More of a hint on my mystery project.

Today, I decided to take a whack at NaNoWriMo. For those of you not quite aware of it, NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge where thousands of writers try to write 50k words in the thirty days of November.

It's pretty epic.

I actually wasn't going to do NaNo this year, but then I realized that I really really REALLY want to finish at least one more rough draft this year.

And yes, it's part of the War of Six Crowns series. This, for those of you who've been reading my goal posts on The Five Year Project, is the Mystery Project I've been working on for most of this year already.

Still not going to say more about it, because I know that once you've read the second book, you're going to get a serious buzz out of this one.

But for now, a song that very nicely sums up the story and the emotions in it:

 

Progress!

My goodness. I can't believe it's October already. I mean seriously. We're a third of a way through that too. Time's seriously flying at the moment.

It's been a while since the last time I posted. For good reason. I started a new business, which means that my available time has been severely limited.

So the good thing (especially for you, if you've read The Vanished Knight and want to find out what happens next) is that I'm spending most of my available time to get TVK and The Heir's Choice ready for publishing.

The not-so-good-news is that the time constraints I'm facing means that I probably won't be able to publish at the end of October as previously announced.

At the moment, I'm waiting for the covers, as well as for my final beta readers to let me know if THC is clean enough to send in for copy edits. After that, I have copy edits and formatting, then both books will be out there for the whole world to see.

Still. We're close.

In related news, I've finished (I think) the rough draft to book three in this series. Which means I'm right on schedule to publish it next year.

Since I love this song and it's perfect for the place I left off for book 3, I thought I'd share.

Update and Another Awesome Song

Sheesh! I can't believe it's almost being a month.

Sorry for disappearing on you! I didn't really mean to. But I kinda got busy... you know... writing the series.

Right now I'm editing The Heir's Choice and it's going to be awesome. At the same time, I'm busy writing its sequel. The plan is that I can get into rewrites by the end of the year and edit it into greatness early in 2015.

I've actually hit on a title for book three, but I'm going to hang onto it for now. Maybe it will change or something as I edit, and I don't want to confuse people by having too many titles out there for the same book.

Today's song comes from my playlist for Book 3. Specifically, I'm busy writing a scene with Callan and Darrion and this song seems fitting. The band, Zebra and Giraffe, comes from South Africa, my home.

Sadly, though, today's vid doesn't have a lyric's version available, so I'm just going to let you all get lost in the emotions.

Song from Wo6C3

I've been wondering about which song I would post here next and then today I heard this song at my friend Robin's blog.

It reminds me of the third book, which I'm incidentally working on at the moment. Yep. No long delays before publishing for me. I'm hoping to have book three and something related to the series published next year.

Anyway... the song. It's one of those I can't really say much about, since it does have a deep meaning to the story in book three. Still, you'll note it's pretty sad.

And that's for a reason too...

A song for Callan (Plus a series update)

Right now, I'm shaking with excitement. Trembling with anticipation. Squeeing.

Yes, I squee. Much more regularly than one would think.

But tonight, I thought I should share, because the source of my giddiness is The War of Six Crowns. 

I mentioned before that I've been working on The Heir's Choice, which is book two in the series. I also mentioned that editing this book is a pain in the ass, since I wasn't completely sure what to do to make the book stand on its own the way it's supposed to.

However a few days ago I decided to be brave and make a huge change, even though I didn't know how it would affect the end.

It will be affecting the end. Drastically so. But the good news is that the result is so epic that I'm literally itching to start rewrites on book 3.

More than that, I'm not going to say. (Because hey, I still want you to read the books.)

But because most of the epic-ness is centering around Callan, I thought I'd share a song that captures her character for me. And... well, because it's an awesome song.

Hope you enjoy!

  

Undisclosed Desires

Actually, now that I think about it, I actually do have some posts I can share with you all. Mainly, these will be songs that I use when writing and editing the first two books. (Still editing the second book. TVK is ready for re-publishing.)

I just think it'll be a great way for you to get a feel for the story. Later-on, I'll probably re-post some of the songs with scenes those songs define for me. Right now, though, I'm going to leave you in suspense a bit longer.

But I will say this: One of the things about this series (and something that sometimes makes editing and writing it tricky) is the emotional complexity in it. Not everyone wears their heart on their sleeve, but there's some deep and sometimes dark stuff going on under the surface.

And this basically means that Muse is always an excellent choice for me to write to. And probably the most relevant song when it comes to the romantic aspects of the series is this one:

I've been absent again lately and feel horrible about it!

Just went through a bit of a tough time with my editing, and needed to focus on that instead.

The good news is that I'm finally getting into editing The Heir's Choice, which is bringing me closer to publishing the two first books of the War of Six Crowns series.

I am busy with putting together things I want to share with you on this blog, but at the moment, it's a bit difficult while I edit.

So for now, my posts here will remain sporadic until about (I hope) three months from now.

Thanks for your patience!

X

Announcing: What will be happening with The War of Six Crowns

I know that this is a weird time for me to post this, but I've had this moment of clarity while listening to an awesome song. And right now it's super-exciting and I'm just going to lay it all out there.

See... I have a blog for my writing, a blog for my life and this blog. And for a while, I've been struggling as to what to put on this one. I've been figuring some of this stuff out, but the truth is that only now things have fallen in place in my mind. 

The truth is that when I signed up for this writing gig, I sort of had this nebulous view as to what I wanted to achieve. Basically, I want to write a ton of books and I want to publish them and sell well. That was the goal. But now.... I've basically gotten hit by the sting of what this industry's like, and I've had to take stock of everything. 

And this song pretty much kicked me into gear.

Once, I split a good book into two in order to form The Vanished Knight and The Heir's Choice. And as a result, that good book grew a bit more epic. But let me take the moment to admit that I did this to fit in with my publisher.

Now, I don't have to. Now, I can do exactly what I want with my books. Which in itself was daunting. But now... now I've decided on a course of action.

This series has always been intended as one long story with four (and then five after the split) volumes. And the thing is that I still feel that The Vanished Knight feels a bit lonely without a friend. So I'm going to do something insane, and I'm going to publish it and The Heir's Choice at the same time. There's a method to this madness, I promise. But the first thing that I feel is that even after the split, these two books run together so closely that it feels wrong to put six months' minimum of a wait between them. At the same time, throwing two books with different minor arcs back into a single volume doesn't feel right either.

So two books you'll have. Hopefully by the end of October. And:

They. Will. Be. EPIC!

Speaking of epic, this blog is going to go to a whole new level, because I'm going to pop up at random to share awesomeness. Songs that inspire me? Check. Awesome scenes - cut or not? Check. Many other forms of epicness? Honey, you have no idea.

We're going to have so much fun.

A little taster from the War of Six Crowns Series...

So this morning I woke up with this song in my head. Which is interesting. See... I've heard it many times, but never really bothered to pay attention to the words.

Thing is... those words hooked somewhere in my subconscious and I woke up hearing: "And the walls came tumbling down on the city that we love." 

Now usually when a song's looping through my head, there's a reason for it. So I went around trying to try and find out why.

Now, it's an interesting fact that when I'm writing I have two muses. I have a general (female) one, that's kind of my creative mind going about inspiring me as if she were a separate person. And... well... it suits me to think of her as such. Because if I let ideas grow and expand organically and without conscious thought as I write, I generally write MUCH better.

So that's one muse. The other... Well.

The other is Darrion. Yup... as in one of the main characters from The War of Six Crowns. He kind of just started out as the first guy from the stories to show up in my head. Then he became their spokesperson in my head. And... Well... Now he tends to be the one to kick my butt into gear when I haven't been working on the series in a while.

And this, lovely people, was him kicking my butt into gear. Why? Well... I have book 1 to re-publish, book 2 to edit, book three to re-write and book four to start.

This song ties into book four on so many levels that it makes me emotional to think about it. But just in case you fear I'm posting a spoiler, nope. There's no volcano erupting and destroying everyone.

The words are all metaphorical, and deeply beautiful to me because I know the meaning. Sadly though, sharing the meaning will be spoiling, so instead I'll share the song and let you come to your own conclusions.

Bad news and good news

Hey all.

As the topic says, there's bad news and good news today.

Bad news is that The Vanished Knight was taken out of all its selling sights as my publishing house gave me the rights back.

The good news is that I'll be publishing it again very soon, and the fact that I have free rein with the book now, means that this blog will be a lot more fun.

Watch this space!

I'm still alive and being pensive.

I've been quiet on this blog lately.

It's not really something I wanted to do. But I've been working very hard on the guest house I mentioned before and a variety of books I'm writing.

Which is actually an interesting dilemma for me. My publisher seems to expect me to devote a significant proportion of my time to marketing. So they want me on social media to drum up new sales.

Thing is... It doesn't really seem to work. I have a significant platform elsewhere, adding up to about ten thousand people in my entire network. But no amount of posting, tweeting etc. about my book actually added up to sales.

Sales have happened, yes. But on days I did nothing related to the series.

Which means, the way I see it, that actually spending time devising and posting tweets, g+ postings etc. adds up to nothing. What has sold, however, was me building relationships through blogging. That I know, because most of you on my to-read list, I recognize from my blogging activities.

Ideally, then, I want to create the same type of society here. But it's difficult to create a society around something when most people out there haven't read my book.

It's a chicken and egg situation, really.

Hopefully I can figure this one out, though. I just need to put some more thought into how exactly I'm going to do it...

Just checking in...

I took a bit longer than I expected to get back to this blog. It's to be expected, I think, since I already run two other blogs, while doing a wide variety of other stuff. 

At the moment, a huge chunk of my time is going towards getting the guest house ready for business in February. It's hard, physical work and that means two things to me: earlier bed times and earlier wake-ups. 

See, if I'm to exhausted to think at the end of the day, I can't really write all that well. So if I want to get anything done, I need to wake up at least an hour earlier to do it. 

I'm doing quite well, though. As soon as I have some confirmation as to what's going to make it into War of Six Crowns Book Two, I'll get cracking on doing the rewrite to book three. 

Can't wait, really. Don't get me wrong. I love writing in general. I adore my new worlds and characters. But the truth is, the world of War of Six Crowns is like home, and I can't wait to go. 

In the meantime, I'm busy editing and drafting at the same time. I'm also reading whenever I can steal time. I want to read 75 books this year, which means I have to read about a book and a half every week. One of the books I want to finish is Les Miserables. I started last year, and have been inching along slowly but surely. I also want to finish reading Jane Austen's book, as well as at least a few of Shakespeare's plays. 

Yeah, that's quite different from the type of stories I usually write, but then, I read very widely. In fact, I'd probably read anything someone would give me. 

I'm reading Kinetic by my blogging friend SK Anthony at the moment. 

What are you reading today? Which books/authors are on your to-read list for 2014?