Body counts

 We all know, right, that not all characters survive their fantasy books?

The Spectra Books aren't graphic, but some of them do have a body count--the no-longer-living type, I mean. The romance goes to chaste kisses at the most (and one married couple walks off "to spend time alone").

I made up a little system to classify these books. Books can get an X for:

• Someone (or many someones) pass away in backstory
• Bad guy(s) don't survive the book
• Unnamed people are lost in battle, not graphic
• A named character (non-villain) passes away
• The point-of-view character actively ends someone.

So that's a maximum rating of 5 Xs. 

Let's see how The Spectra Books rate:

The Keita's Wings series is a YA fantasy about an exiled princess uniting six kingdoms. It's closer to a traditional epic fantasy than my other books, including battles and villains who meet sticky ends. Score: 4/5 for most volumes, 5/5 for the fifth book (of six).

Two species try to subjugate each other in this standalone novel, but Mira and her best friend, a griffin called Freko, actively choose nonviolence and try to end the conflict. 3/5 Xs

This adult trilogy deals with persecution and follows an exiled found family. It's inspired by real life pioneers and includes grief, loss, guilt, and sometimes violence. 3/5 Xs.

Somehow, my sweet romance got the maximum Xs. It is a Shakespeare retelling (of one comedy and one tragedy mashed together) with a pirate battle and a heroine sailor who can outshoot her peers, so the Xs rack up. It's still cute and funny, I promise. 5/5 Xs

This dual point-of-view romance circles around themes of recovering from grief and navigating different cultures, which tend to clash violently. 3/5 Xs.

I have to calculate the Spectra Crown Tales separately because each has a different main character and plot, even though some overlap. 

3/5 Xs:

The Seventh Clan, set in a fantasy version of the American Revolutionary War.

The Dream Realm, a sleeping beauty retelling with an especially nasty villain.

The Sunken Oath: the love interest is a pirate. Enough said?

2/5 Xs:

The Tiny Wings: an orphan has loss in the backstory, and a villain meets a sticky end.

1/5 Xs:

The Cousin Pact and The Seven Sages each have main characters overcoming loss in their backstories.

The Cousin Curse has a single battle scene, where afterwards the characters learn that there were casualties.

0/5:

The Masters of Wishes has no casualties. None. At all. I'm going soft or something.

So, if you need trigger warnings or aren't sure which books would be best for which readers, now you know. I do read all of my books out loud to all of my children, ages 17 to 3, so I don't put anything too awful in there.

As an aside, I linked each book to its amazon page, but you can find the paperbacks on Barnes&Noble and many other book sellers. You can also find the ebooks in many library apps including One Drive and Hoopla. 

The Spectra World origins and overlap

 In middle school, I decided to write a story about a group of six kids, one represented by each color. I was inspired partly by the energy cards in my Pokemon collection. The story began with the yellow/electric girl getting overcharged from swimming with her classmates (because electricity beats water in Pokemon), and the other five kids having to rush her into an empty classroom before she exploded lightning everywhere. 

That was the beginning of the Spectra magic system, which has the same colors and similar associated abilities (red for fire/heat, orange for ground/earth, yellow for electricity/innovation, green for grass/life, blue for water, purple for psychic/communication). I daydreamed about the system for several years before I finally started writing my first Spectra book in 2011.

The Spectra world is a lot of fun to write in because there is a lot of room for variation within those broad categories. I've also loved creating an alternate history for their continent, which is loosely based on the western United States. 

One advantage to staying in the same world for every book is that they can overlap a bit, and cameos from one book to another show up a lot. I'll share some examples from DreamRovers, since the series finale comes out on the thirtieth!

In my very first book, Keita's Wings 1, Keita mentions in passing a valley full of people who can travel through dreams (which expanded into the DreamRovers trilogy several years later). In Keita's Wings 3, she and another character mention legends about One-Shot Walker, a character in DreamRovers, which takes place about two centuries earlier. DreamRovers 3 will go into more about griffins, and even see a carving of the characters of Mira's Griffin. DreamRovers will be a major focus of the second Spectra Crowns book, and in my future book, The Captain's Dowry, the characters visit a city named after a DreamRover character.

My history with audiobooks

 

I have to admit, I'm not big on audiobooks, but there was one time that they were a large part of my life: family road trips. My siblings and I would beg for "The Storm Testament" (abridged to be appropriate for families). I first experienced "The Life of Pi" in audio, joining in the adventures of a boy and his tiger. I traveled through the past in "Tennis Shoes among the Nephites". My mother and I listened to a delightful scandinavian narrator read "Fire of the Covenant" as we drove through Salt Lake City. (Yes, most of these are religious fiction from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).  Now one of my books is out in audio!

I've had a great experience working with my narrator, Talon David. She does some amazing accents for the fantasy characters. We've been working on this project for about three months, and I'm delighted to present the results to you now.  For those too busy to read, or who prefer to listen while doing some other task, or those trying to find a measure of peace while crammed into a car with many other listeners, I hope you enjoy Mira's Griffin in audio.

Sneak Peek:

In honor of the audiobook release of Mira's Griffin, the sneak peek this week will be in audio:

Our Audiobook Story, So Far

 My first audiobook is coming out soon! I've had people ask about the process, so here's a quick sum up about our journey so far:

I decided to try making an audiobook for my standalone book, Mira's Griffin. I figured I would test the waters, if you will, with a standalone before I committed to a whole series.

First, I used acx, which is amazon's audiobook branch. I chose a sample from my book that included dialogue from most of my characters, especially the ones with accents and that needed special effects (mind-to-mind speech, in this case). I put it up for audition. ACX asked me to provide the age, gender, accent, and style of the narration I'd like, and showed my book to those. Two people auditioned within the first week or so. I chose the best one, Talon David, and we exchanged some messages, making sure that we got along and could work well together, before I made it official. 

I chose royalty share for our payment option, which means that the royalties we earn are split 50/50 between the two of us. You can pay a narrator outright, but it will cost many hundreds of dollars, so you'll have to be certain that you can sell enough books to cover the cost. And, of course, you can do it yourself, if you have the equipment and are willing to learn how.

I, as the author, was in charge of setting a date. I looked at my publishing schedule and sent Talon a large range, asking when she thought would be best (communication with your narrator is super important). She told me how long she thought it would take, I added on a couple weeks just in case, and we were ready to go. I sent her a pronunciation guide for some of the words and names unique to my fantasy world. 

While she was recording, I did the cover. I made my own cover for Mira's Griffin, so it was pretty easy to adapt it to audiobook. The cover for audiobooks needs to be a perfect square, and they require that the bottom right corner be left without important information in case they want to stick promotional information there. 

After she submitted, I listened to the whole thing and wrote down a few things that needed to be changed, and sent it back. It's really cool to hear the story come together--and it's also important to remember that it's not going to sound exactly like me, and that's okay.

I put my book up for audition on May 3, 2021, and right now it's being reviewed by acx. It should be available for purchase sometime near the end of the month, so all in all, it took about 3 months. It's been a great experience so far. We'll see how it goes!

My Writing Process (2017)

 

My Writing Process

Every author and writer has a different process for drafting and editing. They go through a different number of drafts or stages before getting to the book you see on the shelf. This is my process:

1. Rough Draft

Usually I use NaNoWriMo to get this draft down, though in grade school I used a notebook for the same effect. For the rough draft, you are not allowed to stop and edit. You have to churn out a certain number of words a day, and it's not going to be pretty. It's a mess that you cringe to think of anybody ever looking at. It might even include passages like these (from a yet untitled novel about griffins):

 Tyra rolled her eyes. “What about the other women in the vale?”

“Aren’t any. White Leader’s a top hunter. He gets first pick of humans, and until Runa he always went for males.”

#It seems like all this explanation should be earlier. Or maybe not.

His other two picks were both men, tall and strong. Both were fishermen. Name1 had a wife and two youngsters at the village. Name2 was older, with his four children all grown. None of them spoke to each other. 

The chain that had been attached to her collar lay in a corner.

Edit: she’s still wearing it.

Tyra examined it. 

A girl screamed again. Tyra was getting tired of the screaming, though her heart had sped up again without her permission. (I counted the word 'scream' ten times in this section).

Since I am not allowed to edit, I sometimes go back and add a line explaining the changes that I'd like to make. Occasionally I include several paragraphs brainstorming how this section ought to go, or outlining what I think should come in the next couple sections. The rough draft has no chapters, but I do have heading titles to help me find the sections quickly.

Again, the rough draft is for nobody's eyes but mine. If you're working on NaNoWriMo, congratulations! You've got a start! But please please please do not assume that you have a full publishable story on your hands. Yes, amazon will publish it for nothing, but it gives indie authors a bad name.

Ahem, coming off the soapbox...


2. First Draft

This draft takes the longest, often several months. I start by listing out every scene in the novel with a few key words. For example, here's the first chapter of The Spectra Uprooted:

Part 1: Introduction 

Chapter: Harvest Festival 

Wrestling match 

Eating 

First raid: numbers scare off raiders, Bract worries they will be back

Zuri is brought in/Keita’s identity revealed 

“captured” by grasslanders

I move these clips around into chapters and add in a few lines for scenes that I think ought to be added.  My goal is to have the story build to a climax in each chapter, with all of the scenes in that chapter adding up to it.  Once I've got this guideline, I fill out the scenes that I've described that still need added. Also, because I'm slightly OCD about page numbers, I keep track of chapter length on an excel sheet, which I've already described. I also make the changes that I noted during the rough draft. 

When I'm almost done with the first draft, I go back to the beginning and read each character's voice as if I were doing an audiobook. This helps me make the characters' dialogue distinct from each other.

By the time I am finished with the first draft, I have a decent story that I am willing to share with beta-readers. The plot and characters are in place and in order. Going over each scene allows me to rewrite most of it, so some of the more awkward prose gets corrected.

3. Prose Draft

The prose draft mostly involves cutting extra words to make the story flow better. Red flags of words to change include could and 've had to, -ly adverbs, passive voice, etc.  I like to use prowritingaid for a free analysis of my first few pages, looking for problems that I'm likely to find in the rest of the work. After working on the computer, I request a physical copy from Staples, where the extra words are more obvious. Here's a page from The Spectra Uprooted:

This copy can also be shared with beta-readers. I can leave it with friends to add comments.

After I make the changes I've marked on my physical copy, I format to the correct page size and add the maps, acknowledgments, and other material. Once this is done I start working on the cover, which means that I can't make any more major changes without risking a change to the cover's spine width. My beta reader and I go over it one more time and then I request the proof copy.

4. Proof copy

There's nothing so exciting as getting the proof copy in the mail! At last, it looks like a real book!

Now I get to read the whole thing, pretending I'm a reader. I also circle small changes and especially typos that need fixed. I might have to add a label to the map or make sure all the fonts match. And, if I'm designing my own cover, I check to make sure that's working (if not, I have to order a proof all over again, which is not fun).

Timing:

From start to finish, this process takes about a year to complete. I choose my own due date when I first start writing, usually my angel baby's birthday (September 5th). That gives me time to work on marketing and side projects and preparation before NaNo comes around again. 

So, there's my writing process. What's yours?

2021 Note: The books I used as samples are now published. Mira's Griffin changed quite a bit since those snippets! Keita's Wings (the new title for my first series, of which The Spectra Uprooted is third) is now complete. I've written a new blogpost with more information about my writing process, along with changes I've made in the past four years.