2.

When Psyke returned to the ballroom, arms prickling, bare with cold and vulnerability, a man's shadow crossed her path, too close to be a servant. Maledicte, she thought, and her fairly trapped. But a glance up and further up still reassured her of that even as her breath caught. This wasn't Maledicte at all, but Maledicte's lover: Janus Ixion, Lord Last, the bastard nephew of the king.

Her smile never faltered, even as Ixion bowed silently, and without a word, or even truly a glance at her, offered a hand. Read more

Psyke's Very Bad Day, pt 1/3

These are a few (longish) scenes that never made it into Kings & Assassins.

Why this didn't make the book?: It was a prologue that references a whole lot of people who would be irrelevant to the plot of Kings. Plus, the nervous debutante was just the wrong feel for the rest of the book. Those of you who've read Kings will find certain phrases or parts familiar--they were cannibalized for use later. Still, I have a fondness for these scenes; they gave me my first look at the kind of woman Psyke Bellane might be. Read more

So, I've been revising the Beasts, filling in all the blanks--*cough* setting *cough*-- adding those things that make a novel work better--you know, things like character conflict, like foreshadowing, like PLOT--and I've gotten up to chapter five. Read more

Sia McKye was kind enough to allow me a platform to babble about my process in novel structuring! Go check it out and stay to read the rest of her site--she's got a lot of fascinating articles by other authors.

http://siamckye.blogspot.com/

So, obviously I didn't manage to post a June progress report, but I'm going to blame that on the fact that there was too much progress going on!

I'm in the second week of the Lawrence KS CSSF short story workshop and it is kicking my butt in the very best way. It's been a while (ages, eons) since I've written short stories, and since I do love them, I thought what better way to get motivated to write a couple? I'm beginning to think workshops carry their own brand of selective amnesia with them: after they're over you just can't really recall the effort expended during them. Read more

The good people at BSC were kind enough to let me ramble on a bit about the process behind Kings & Assassins. Go on over and check it out, and stay to play on the site! It's a great place to spend some time.

My ramblings at BSC Reviews

While trying to organize my study again (and again and again and again--it is the Augean Stables of my house) I found a notepad with the following written on it:

New Story!  (note the exclamation point.  I was, apparently, excited about it.)

Start w/aftermath:  When the hotel failed to be devoured by a nightmare-headed god-thing, there

And THAT'S IT!   Read more

Sigh.  So it's been one of those days--busy, choppy, and full of ringing phones--and I just was not dealing with it well.  My head felt disconnected and logy; my general mood was blah, and my brain--well, what brain. Read more

So, ten days out of thirty-one lost to either migraines or to the wonders of migraine meds which take away the brain as well as the pain. 

Productivity level? 

Regrettably low. Read more

So I promised you all cut scenes from Kings and Assassins, and promptly fell down on the job. Problem is, I'm a big writer. Tell me to write 100K, and I'll write 140K. Tell me to write 120K, and it just gets ridiculous. This is the sole reason I moved to novel writing in the first place: my "short" stories were all clocking in at 7K, 10K, 25K, and the first Sylvie "short?" reached 40K at the 3/4 mark before I got disgusted and decided she needed to be a novel character. Read more