothing you can do about it. I celebrate Christmas, as a Christian. That's offensive to some people, but that doesn't mean I'm going to change the way I celebrate, or stop telling people to have a Merry Christmas.
This wasn’t what I wanted to talk about today. Actually, I was going to talk about my first Christmas without my grandmother. Then I started typing, and all this came out. But I really think that this is something we all need to hear, and it’s something that pertains to our writing as well.
Don’t be so cautious in your writing that you’re afraid of offending one of your readers. I can nearly guarantee you that I’ve offended people with some of the things that I’ve posted online, some of the things I’ve written in my books. In many ways, my beliefs are quite clear based on the themes of my writing. In others, my beliefs couldn’t be farther from the things I write. That’s what we need to be okay with.
Your writing is a reflection of you, yes, but it is not you. It doesn’t have to conform to everything you believe in, it doesn’t have to be politically correct, it doesn’t have to bend to the rules of society. In fact, it probably shouldn’t do any of those things—a lot of the time, that’s what makes writing better.
Don’t follow the rules. Don’t do what society says you should do. Those are the books that stand out in a crowd, the stories that people don’t forget about.
And I think that’s a great note to leave off on, as we approach the end of the year.
(don’t worry, I still have one more post coming up before the year ends)
[love]
{Rani D.}