The King's Mistress is coming!

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for My Name Is A'yen! Proceed with caution.

You have been warned. :)

I'm starting edits on The King's Mistress this next week, and I'm very excited about it. The book is going to be so much better once I'm done with them.

The book has had this title since the very beginning. I started it two days after I finished the first draft of My Name Is A'yen. The title is significant in the A'yen's Legacy universe.

At the end of the first book A'yen finds out his family line, through his father, is the long-lost royal family. It's a cosmic shift in his identity and changes the way he looks at his past. He's not quite sure he's up for it and fears losing who he is in order to be who the Lokmane need him to be.

So he's a future king. And he's owned by his wife, because the Lokmane are still enslaved when the novel opens. Fae is, literally, the king's mistress. This one explores her character a little more, though A'yen is still the one running the show. You'll learn more about her background, what her family is like, and meet her half-brothers.

In this one you also meet Da'Ro, another Me like Na'var in My Name Is A'yen. Ro borders on being an antihero and I had so much fun writing him and doing things I'd never done before. Along the way he stole my heart, and I hope he steals yours too. He's a broken man searching for a reason to live. He's lost everything and everyone who's ever cared about him, and the list was small to begin with. He's hated and feared by other Lokmane, and for good reason. He's the most dangerous kind of Me--a mind-hopper.

What is a mind-hopper? Well, to find that out you'll have to read the book when it comes out.

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B is for Brainstorming

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono,
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm a writer. One of the things we do is called brainstorming. It's the process of throwing stuff out, asking what if and why, and figuring out what all happens in the story.

I do most of my brainstorming online, since my writing buddies all live in other states. My bestest buddy, Winter Austin, is so much fun to brainstorm with. We think alike, create alike, and plot alike.

Last fall I got to do some in-person for the first time in far too long, and had a blast. Stayed up till two a.m. helping a friend figure out a character's motivation.

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My sister thinks I'm crazy...

My sister thinks I'm crazy, and she might be right. I'm posting snippets right now from Fear The Light, the first book in the Slipstream Network series, but I'm actually working on the second arc of the space opera. And I'm having a lot of new character experiences with my heroine, Sunny.

Sunny is, without doubt, the most formed heroine to ever walk into my head. She arrived with her own fashion sense, her hangups, her lie, her armor. Last week I found her perfume, which is a first for me. The way Sunny dresses is inspired by my sister, and her perfume is a scent my sister bought a couple weeks ago. I'm nosy. When she gets new perfumes I smell them to see if they'll give me a headache like her Dolce and Gabanna Light Blue.

I have allergies and I'm not a perfume person. While other authors can peg a scent to every character they create, I've got nothing. I don't even think about it because sniffing and testing perfumes is not something I can do for more than five minutes unless I want an allergy headache from hell. For Sunny to tell me she wears a specific scent ALL THE TIME is so beyond weird.

What does she wear? It's called Caribbean Salsa, from Ten Digit Creations. Their scent description lists it as "sweet pineapple, bright citrus, and fresh peach infused with the exotic Yuzu flower and Tahitian vanilla." It's a bright and vibrant scent. Like Sunny.

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What Happens At A Writing Conference

I'm lucky enough to be in an organization for writers that hosts an amazing conference every year. I'm even luckier that I've been able to go seven times. Yes. I've been to SEVEN writing conferences. Each one has been unique and memorable, with new things learned I can immediately apply to my writing.

It's in September every year and is the highlight of my year. This year I wasn't sure if I would make it, but the money all appeared, I found the cheapest plane ticket I've ever seen out of my local airport, and off I went on Friday the 13th to Indianapolis.

This was the second time this conference has been in Indy. Last time was in 2010, which was a really bad year for me. A lot's happened since then, including me finishing almost four 95K+ novels and switching markets.

A couple of things really stand out. First was James Scott Bell's Quantum Story class all day Saturday. One of the best classes I've ever sat through and I have more notes from that one class than my last four conferences combined. New ideas flowed, a couple more things clicked. And then he got to the last forty-five minutes of the class where he talked about the secret to unforgettable fiction.

He put it in one word. Joy. Find your writing joy, and your fiction will be unforgettable. Well, I found my joy last May when A'yen walked into my head. It just took eight months to see it, and another four to finally make the decision to totally cross over and enter the ABA market.

The other thing to stand out was getting a chance to talk for a few minutes, TWICE, with the agent I've been courting for the last year. I was able to run my next idea by her, get some great feedback, and she advised taking one particular element out. Which I promptly did and WOW. The entire world fell into place and I'm even more excited about it than I was before. More details coming on it later.

As always it was an amazing experience. So much laughing, brainstorming in person, introducing John Barrowman to people who have never had the pleasure of gazing on his handsome face, and nowhere near enough sleep. Lack of sleep is part of the experience. And more than a few God moments, which for me are very important. It's very cool to have attended a Christian conference, in a market I used to write in, and receive confirmation--amidst so many talking about how Christians must write only Christian fiction--that crossing over is the right thing for me to do.

My writing self is re-energize and rejuvenated for another year. And more than ready to keep honing my craft and write books people can't put down.

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SFR Brigade Blog Hop: Rachel's Alien Planet

Welcome to the second midsummer blog hop hosted by the members of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade! The bottom of this post contains the links to the rest of the blogs. Don't be shy! We have some great prizes. Be sure to fill out the Rafflecopter form for your chance to win. The prizes are listed in the box at the bottom of this post.

When I saw the blog theme I decided to share about my alien planet, Lok'ma. It's the lost home of an enslaved humanoid alien race and most of the first book, My Name Is A'yen, takes place here.

About three years ago I found out about the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia and spent a couple hours looking at pictures. Back then I had no idea I would one day be writing science fiction.

When A'yen came to me and I found out they were looking for his planet, I knew the Plitvice Lakes had to make an appearance. I ended up building the entire planet around these lakes. They're gobsmackingly gorgeous, especially when they're frozen.


I also have a thing for autumn leaves. Except I live in Louisiana where there's basically no such thing. Lok'ma's trees come in many colors. All the time. I spent several more hours on Google one evening looking at fall foliage in the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains.

Lok'ma continues to be a work-in-progress. These two features are my favorites, and my characters' favorites.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Falling In Love With His POV

Most of our reading habits are formed when we're children. My childhood included lots of Nancy Drew, every horse book I could get my hands on, The Boxcar Children, and The Hardy Boys. I collect Nancy and the Hardys.

In mulling over my POV preferences after being disappointed with Gabriel's Ghost, I had several light bulb moments. I talked about one last week, and today I'm going to explore the other big one.

I started reading Nancy and the Hardys when I was around eight or nine. The Secret of the Old Mill is my favorite classic Hardy Boys book, while Campaign of Crime, Strategic Moves, the Phoenix Conspiracy trilogy, and Brother Against Brother are my favorite Casefiles.

Frank is my favorite brother. Especially in the Phoenix Conspiracy trilogy. A side of him comes out that's never been seen before and it's amazing. I own nearly a full set of Casefiles too, and way more of them than any other format.

My first forays into the writing world were in Hardy Boys fan fiction. Of course I was writing in largely his POV. And I loved it. I still love it. Hardy Boys is the only fan fiction I've read mountains of, and it was because I knew I was getting majority his POV. Most HB fan fic skews heavy to Joe, but that's okay. There's very little female POV.

I think my early love of the Hardy Boys--something I have not outgrown--is a big part of why I love his POV so much. It's probably a big part of why I write heavily skewed to his POV. I practiced the basics of writing fiction in something that's 90% male POV.

I dabbled in Thoroughbred fan fic too, after I stopped writing HB fan fic. But even then I was fascinated with a secondary boy character named Tor. I won a TB fan fic short story contest with something written in Tor's POV.

What I'm calling my SFR/paranormal mash-up, The Slipstream Files, was partly inspired by the Hardy Boys. I realized this a couple weeks ago when a HB fan fic friend was in the hospital. My main characters are two brothers, and I realize now their relationship is somewhat patterned after my favorite fan fic portrayals of Frank and Joe.

I wonder if the arrival of Luke and Cole has anything to do with the new Hardy Boys Adventures series and the fact I'm actually enjoying it...

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When A Romance Is Not A Romance

I'm a girl with strong opinions, and those opinions include the kind of books I read. I'm a romance writer, and a romance devourer. Because of that I have very specific things I want in a romance. The most important is hers and HIS point of view.

I've never been fond of first person point-of-view. It usually locks me into the head of the person I care the least about. I gravitate to books with strong male leads, and I prefer for the male lead to have the majority of the POV scenes. I know I'm in a minority on this and I deal with it. But I feel cheated when I start on something billed as a romance and I find out his POV isn't there.

This happened to me a couple weeks ago, and I'll name the book. Gabriel's Ghost by Linnea Sinclair. Intriguing set-up, loved the plot blurb, right up my alley, conspiracies aplenty, telepaths. And first person POV. For some reason I didn't bother to look at the first page when I left the library with it. Linnea's one of the queens of SFR so I thought I'd give it a fair shake.

Couldn't do it. The further I got into it the more cheated I felt. I didn't finish it. It was easy to abandon when The Darkest Kiss arrived at the library, and easy to abandon again when The Darkest Whisper arrived Monday morning. I flipped to the last chapter and read it. The revelation there made me really wish Sully's POV had been in it. But it wasn't. I probably won't read the second one, because it's the same MC in first person. I didn't connect with her at all. Honestly, she got on my nerves. I wanted to be in Sully's head and Ren's head. Not Chaz's. The third one is in third person, so I may give it a try.

Now, to contrast this with two third person series with one POV that I did enjoy. First up is Sara Creasy's Scarabaeus books. I knew they had a romantic sub-plot, but it was by no means a romance. The feelings Edie has for Finn could be removed and it's still a great book. I inhaled both books back to back. I bought them, in fact, and they will be read again.

I devoured The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells and they were 100% his POV. There was a nice romance subplot and I stayed up too late for two weeks inhaling these. I finished the second one at 10:30 one night, hopped on Baen and was reading the third one in less than 10 minutes.

There are two important differences here. One, they're not billed as equal parts SF and romance, or with the Raksura books equal parts romance and fantasy. It's romantic SF and romantic fantasy. Two, it's third person. I adore third person. It's my favorite and it's what I write.

But I'm calling this When A Romance Isn't A Romance. For me it boils down to this: If you're telling me a book is a romance and all I get is her POV, it's not a romance to me. A romance is about two people falling in love. I want to see BOTH of them on that journey. Not just her. My bias toward the male POV is more fine with a romance subplot being told entirely through his POV than hers. Edie and Finn have begun to fade from my memory, but not Moon of the Raksura. Never once in any of those did I find myself wishing for Jade's POV (Moon's love interest).

When I started writing My Name Is A'yen I decided I was going to write it exactly how *I* wanted to read a romance. A'yen dominates the story. If I go by just his and Fae's POV scenes it's something like three to one in his favor. My secondary POV's are also male characters. Ditto for the second book. I'm in the third one now and, again, it's majority him. I have six POV characters. Only two are women.

Don't try and sell me something as a romance if it's only her POV. I couldn't care less about seeing it through her eyes. Even when reading a traditionally structured romance I miss his POV if I go too long without it and I'll start skimming hers so I can hurry up and savor his.

Call me weird, but there it is.

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In Which I Ruminate on Labels

Image courtesy of Jeroen van Oostrom / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I've recently discovered SF Signal and can easily get lost in the Mind Meld column archives. I did some of that yesterday afternoon. In "The Directions Speculative Fiction Hasn't Taken Yet", one panelist's contribution really stood out.

The panelist is Diana M. Pho. She asked this question:

Are readers the ones who tend to categorize, or is it us, the producers and creators, who rely on labels more? Is it possible to go “labelless” and have readers find their own words to describe it?

I think the tendency to categorize with labels is human. It doesn't depend on whether one is a reader or an author. Humans have a need to create order out of chaos, for the most part. Labels, and genre labels, help us achieve this. They're the "keys" to finding what we want.

Case in point: The only real bookstore in my town is Books-A-Million. Several years ago they decided to do away with ALL genre sections and file everything alphabetical by author under fiction or non-fiction. I have no idea if it was a local decision or a national decision, but I can tell you it was a disaster. I think it lasted all of two weeks, a month tops.

As a reader, I can tell you it was a nightmare. Unless I knew exactly who and what I was looking for, no way was I leaving there with a book. Browsing around in the genre I wanted to read and finding something new was impossible. That's how readers discover new authors, for the most part, and that ability was taken away. Even if you buy most of your books on Amazon I'm betting you look through the "what other people bought" carousel. I do. I've found some cool stuff doing that.

Is is possible to go "labelless"? Yes. Is it desirable? Based on the fact that Books-A-Million is once again sorted by genre in fiction, and subject in non-fiction, I'm going to say no.

I think as writers and authors we can get too hung up on specificity in our labeling, because we have to do that in proposals and queries. Does it really matter that, to an agent, I label what I'm writing planetary-based science fiction romance with a space opera vibe? I don't think so. What does matter is that it's science fiction romance. There is such a thing as being too specific I think. But the inverse, not specific enough, is just as dangerous.

The better way for me to label my SFR is like this: Do you like Farscape and Firefly? Do you think Crichton and Aeryn, and Mal and Inara, are the most overlooked couples in science fiction TV history? If so you'll probably enjoy my flavor of SFR.

Now if I can only get it published... Plans are in motion to make it happen this year.

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Meet A'yen and Fae

The story behind the creation of this universe is a very unique one for me. A'yen walked through my head in a dream the night of May 15th, 2012. I remember it because it was the same day my sister left for her vacation in France and the chicken drama started. (My sister "farms" for her hobby and while she was gone for three weeks a raccoon killed all seventeen of her chickens. One at a time.)

BBC via Pinterest

It sticks out for another reason too. May 16th, 2012, would have been my third wedding anniversary. The date that should have started the best period of my life instead signified the beginning of the worst two and a half years of my life. But that's a story for another time. Because on May 16th, 2012, I started the development process of what turned into My Name Is A'yen. I became a Whovian in this same span of time and inhaled seasons 1, 3, and 4 while she was gone. We hadn't yet seen Vincent and the Doctor when my sis went to the Louvre, so she didn't know to look for him and why his Sunflowers painting should make you cry.

IMDB via Pinterest

Originally his name was spelled A'yon. He informed me very quickly I was spelling it wrong. I could see him clear as day in my head, but was having a hard time describing his features to my crit partner. He's a humanoid alien. In an effort to show her what he looked like I began combing through every TV alien database I could find. I spent weeks looking for his face. Then it hit me. The Face of Boe, minus the tentacles and wrinkles.

Still wasn't enough though. I needed more to match the vision in my head. While catching Doctor Who reruns on BBC America they kept playing commercials for Copper. British costume dramas are amazing and it's set during the Civil War in New York City. Must watch! And there I met Tom Weston-Jones and his amazing blue eyes.

 If A'yen was human, he'd look exactly like Tom Weston-Jones.

Via Pinterest

Fae was a lot easier to cast. I knew she had bright green eyes almost too big for her face and black hair. She's Zooey Deschannel, but with green eyes instead of blue. Another writer friend snagged the image I pinned and Photoshopped it for me with the exact correct shade of bright, almost fake, green eyes. Which turned out to be an important clue to her real identity. I knew immediately she was an archaeologist. I wasn't ready to let go of all the work I'd done building myself as a historical romance writer. I'm over that now, but Fae is still an archaeologist. I have thousands of years of history to fill in for A'yen's people and I'm enjoying every second of it.

 

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Creation mode

Paired with my love of Star Trek is a love of old things. I love history. I love writing by hand too. There's nothing quite like it. When my dad jumped on the fountain pen bandwagon a few years ago it didn't take long for the rest of us to follow him.

I love my fountain pens. I'm up to six. The one pictured is my newest, a Noodler's Nib Creaper Flex. The color is called Lapis Inferno.

I finished the first draft of The King's Mistress day before yesterday, but this page of notes is actually from last week. The plot of #3, To Save A Life, is still simmering and it's not quite there yet. The heroine is still being tight-lipped about things.

Heroines do that to me. Every. Single. Time. It took 140,000 words across two books, plus an amazing class at a writer's conference last fall and a page of backstory notes for me to get a handle on why Fae is the way she is. You can't have a romance, IMO, without a heroine's POV.

The page of notes in the picture is on Jasmyn Jenkins, heroine of To Save A Life. Heroes tend to walk into my head about 75% formed. Heroines, sometimes I'm lucky to even have her name. Jasmyn has been a little different. Thanks to the tricks I learned in the above mentioned writer's conference class making heroines real is a lot easier. Jasmyn's creation is coming along, but I still don't have enough to start writing To Save A Life.

Enter Beth Harrison, heroine of one of the prequels, Worth Fighting For to be specific. I've had her name for awhile, but when I pegged her archetype Monday night she blossomed into a three-dimensional person. So that's the one I've started working on. It's going to be fun!

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