Hello People Who Haven't Quite Given Up on this Blog

Yes, I've been totally MIA blog-wise since June. What can I say, it was a rough summer with little or no writing and fall wasn't much better. There were family issues, there was a move... nothing all that interesting though it effectively brought my blogging and fiction writing to a grinding halt nevertheless. I'm going to reformat The City Darkens today for release as a full novel (no more serialization--I've decided that since no one seemed to think that was as fun as I did, I'm done with it), and I have a new cover (queue excited clapping) done by professional artist Dolly Georgieva-Gode. You get to see it here first:

Also, if you read one or more of the installments of The City Darkens, like the first one, Myadar's Snare, for instance, please comment below with your email and I'll send you a complimentary copy of the full novel. I'll be formatting it so you can skip forward to whichever section you choose, so you don't have to reread the first parts if you don't want to. I would, of course, deeply appreciate your giving the book an honest review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads.

Wondering if you'd like the book and what it's about?

Here's the blurb:
For ten years Myadar has accepted her life as the estranged wife of a nobleman, running his estate and raising their young son. Everything changes when Myadar is summoned to the capital to begin a new life as a courtier in the decadent, scheming royal court. In a land on the cusp of a new age of modernity, Myadar must decide whether to oppose the rising tyranny that threatens to destroy everything she loves, and risk her own life in doing so.

And here are links to the Goodreads pages of the first three installments from back when it was a serial. You can read reviews there.

Myadar's Snare
Myadar's Betrayal
Myadar's Flight

Myadar's Flight is out!

Myadar's Flight, the third episode in The City Darkens, is now available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Like the other episodes, it is priced at $0.99.

Here's my description (SPOILERS if you haven't yet read Myadar's Snare--which you can download for free here--and Myadar's Betrayal):

Myadar has struck a blow against Reister, but she still hasn't found Bersi or figured out a way to escape Helésey. After the success of her first foray into the city disguised as Raud Gríma, she determines to don the costume of the legendary highway robber again. This time, however, things will not go as planned.

So far April has been great for sales. I've sold over three times as many books as in any prior month (although since that number was never very high, it's still not like I can quit my day job). It's super exciting, though. I love knowing that people are reading my books! I just hope they enjoy them, too.

What do you think of the cover? Do you have a favorite of the covers for the parts of The City Darkens, yet?

Cover for Myadar's Revelry (part 2 of The City Darkens)

So just to have all my new covers in one place, I figure I'll post a blog article for each.

This one is for part two of The City Darkens, which I'm hoping to publish tomorrow, depending on whether I get the final edits done and whether my homework for the MA program gets in the way. In any case, it should be up by the end of the day Monday.

My concept for the covers is to keep the background mostly the same (although I'm smudging and shading each individually, and unless I find a way to cut that corner, that means each will still have a slightly different background). The portrait of Myadar, the main character, in the foreground, will change with each episode, and have something to do with the story in that episode. In Myadar's Revelry, for instance, it's the first time Myadar's look gets "updated" to reflect the court's fashion (basically flapper, art deco, etc.).

So here it is:

What do you think of it?

COVER! OF! PART! ONE!

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I was really fretting over the creation of my covers for the decopunk serial novel I've been working on, The City Darkens. I wanted a deco feel, and the closer I could get to a tribute to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the better. Since part one is almost ready to be published (maybe tomorrow!) the time had really come to confront my fears and get to work on the cover. So I collected some images on Pinterest and sat down at my dining room table with all of my boxes of art supplies, none of which I have touched in over a year, and this is the result:

I'm really pleased with it. If you are familiar with the posters for Metropolis, you might recognize the one I like the best:

I realize my font is a bit hard to read, but I figure the title will be all typed out nicely at the top of the page next to the cover, so it's really more about catching the eye and also communicating the Lang inspiration and deco quality.

My husband asked whether I'll get in trouble for the similarities. My understanding is that as long as an image is 75% altered from the original, you're okay. Now, I can't claim that I ran any sort of algorithm, but I did change a lot in the picture. I think I'm okay. Would you agree?

Anyway, be on the look out for the soon to be published first episode of my novel, The City Darkens: Myadar's Snare. Yay!

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett

Continuing in my pursuit of good fantasy novels, I picked up The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, by Galen Beckett. This one is not GLBT, although I suspect two of the male characters may pair off eventually in a sequel.

First off, let me say that the novel was not only good enough for me to finish, but I've wishlisted the sequels. So that's saying something. However, I did have a number of problems with it, which I'll get into in a bit.

The novel is set in an Edwardian-esque fantasy world with strange night/day cycles that change all the time. Nights are referred to as "umbrals" and days as "lumenals," and due to some unexplained phenomenon, some umbrals last 20 hours, some five, and likewise with the days, etc., with no rhyme or reason to when the long and short umbrals and lumenals occur. Magic exists in this world, and seems to have different manifestations based on gender. Other than that, the setting is very much Edwardian, as you can guess from the dress the woman on the cover is wearing.

So my initial reaction to the first lines, which are very  Jane Austen, was delight. I thought, here is exactly the sort of book I want to read, especially given my intent to explore writing an Edwardian romance. However, this delight soon faded.

First of all, I think it just doesn't fit to combine fantasy and Austen. It's weird, because I love both, but somehow, they just don't go together. It's like lemon curd and white cheddar. Love 'em both. Wouldn't spread the one on the other.

Secondly, Beckett moves from Austen, to Bronte (all of them, but especially Jane Eyre) to Dickens, and back to Austen. I love all of these, of course, but they are all very different. I don't read Austen if I'm in the mood for gothic romance (Northanger Abbey is not my favorite of hers), I read Bronte instead. I don't read Bronte if I want a taste of the drudgery of living in working class London, I read Dickens. 

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

So the movement in the novel from the (mostly) cheery story of Miss Ivy Lockwell and her sisters and their association with Rafferty and Garritt to Ivy becoming a governess in the lonely, shadowy Heathcrest Hall in the windblown, wild country of Mr. Quent (who almost has a wife locked in an upstairs room, for pity's sake), to a return to the capitol with a focus on Garritt's struggle to find and keep a job as a clerk... I just had trouble with it. I found the similarities to real works by Austen, Bronte, and Dickens too distracting and when the plot deviated from the expected formulas for those novels (Austen would not have had Ivy fall for two men, for instance--at least, not without resolving it for the reader so that one of the men was revealed to be a cad) I was annoyed.

I also found it bewildering when the mid section of the book, set at Heathcrest, suddenly switched to first person, and I became convinced that the whole first part of the book was almost entirely unnecessary to the plot. I started thinking, why did the author even include it? And why not write the whole novel in first person? I know why now, having read the whole thing. Beckett needed to go with third person in the first and last thirds of the book to show stories like Garritt's. Could the middle part have remained in third person? Probably. I'm left feeling like the novel just wasn't very tight. Maybe if I reread it I would feel differently.

Anyway, those are my quibbles. Overall, I did enjoy the novel. Ivy is likeable, as is Rafferty. Garritt I'm on the fence about, and I was ready to toss his sister to the bad guy he so strenuously protected her from. I have a theory about Mr. Quent, but I won't share it until I've read the next two books.

Click the image above to order.

I won't say, "If you're a fan of Austen and Bronte you'll like this book," because as you can see, that's not how it worked out for me. Rather, if you are looking for a fantasy novel that departs from the usual medieval setting and involves some likeable characters, you'll like this book.

Mélusine, by Sarah Monette

The fantasy novel Mélusine, by Sarah Monette, is the first in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series. First off, for those familiar with the French myth of Mélusine, be aware that this story has nothing to do with mermaids. Luckily I didn't remember that the mermaid in the myth was named Mélusine, or I might have been disappointed. I've always liked mermaids.

Anyway, this story (which fits into the GLBT fantasy genre, by the way) is about two men who live in a city called Mélusine. One, a mage and a member of the royal court, is named Felix. The other, a cat burglar and sometimes thug, is named Mildmay. Felix and Mildmay don't know each other, and for most of the novel, pursue different stories. My biggest beef with this novel is that it switches from Felix to Mildmary's first person accounts, sometimes within the same page. I think I understand why Monette chose to do this (she wanted their stories to keep up with each other in the course of time passing), but it still irritated me all the way to the end. I would get engrossed with one story, and then be jolted into the other. Just about every book I've ever read that does this annoys me. However, I can see the appeal of telling a story from more than one perspective, particularly in this case. I won't say more about that so as not to spoil things.

I liked both Felix and Mildmay, and became more interested in each of them at different times. Mildmay's voice, in particular, really grew on me. I became very attached to both of them, and by the end of the book, I didn't want the story to end. This sort of thing doesn't happen all that often to me; I'll enjoy a book just fine, but also enjoy the ending, and be done with it. Not so with Mélusine. I'm really happy I get to read more books in the series, otherwise I'd miss these characters, especially Mildmay.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

The irony is that through most of the novel, I liked Felix more, and more often than not, I wanted to know what was going on with him much more than Mildmay. I enjoyed Mildmay's voice and I really liked it when Mildmay told stories--long before he said so, I knew Mildmay loved story-telling, you could read it in the way he would dig in to a story and deliver it with such relish. Also, at the start, I had a hard time with Felix's experiences, since saying Felix was a punching bag is like saying Hurricane Katrina damaged some houses. And it just kept going and going, I was like, jeez, let's give the guy a break already, okay? Eventually Felix loses his mind, with full-on hallucinations and such, and actually, that's when I really started to like him. And I have to say, sane Felix (who we only meet at the end) is not nearly as likeable as crazy Felix. I'm a bit concerned I won't much care for sane Felix in the next books. Time will tell, I suppose.

Click the image above to order.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It is very well-written, meaning the phrasing, etc., is so good I felt like my writing was improving as I read it.


Oh, and just a note on the cover. I really don't like it. To me, it says "beefcake," and not much else, despite the attempt to represent Felix's mage tattoos. And it's so very inappropriate to associate beefcake to this novel. Perhaps Felix was buff and all before his misfortunes hit, but very quickly Monette describes him as emaciated, his hair shorn, etc.--I visualized concentration camp victims.