The Sea Prince

Apr

2022

Mondayist Monday that ever Mondayed

Today started with the disappointing news that, because of reasons beyond anyone’s control, production on the Hidden Things audiobook has to be canceled, and the contract dissolved. It’s not anyone’s fault, and everyone is very disappointed. Back to square one, I suppose. Although I think I’m going to have a hard time picking a new narrator — Mark’s voices were just so absolutely perfect.

Mark and I are hoping that we will be able to work together again in the future. So here’s to that hope, — maybe with Heir to the Firstborn or The Sea Prince. We’ll see what happens once those two are done.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

131341 / 170000 (77.26%)

****

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, book 1)

31308 / 120000 (26.09%)

I may be putting The Sea Prince to the side for the next month — school is out one month from today, and I really want to have The Way Home complete by then. Or I can use it as a carrot — if I get my words in for The Way Home, I’ll get to go make some words for The Sea Prince. We’ll see which works better.

So… for now, I’m going to keep working on The Way Home, getting that finished so that edits can start and we can get the series wrapped up for a November release. I’ll revisit the Hidden Things audio in the fall, once there’s some distance and I’m not hearing the voices that we set up already. I was planning on working on some non-fiction for the summer anyway, so I may just take a total fiction break and pick up The Sea Prince in the fall, too. I think I might need a break. We’ll see.

Apr

2022

It’s Still Monday.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

124393 / 170000 (73.17%)

****

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, book 1)

25784 / 120000 (21.49%)

It’s late, but it’s still Monday. So this still counts as being a Monday blog.

Today, I played hooky. After morning yoga, I went on a morning date with my husband. We headed down to Disney Springs, wandered around, went shopping, and went to lunch. If you’re ever in Disney Springs and want a good quick service meal that handles food allergies really well, go to D-Luxe Burgers. They’re Disney-owned and fantastic.

They’re also verging on the ridiculous. At some point in the past year, they added lettuce buns to their menu, because they were having a hard time sourcing their gluten free buns. So today, they asked if we wanted a gluten free bun or a lettuce bun.

Most of the time, when you get a lettuce bun, you get a messy burger wrapped in a few leaves of limp lettuce.

This is what you get at D-Luxe:

If you can’t tell, that’s approximately a small head of lettuce, sliced in half, with a burger in it. Lettuce bun indeed!

(AND IT WAS SO GOOD!!!!)

Got back home in time to pick High School Boy up from school… completely forgetting that he had clubs today and wasn’t going to be out for another half an hour. (He opted out of clubs today when he found out I was early. More time to play Clone Hero.)

Which means that today I did yoga, I’ve backed up my computer, I am writing this blog post, and I will probably not write a single word… and I’m good with that! Today was a recharge day. A “fill your own bucket” day. And I talked about that in my Carline Talk on Tiktok.

My what on which?

I have a series of short videos on Tiktok that I recorded while waiting in carline, and which I call my Carline Talks. (Over the summer, these will change to Coffee Time with Liz). I talk about writing in general, and about various and sundry, and today was about filling your own bucket — giving yourself permission to stop and relax, something most creatives are lousy at doing. The thing is, if you don’t recharge, you eventually burn out. So give yourself a break, and read a book. Watch a movie. Go do something fun. And come back renewed and ready to start again.

I give you permission.

(a quick note — I will be changing hosting companies for this website within the next week. Hopefully, the website won’t go weird in the changeover.)

Apr

2022

Time is Fun When You’re Having Flies

Hard to believe it’s April already. Coming up on the end of a school year already. Which means I have just about a month and a half to finish The Way Home.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

120211 / 170000 (70.71%)

****

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, book 1)

25154 / 120000 (20.96%)

I think I can do it. And… in case it’s not COMPLETELY obvious by having it right up there, I have indeed decided to try and get The Sea Prince moving again, and start serializing it once Heir to the Firstborn is complete. I figured out what the problem was — I’d somehow managed to center the plot on the one romance plot device that I hate more than any other. You know the one — if they actually TALKED to each other, this would be a short story?

I deplore that plot device, to the point that I clearly can’t write it! So I’ve reworked the plot, and now I think this works even better. I’ve rewritten the first six chapters, and am about to start on the seventh, which is the last full chapter that was written before I shelved this the last time. So let’s see if I can get this onto chapter eight.

The question now is… do I serialize on Patreon, the way I have been, take it over to Vella and give that a go, or do both? Vella allows for content to be serialized so long as it is not publicly available anywhere else or previously published. Since my Patreon isn’t public, I should be able to do both Patreon and Vella. Decisions, decisions….

I also have another project in mind, one that’s going to require research. And it’s not a novel — I have an idea for a book on worldbuilding, using the framework of cultural anthropology. Planned title — Imaginative Anthropology. (There might be a subtitle, but I haven’t thought of it yet.) I’ve often described myself as a frustrated cultural anthropologist (Darn you, college advisor, for not letting me have a triple major English/Secondary Education/Cultural Anthropology!) I just hadn’t realized that I was using the classes I took in college as tools for my worldbuilding. At least, not until I spoke to 150 high school students about being a speculative writer, and the importance of worldbuilding that makes sense. I put the words “Imaginative Anthropologist” on the presentation slide, and somewhere around the fourth or fifth time of giving the presentation (over 6 periods of the day), I realized that I might be on to something. So I’ll be developing that out as my summer planning project, and working on it once I finish up with the business planning I’m doing this year.

Busy, busy, busy, right?

This month has another book giveaway with 34 books free for the download, and a chance to win a gift card. Check it out by clicking the graphic.

In other news, I sat down via with Mark Oosterveen, the narrator for Hidden Things, and recording on the audiobook will be starting quite possibly this week! He’s nailing down the final schedule and will let me know because I will be (virtually) in the recording studio with them! Mark wants to have real time feedback on voices and tone during the recording, and I’m very excited to be included in the process. More updates as I have them!

And that, I think, is all the news this week!

Mar

2022

Spring Flowering

Here we are, coming up on the end of the first quarter of 2022. And… I don’t know. Still feels very much 2020-ish in here.

I’ve been saying for years that normal is a setting on my dryer, but really, I’d like some normal at some point. Or at least… something closer to what was normal back in 2019. But… yeah, that’s not happening. 2019 normal is what got us into this 2020-ish limbo. Maybe someday we’ll have a new normal, but it’s still too soon for all the upheaval and the way things are now to feel “normal” yet.

Boy, I’m clearly in a mood today, aren’t I? I’m going to stop now before you all hit the ‘X’ on this window.

Work on The Way Home continues, and I had a really good writing week this past week. I’ll be heading into the final plot arc fairly soon. I think this one will need some heavy edits. I’m realizing now that there are some plot holes early in that need to be addressed. Will it be 170K words? Maybe not, but it may be close. Watch this space and see!

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

115906 / 170000 (68.18%)

We’re in the final days of the World of Fantasy giveaway. There’s still time to go and grab over thirty free books, and enter for the chance to win a $20 gift card.

Starting on April 1st, there will be another giveaway. Love and Romance will run from April 1st to the 22nd, and will offer the chance to win a $25 gift card, in addition to 29 free books. (I’m not sure why the graphic says Contemporary Love Stories, because there’s historical romance and paranormal in the list.) The link will not be live until Friday, but you can take a look to see what is being offered.

On the subject of new work, I haven’t yet gotten back to working on the short pieces I mentioned last week. I spent most of the end of last week working on a new school talk presentation for this Wednesday. Once the talk is over, then Tell Me is on my list for finishing up. I also need to tweak the cover a little. It’s almost there. Almost.

I’m still deciding on the next project. Right now, it’s coming down to Tower of Light (the Metropolis retelling) or Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand. But neither of those will work for Patreon, so I need to figure that out, too. I might possibly take up The Sea Prince again and see if I can figure out where that one went wrong.

Decisions, decisions.

Jun

2021

Writing is a Solitary Profession

Most of the time, we’re alone in our rooms, banging our heads on the keyboard and drinking something caffeinated. Or, if you’re writing later in the day, non-caffeinated. Perhaps alcoholic. Or maybe not. I’m so not judging your choice of libations. Right now? I’m drinking water and writing this blog, and thinking about the next thing that’ll happen in Heir to the Firstborn. (Owyn is in trouble. Again. When is Owyn not in trouble?)

Heir to the Firstborn(Heir to the Firstborn, book 5)

100240 / 150000 (66.83%)

Writing is solitary. Except, of course, for when it isn’t. This morning, I spent an hour interviewing the fantastically funny Amy Christine Parker about scene architecture and story structure, and during the interview, this came up in conversation:

Being a writer is fun. You get to do things like interview other writers. You get to go to conferences and meet the people who’ve read and loved your books (or people who haven’t read your work yet, and have just discovered that you exist.) You get to meet the writers whose work you’ve loved, and learn that they’re really cool people (most of the time).

The actual writing part? That can be hard — in 1949, someone asked sports columnist Red Smith if writing a daily column was difficult. His response? “Why, no. You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” Sometimes, you just really stare at the screen, or at the page, or at the backs of your eyelids, and you wonder where all the voices in your head went (I do hear my characters — that’s how I know I’ve got them figured out.)

I have two partial manuscripts I’d love to finish, but the characters won’t talk to me anymore. There’s something wrong in the outline, and I haven’t been able to figure out what or how to fix it. (I talk about them every so often — The Sea Prince is one. The Willow Sword is the other.) Now, it took me six years to figure out what was broken with Heart’s Master, and finish that one, so I have high hopes that one of these years, you’ll see a book cover with one of those titles, and my name on it. But not until I figure out what’s broken and how to fix it. I’ll be taking another stab at The Willow Sword once I finish Heir to the Firstborn. Maybe this time, I’ll pull a hat out of a rabbit.

No, I don’t have that backwards. Any magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat. Who pulls a hat out of a rabbit? A really GOOD magician.

Or a writer.

The Sea Prince

Mondayist Monday that ever Mondayed

It’s Still Monday.

Time is Fun When You’re Having Flies

Spring Flowering

Writing is a Solitary Profession

Works in Progress

Appearances

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