2023 is almost over...

Greetings my wonderful readers! Here we are in 2023… in October… which means this year is almost over. The years do roll faster downhill, don’t they? So here’s your update on all things writing:

Progress on the next book has been… slow. I realize that I swore up and down that Book 4 would be the final chapter in the “In Caves & Catacombs” series, but I find myself conflicted on whether to continue with a fifth book. I feel that there is more of the story to tell: what happens to Valentino, Maggie, Susannah, April, Damian, and the others? How do they survive? How do they adapt to the dangers of their new world? To the dangers within themselves?

Here’s what I know: these characters are the bringers of the new world. They will shape everything that comes After. You can see how there is so much more to the story…

And yet!

The first book in the next series, By Scion and Sea, awaits. Set in the same universe and featuring the descendants of the “In Caves & Catacombs” series, the next series explores how the sea people clash with those who bunkered through the apocalypse as they emerge from their underground cities. Love. War. Brutality. Hope. Etc.

I want to jump into this so much… I have a draft that I wrote just about ten years ago now that is in need of serious revision. Well, more like an entire rewrite, really. But I’m struggling to write it because I feel the characters from The Cave are calling to me to write more into their story, which could change how By Scion and Sea comes to be.

Sigh.

And this is how I find myself with zero meaningful progress on either project.

That being said, I am as dedicated as ever to the worlds I have built and those I have yet to build. My writer’s fire still burns brightly, even when internal conflicts suck all the oxygen away.

Please know that I hope to provide more concrete updates on my writing plans and timeline in the coming months. I will also commit to the one project to breathe life into by the New Year.

Thank you all for your ongoing support, and for the wonderful reviews! They all add logs to the fire :)

Audiobooks & Accessibility

Hello my dear readers,

Recording Studio

I am really excited to share my latest author adventure: working with an amazing group of voice actors to create audiobook versions of my ebooks! By the end of this year, you should be able to read and listen to my work as audiobooks, paperbacks, and ebooks. Naturally, I’m excited partly because I hope that this will open my content up to a new market audience. But it goes beyond that. By adding audiobooks to my repertoire, my content will be more accessible and inclusive to all.

Accessibility is something I think about a lot. As so many writers do, I have another full-time job in the public education sector. Specifically, I work as an Instructional Designer and Technologist, which means that I work in online learning and provide training to educators for delivering their instructional content at a distance. You can imagine how the demand for instructional designers has magnified over the past year!

Accessibility, put simply, is hugely important to instructional designers. At its core, this is because learning is for everyone. Period. Ensuring that your content is accessible to students with disabilities is critical not only because it’s the LAW, but also because it will make your instruction better when done mindfully. When you design for those in the margins, everyone benefits. I’ll give you one of the same examples I use in my training: how many of you have ever used the captions on a movie to better understand what was happening, even if you’re not hard of hearing? Or how many times have you been sitting somewhere in public, watching a YouTube video on mute with the captions on? Captions may be designed for those who cannot hear, but so many others benefit from their use.

The same principle applies to audiobooks. And that’s because reading is for everyone. Maybe some think of audiobooks as serving a small portion of the population, and thus, a small segment of the market. And maybe I won’t earn back much, if any, of the money I’m investing in the process. But putting in the time and money to add an accessible option is something I’m excited about, and I can’t wait to share the finished products with all of you!

And to those of you who asked me about the audiobook versions that started this whole train of thought: thank you! I’m listening!

Overwhelmed, Overworked... and Utterly Inspired

“The Road” Cover Art by Elle Otero

Dear readers,

I must admit that I meant very, very much to publish the third novella for the In Caves and Catacombs series a year ago exactly. I also meant very, very much to update this blog. But here we are, at the tail-end of 2020, and I am just now wrapping up what I swore I'd accomplish 12 months ago.

I'd give you a laundry list of reasons why this year was awful, but I’m so dreadfully tired of the sadness. The anxiety. I don’t wish to fixate on the relentlessness of COVID and its expanding impact on our world. On top of that, enough terrible things befall the characters in The Road that I just need to inject some (hopefully not toxic) positivity into the world right now. We have been so very, very fortunate that very few members of our family have caught COVID. It is such a deeply frightening experience, as so many of you know. So I'm going to attempt to share a bit of levity and joy by focusing on the good things that have come out of this year for me and my family:

1. Evie: Our daughter is a constant source of goodness and love. This year she turned 2, and she is the sweetest child "that ever I seen", to quote her directly. Her request of Santa this year was "To give mommy a present". Hand to God. She is an incredible human being, and I'm 40% positive she's not manipulating me for more fruit snacks.

2. Steve: My husband Steve and I have grown closer. We have shared our deepest fears, done our best to prepare for the worst contingencies we could imagine (many of which did not come to fruition, thank God), and have practiced patience and understanding with each other. I don't have anything funny to add because I'm being sincere AF. Steve is a lovely human being and I am grateful for him every day.

3. Gardening: Our garden that we panic-expanded (well, rushed our existing plans for) in February has been incredibly bountiful. I'm still shockingly bad at growing good corn, but we can grow the heck out of tropical and semi-tropical rare fruit species, so, a net win. Also, we have added chickens. Ever since we sold our country property and moved to a smaller lot in the city, we've been chicken-less. Not so anymore! There's nothing like waking up to their lovely little clucking. Also, Steve has since fixed the dog door so we no longer wake up to it, but it's nice to hear when we go outside.

4. Work: Work is insane. I work in the field of online education and technical training, and we were understaffed before the COVID crisis began. Going from approximately 5% online courses to 100% virtually overnight was crazy in March, and the repercussions of that switch are still reverberating to this day. Despite feeling overwhelmed and overworked all of the time, I still consider this to be an incredible privilege because there are so many out of work, losing their businesses, or scraping by on unemployment. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to continue supporting the transition to online learning.

5. School: School is also insane. Yes, in late 2019 I began working towards my PhD with no idea what 2020 would bring. And now I've made it a full year into the three-year program (am I dreaming? does anyone finish in 3 years?) and there's no turning back now. About half of my motivation to complete my doctorate is pure, but the other half is because I'm totally going to make people I dislike call me Doctor. I challenge you to find anyone who's doing it without that in mind. They know in their deepest, darkest place in their hearts exactly what I mean.

6. Writing: What? How did I find the time? I still don’t know how, but I've actually finished The Road, were you even paying attention??? Artistic inspiration is one of the few things we can rely on when the world feels upside down. I have furiously scribbled during my breaks and stayed up too many late nights, but I’ve finally finished the third novella. While it is not the drafted novel that I’ve been kicking around for years, The Road is a major accomplishment for me nonetheless because it required a total rewrite. I was ready to hit publish one year ago when two very dear friends told me to wait. Let it sit. As much as it pained me then, that process of rewriting made the story far better and more developed than it would have been otherwise. Furthermore, it has also given me the opportunity to seriously workshop it with my writer friend, Marysia (I will link to her work as soon as I can, because she's amazing). The workshopping process has been delightful and such an incredible learning experience, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

There are so many more things to be grateful for this year. Breadmakers, for instance. Jellybags. And growing closer to our family, friends, and neighbors, even at a distance. Seeing our communities band together to get through the COVID pandemic has its own kind of beauty, and it shines a light that cuts through the darkness of death that has shadowed our world for the better part of a year. 2020 has indeed been awful. If you lost someone, I am so, so sorry. I hope that you will find peace, and hope that you will find a way to honor that loss.

If you can find it within you, let’s come together to celebrate what we can. Merry Christmas, dear readers, and Happy Holidays!

The Value of Workshops

Workshop minimum requirement: coffee

A few years ago, I began my first college writing workshop. Sure, I’d taken some creative writing classes before, but I couldn’t imagine that the natural talent required to create art could really be taught in the classroom. I failed to appreciate the mechanics of writing well, and the value of the writing community. I also couldn’t have imagined how it feels to share your work with fifteen to twenty other readers.

When I first read aloud an excerpt from my first novel draft, I was overwhelmed to the point of tearing up (just a little, okay?). That silence as you read is loaded. When you finish, you become a total cliched breath-holding, nail-biting quivering child, speaking in public for the first time. You want everyone to like it so very much, and you feel your dreams riding on that quietness. You wonder if you write for other people or for yourself. Only the truest writers write for themselves and don’t care what others think, right? Right?!

I don’t think so. Not entirely, anyway. There’s value in workshops, and it’s not just in getting others to beta read your work, or to get feedback and free editing. A great deal of the value is in hearing others discuss your characters as if they’re real. The readers discuss the choices your characters make, and how that might change what happens next. It breathes life into the work. It encourages you to keep going, to keep spending those hours writing and editing and researching and imagining. Workshops are a beautiful thing. So seek them out, friends. Even if it’s just you and your pal, meeting weekly over coffee to talk about the next chapter. They’re worth every minute!

Drawn to Darkness

I’d like to think I have a sunny, bright, happy personality. I love happy things! And I recognize the same brightness reflected in my one year old daughter’s eyes every time she gives me one of her thousand-watt smiles. But there’s some part of me, and I think all of us to some extent, that is drawn to the darkness. There’s something captivating about pain; the brooding, sensual, raw edge of it calls to our softest, sweetest, most vulnerable parts. Having lived through some remarkably bad decisions, I’m still drawn to it, but not in the way that I used to be.

Now, I just write it into my characters. The more flawed and human and damaged they are, the more they compel me. The struggles they endure begin to dictate the direction of the story. I’m finally getting my writing legs back, and it feels good to muddle about the shadows again.

Really, all of this is to say that “The City” is back on track for a July release! I’d give a description of the story, but it’s evolving so quickly in the rewriting process that I won’t try to pin April (our heroine) down (even if she might like that sort of thing). Suffice to say this is still a story of love lost in the apocalypse, a story of journey, of redemption, and self-discovery. It’s a lot to stick into a novella.

More updates to come!

I thought I was a gamer

I came to a conclusion about my identity the other day that was a bit surprising. I've always considered myself to be a gamer. A gamer "light", if you will. I started with my first Gameboy in the 90s, and continued with early Apple computer games (Lode Runner, especially), and then progressed to the life-changing Nintendo 64 (Zelda, what what!).

After that, I started playing games like Age of Empires, where I could design and explore my own kingdoms, or Petz, which allowed me to create my own cat and dog breeds and customize my own "house" (backgrounds where the animals romped around, in essence). But what really lit my 14-year-old fire was my introduction to online role-playing games with "Vampires! The Dark Alleyway".

"Vampires!" was very basic mechanically: I'd click these dark squares to "move" through the city, clicking white underlined text to drink the blood of humans or other vampires I encountered. But where the game came to life was across Yahoo group forums, where self-proclaimed "clans" of vampires would write pages and pages describing their movements around the city, envisioning their characters and locations, and detailing their interactions that other players could then play off of, adding to the script. There were wars, marriages, clan raids, vendettas... and I continued seeking out games like that, ending up in SecondLife, where you can be anything, meet anyone, travel anywhere.

I thought all of that made me a gamer. That, and Grand Theft Auto and Halo and Guitar Hero and Archeage and other WoW-style MMORPGs (and too many other games to list). But I've come to realize that the games that most captured my attention were the ones that allowed me creative freedom. The bigger the world, the more invested I became in my adopted identity. And it wasn't because I'm a gamer by nature. It's because I'm a writer. And that identity has always felt too big, too lofty to aspire to.

I'm beginning to come around and accept my identity as a writer. The more I put down the games, the more I focus on honing my craft, and fitting into that role. The same inspiration that made me click that white, underlined "drink" button, the same imagination that allowed me to visualize the human brought to their knees in front of me, that's what fuels my writing.

Identities change. And it's very rewarding to find yourself proud of your identity when you finally realize it fits.

Crossing Genres

I've been slowly working my way through Book 3 of "In Caves & Catacombs", and my characters have developed... feelings. It's strange, when a book takes on a life of its own. That neat little outline that I wrote begins to expand and contract, breaking its constraints to become something entirely different. In the case of "The City", it has evolved from a post-apocalyptic solo through the remains of Southern California to a team effort. I dare say it's becoming a bit of a romance.

Romances are hard for me to write. Not because I don't enjoy writing them, because I do. I love a good romance! But writing one is difficult because there are so many elements inspired from my personal life. Many of my characters in my writing are rather obviously inspired by my friends and family. That red-headed mermaid in Out of the Efrenen Sea? Yeah, that's me. Well--she used to be me, anyway, before she deepened enough to be a character entirely separate from my being.

You see, if I strictly wrote about myself or the other folks that inspire my characters, it wouldn't be weird. I wouldn't be paranoid about it, because truth be told, I'm a rather boring person in real life (except for the mermaid tail, but that's another story for another blog post).

My characters, on the other hand, are decidedly less boring. And when the fictional characters start to make their own decisions, I start to worry about the way their inspiration might be perceived. In my head, they become unique and completely detached from their original inspiration. But do my friends and family know that? Or are they seeing me linger in a description about the connection between April and Will, wondering if that's how my husband and I speak or interact?

To move forward, I've had to stop worrying about what people will think. There's no time for insecurity when there's a story to be told.

It's like a romantic stroll through the snow, but with fallout.

A twist of the knife

"The Grave" has changed the entire direction of the "In Caves & Catacombs" series, and I love it. But the more you love something, the more frightened you are of it, for it, by it. It scares me because it's dark, but is it dark enough? Does it honor the veteran experience enough? Does it honor the struggle of being homeless enough? Is it, in and of itself, enough?

I'm afraid the truth is that it isn't enough. I fear that I haven't done it justice, and that bothers me. There's that twinge of regret, that twist of the knife, that if I held onto it longer, if I worked it more, that it could be so much better. The same goes for "The Boat", and the same will go for the next three or four installments in the series. Hell, the same thing will happen to the Efrenen Sea series. I could hold onto it for ten more years. Perfect it. Coddle it. Shield it from the light and critics alike. But it'll only make me fear it more. And I'm the most afraid of letting the fear hold me back from accomplishing all the things I want to accomplish.

Now that I've said it, it gives me peace. Because nothing I write is ever going to be good enough, and that's okay. My husband tells me that I'm too hard on myself, and he's right. I push and push because I feel like I don't measure up. But that's good, in some ways. Because that's what motivates me to keep going. I don't expect anything big to happen. I don't expect to be able to quit my day job to write full time. What I want from this venture is for people to read what I produce and to enjoy it. It's so simple--I just want to entertain you. And there's a darkness in that, all my own.

Bo Burnham hits the anguish of it absolutely perfectly... hang with this all the way through to the end (it really happens around the five minute mark, but seriously, watch the whole thing), and you'll see the connection: 

Full show available on NETFLIX.

I don't think I can handle this right now, either. So I'm going to go back to writing the third installment, God help me.

Evolving Process

As I edit the draft of my novel, I've noticed my writing process is evolving. My previous process went something like this:

Me, staring angrily at my computer screen instead of writing.

But my writing process changed, and now I've been able to write a full length novel and several short stories. There were two Big Things that changed to liberate me from angry staredowns with my laptop. The first is outlining, and the second is counting my words.

Outlining. *Shudder*. The word brings me back to middle school. All of my English teachers taught me that step one was to create an outline for my essays. I hated it. I much preferred writing out all of my ideas, and then going back to organize them. I hated outlining so much that when I had to turn in my outlines for points, I sneakily wrote the essay first, then crafted the outline to turn in. Thus, when I began writing creatively (not for points, and not for dollars), I still shunned the very idea of an outline. It seemed antithetical to include something so academic in my creative outlet. 

I don't even know how I'm going to finish this blog post with this image in here, it's that uninspiring.

Eventually, I decided that I would finish a novel, but I didn't know how. I had so many beginnings, so many ideas scribbled on looseleaf, so many chapters saved onto my hard drive, and not one full story arc to my name. So I began outlining instead. I found it deeply satisfying to create a story from beginning to end, and it made me excited to fill in the gaps. It directed my energy, because I knew what had to come next, and even if I wrote like crap to get from Chapter One to Chapter Two, at least I got that far.

Outlining gave me direction, but it was counting words that pushed me to follow through. I became obsessed with my word count when I began NaNoWriMo, but what's in a word count when you're writing something that's not a minimum of fifty thousand words? Motivation, that's what.

Not that kind of motivation. REAL motivation.

But if outlining is academic, surely adding math would ruin the artistic process, right? Nope, not for me. I'm so Type A that I find meeting my word count goal inspiring. And the truth is that I tend to think I'm finished with a chapter with only half of my needed word count. That's where I push through. I look at my count, review my outline, and more often than not, it turns out I haven't written enough or described enough, and my characters haven't developed enough. And that's where my best writing comes from. When I'm motivated to meet this tiny little chapter word count goal, it gives me what I need, piece by piece, to meet my hundred thousand word novel goal.

So try combining that crap from school that you hated with your writing. You might be surprised by the results!