Kate Corcino's Blog, page 9

“How Do I Write This?” — Writing Research for Beginners

On my to-do list today is a blog post I’m scheduled to do for a group. I plan to write about finding inspiration in the world.

After seeing FB posts on several writing groups, I’m wondering if I should change it to basic writing research. I’m seeing way too few quick answer and writing process questions today and way, way too many, “I have this idea. How would it work? What should I write?”

Um, that’s a part of your world-building, and you will be far, far better off if you do it for yourself.

I knew zip about nanites, bio-terrorism, or really *electricity* before I started writing Spark Rising. Yep, I was a flip the switch for lights and don’t stick a fork in the outlet girl. That’s an exaggeration, but not by much. I had a very basic understanding of electricity. I love science, but that just wasn’t a field that excited me. Now? I’ve got a deeper knowledge base of direct current, alternating current, batteries, Tesla being the real man and blah, blah, blah. Not an expert–not even close–but enough to build on. I had an idea and I researched the hell out of it, fitting together pieces of reality with my fantasy. (IMPORTANT NOTE: I DO NOT write hard scifi. If I did, this “expose” would be shameful! Just sayin’!)

The thing is, each bit of research fed the creative part of my brain. A side note or chasing something that seemed cool but irrelevant down a rabbit hole often led to my next big idea or even a new plot point (Capacitors! Oh, my love affair with capacitors!). You’re doing yourself no favors by looking for “shortcuts” in other people’s minds. And no, I’m not talking collaboration…I’m talking about building your idea from the ground up and making sure that YOU understand your world so you can take your reader with you.

Don’t know how to write an idea about a deep-sea military installation in the future, because you just don’t have the science? READ. RESEARCH. Read some more. Offer to take a quick-thinking friend out for coffee/a meal/drinks if they’ll let you riff on your idea and give you feedback. Find yourself a friendly oceanographer or military engineer (people LIKE talking about what they do, so long as you’re not wasting their time–do research first!). Read and research some more. Chase inspiration bunnies. Take notes, of whatever depth your writing process requires.

Then sit your ass down and write. It’ll suck at first. It’ll feel awful and unnatural.

Until one day, it won’t. One day, it’ll feel amazing. To get to that day, you just have to slog. If you can enjoy the hard work along the way, so much the better, but please have no illusions…after the initial inspiration, it’s HARD WORK.

Do it.

An Honor for Spark Rising

I am extremely pleased to announce that Spark Rising won Second Place in the Paranormal, Fantasy, and Futuristic category of the Toronto RWA’s 2014 Catherine Award. It was a great honor to have made it into the final rounds with the three other competitors!

Weekend Writing Warrior – Ignition Point

My entry to this weekend’s Weekend Writing Warrior Entry is a snippet from “Ghost Story,” the third story in the recently released Ignition Point. We’re heading closer to the release of the related novel at the end of the month, and this story introduces the protagonist a few years before her story starts in Spark Rising.

 

Excerpt from “Ghost Story”

As soon as Ghost came closer she could smell the infection that would kill him in a few days, and a sick boy alone against Scavengers wouldn’t survive.

She weighed the danger to herself, then sighed. “I can help.”

“You’re a curandera?”

Lena shook her head and answered with the truth she was never meant to share, “Spark.”

“I’m not a battery.” He huffed a brief laugh.

“Actually,” she told the young Neo-barb, “you kind of are to me.”

 

 

If your interest is piqued, Ignition Point is on sale for $.99 and can be found on Amazon here.

More Weekend Warrior Writing authors can be found here. Have an amazing Sunday!

Chapter One of Spark Rising Available on Wattpad

I’ve made the first chapter of Spark Rising available on Wattpad here. I plan to add more chapters every few days as we count down to the release date of the novel at the end of November. Please have a look. Let me know what you think…and feel free to share the link.

Have an amazing day!

A Word on Reviews, Honesty, and Gratitude

I’d like to share my thoughts on gratitude and reviews. My first book released this month. IGNITION POINT is a collection of short stories (perfect for waiting room reading, or a train ride, or a bathtub read that won’t leave you too pruny! ) that are set in the same world as and featuring an earlier glimpse of the characters from the novel due next month. In the days after the release, it briefly made it into the Amazon Top 100 Bestsellers for Paid Sci Fi Anthologies and Collections (at #89), and I was thrilled beyond words. I was also incredibly grateful to those of you (and those I don’t know at all) who spent .99 to see what I’ve been talking about non-stop for so long. I didn’t write the stories for me. I wrote them for others. That people are buying them humbles and thrills me in a way that I’m not sure I can express.

I can only hope that those who’ve bought the book like it. The best way for me, and any other potential readers, to know is for you to share your thoughts in an honest review (on Amazon, on Goodreads, or on a blog if you have one).

Yes, I keep stressing HONEST review. Obviously, I’m in no more hurry than any other author to be savaged if it wasn’t well-received, but I also understand that readers (including myself) use those ratings. And as I was reminded last night when a one-star review helped me decide to buy a book, sometimes what you didn’t like about a book will be exactly what someone else is looking for. If there aren’t any reviews, good or bad, potential readers will never know that.

That’s why I was also thrilled to receive my first four-star review. Don’t get me wrong. I love that I have five stars on there. I love that those who’ve read the book are as excited about the world and characters as I am. But that four-star review didn’t mean that the reviewer wasn’t excited, it meant that he/she took the review (and by extension, the book) seriously. The review itself was enthusiastic. So why four stars? Perhaps phrasing in the writing that didn’t resonate? Perhaps one of the three stories wasn’t as well-liked? I don’t know. But I do know that I am grateful that the reviewer took the time to consider, to weigh, and to give my potential readers (and me) the gift of honesty.

I hope that those of you who’ve bought the book might be moved to leave a review. They really do matter. And that those of you who have not picked it up might reconsider. Either way, thank you for putting up with me and for the companionship and encouragement as I bump, bump, bump along this road. It means the world.

And now, the obligatory link, because I’m a writer, and I wrote these stories to be read! Have an amazing day.

Ignition Point: A Progenitor Anthology

IGNITION POINT is Live on Amazon!

I’m pleased to announce that IGNITION POINT is live on Amazon today.

IGNITION POINT is a collection of short stories set in the same world as the novel, SPARK RISING, that releases in November. Each of the three stories stands alone, but together they build toward the novel.

Two hundred years after the cataclysm that annihilated fossil fuels, Sparks keep electricity flowing through their control of energy-giving Dust. The Council of Nine rebuilt civilization on the backs of Sparks, offering citizens a comfortable life in a relo-city in exchange for power, particularly over the children able to fuel the future. The strongest of the boys are taken as Wards and raised to become elite agents, the Council’s enforcers and spies. Strong girls—those who could advance the rapidly evolving matrilineal power—don’t exist. Not according to the Council.

* “Ward” introduces Thomas, a thirteen-year-old boy rescued from Scavengers, marauding slavers who murdered both his biological and foster parents and sold the highly powered boy to the highest bidder—the Council of Nine. Dumped at the Ward School to train his abilities, Thomas must learn to survive among a new breed of savages…the boys who have been training there since they were five and the men who must hone them into weapons.

* “Blood and Water” is the story of Lucas, a young man who has spent his childhood shunned by his powerful, religious family for the crime of being born a Spark. On the cusp of attaining his place in the world his grandfather intends to re-shape, Lucas will discover the heavy price of belonging. Will he pay it, or will he count the costs and deem them too high?

* “Ghost Story” shows how lives lived on the edge—of society, of safety, of sanity—intersect. Lena, a highly powered runaway, fled a life of hiding from the Council. Elias is one of the so-called New Barbarians, those who choose to live free, if hard and dangerous, lives. Wounded and dying, he hunts the Scavengers who killed his family and took his brother to sell. A chance meeting in the desert of what was once New Mexico will change them both forever.

Cover Reveal for Spark Rising

I am so pleased to be able to finally share the cover for Spark Rising. It’s been a long journey, but I think that Regina Wamba of Mae I Design & Photography did an amazing job! If you love it and are in need of design work or photography, please consider contacting her at http://www.maeidesign.com/

Without further ado, here is the cover:

The book is also listed on Goodreads now, and ready and willing to be added to your TBR queue! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22705139-spark-rising

Starry Nights and the Creative Process

Hi, and welcome to my post on the SFR Brigade’s Midsummer Blog Hop–your chance to read great posts and win wonderful prizes (more on that below)! The theme this year is “Starry Nights” — and as soon as I heard it, I knew what I’d be writing.

Even as a newbie writer, I’ve discovered that people are fascinated with the writing process. A question common to most writers is, “Where do you get your ideas?” And the answer is generally pretty complicated–ideas can come from a snippet of conversation overheard, a news article, a bit of science, a “what if?” question. They can spring whole into the author’s head as a story, or as a character begging for a story. Or they can be sparked by a photograph.

In the case of my novel Spark Rising, it was a series of photos called “Darkened Cities,” created by photographer Thierry Cohen, that led to brainstorming that led to a character, hiking through the southwestern US desert that I love. It was night, and starlight swirled all around her, lighting her way. That vision, of course, fed into weeks of character sketches, plotting, and research into eco-terrorism, nanites, the US petroleum industry and protection districts, and a grab-bag of conspiracy sites (all of which likely have me on a watch list somewhere!). But it all began with those breathtaking photos.

It’s funny, because the scene that I imagined, and ultimately wrote in a short story prequel to the novel, was of a young woman in the wilderness. It would seem that those darkened cities would have little to do with the quality of starlight for her. But in the back of my mind, I knew that the world had gone dark and the same starlight that lit her path was now visible the world over. Not only was it more visible, but how the survivors of this world felt about it defined who they became.

Excerpt from Ghost Story:

Darkness fell over their camp, and their eyes adjusted to the gradual loss of light. They were aided by the brilliant blanket of stars that lit the sky above them. As always when she was out at the same time as the stars, Lena stared up at them, tracing the bright whorls and shapes with her eyes. The Natives believed there were answers and truths hidden in the stars. The old people, those who had died before the Second Dark Ages, had scoffed at such things. Lena wasn’t sure which was the truth, but she found peace in them. That was enough.

“You don’t mind the stars?” Ghost asked her. His quiet voice from where he lay on his side a few feet away barely disturbed the night.

Lena looked up at him. “Mind the stars?”

He nodded. “Some don’t like them. They remind us of how small we are. And alone.”

Lena chuckled. “I’ve had a long time to get used to the idea of being small,” she said, referring to her child-like height, “and I prefer being alone.”

“Why are you alone?” He stared, waiting.

Lena used her index finger to trace star shapes and swirls into the sand beside her. “I was always alone,” she finally answered, “even when I was surrounded by family. They knew I was different from the beginning, I guess. In the relo-cities, different is dangerous. When they sent me for my testing year—” She glanced up to be sure he understood. “They send us to be tested when we’re five years old, to see if we are Sparks?”

He nodded understanding.

“When they sent me,” she continued, “I was supposed to pretend to be weak.” She looked down at the shapes she’d drawn into the earth. She drew the side of her palm across them, wiping them away. “But I couldn’t. I forgot. So my father made me hide, instead. I lived like that, hidden in the house, until he died. After that—” Lena shrugged. “I left. And there is nothing that could ever make me go back. No one will ever tell me who to be or how to live ever again.” Her voice had risen, but the wind snatched the remembered fury and helplessness and carried them away. She could feel Ghost’s eyes on her and, sheepish, she shrugged. “I got tired of hiding.”

“I can imagine.” He shook his head. “But it’s good that your family was able to resist the blood price. I didn’t think your kind—city dwellers—had that kind of loyalty. So that’s something to be grateful for, at least.”

“Blood price?”

“The blood price the Council offers for girls like you?”

Lena swallowed. The wind chilled her cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

I tried to imagine what it would feel like to live in a world that had been devastated by forces the average person didn’t understand. What would it be like, as a tiny human looking up at the vast, star-whorled sky, to be reminded of our place in the universe? And how could that shape those survivors? The answers to those questions became a novel.

I hope you found this glimpse into the creative process fun — and that you were as inspired by Thierry Cohen’s photos as I was! To be entered in a random drawing here on my personal page, please leave a comment on this post sharing your favorite sci fi inspiration — whether it’s a book, a movie, a science article, or a photograph.

Thanks for visiting! Both Spark Rising, my debut novel, and Ignition Point, a free companion book of short stories set in the same star-lit world, will be released this year. Please consider following me here or on my Facebook author page for updates. And have a blast on the blog hop!

Those of you not participating in the blog hop, please reconsider. The stories written and the prizes provided by the author members of the SFR Brigade are amazing, ranging from $25 to $100 gift cards to amazon or Barnes & Noble PLUS 11 to 41 ebooks!

Sign up for prizes via Rafflecopter.

And continue on the SFR Brigade Midsummer Blog Hop.

First Excerpt from Spark Rising

In celebration of a fan milestone on my Facebook author page, I held a giveaway for a gift card and the opportunity to choose which excerpt from the novel I would share first. This is the selection she chose. I hope you enjoy it…there will be more to come!

 

Excerpt from Spark Rising, Chapter 8:

Lena sank back, allowing the restraints to pull her to the bed. A memory flashed into her mind: crying as her mother brushed her snarled hair. The brush caught; Lena’s breath caught with it. Her mother’s hands stilled as she caught the snarl in her fingers and gently untangled it, urging Lena to recite the Spark’s Rede, the code that all of the Spark children learned in their earliest years. She began, voice quavering, high and pained, “I will do no harm with my power. I will follow the will and the good of those without. This gift is my virtue; My Councilor is my guide.” By the time she finished, the knot, and with it the pain, were gone. Her mother told Lena many times the act of focusing on the words could keep pain at bay.

Her lips moved. The Rede came back to her, as if she was young again. The pain didn’t recede.

Lucas’s voice intruded, disgusted. Put upon. “I should have sent for the sister.”

The Rede stuttered in Lena’s mind. I will do no harm…. Her eyes lifted to Lucas. But they could? They could do whatever they wanted to the people she loved? No more. I will do harm. I will be free.

She focused the scream inside, rage making her immune to the effects of the current. Dust swarmed to answer her. The scream howled free. With it, white light arced across the room, seeking the men. Her electric-coated shriek of rage and grief released something within her. She convulsed, her body arching up in a corona of white light that flashed up and across the room with a concussive boom of sound that drowned out her scream. It sucked away her breath and her voice died, the electricity following it back, crackling away into nothing.

When Lena’s eyes fluttered open, the windowless room was dark. The brilliant after flare of the branching white heat etched her vision, glowing in the black. From somewhere nearby, Lena heard the faint metallic squeak of a fixture swinging. Voices shouted from outside the room. Someone banged at the door.

Inside the room with her, there was nothing. Lena pulled her body up to the right, trying to roll to the limits of the restraint straps, but they didn’t hold. As her body pressed against them, there were dry pops and faint metallic tinging as the leather cracked and fell away from the buckles. Waiting for the pull of the taut, thick restraints, Lena rolled up and almost off the bed. She caught herself with one shaky hand.

She leaned her face over the edge, eyes vainly searching past the vivid memory of light into the darkness below. Her mother was down there. She’d freed herself to go to her mother.

“Mama?” It hurt to make even the faint, hoarse sound she managed. No response. She pushed with her hand and eased up to sit, pulling her legs free of the cracked restraints to swing over the edge of the bed. She turned in the darkness. Something brushed her head and she jumped back from the sound of swinging metal. Pushing her hand out in front of her in the dark, she reached up, searching. Her hand made contact with one of the metal lights that had been trained upon her when she woke. It hung down over her now, loose and broken.

What had she done?

Growing a Fan Community on Facebook

Growing a Fan Community on Facebook

We are creeping up on the first big milestone over at Kate Corcino on Facebook — almost to 100 fan likes! When it hits the “big 100,” I will be posting excerpts from the novel and giving a small gift to one lucky fan to celebrate!

One fan of the page will be chosen at random to receive one $15 gift card to Amazon, iTunes, or Barnes and Noble (recipient’s choice), as well as being the one to make a choice: Will the first excerpt shared from Spark Rising be an action scene, a suspenseful scene, or a bit of sexy scene?

Feel free to share this post on your pages and/or with specific people you think might enjoy being a part of the journey of a new sci fi/fantasy/romance author. Thank you for “liking” the page!