Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, events, fantasy, writing on January 24, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Starts today.
Check it out here.
Be sure to click through to find more books (including the first three books of the DUAL MAGIC series) at already low prices. Click “MORE CIR BOOKS” at the top of the sale page or “Second Page” at the bottom.
You’ll find some great reads there.
And don’t forget the CIR Fantasy Winter Escape Giveaway, still going on.
Enter the rafflecopter giveaway here.
Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, events, fantasy, writing on January 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Sixteen authors have gotten together to give away a kindle fire and sixteen books to fill it with. THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, DUAL MAGICS BOOK 1 is one of them. You don’t want to miss this.
You can enter the Rafflecopter giveaway right now.
There’ll be a Facebook event with a chance to get to know some of the authors and their books on February 5th and 6th, too.
Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Multiple Projects, revisions, sequels, series, short stories, writing on January 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I’ve reached the point in WAR OF MAGIC,
where the plot line intersects with my already-published short story, “Becoming Lioness”.
You’d think that’d make this section easier, because I’ve sort of already written it. And in some ways, it will. But it’s also going to be . . . interesting to manage, because there are some noticeable differences between the two, as I’ve blogged about once before. I realized there’d be an issue back then, but now that I’m up to the actual writing of that part, the problems are a little clearer.
Some things are just minor points that changed between the time “Becoming Lioness” was published three years ago. Mostly small things, some of which I can fix with minor adjustments to “Becoming Lioness”.
The birth order of three siblings has changed in the interim, for example. That’s not a huge deal. I can just leave the second brother out altogether. That’ll mean deleting all of one or two sentences.
One thing that’s changed won’t be quite so minor: how a character whose ability to use her magic was blocked, gains the use of her magic after all. That’s not necessarily insurmountable, but it’s sure going to be interesting to deal with.
I’m already planning a revised version of “Becoming Lioness” to deal with some of this, but I’ll eventually want to put together a boxed set of the DUAL MAGICS series. And if I include the couple of tie-in short stories already published, plus a couple that I haven’t pulled together yet–well, that’ll put the two versions side by side.
And that’s an issue for all of the short stories. Because the main thing I have to change to make the short stories work at all is to reduce the number of characters. The cast appropriate–and necessary–for a four-book series of epic fantasy novels is simply unmanageable in a short story.
Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Multiple Projects, sequels, series, world building, writing on January 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I’ve never (yet) written a prologue that I’ve kept in the final story. I don’t tend to like them much. But there’s a first time for everything, they say.
No, WAR OF MAGIC doesn’t have a prologue (exactly), though it will have an epilogue.
But BECOME, the next epic fantasy I’m planning to write, will have one. Or maybe more than one.
I’ve been getting some feedback from my critique partners on the parts I’ve got written while I keep working on the first draft of WAR OF MAGIC–setting myself up to work on BECOME while that first draft rests before I start the revisions.
The first–very short–prologue that I’m almost sure I’ll have is the only one I haven’t written some version of. That one will basically be just a prophecy and the fact that it’s been carefully hidden. That prophecy–once discovered–will be the reason the antagonist does some of what he does. And the prologue will help set up something that will take a little while to develop as the story is currently working out.
That one might be so short it might not even need to be labeled a prologue.
I have another prologue written that helps set up the background for this story, but at least one critique partner had some issues with it that might cause me to scrap that one, though.
Posted in writing on January 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I’m a discovery writer. (I think I’ve mentioned that before.) I don’t–normally–outline. It just doesn’t work that well for me. I either immediately ignore the outline and write something that bears only a passing resemblance to what I outlined, or I spend way too much of my writing time updating the outline to what I’m writing now.
However, for much of WAR OF MAGIC, I’ve been using a kind of rolling outline that’s worked fairly well for me.
Not that I still haven’t diverged a bit, but it’s usually been more on the order of changing the order of chapters or splitting what I thought was one chapter into two.
At no point has that outline extended more than six or seven chapters ahead of what I was currently writing. Right now, it’s only four chapters.
This has been such a difficult first draft–for a number of reasons. I think this is helping. Too soon to tell whether it will become a regular part of my writing.
Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, sequels, series, writing on January 6, 2016| 4 Comments »
I’m still in the trenches on the first draft of WAR OF MAGIC, Book 4 (and last) of the DUAL MAGICS series.
And there’s no way I can honestly get out of this story without killing off a few characters. In fact, I’m coming up on having to kill off the first one in this book. May be why my progress on this chapter has been so slow.
I haven’t killed a character in this series since the first book, when I killed one off in the first chapter. (One nobody, including me, had had a chance to get too attached to.) I’ve wounded a few, sometimes pretty badly. Even permanently. But I haven’t killed off another one since.
But this book is called WAR OF MAGIC. And some of them are going to have to pay the ultimate price. That’s making this draft more difficult than the earlier books.
Posted in Real Life, writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Multiple Projects, Real Life, sequels, series, writing on January 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Well, not quite. There’s still a lot of Christmas stuff to put back up, though the big stuff is taken care of. And one more family celebration.
But tomorrow I have to go back to work after two weeks off and that’s been messing with my mind today. Funny how, just as I start to sleep in, it’s time to set the alarm again. That, and they’re promising a week of unpleasant weather, to boot. Couldn’t have happened this week when I didn’t have to go anywhere but grocery shopping once.
Add to that I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 last night, which turned out to be more involved than I expected. It was one of the too-many things I’d had on my list to take care of while I was off so I figured I’d take care of it. I was prepared for the change to cause problems with some of my non-Microsoft applications. Never expected it to mess with Microsoft Office, though. That took a little time–and considerable angst–to work out. Oddly, so far all of the non-Microsoft products appear to be unaffected. Not that I’ve tried them all.
Nevertheless, I have managed to get some writing on WAR OF MAGIC done anyway.
I’m really going to try to have this draft finished by the end of the month. No promises, though.
Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Goals, Multiple Projects, revisions, rewrites, sequels, series, short stories, world building, writing on December 30, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Here are my 2016 Writing Goals:
I think that should keep me busy.
Posted in writing, tagged Cover Art, e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Middle Grade, Multiple Projects, revisions, sequels, series, short stories, writing, Young Adult on December 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »
For 2015 my writing goals were:
First: BEYOND THE PROPHECY (Book 3 of the Dual Magics series): Finish the first draft. Revise. Get critiques. Revise again. Polish. Format. And Publish.
Yes.
Second: Tie-in Dual Magics short stories: “Modgud Gold”, “Hunter and Huntress”, possibly “The Seeker”. These stories expand on the events of the novels. Some things that there just wasn’t room for in the novels. Often from the point of view of side characters.
Of those, I only completed “Modgud Gold.”
I guess the other stories will just have to get pushed to next year. Honestly, any time I have to decide between working on a novel-length story and a short story, the novel is likely to win. They’re just more fun.
Third: MAGE STORM: my middle grade adventure fantasy. There’ll be at least two periods when I need to let BEYOND THE PROPHECY rest so I can come back to it with fresh eyes. During one of those, I want to go back over this story. Possibly change the age of the main character. Then give it a try with a small press.
Yes, but no luck. Middle grade is a really tough market, whichever way you try to go with it. I have a different plan for this one now. And its three sequels.
Fourth: DAUGHTER OF THE DISGRACED KING: This one is complete and ready to go. I’ll query it for a little longer, but there’s also a good chance I’ll just decide to go ahead and publish it myself.
Yes. I did decide to just go ahead and publish it.
Fifth: BOOK 4 of the Dual Magics series (No title yet): Start the first draft for publication likely in 2016.
Yes. And it now has a title–WAR OF MAGIC. And a cover.
Sixth: At some point, I’m likely going to need to go play in a different sandbox for a while to keep things fresh. That will likely mean work on either DREAMER’S ROSE or that weird Oz story that’s been tickling around in the back of my brain for a while now.
Yes. What was DREAMER’S ROSE is now BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING. Weird Oz is still fermenting.
I guess I did pretty well against my 2015 goals.
Here’s hoping I do as well next year. I’ll be setting those goals in the next few days.
Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, sequels, series, writing on December 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »
No, we haven’t–quite–reached that point of the year where I assess how I did against my goals for the year and set new ones for next year. Soon.
But I don’t just set annual goals. I also set weekly and monthly goals–and I publish them on two online writers’ forums I belong to. This week if the first time in quite a while that I’ve actually exceeded my weekly goal on the first draft of WAR OF MAGIC.
I’ve been setting a goal of three chapters a week. This morning I actually started the fifth chapter this week. I may not finish it by tomorrow night (those goals are set Friday to Thursday), but I’m still ahead of the game for this week, at least.
Woo hoo! Time to celebrate small victories.
Meredith Mansfield, Author 