rowyn: (artistic)

I apparently didn’t set enough goals plus stretch goals for January, because I’m running out of goals to complete and I’ve already done all but one.

One of the goals was “make an art”. I’ve been doing some work on art every week this month, but most of it is on the eternally incomplete cover for The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. Which I need to finish soon because Alinsa got the draft of the e-book to me, so we’re getting close to the point where “no cover” is the reason I can’t publish it yet. o_o;;

But I took a break to doodle a picture of the Anesh Archipelago from the Demon’s Series. Because I finished drafting book 4 this month so I’ll need covers for those books soon too. Oog. I miss commissioning book covers. Anyway, this is definitely not a book cover, it’s just me thinking about how the setting looks. During a storm-cloud-filled sunrise, in this case.

Storm brewing in Anesh

rowyn: (Default)
 
In the fight against the demons of the skylands, Sunrise has one of the rarest powers: that of a lure. Where demons normally feed by tormenting their victims, Sunrise draws them with her happiness.
 
She doesn't want to hunt demons, but when a hunter team arrives at her village to ask for her help, she agrees. It should be easy: they just need her as bait for a pain demon that is too fast for them to capture otherwise. And a typical pain demon is no match for an experienced team of demon hunters.
 
But this is no typical demon. And it has its own plans. It has no intention of being trapped, and is not worried about the hunter team. No, its main concern is: what does a demon who's spent millennia torturing and tormenting humans know about making one happy?

~

Demon's Lure is my newest release! It's in a brand new setting, the skylands of the Anesh archipelago. This is my first general fantasy: there is no romance in Demon's Lure or in its sequel, Angel's Sigil*. So those of you who like my world-building and watching characters problem-solve, but aren't so much into the romance: this one's for you! Its theme is change and adaptation, with central questions like "how can you be happy despite things you don't like and can't change?" and "what causes people to change?" and "do the same things apply to demons?"
 
Some of these questions are less universal than others, is what I'm saying.

Anesh is a queer-positive setting; the protagonist is bisexual, some minor characters are nonbinary, and the society as a whole considers this unremarkable.
 
My cover artist for The Demon's Series is the talented Anthony Avon, and I can't wait to show you the cover** for Angel's Sigil, the sequel. That book will be out in August, so you won't have to wait long for the sequel.
 
* If I write a third book in the setting, it will almost certainly have a romantic subplot, though. Just warning you.
 
** Though if you browse around on Avon's DA, you can spot it now. n_n
rowyn: (studious)
I am on my final read-through of Demon's Lure before I send it to first readers, and hope to finish in the next few days. This is my call for volunteer first readers! Here's the blurb:

In the fight against the demons of the skylands, Sunrise has one of the rarest powers: that of a lure. Where demons normally feed by tormenting their victims, Sunrise draws them with her happiness.

She doesn't want to hunt demons, but when a hunter team arrives at her village to ask for her help, she agrees. It should be easy: they just need her as bait for a pain demon that is too fast for them to capture otherwise. And a typical pain demon is no match for an experienced team of demon hunters.

But this is no typical demon. And it has its own plans. It has no intention of being trapped, and is not worried about the hunter team. No, its main concern is: what does a demon who's spent millennia torturing and tormenting humans know about making one happy?

Demon's Lure is the first book in a new setting. There will be at least one sequel. The lead character is bisexual and she lives in a queer- and polyamorous-friendly society, but neither this book nor the sequel is a romance! There are no central conflicts or sub-plots that are resolved by the power of romantic love.

You needn't have read any of my other books in order to volunteer for this one. First-time volunteers are appreciated! General feedback I am looking for from first readers:
  • General commentary on what works/doesn't work in the story
  • Spelling/grammar/editing artifact errors
  • Continuity errors
  • Overused words
  • Confusing text (eg, if you find yourself confused about what's going on, or what this word the characters keep using means in the context of the story, or things of that nature)
I figure on sending the book to first readers somewhere around Feb 20 (Tuesday). I'd like readers to be done reading & providing feedback within a month, so by 3/20 or so.

Please comment with your email address (or direct-message me on Twitter or Dreamwidth) if you'd like to volunteer. All comments are screened so your email address will not be made public. Reading will be done through Google Docs, so email accounts with a Google account associated are preferred.

Thank you!
rowyn: (studious)
I've been working on the current draft of Demon's Lure since February. Technically, it's a book I started in 2009, but I only wrote around 5000 words back then, plus a rough outline. I scrapped most of the outline and started writing again from scratch. The book went much better this time around.

But, while I'd written a detailed outline for the new version, my draft had severely diverged from the original outline. From where I am now, the rest of the outline works remarkably well all things considered, despite that I've kept changing things as I wrote the story.

The changes I'd made had, however, made the first half of the book much longer than I'd anticipated. I was at 80,000 words and less than 60% of the way through the outline. I complained to Maggie that the book might end up over 150,000 words, instead of the 100-120k I'd been targeting.

"Split it in half?" she suggested.

"Split it in half" is what multiple people advised me to do with Silver Scales and A Rational Arrangement, and in both cases I declined because I don't feel like either book made a satisfying story if I chopped it into two parts. But the way I'd changed Demon's Lure already from the outline did make the current section a reasonably good break point. The central conflict may not have been exactly resolved, but it has mutated dramatically, to the point where it's really a different conflict now. I could finish out the current scene and it ends on a "this obviously needs a sequel" note, but it wouldn't be a total cliffhanger.

So I wrote the rest of the scene and went "Huh. So I guess I finished a book?"

It needs considerable revising and probably some new scenes before I am ready for beta readers on it. I expect that I will plug away at Book 2 as my next-thing-to-write, although I'm not ruling out letting myself work on a different book. I won't be releasing Demon's Lure until 2018 anyway, because I have three books coming out in the next eleven weeks and that's plenty. Really.

But I feel pretty good about having finished a draft and edited three books, with eleven weeks still to go in 2017. I mean, "edit The Sun Etherium and draft another book" was one of my STRETCH goals for this year. I have already finished my regular goals. And those were set when I didn't know Lut had cancer. o__o

Granted, I've decided against serializing Scales and I was still editing it in June and nowhere near releasing it. So my time scale has slipped and I removed one of my goals for business reasons. Even so.

... I still feel kind of like I should finish drafts for another two books this year, though. So I can be sure of releasing three books in 2018 too. And I do have most of a draft of Fellwater written, and book two of Demon's Lure would be comparatively short, by my usual standards ...

I'm not gonna push for this, though. One thing at a time. And Lut is still sick and the new normal is different and not as conducive to writing as the old normal. I need to remember this and not charge off thinking I can write 3000 words in a day and everything else in life will sort itself out.

Regardless: I finished a draft! \o/

May 2025

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