September 2015 Update

You can feel them: the winter winds, creeping over the mountains hoping that you won’t notice them. Outside my window, it’s snowing. But in these parts of Canada, it always starts snowing in October. There’s no reason to believe this year will be any different.

This is the Year

But for me, this year will be so different than any other year. For this year is the year I become an author! As I eagerly make my way through one of my favourite books – Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always – I find my spirits lifted despite the fact this is a dark tale of childhood. For you see, only Barker’s tales have been able to give me the chills since I can remember. And it’s this beyond-the-pages touch that I hope to convey into my readers. If I can give them the chills or influence them after they’ve set the book down, then my work here is done.

This month, I’ve spent my time in the R&D side of writing – I’ve read more ghost stories and horror than I can shake a stick at. In fact, I crashed my Kindle (twice) with overuse from the books, and read more Wattpad entries than I care to admit. All in an effort to find one thing: lines, passages, statements – anything that sent a shiver down my spine.

My Plan for Thrills and Chills

With Below written, edited and waiting patiently for cover art, Book 2 (title: Whole) is a hair’s breadth away from first draft. My goal for the series is to take the underlying tone from dark paranormal fiction into horror. I told myself to wait until the third book before I let loose with the true horror genre, and I’ve been writing those horror scenes in handfuls lately. Using the books and stories I’ve been researching, along with a love of Asian horror movies, I’ve been piecing together the remaining three to four books of the series using skipping stones of stories that either struck fear into my bones or sent a shiver down my spine.

Passage from Servant of the Bones by Ann Rice (and my vulture talon fingernails)

Needless to say, I haven’t been sleeping too well these days. Whether it’s ghastly children hiding under the tablecloth, or a frightening spectres crawling out of the television set, or a vampiric house trying to eat its occupants alive – they’ve all left their mark, and they all made me sleep with the bathroom light on more than once. It’s such an interesting concept – being able to influence the reader or watcher so deeply that they’re effected even after they turn off the movie or put down the book. And that’s what I want to do: to be able to continue influencing my readers even after they’ve put down my book.

I know it’s vain of me to compare myself to other established and well-published authors, but those are the ones I strive to be like. Stephen King, Clive Barker, Ann Rice – these are all horror-genre writers I’ve loved well before I decided to be a writer myself. Stephen King instilled in us a raw fear of clowns with It, Clive Barker taught us that the whims of childhood can lead to horrors beyond our imagination with The Thief of Always, and Ann Rice was rockin’ the vampires well before they sparkled and in-explicitly kept repeating high school with her Vampire Chronicles series.

These are my role models; these are the authors whom I strive to become.

The NaNoWriMo question

With my goals set firmly in my mind, there’s still another question which plagues me: to NaNo or not to NaNo. October is NaNoPlanMo – National Novel Planning Month, though I’m more of a pantser than a plotter by nature. I’ve NaNo’d for the past 3 years now, finishing two of those years with novels (one of which is Book 2 in my almost-published series, The Rose Cross Academy). This October, I’m still struggling with whether I have enough time to compete in NaNo, or whether I should focus my energy on publishing my first novel. November is, after all, my goal publishing date for Book 1.

An idea popped into my mind while watching the news, of all things. This idea I thought I could take to NaNo in November and give it flesh and bones. It’s a modern take on Stephen King’s Carrie but told in novel form. My main character, Becca, is an outcast at school and gets her revenge on the classmates who torment and torture her by calling upon ghosts and nightmares to do her bidding. I’ve chosen the title as simply Becca, also as an homage to King’s Carrie.

I like the concept and I’ve planned out a few scenes, but I’m still on the fence about whether I will have enough time to write the novel in November. Nothing’s stopping me from giving it a shot, but at the same time I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. It’s a tough story to write, and due to some unique reasons.

NaNo 2015: ‘Becca’ (maybe!)

I want the tale of Becca to be a unique one, and I want the horrors to happen during the day. Night time haunts are cliché-ic and predictable; the dark figure in the window, the screams in the nights. But when was the last time you were scared in the daytime? I want the horrors to be everywhere; no where is safe from Becca and her nightmares. You’re not safe shopping at the mall, you’re not safe walking home from school on a busy street. Right in broad daylight is where Becca will strike, which is where I want the thrills and chills to live. You’ll never know if it’s safe to take that selfie or open the mailbox. You’ll never know if one of Becca’s horrors is coming after you.

And then he blah’ed all the way through the plot

But then what happens at night? This is where I’m tripping up, actually. It’s easy enough to instill a sense of uneasiness in a dark house at night, but that’s too predictable. I struggle with how to make the night just as chilling as the day without getting into the corny aspect of the horror genre. I don’t want things hiding under the bed or in the closet – these concepts have been done to death, pardon the pun. And you’ll expect to see reflections in the mirror or the darkened windows of night. But what about a dark figure in the hallway? In the reflection of your soup spoon. Would that be out of the ordinary enough to bypass the horror cheese-and-wine platter? We’ll see.

There’s also the problem with proving to the world I’ve actually written this story. I’ve juggled with the idea of uploading the story chapter-by-chapter to Wattpad. I could do that as well with past NaNo projects, I guess. My only issue is uploading anything which isn’t edited or proof-read. My first pass at the draft is straight-forward: ‘he did this, then he did that’ – with no emotion and very little narration. Then there’s the bullet points left over from those rare moments of planning. Oh! And let’s not forget the “blah” entries which need to be fleshed out. All of these things I can’t in good conscious upload for public consumption.

The Updates

Too late!

And so with that, we come to the end of what has been a long and rambling blog post. I’m still in wait mode for cover art for Book 1 (Below), and Book 2 (Whole) is still growing past my initials estimates. I’m really delving into the horror genre, so I’ve been reading all my old horror faves from my teenage years as a form of research. Half our jobs as writers is to read, and that has been my job this month.

October will be a month of many decisions and many milestones. I want to try to make another YouTube video, as painful as the first one was. Here’s hoping the stars align enough for me to get some work done!

Halloween is coming! (Let’s avoid a corny Game of Thrones reference here)

Halloween is my favourite holiday.

– Rissa

Phew! August has come and gone so quickly. So much has happened this month. The last week of the month was spent home-bound for much of southern Alberta, which unfortunately didn’t translate into a lot of writing time. It’s strange – when you’re bored out of your skull because it’s too unhealthy to go outside in the middle of summer, it’s amazing how much you don’t do.

We Didn’t Start the Fire

Smokey City

The biggest life event of August was that the city survived horrible smoke levels that were off the charts. Fires in Washington State and British Columbia socked in much of southern Alberta. At one point, air quality in Calgary was a whopping 28 on a 1 to 10 scale (methinks the scale needs to be revised, n’est pas?) Many of us were relegated to homes and offices with the ventilation turned off while temperatures ran up into the mid-to-high twenties (75-80F). Smoke choked the skies and choked our lungs, and I’m not even kidding about that. I couldn’t go outside without a scarf tied around my face. And even then, I would cough for half an hour once getting back in doors.

Websites!

Sometimes we have bad dreams…

I’ve launched my author website, www.rissarenae.com . Whoo hoo! The blog is up and I’ve put up a little teaser for Book 1. Still lots to add to the site, but I’m taking it all in baby steps. I’m kicking around the idea of starting a vblog on YouTube, and I’ve already set up a Facebook page. Social media is a lot to keep up with, so this is gonna take some getting used to.

Rose Cross Academy website

In addition to the author website, I’m setting up a website for the series I’m writing. The series is called the Rose Cross Academy series; central to the storyline is the aforementioned academy – a high school which trains its students to hunt and extinguish demons. I’m building up a university-esque website, www.rosecrossacademy.com, to serve as both a marketing tool and an informational site for the series.

Book 1 is still waiting patiently for final artwork. In the meantime, I’ve been polishing up Book 2. I’ve hit my word count, which I’ve been using as a basis for determining how complete the book is. But at 83,000 words, the manuscript is still not complete. This was something I was hoping to finish up in August. Now, I’m thinking this book may hit close to the 100,000 word mark (my editor better prepare herself!)

There will be a Book 6!

Book 5 Storyboard Snipit

Book 5 grew an ending this month! So now that means I’m going to have to write a Book 6 in order to end the war that’s brewing all the way back in Book 1. I’ve also come up with an ending for the series. When exactly the series will end in its entirety remains to be seen. Six books? Eight books? It’s strange to be thinking about the end of the series when I’m still waiting to publish the beginning of the series. However, when you take into account the fact that I’m a Pantser and not a Plotter, having a goal is a good thing: the light at the end of the literary tunnel is no longer a freight train.

The Statistics

I love my statistics – that’s the Gold in me coming out. I know it bores the snot out of most people, so I’ll try to contain myself. Other than Book 2 hitting the word goal of 83,000 words, most of the effort this month went to the websites and my experimenting with whether or not I’m going to be starting a vlog.

It’s looking like September may be fairly quiet. Still, I haven’t made a decision on NaNoWriMo 2016 yet as I’m aiming to publish Book 1 in November. Ahhh, so many decisions to make, and I still have to remain gainfully employed through all of this. I don’t know how most authors do it.

Later!

– Rissa

It’s finished! Book One is finished! The absolute and final edit is complete and I have a full, publishable draft. But not so fast! The text may be done, but there are still several more tasks to be completed before this novel sees the light of day.

The Blurbs

First, there are still lots of little pieces that need to be written: query letters, inside flap synopsis, and that annoying 2-sentence explanation of the entire book that is just about impossible to write. It’s not that I have been procrastinating on these items, oh no. Well, maybe a little. It seemed as though every time I read a new article or post concerning writing these items, either the information I was reading changed or completely contradicted what I thought was my game plan. I think these items will be a blog post of themselves, so I won’t bore you with the details just yet.

Second, is the all-important interior design. This entails making sure all the font is consistent, and that spacing and layout is consistent throughout the whole novel. Since I ping-pong between word processors, formatting is different between the two, so I must consolidate. I’m using a free eBook tool called Calibre. Since I have a web programming background, editing the HTML of the book before putting it into eBook format is a relatively easy, albeit, time-consuming task.

The interior design feature of Calibre

And third, and perhaps the most exciting on my way to final publishing, is the artwork. I have enough Photoshop skills to get myself in trouble, but no enough to make a cover the way I envision. Interior art such as chapter headings and maps are easy enough to do since they are monochromatic (black and white) and easily producible in Photoshop. The cover, however, needs a huge slap of TLC. I have a concept to which I have passed on to someone far more qualified than myself to turn my concept into reality.

So, with that out of the way, on to the ever-important statistics! Only added about 4,500 words to the entire series as most of my time was spent creating the publishable draft of Book 1.

The Progress

Book 1: Publishable draft complete!
Book 2: It’s so close to being the first draft!
Book 3: Editing, mostly; 68%
Book 4: More than half the draft is done.
Book 5: Almost ¼ draft complete

Well, the weather is hijacking my mood (two tornadoes and two freak hail storms in as many weeks), so I have a lot of cleanup to do in the yard before winter sets in.

Tornado!

I can see it – the cold, cloudy days of winter peaking over the mountains. Already, I can smell the chill in the air and feel it seeping into my bones. Winter is the perfect time to stay inside and write, so maybe I’ll finally get caught up on my other novels.

But hey, no promises there.

Stay warm and stay dry!

-Rissa