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. 

Kindle vella: What is it and why should I try it out?

News is slowly getting out. A lot of people have heard the name "kindle vella", but not everyone knows what it is or why they should give it a try.

I enjoy kindle vella, amazon's serial reading platform, because I don't always have the time or focus to sit down and read a whole novel, but I do have snatches of time where I can easily squeeze in an episode. If books were like movies, then kindle vella would be like a tv show. Each episode contains a section of the story, similar to a book chapter. Stories are often much longer than a novel and might continue through several seasons. My favorite kindle vella story (The Queen Trials by Penelope Wright) updates every single day, so whenever my day starts to drag, I can check for my daily update and continue the story just a little more. I also love to sample a story, or even an entire genre, to see if it's something that I will enjoy before I invest my time and money into it.

To read on kindle vella, you only need your amazon account. The first ten episodes are free, and trust me, you can get into a lot of story in ten episodes! In my most popular story, The Captain's Dowry, the main character changes from a proper lady to a cabin boy, escapes a debtor, and marries a stranger. After you've read ten episodes, you can buy tokens to unlock more. Currently, each episode costs ten tokens, which are about ten cents each (check those numbers for updates though). You can read directly from the kindle vella website, or check stories on the kindle app. For the moment, kindle vella is only available for the United States, but it's a new program and often changes.  

Another huge advantage to kindle vella is that it allows you to interact with the story and its author in ways that are not possible in a full book. While you can review a story like you would a full book, vella has many other options. After each episode, you can choose to hit the thumbs up button, or leave a comment. Some even have polls where you can vote for answers to story-related questions. And each week, you can pick your favorite story. The top 250 favorite stories get a coveted crown (and bonus money), so let your favorite authors know how much you enjoy their work!

I've seen a lot of different genres on kindle vella. As always, romance is queen, and spice sells. Not all stories are steamy romance, though. I write fantasy with sweet (not spicy) romance subplots. My kids screen each episode for me, so I need to make sure they're interesting as well as clean. I've enjoyed nonfiction, such as Life Lessons from Flipping Houses. Rosanne E Lortz writes some amazing Regency Romance stories. As mentioned, I've been reading The Queen Trials, a dystopia with a hint of fantasy, every day for years. I've even found stories that I've loved on kindle vella and later purchased as a full book on amazon, such as the middle grade adventure, The Golden Scarab of Balihar. These are the stories that interest me, but you can find stories of all kinds on kindle vella. 

I highly recommend giving it a try!

Shall I compare thee to a Shakespeare play?

 

How do you feel about Shakespeare? I was always indifferent when I had to puzzle out the meanings in high school. Then in college I took a class that focused on the comedies, and I fell in love, so to speak. Funny story: when one of my sons was little, my husband gifted me an omnibus of the works of Shakespeare with a big picture of him on the cover. My toddler would cry "Achey Bear!" when he saw it. Once or twice, he said it about a picture of Jesus at church. My favorite play is As You Like It. The main character, Rosalind, is courageous and witty and powerful, taking charge and driving her own story. While she falls in love at first sight, she stops and gets to know him before making any major life (or death) choices. My new book, The Captain's Dowry, started as a daydream about a girl disguised as a boy, a marriage of convenience, and an attractive sea captain. A few chapters in, I noticed the similarities to As You Like It and incorporated the retelling into the story (I was almost done with the rough draft when I realized that some of the subplots could fit beautifully if influenced more by King Lear.) The Captain's Dowry just came out today in ebook and Kindle Unlimited (it was already in paperback and kindle vella).

Sailing into a new Spectra story!

 

Is anyone else an avid daydreamer? I've been studying what some call maladaptive daydreaming. It's not letting your thoughts wander, or planning out your future, or even figuring out what to write next. When I'm stuck in a daydream, I'm basically watching a movie unfold inside my head--a movie I get to direct and control. Is it maladaptive? I'm not sure. Usually after about a week, it fades and I'm more grounded in reality for a while, until I meet a new idea I just have to watch unfold. Part of my character Indra's struggle with living in dreams (literally) in the DreamRovers trilogy comes from me. I bring it up because these daydreams end up being a goldmine of story ideas. I'd like to introduce you to a new story that started as a daydream. As I wrote down the basics of the daydream, I noticed its similarity to my favorite Shakespeare play, As You Like It. I combined both ideas into a new story, The Captain's Dowry.

Sal lives a double life--half at sea as her father's cabin boy, and half at a fine finishing school. Both worlds turn upside down when her father sells his ship and her hand in marriage. If her new husband thinks she'll stay quietly at home while he sails off into the sunset, he can think again. She won't stop until she finds a way to be herself--both of them.  If you'd like to read the first three chapters completely free, you can find them on kindle vella. (FAQ for how to read on kindle vella here). I'll be posting two chapters each week on kindle vella. If you'd rather wait for ebook, paperback, or Kindle Unlimited, the full book is coming out April 1, 2023. That'll give me time to finish all 45 chapters, have a few more beta readers look over it, and have a baby.

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.