Constance Burris's Blog, page 6

What I Learned Writing Chalcedony

So… Chalcedony Everleaf Book 2 is off for its last major edit. If all goes well, I’m hoping for a May release. Fingers Crossed.  Once again, I’m thinking about what worked and what didn’t work in my writing/drafting process.

A Clean First Draft

I don’t like editing, so I decided to make the first draft of Chalcedony as clean as possible. For the first half, Chalcedony was nice, clean, and full of descriptive writing. I got anxious towards the end, and the writing was a lot rougher to edit. For Book 3: Jade, the goal is not to get too excited and make sure the end is as clean as the first half.

Quality over Quantity

To be a successful writer (traditional or published) an author has to get as many books published as possible as quickly as possible. I tried to rush in order to meet a January deadline for Chalcedony.  Obviously, that didn’t work. I can’t write fast while working full time and balancing my home life.

I’m gonna have to change my publishing schedule. I officially started working on Chalcedony in November.  The 1st draft 4 months to draft.  If Chalcedony is released in May. Jade will have a November 2016 release.

Random

Metaphors and similes. I used to think they were a waste of time. Just tell the damn story. As I read as a published author.  I have learned how much similes, metaphors, descriptions and the all enhances the story. Descriptive writing immerses the reader and evokes emotions. I want to evoke lots of emotions. The art of writing can be very manipulative. I want to manipulate the world. I wish I would have paid much more attention to descriptive writing in high school now.

–PS. If you’re interested in an advanced review copy of Chalcedony, let me know and leave a comment. A chance for a review copy is increased if you have reviewed the first book.

Colony: Season One

I guess my husband thinks he knows me or something because he turned me on to Colony. A show on USA cable network. I had never heard of it before.  But Last Friday, we watched the first few episodes together and I was hooked. I’m an addict, so I binged watched the entire season in one weekend while he slept.  Y’all know how I do.

Here is the Amazon blurb:

Set in the very near future, “Colony” centers on one family’s struggle to survive and bring liberty back to the people of an occupied Los Angeles.

That’s about how I write blurbs for my books. sucky. At first, we are introduced to Will  played by Sawyer from Lost Aka Josh Holloway.  Dude still looks hella good. Will is a mechanic, and I’m like yeah… its gonna star a regular person and not a cop. Spoiler Alert: I was wrong. He turns out to be a cop. I was disappointed. There is nothing original about that.

But then we meet the wife Katie played by Rick’s wife from The Walking Dead. I was wondering if she was tired of playing the wife to cops. Apparently she was because her role in Colony is soooo much more than just a wife and mother. At a conference last year, I sat on a panel about mothers. The number one complaint: mothers aren’t allowed to have adventures. Well, the ladies on that panel would love this show. Colony is all about the mom having adventures. Well, not all.  I’d say its about 55% mom and 45% dad doing the adventuring and advancing the plot.

While I was watching, I kept thinking of Fury Road. Where George Miller fooled the viewers into believing Fury Road was a manly man action movie, and then he makes it all about Furiousa and women. Colony isn’t as feminist centered as Fury Road, but it comes close. Like Fury Road it has something for the woman and for men.

Diversity: B

Much as been said about the lack of diversity on extras on movie sets that are located in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto.  Colony is first show I’ve ever seen that got it right.  In fact, it was so different and diverse, it was jarring and took me out of the story for a little bit. Note: Yes, the extras are diverse, but most of the main characters are white as hell.

Sexy, Sexy: A+

Lost will forever go down in my household as the last TV show my entire family watched without complaints. (We binged watched it on Netflix over a couple of months).

I wasn’t a big fan of Sawyer.  But there is something about those dimples.

Tory Kittles

Oh my Gash, this man bought all the sexy. Yes, he sounds and looks like Denzel Washinton. But whatever. He rocks in this role as the emotionless mercenary with a heart of gold. I can’t wait to see where he ends up in Season 2.

Colony is definitely worth the time investment.  I can’t wait for Season 2.

Quote Challenge: Day One –Pain

I was tagged by Kayti Nika Raet to do threee posts of my favorite quotes. Anyone that follows me on Twitter knows that I love me some quotes. It works like this   Post on 3 consecutive days Pick 1 or 3 quotes per day Challenge 3 different bloggers per day.

For a while, I had a list of my favorite motivitating quotes and I would read them everyday as  areminder to do what I needed to do for that day. Here is one of my daily quotes:

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret and disappointment.” Jim Rohn

I love this quote.  It doesn’t sugar coat the price of achievement. Goals take discipline and discipline is painful. It takes away time from family and friends. If you’re disciplined it can eat away  at your time.  I prefer the pain over regret and disappointment.  What about you? What pain would you choose?

Chalcedony Cover Reveal

So….  We all know I’m not great with picking book covers.  Chalcedony: Book 2 of the Everleaf Series was a lot simpler because Book One is already done. I can’t the format without re-doing Book One.Also, i know Fiverr gets a lot of bad press, but its cheap and I can go through lots of iterations without

I know Fiverr gets a lot of bad press, but its cheap and I can go through lots of covers without feeling guilty or pissing off the artist. Overall, I went through six or seven gigs before I decided on a cover I liked and spent about $68.

Try 1. Here is the first once, I’m not sure why they chose to make her eyes purple. But it did make me want to do a gig and have red eyes.

Try 2 with red eyes and different model.

I love the red eys, and the mysteriousness of it, but I wanted to try pointy ears, so i got another gig.

Try 3,4, & 5. After three more gigs from two artists.  I’m not sure why dude wanted to add an earing to the pic. Can you tell which one I decided on?

 

Drum Roll Please…..

The Final Cover

 It’s not perfect. For one, Chalcedony doesn’t have kinky hair, but I love the model and I was willing to overlook it. 

 

5 Star Review: The Girl With All The Gifts

Amazon Blurb: Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.

I saw this book around the interwebs. Somebody said it was diverse, but when I saw the little girl on the cover I shrugged and said no.  I had to finally give it a try after the guys on the Self-Publishing Broadcast kept bragging about it.  And Oh my gawd. It was soooo good.

It gave me my much sought after diversity high because not only is one of the main characters, Ms. Justineau, a black woman, but she  is so perfectly, beautifully and so well-crafted that I couldn’t help but fall hopelessly in love with her.

Love is the motivator of so much in life and in literature. But love as a breathing character like what Melanie has Ms. Justineau. I’ve never encountered such a thing in a book before. Never. I’m still processing it. Let me stress that this wasn’t sexual love. It wasn’t even the love between a mother and her child, but it was still pure unconditional love.

I could argue that Melanie couldn’t love anyone else. Noone reciprocated the child’s affection but Ms. J. All of the other adults ignored if not straight out showed her disdain and fear.

So even if Melanie only love Ms. J out of a need for love and affection, it was still the most beautiful book I’ve ever read about love. Love. Love.

—

I was so enamored by the book that I looked up the movie cast. I remember someone saying it was going to be whitewashed, which would be completely stupid because Ms. J was defined by her skin color in such lovely  detail that there is no way they could make the movie and cast anyone other than an older, brown skinned goddess.

Well ya know how that goes. .. Ms. J is going to be played by a pale-skinned women. Melanie, who is white as a sheet in the book, is being played by a black actress.

Cool, I originally thought.  Melanie is a MAJOR role. MAJOR! Then I thought about it more and  my enthusiasm died. Miss J, a dark skinned older woman, is the object of affection in the book.  She was the embodiment of love. She was symbolic of everything beautiful left in this dystopian world.

To make Miss J white takes away an important diverse aspect of The Girl with all of the gifts novel, and puts it back into a white woman’s hands.  Soo…. And you can even make the argument that is goes into White savior mode. But that can’t apply whole, Melanie is the one always having dreams of saving Miss J. Anyways, its almost circular argument. And race could be taken out I completely and enjoyed for arts sake.

As an older, dark-skinned woman,  Ms. J. was me. So I’m officially voicing my disappointment in having any one other than a dark-skinned beauty play Ms. J.

See move pic below: It also looks horrible to see a black child with her hands shackled with a face mask. That’s a loaded image. — At the same time, we need more deadly black characters, so I’m torn. But people have a hard enough time seeing black people (see Tamir Rice) as human and non-threatening. Like I said, loaded image. too much history to unpack on a blog post. Either way, I’m still gonna see the movie.

Either way, I’m still gonna see the movie. I think it’s worth paying for. It’ll just be hard to check my history at the door.

I listened to the audiobook, btw. Amie has an awesome review of the audiobook here

 

 

Murder in March

 

I’ll be participating in the Murder in March Facebook event on March 4 and March 5 at 8PM CST each night. I’ll be giving away an ebook of Black Beauty, a signed copy of Black Beauty, and I will happily kill off one lucky participant in Shemeya the official, official Sequel to Black Beauty.

Reserve your spot here: https://www.facebook.com/events/15670...

 

5 Star Review: The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

The universe is telling me something.

Somehow I got Patrick Rothfuss’ A Name in the Wind on Audiobook. I think it must have been free cause I had never heard of him or the book. After dozens of false starts, I finished Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Blood and Stone, and then after hearing there was polyamor-ing going on, I read The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. Y’all know how much I like poly relationships. Anyway, all three authors are masters of world-building.

I’m always scared of being slow and boring when I’m writing, but none of these authors were worried about being boring. They are confident enough in their story to weave in their world building with minimum action and tons of loaded language.

I’m supposed to writing a review. Here it goes.

The Fifth Season is on all of the 2015 Best of Lists. But I only bought it cause  All of Our Worlds said there a polyamorous relationships. Yes, I am that shallow.

On to the review:

Random Thoughts:

There was a transgendered woman, and the lead character had dreadlocks. So I definitely got my diversity high.

The polyamorous relationship begins at the 72% mark on Kindle. Snicker snicker snicker. blush blush.

I read a lot of YA, but The Fifth Season is all adult. I felt grown and sexy after I read this book.

There were more than a few things that stayed with me long after I read the story, but a big one was the complexity of the story. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes this story so much more mature, and I’m thinking it’s the complexity of Cyanide. She is pissy, unlikable, but so relatable. She is a grown ass woman and she didn’t have to fight every five minutes to keep me entertained.

I didn’t occur to me at the time but there is a scene in the book that reminded me of the scene in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

The Fifth Season had one of the most original magic systems since Jim Butcher’s The Codex Alera and Brent’s Week’s The Broken Eye.

Alabaster and Cyanide, my two favorite characters, start the story despising each other. Also, both are unlikable and lovable at the same time.  Over the years, they grow close.

It read almost like a Dystopian Fantasy

There was a melding of storylines at the end that was really cool.

I am going to attempt to break down some of the world building elements.

The originators have the ability to quell or cause earthquakes. (read earth benders from the Avatar, but not as hunky.
The stone eaters can move through stone and the ground. For some damn reason they like to cling to and follow the originators. I thought this was brilliant in the case of NK Jemisin because at first we see the stone eaters saving the life of the originator Alabaster, but at the end… The stone eater doesn’t look like its helping Alabaster so much.
The guardians, do some type of manipulation in the brain that can distort or cancel out the power of the originators.
Then of course there are the humans/the mundane who fear the power they do not possess.

 

Follow Me to My New Blog

I paid out the ass, dipped into my retirement account, I had someone awesome and talented set up a website for me:

www.constanceburris.com <<----Doesn't it sound so official!!!

Don't click on the free books though, I'm still tweeking that part.

The blog link is www.constanceburris.com/blog 

Today, I have an interview from +Voss Foster. So seriously, stop over to the new blog, say hi and ask Voss a question.

Coal is Now Available

I bumped up the release date  for COAL and it's available for $1.99. On Friday, the price will increase, so now is a great time to buy. 
Amazon
Barnes and Nobles 
Itunes  
Kobo   Scribd  
Coal has lived most of his life in the fey realm with his elven best friend, but when a human child he promised to protect unintentionally breaks a law in the presence of the fey elite, he will have to choose between betraying his best friend or saving the child’s life.

Text to Speech Using The Iphone

The Kindle's text to speech feature has made all the difference in the amount of books I've been able to begin and finish. I now take my Kindle with me everywhere. I listen to it while I clean,  at lunch, and on my commute to and from work. However, I carry too much crap with me on a daily basis and I have a fantasy of having both my phone and kindle on one device. When the Fire phone was recently on sale for $199 with one year of free prime I was really tempted.   But I'm broke on a strict budget and I have to spend all my extra money on editors and book covers. But still I researched the phone, and I found a website that showed me how to use the text to speech feature on my iPhone.
Woot!
Directions: Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Speech.
With the text to speech feature on my iPhone,  I no longer have to have my phone and kindle on me. I can listen to my ebooks while driving to work using my phone ear buds. I could also listen to websites, Onenote and Wattpad stories from my phone. My tech life felt complete.
The reality was not as good as the fantasy.  After a few days of using this feature on my iPhone, I was reminded just how revolutionary the Kindle is. The voice on the kindle is pretty close to a human speaker. The text to speech feature on the iPhone is robotic and impersonal, and so most books I tried to read were hard get into to.
So it's good to know that I have the option, but the text to speech feature on the iPhone by no means replaces my Kindle.
Update: Apple has updated their voiceover program. When I originally tried the program, the only option was Default. Now there is default, enhanced, and Alex. (a high-quality US English voice that delivers natural-sounding speech) But to use Alex, I need to delete some apps from my phone.  I'll get to deleting and give you a review later. 
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