Arcanium: Day 21

Tags

arcanium, demonic circus, demons, erotic horror, erotica, jinn, novel, work in progress, writing

Title: ARCANIUM

Word count: 55,026/125,000

Summary: After her boyfriend’s foolish wish in a jealous rage, Maya DeLuca finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus at the mercy of a devious jinni, Bell Madoc.

Among the voluntary human oddities and the demons masquerading as humans, Maya joins the other tortured souls in the circus, caught in a perpetual purgatory under the weight of their wishes.

It’s up to them to make the best of a cursed situation. (working summary)

Notes:

When I looked at the word count difference between the last post and this post, my heart sank. 14k words didn’t seem like that big of a jump for the amount of effort I put in…until I realized the last post was just three days ago, and I wrote 4k Friday, 5k Saturday, and 6k Sunday. Over the week, I wrote about 24k words, and that’s seriously impressive for me. Crossing the 55k line last night felt seriously good, even if I’m tired, my hands hurt, and I have to ween myself off coffee again. I notice I have to do that a lot.

Things are going to go mostly back to normal during the week. I’ll bring up my  weekday word counts to 3k if I can, and I think I’ll be able to, but 2k would also be acceptable, because Fridays-Sunday will be 4k per day (when I’ll have some coffee allowances), and that should bring me to at least 20k per week. Here’s hoping that gets me through ARCANIUM before the end of the month.

I’m finally starting to reach the scenes that have been in my head ever since the demonic circus idea first surfaced, so it’s a lot more exciting to write. And a lot more confusing, because damn if I can’t make amorality sound perfectly reasonable. This is probably the reason why I’m an involuntary nihilist.

Give me a few more chapters and shorts, and then the shit will really hit the fan. And then my stomach will get all twisty because I know that’s when the darkness really rises, and I’ll be moaning and wailing about how this is never going to sell. But will I stop? No. Because I’m a masochist that way.

I can always self-publish. That’s what I tell myself, and it’s what gives me confidence. Publishing companies and agencies are no longer the gatekeepers, and I can hold with my personal integrity by not changing things that I think are essential to the story. I don’t fault them for asking me to change things, and sometimes I do, if it doesn’t hurt the spirit of the story. After all, they have principles, too, and there’s no point putting in the work on something that won’t sell well in their market. But authors also have more confidence saying no and knowing they have other options. Authors can walk away if they need to. I think that’s pretty liberating.

Of course, self-publishing is not at the top of my preference list. But at least it’s an option.

Arcanium: Day 18

Tags

arcanium, demonic circus, erotic horror, erotica, jinni, novel, supernatural, work in progress, writing

Title: ARCANIUM

Word count: 41,285/125,000

Summary: After her boyfriend’s foolish wish in a jealous rage, Maya DeLuca finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus at the mercy of a devious jinni, Bell Madoc.

Among the voluntary human oddities and the demons masquerading as humans, Maya joins the other tortured souls in the circus, caught in a perpetual purgatory under the weight of their wishes.

It’s up to them to make the best of a cursed situation.

Notes:

If you are exceptionally observant, you’ll have noticed that my expected word count has jumped considerably since a few days ago. Forty-five thousand words jumped. This was not in the plan and in fact throws off my intended schedule for the year, and it makes me wish I had done STONE AND CHAIN first instead of ARCANIUM, because at least S&C promises to be as regular-sized as I intended. ARCANIUM, on the other hand, has decided to become another monster, because I seem to be incapable of writing something uncomplicated that can be resolved under 90k words.

It’s mostly frustrating because, if I plunge ahead and finish at 55k by the end of the weekend, I have a little over four weeks to write about 70k words, when I usually write 60k in a month. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that projection only works if my chapters and short stories average out the way I anticipated. And how often do my numbers work out the way I anticipated? FORCES OF NATURE was about the only story I’ve written that went smoothly, not counting the extra ten thousand words I had to add later.

I’m not mad at the story for being longer than I thought. I’ll give it however long it takes. It’s just that NaNoWriMo is coming up, and there’s not a lot of flexibility with NaNo. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to overlap the first week or so with this novel and my NaNo novel, and I DO NOT LIKE doing that. Or skipping a month and returning to an old story. I don’t work well that way, as I reiterated to myself with FORCES OF NATURE additions.

So, the aim for October is to write a lot and not go crazy. Sounds simple, right?

As far as the story goes, I’m finally getting into scenes that have been hanging around in my head for a long time, and I’m looking forward to writing them, even the darkest scenes. Oh, and I wrote my first short story with demonic characters from the Arcanium cast. Yay!

Of course, the major irony with all my struggling to finish this and get it shop ready for edits in 2014 and submission is that I’m pretty sure now that ARCANIUM is way too dark for TEB, in spite of the fact that there are no consent issues like WOLF GIRL. All that means that I’m struggling to reach a deadline that only means anything to me, which means it’s completely arbitrary … but I gotta do it. It’s my schedule, and a girl can dream.

Arcanium: Day 15

Tags

arcanium, circus, demons, erotic romance, erotica, horror, jinni, novel, supernatural, work in progress, writing

Title: ARCANIUM

Word count: 31,201/80,000

Summary: After her boyfriend’s foolish wish in a jealous rage, Maya DeLuca finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus at the mercy of a devious jinni, Bell Madoc.

Among the voluntary human oddities and the demons masquerading as humans, Maya joins the other tortured souls in the circus, caught in a perpetual purgatory under the weight of their wishes.

It’s up to them to make the best of a cursed situation.

Notes:

I’m a little behind, but I hope to catch up and then some this week, since I have a few days off during which I can do more than my usual daily word count.

Good news, though, is that the momentum of the story has increased, and I have a better grasp on my protagonist, who is quite unlike most of my protagonists in that there are things that I actively dislike about her, rather than the neutral feelings that I sometimes have for some of my character’s traits. Don’t get me wrong, I like Maya, just not all of her. And that’s okay. This is horror, and horror compounds people’s worst traits as well as their best.

Also, I really love the “Behind the Curtain” short stories. It interrupts the flow of the larger story, but not in a negative way. I think it kind of gives people a breather while introducing them to some of the supporting cast in a very intimate way, not to mention letting them see more of the circus than Maya can show them alone. The second story was sad before I even got into the supporting character’s back story.

I’m still a little terrified that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, controversial subject-wise, especially since I didn’t actually set out to do something controversial. I just have to hope that respect I have for variety shines through. It’s all I can ever hope.

I’m also afraid that ARCANIUM is just too dark for my usual publishing company. That was the challenge to writing erotic horror, and I guess I might have failed this time. I have to stay true to the horror as much as to the erotica, and I refuse to flinch from unpleasant things (at least in fiction).

It’s funny. WOLF GIRL walked the line of consent and sometimes strayed over it, but it never got as dark as ARCANIUM will, and there is absolutely no issue of consent in this story. It just goes to show that  shades of darkness don’t always follow the rules you expect them to.

Even if ARCANIUM doesn’t work for this particular company, there’s always STONE AND CHAINS, which will still be dark but will end up more gothic romance than erotic horror, and which I’ll work on this winter.

Coming Soon: Gravedigger

Tags

anthology, erotic romance, erotica, frostbite, gothic, gravedigger, horror, short story, supernatural, total-e-bound, vampire, western

So I asked myself, How do I shift away from the usual vampire fare, even though I like that sort of thing? I want to write something a little different.

I know! Let’s set it in the historic Wild West in winter!

And that’s how the gothic Western vampire short story “Gravedigger” came into existence, and it was a blast to write, if not quite as fun to edit. :) More info to come, like the summary, as we approach November.

“Gravedigger” is now part of the Total-E-Bound Frostbite winter collection of four vampire tales. I’m not familiar with any of the other authors, but I’m thrilled to be a part of it, and the cover is so wonderfully dark and gothic, and I’m such a sucker (no pun) for that. I hope they do a print book of it so I can gaze upon the shiny in person.

The collection will be available for preorder on Nov. 1, 2013, and comes out on Nov. 15 through Total-E-Bound and Dec. 13 everywhere else.

Arcanium: Day 10

Tags

circus, demon, erotic romance, erotica, horror, jinn, novel, oddities, supernatural, wish, work in progress

Title: ARCANIUM (Which apparently I can’t spell without first typing ARCASNIUM. I don’t even know.)

Word count: 20,042/80,000

Summary: After her boyfriend’s foolish wish in a jealous rage, Maya DeLuca finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus at the mercy of a devious jinni, Bell Madoc.

Among the voluntary human oddities and the demons masquerading as humans, Maya joins the other tortured souls in the circus, caught in a perpetual purgatory under the weight of their wishes.

It’s up to them to make the best of a cursed situation.

Notes:

I’m two chapters and one “Behind the Curtain” short story down. As of this moment, I think it would be ideal for the stories to be integrated in the larger story. I think it gives it color and makes the supporting characters more than just supporting. That, and it’s some really hot, diverse erotica, which is apparently the problem – it’s just too damn diverse that marketing becomes an issue? I guess we’ll see.

I’m still trying to get a handle on Maya as a character, as a voice. What I have so far, she’s sarcastic, inwardly sensitive, not nurturing but can be encouraging, a little aggressive, but insecure enough to be prone to knuckling under controlling and dismissive men. It probably doesn’t help that she’s a middle school teacher. All of you middle school teachers, I deeply respect your abilities. It’s a hard age to teach.

I’m still hoping for an 80-85k word story here, especially since the “Behind the Curtain” scenes are pretty short, vignettes really, but I’m still terrified it’s going to bleed up into 100k, which I’m trying to get away from. It’s not that that length isn’t okay, just that I want a greater variety of lengths for my stories so that new readers aren’t so intimidated by the scope (and price) of the longer pieces.

And let me tell you, walking the line between horror and erotic romance is as hard as I thought it was going to be. They’re diametrically opposed genres, but I guess the challenge is nice. Most of my writing thus far, in the larger story at least, has been more horror than erotica. I’m looking forward to the erotic side of things starting for my larger story. That should really be fun. The only problem is that it will mix a little sex and death. That’s what happens when you bring sex demons to a circus. But it won’t be my main characters, and they won’t be turned on by the death, so… okay? The complicated webs we weave…

Arcanium: Day 6

Tags

circus, curiosities, demons, erotic horror, erotic romance, erotica, jinn, novel, oddities, work in progress, writing

Title: Arcanium

Word count: 10,730/80,000

Summary: After her boyfriend’s foolish wish in a jealous rage, Maya DeLuca finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus at the mercy of a devious jinn, Bell Madoc.

Among the voluntary human oddities and the demons masquerading as humans, Maya joins the other tortured souls in the circus, caught in a perpetual purgatory under the curse of the wish and the power of the jinn.

It’s up to them to make the best of a cursed situation.

Notes:

So. This is an attempt at erotic romance horror. Already I’m wondering whether I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

At the very least, the subject of a freak show is an incendiary topic. Just like the subject of mental illness, there’s a lot of ways for it to go wrong, especially in erotica, because I don’t want to seem like I’m fetishizing or romanticizing human oddities or making out extreme human variation as a curse. On the contrary, I have a deep respect and love for human variety and want to include that in the erotic conversation. Come for the freak show, stay for the people, you know?

Once I get over the mind-numbing terror that people are going to get mad at me, I’m actually excited to be working with such a diverse cast, since physical and racial diversity isn’t all that prevalent in popular erotic romance. I actually did the white-washing thing again when I was creating my cast (something that I did in Winter Howl and something that I’ve worked to correct since then), so lost in the physical diversity was I.

But I think I caught it early enough. I mean, my main character is of Italian and Hispanic heritage, and she started out in my head as a pale blonde. I like her better this way. That’s how it should be. If you’re going to change things, they should fit even better than the original. That’s how you know it was the right thing to do.

I’m looking forward to meeting all of the Arcanium’s cast of characters soon. I’m also planning a subseries of erotic short stories with a good number of the supporting characters that will either be interspersed in the novel (which was my original vision) or sold simultaneously as a free anthology.

Anyway, I’m 10k in, so it’s too late to turn back now. I’ll just write it and figure out whether to keep it in the trunk afterward. I’ve already penciled in this novel for  autumn, and I’m a stickler about schedules. At the very least, Stone and Chains is also on the docket for 2013 and it’s less controversial. Also, Cry Wolf has been edited and sent in and I’m optimistic about it. So the second half of the year won’t be completely for naught.

Point of interest: The week before I started this, I was completely between self-imposed projects, and the stars aligned so that one of my short stories being looked at by TEB was sent to me for edits. I seriously had nothing else to do, so it was a pleasure to take advantage of that perfect timing. I’ll tell you more about it when I get the cover to share.