Since I’m in Seattle from June 17th to July 31st to attend Clarion West, I’ve written a number of blog posts beforehand to post while I’m gone. I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments, but might take a while to respond.

More on Showcasing Shinies.

Yeah, that chick.

Femke
by Darci Robbins

Femke
by Shawna Mills

Since I’m in Seattle from June 17th to July 31st to attend Clarion West, I’ve written a number of blog posts beforehand to post while I’m gone. I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments, but might take a while to respond.

More on Showcasing Shinies.

Lillian
by Peter V. Nguyen

Lillian
by Darci Robbins

Since I’m in Seattle from June 17th to July 31st to attend Clarion West, I’ve written a number of blog posts beforehand to post while I’m gone. I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments, but might take a while to respond.

More on Showcasing Shinies.

It probably won’t come as much as a surprise that Lillian from Always Read the Fae Print is one of those.

So here’s half of my Lillian stash, with the others coming up soon.

Lillian
by Dan Howard

Lillian
by Courtney A. Bernard

Since I’m in Seattle from June 17th to July 31st to attend Clarion West, I’ve written a number of blog posts beforehand to post while I’m gone. I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments, but might take a while to respond.

More on Showcasing Shinies.

Then I decided that mixing up novels and characters was clearly the better way to go about it. Chaos!

So here’s my darling Valentijn, supporting character in Always Read the Fae Print and main character in the as-of-yet-untitled sequel I wrote earlier this year:

Valentijn
by Courtney A. Bernard

Valentijn
by Amy “Lyosha” Fennell

Shiny thing number one: It’s my birthday!

Does anyone remember what birthdays are supposed to feel like? No? Me neither.

Shiny thing number two: My Pixel Qi screen finally arrived. Unfortunately I don’t have screwdrivers small enough to take out my current netbook screen, so I’m foiled in my attempts to install it straightaway. Theoretically, The Dad will be coming to the rescue when I meet him tonight. If all goes well, I’ll spam you guys with pictures soon enough. I really think this is a fabulous tool for anyone who spends significant amounts of time at the computer.

Which is, you know, all of us writer types.

Shiny thing number three: I actually received this a while ago, but I haven’t found a good place to stick it yet. Anyway, I commissioned the lovely Darci Robbins to draw a picture of Lillian Hagen, the MC of Always Read the Fae Print, the book currently on submission.

This is the absolutely mind-blowing result:

It is the prettiest, shiniest thing I’ve seen in months.

Receiving this picture made me realize just how few of the drawings I’ve commissioned off artists have ever made their way onto the blog — which promptly gave me the answer to the question that’s been nagging at me for a while: “What do I do with the blog while I’m at Clarion West?”

Starting mid-June, prepare to be showered in pretties, you lovely people.

A lot of the time, when people list authors they’re inspired by, I feel a little intimidated. They’ve got all kinds of well-known names on there — the giants, the classics, the ones everyone’s read and everyone’s loved.

And… well… I haven’t read them. At all. This is the embarrassingly small list of ‘classic’ authors I’ve read:

• J.R.R. Tolkien (The first two LotR books, in Dutch)
• Bram Stoker (Dracula, of course)
• George Orwell (1984)
• Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
• …
• Yeah, I’ve got nothin’.

There are several reasons for my lack of education. Reason number one is, er, my lack of education. I left high school at fourteen, when I hadn’t yet gotten around to reading the classics in English class. (Keep in mind: I’m not actually English. We’ve got our own literature… not that I ever got around to reading much of the adult stuff, I’ll admit. Thea Beckman 4eva!)

There are a handful of other reasons, so don’t burn me as a heretic just yet, but what it comes down to is that the bulk of my lifetime reading comes down to MG/YA. I’ve been slowly trying to remedy that in recent years, but I’m hard-pressed for reading time as is, so I usually opt for more contemporary works. I know these authors online, people rave about them so I need to know what all the fuss is about, I need to know the currentday market anyway, it tends to be much faster-paced which is good for my short attention span… You get the picture.

So usually, I gloss over questions of inspirations. But when I wrote that blog post on Merel/Femke/Imke/whatsherface the other day, a lightbulb went off.

De Griezelklas.

The mother-effing Griezelklas series by Tais Teng.

I devoured those books as a kid. It’s about a girl, Meral, who recently discovered she’s a witch, but who’s still clueless about it. Her mother places her in a special ‘horror class’, populated with mummies and wood nimphs and kelpies and werewolves, who of course end up getting into all kinds of hijinks together. Also, their teacher has a digital version of the Necronomicon.

It. Was. Badass. And, looking back on it, probably a huge influence on the Fae Print series.

When I thought on, another major influence revealed itself.

K.A. Applegate and her Animorphs and Everworld series. I read these books over and over and freaking over — and you don’t want to know the kind of words I’d call the publishers when they stopped translating the books into Dutch after books 14 and 5, respectively. I was livid. I only managed to finish the series in recent years, when I got my hands on English copies.

(This is when I realized the writing was actually not that great. I don’t care. These books are freaking awesome.)

Animorphs was a huge influence in terms of voice and characters, whereas Everworld probably planted the seeds of my love of cracky Norse gods (though there’s some of that in the Griezelklas as well).

They’re probably also why I love series with rotating point of view characters so much.

Take these books, add a liberal amount of Buffy the Vampire Slayer love, and you’ve got Always Read the Fae Print.

Classics? What classics?

I have all kinds of interesting things I want to write posts about… but I’m not gonna.

Instead, I’m sharing some bullet point updates.

• Plotting is going OK. Still need some breakthroughs, but I’m feeling more comfortable with what I have so far.
• Have sidelined plotting for now in order to work on a short story R&R from a major market. (Excited: I am it.)
• That post about Merel/Femke/Imke/whatsherface? My mother is absolutely insistent that I return her to her Merel-y state. “So rename the other M-chick!” she keeps exclaiming. “Merel is PERFECT for her. None of those other names fit.” I will take it under consideration, Mom.
• Cat brought in a dead bird yesterday. That’s a first.
• Semi-hard at work acquiring a netbook to install the Pixel Qi screen I ordered — then I’ll be able to get work done outside. It’ll be magical.
• Yesterday I tried contacts for the first time in years. Getting them in took about 30-40 minutes. Taking them out… um…
• Did you know last night ended with my returning home from the doctor’s while totally high on anesthetic eye drops? Trufax.
• I am not trying contacts again.

Which brings us to today.

Which is Not A Good Day.

Like I mentioned before, both the dogs are leaving. This morning was Bo’s turn.

Tomorrow, Razzi is meeting with a different family where he may or may not stay as a trial run. So… it’s gonna be one weepy weekend.

At least I have words to keep me busy.

Once upon a time, I created a wannabe-Goth character for a ~certain book~. I tested out various names for her, including some that ended up going to other characters, but the moment I came up with ‘Merel’*, I knew it fit. It made that click you sometimes get with names, and it had the side effect of honouring one of my favourite series as a kid — De Griezelklas, by Tais Teng, which had a witch main character named Meral.

(My own Merel is also a witch.) (Kinda.)

(Side note: I should really read Tais Teng’s English-language work some time.)

Unfortunately, another character in the book was named Mariel. And I liked that name for that character even more. They were introduced in vastly different ways and showed up in very different parts of the book so the majority of my CPs were fine with it, but I grudgingly accepted that it might be more confusing in sequels where the characters would actually have scenes together.

Now, I have back-up names for most of my characters just in case, but Merel’s back-up names included Jolijn*, which had since gone to another character, and Esme, but Jodi said one word — “Twilight” — and that one was off the table. But finally, after many drafts and many years — well, over two — Merel became Femke*.

A couple of months in, I just got used to that…

When I realized that even *I* was getting confused plotting this next book, which contains names like Fenrir and Forseti.

In other words: have you met Imke*?

Art ©Darci Robbins

* I suspect I will stick a pronunciation guide onto my site if this book gets published.

The good: I am now officially on submission.

Yes, that requires sparklies.

The timing is pretty cool, too — a month and a day ago, I sent out my first query for the YA version of this project. I’m still dizzy over how fast all of this has gone. Probably not something I should get used to, in this business. *g*

Unfortunately, there’s also some bad news. If you’ve followed this blog (or my Twitter) for a while you’ll probably already know my dogs, Razzi and Bo. If not, here’s a reminder. (And if so… I don’t care. Look, cute puppies!!)

These photos were taken last year, back when I had hair and looked all of thirteen. (These days, I look fifteen, thank you very much.) (Also, that cow in the distance totally shows up in Always Read the Fae Print.)

Anyway, they’re only my dogs part-time. Their actual owner works long hours, so they come over here several days a week, enjoying the extra space and attention and walking time.

Sadly, their owner is no longer capable of even looking after them part-time, and me taking them in full-time isn’t an option either. We’ll be looking for new owners who do have the time to look after them, as well as the space, inclination, discipline and experience — Akitas are tough dogs to handle.

It’s good for them — they were cooped up alone in a small apartment far too often. At the same time… They’re my bay-bees. I get weepy just thinking about losing them. So that’s putting a bit of a downer on the otherwise celebratory mood.

It helps to know that we’re going to be super-picky about selecting new owners, though, and that they’ll have a much better life this way. I’m trying to focus on that.

Oh, and writing. I guess there’s that, too.

The other day, I went through a ton of my old notebooks to find the notes I made for the Always Read the Fae Print sequel.

Surprise number one: I actually found them.

Surprise number two: I also found the notes I made for the first book.

Back then, it was just named “Lillian fantasy” or “Lillian story” and Lillian was in college, studying Something Vaguely Scientific. I was still debating whether she should have burns or hellhound bites. There weren’t any fae yet — I had no idea of the antagonists or who/what they were after, though I did have an idea fo the first scene. (That one actually stuck for the length of the adult version.) At one point, I decided the story needed dragons.

Arjan started off not with a personality or role in the story, but with the following note:

For Lillian story – crush name = Jelle? Arjan? Something very Dutch but simple enough.

Another bit of insight into my thought process:

What kind of critters – made up? Base off existing goblin type things? Research. Also: WTF is actual plot/motivation?

Flipping ahead a few pages, Lillian is still in college instead of working at the restaurant, but I can see the actual plot coming together. The way hellfire works, how her scars tie into the plot, how her dad the warlock sets things in motion, the first incarnation of Merel/Femke (as ‘witch type person’)…

And at the end of that page, I remind myself that I don’t want to make it too YA-y. That went well.

As for my other books? Heirs started out as an adult novel as well. It was going to be very noir and dark. (Um, notsomuch anymore.)

My traumatized, reclusive, messed-up Cally from The Hands of Cally Wu started out as your basic sassy kick-ass urban fantasy heroine.

I love seeing how these things come together. It also really helps me when plotting my next projects: when I’m particularly attached to a concept or plot point that just won’t work for the book, or when I despair at my lack of plot or the flimsiness of the story so far, I remind myself how much these other books changed before I even put a single letter on paper. It helps so much in powering through and getting the story to what I need it to be.