Fun Facts: The Waterlord

So, some of you may have read my latest novel, Air, the first book in my new trilogy. I'm going to talk about the trilogy a little bit today.

Air was not originally the first book in the series. The entire series started as one huge, 160k word novel that followed Tom from his childhood, which I then divided into four books. The first 30k word book was about Tom's childhood on Ruthen's residence ship, his rivalry with Nathan, and his friendships with a few other characters. We even met Tom's father, although it was not explicitly revealed that was who the character was.

That book ended with Ruthen's attempted murder of Tom, and then there was a five year timeskip, where Air started from Nathan's POV.

Obviously, now we have Air as the first book in the trilogy. So what made me change it so drastically? Heavy editing, of course. Editing and a sharp eyed beta reader.

I wrote the series a while ago, and I have been editing it heavily on and off ever since to make it as good as I can. Something that long takes time to write and a lot of time to edit, and it went through several versions.

As I worked on each version, it became clearer and clearer that the first book, where Tom was a child, was completely unnecessary. My beta reader told me the same thing-while it was a fun read, the entire premise of the series is that Tom is a water mage who wants to take revenge on Ruthen, who tried to kill him. Taking 30k words to get to a point that is explained on the back of the book just wasn't working. Worse, a lot of the characters we see in that first book weren't seen again until the last book, and they had small roles. The book was fun, but didn't serve much of a purpose.

So, I cut the entire book, along with the extraneous characters. It was a really hard decision, but the final version is shorter, sleeker, and more enjoyable, and the series makes far more sense as a trilogy rather than a quartet. Plus, having a 30k YA book as the first book in an adult fantasy/romance series seemed odd too.

Now the books focus on what's important-Tom's goal, Tom and Nathan's relationship, and their world.

Check out Complete Works if you're interested in reading the first book!

Research!

So, I'm not just a writer. I also do research in a lab, working with human subjects.

I see all sorts of people-members of clinical groups (psychopaths, drug addicts, schizophrenics, autistic people, etc) and normal people, aka controls.

A lot of the time, the controls are far stranger than the clinical group members. Sure, the schizophrenics may decide you're trying to steal their brain when you interview them, but that's fairly understandable, if you're schizophrenic.

When you're a control, it raises red flags when you start rubbing your feet on everything during the neuropsychological exam.

When I ask you to do an eye dominance test, don't make your hand into a gun and pretend to aim it at me to figure it out.

When I ask you which hand you use to hold a knife, don't lift your hand in a stabbing motion. I meant a knife and fork.

When you're being interviewed, don't take a phone call and start telling all your friends about the crazy questions you're being asked.

Don't take an hour long break between every interview, or we'll stop paying by the hour.

When you leave a message, leave a number to call back.

Don't leave more than one message.

Don't leave five messages in the span of 24 hours, calling purely between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am.

Don't flirt with the lab techs. They're not interested.

If you're doing an EEG, yes, we will wash your hair for you, because the EEG gel we use in the cap is messy. We will not style your hair for you. This is not a salon.

Don't take random pills in front of the lab tech in the middle of the study, especially if you're not in the drug addicted group. This will get you kicked out of the study (or assigned to the aforementioned drug addicted group).

Don't claim to have a disorder that you don't have. If we can tell, you're wasting our time, and if we can't, then you're basically lying to science.

If you refer your friends, try to make sure they don't actually have some disorder. That's always awkward.

And last and most important, bathe. Bathe bathe bathe.

New Free Read!

So this spring and summer, I signed up to write a story for the Goodreads M/M romance group. Each writer was given the choice of several prompts to choose from, that were in turn associated with a photograph.

If you're interested in sexy knights and a quick 12000 word story, check out Chivalry. 

New Release!

My newest book is released today! Check it out at Extasy Books!

Nathan is a skilled mage with control over the air, powering ships over a world covered in water. However, under the control of the powerful Lord Ruthen, a mage of fire, he is insignificant, and he is cowed by the memory of Ruthen killing his childhood friend Tom.

But his friend is not dead, and has nurtured his power over water, which is feared by Fire mages. Nathan is swept up not only into Tom’s idea of revenge against Ruthen, but into love with the outcast mage.

The 6 most head scratchingly odd fanfic types

Everyone reads fanfics. Okay, maybe not, but at the very least everyone has read at least one fanfic. It’s a medium that’s hard to avoid.

When you’ve read a lot of them, though, you start to see the stitches in the blanket-those little oddities that pop out now and again. I’m talking about things like these:

Troll fanfics: These are fanfics that are so bad, so grotesque, that they have to be fake, written by someone who clearly hates the original work and wants to piss off the fandom. An example? I’m loathe to give it, but it belongs in the My Little Pony fandom, and it is by far the worst thing I’ve ever read. 

...Okay, fine. It's called Big Apple Massacre. Don't say I didn't warn you. 

Secret Fetish: Less said about this the better, but there are a number of fanfics out there that, with a careful (or not so careful) read, reveal the presence of a secret kink of the author, especially if every fic by the author contains the same elements. Some are more obvious than others, and sometimes the author doesn’t even bother to hide it. 

Why do I like this?: These are fanfics that are poorly written, but you like it anyway. The language may not be there, the writer may use way too many adverbs or the characters may act a bit out of character, but you don’t care. You’re so desperate for this type of story/this pairing that you will overlook all the bad qualities.

Why do they like this?: Flip the above statement around-these are fanfics that you find to be objectively terrible, but they have about ten thousand views and all the reviews shine to the moon. Sometimes, the answer to this question is that the author has a ton of friends, but other times the author is just answering a desire many people didn't know they had-and you don’t share it.

Why is this here?: These are fanfics that aren’t really fanfics. It may be that the characters are all completely original and the world is borrowed but changed enough that only the very basic elements are there, or the characters are borrowed but they inhabit a completely different world (These are referred to as AU, or alternate universe fics). These are very often stories that started out as original ideas and the author wanted to find an audience, and are the most likely candidates for future deletion and attempts to publish as original work.

The gems: These are fanfics that are so utterly phenomenal, and so much better than the majority of published work you’ve read, that you are left wondering why the author didn’t just write and publish an original story. Often these fit into the “why is this here” category, but they are so excellent that you are left flabbergasted as to why the author bothered with the fanfic step in the first place and didn’t just find a publisher.

These are the oddities in the fanfic world that I've noticed-if anyone has any other examples, feel free to leave them in the comments! 

Random thoughts: Yaoi

I want to like yaoi. I really do.

Unfortunately, it’s one of those concepts that sounds good on paper but in practice leads to lots of disappointment.

So what is it? It’s an acronym for Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi, or translated to English: No climax, no point, no meaning. It’s M/M erotica in manga (Japanese comic) form, with focus on the sex over the story.

I really tried to give yaoi a fair shake, and there are a few stories I really like (Black Sun is one, Crimson Spell is another). But most of them fit the definition a little too well-Most of yaoi is pure porn. That’s all. The stories are as flimsy as the well-hung UPS boy visiting the lonely housewife, and many yaoi “novels” are collections of short stories with very little in the way of actual story.

Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. Porn is fine. But yaoi has a few characteristic tropes that make me put most of it down in disgust.

First, there is the “gay for you” trope. This is when a character isn’t gay, but ends up being attracted to and having sex with a gay guy, while still self identifying as straight. Some people like the thrill of seeing straight guys act gay, but to me its just offputting, especially when the gay lifestyle is portrayed as weird or “taboo,” or the straight character insults the gay one. This happens often, and it has made me put more than one manga straight into the garbage pail. 

Another trope, and an even more common one, is the strict delineation of the uke and the seme, or the bottom and top, respectively. The uke is usually an overly effeminate, uncertain boy/man, while the seme is a hypermasculine, typically insensitive older male. These roles never change. This rigidity makes stories boring and repetitive, and after a while all the ukes and semes start to look the same.

Related to this, most of yaoi takes place in high school, or at least one of the characters is in high school. Fine for younger readers, but that skews way too young for me. I want to see something a little more interesting than stories of boys in high school. 

And another point related to this: Rape and dubious consent of the uke is very common. Not something I enjoy.

And lastly, yaoi almost never actually makes any attempt to portray what being gay is actually like, even if the story is actually set in a high school. I would be intrigued to read about what a gay Japanese high school boy experiences, and the kind of prejudices or support he faces, but those issues are never discussed. It’s nothing but pure fantasy.

Yaoi is great, for those who like it. Perhaps I expect too much of it. But it typically (with few exceptions) just disappoints me.

Slash, on the other hand, I enjoy a lot. Fanfic writers never disappoint. J

Release Dates and New Story Excerpt!

Hey all,

So the release dates for each book in the WaterLord Trilogy are currently June, July and August 1st! Keep an eye out for them for your summer reads!

And to celebrate that, I got a new contract for a prequel to The Perils of Forgotten Pain. Were you curious about Overgrowth, and what happened on Earth that made humanity flee to space? You'll want to check out Remembrance.

Check out the sample first chapter below!

The war is over. The majority of humanity has fled the dying planet to live in space, leaving behind a chemical called Overgrowth that will speed up the restoration of the war torn world.

            Some were left behind, and not all by choice. As one chapter of humanity comes to a close, a soldier who thought he had nothing left and a historian who sees potential even in destruction will make a life out of what remains.

Chapter 1

            A man strode out of the forest, his blond hair gray in the ashy light of the streetlamps and the roiling fog, which clung like a cat to his legs. A loose hinge on the side of his tattered briefcase rattled lightly as he walked.

            “Got anything?” A leathery man held out a hand from the shadows, his voice creaking as he spoke. “Just a bit?” The tall man passed by without answering, and the beggar became lost in the fog.

            The man walked by metal structures, some of them leaning crazily to one side or the other and some standing firm. Flickering lights and fluorescent hums marked those that had survived, though the signs spelled only gibberish in the roiling mist. Pictures could still be made out, mostly of red lips, long legs and huge breasts. Words were unnecessary. The man turned down a narrow street, putting his back to the signs.

            There were no leaning buildings here, and the grit from the main street had amassed in full so that the man's footsteps crunched rather than clacked. Wooden buildings, dwarfed by the metal ones still visible in the skyline, promised light and food. Voices could be heard here, female and male, laughing uproariously at some common joke. The words here were etched or carved into the wood. The man took his chances on one, a sign that waved in the damp wind and promised “Bes Drosoph in the City.”

            A woman who's ribs showed through the skintight clothing she wore opened the door for him, a smile plastered on her face. “Lemme guess-pounds over pity?”

            The man nodded, the pupils of his blue eyes constricting painfully in the light. He didn't usually stay long in these places, where those who had been left behind scraped to live as they could, indulging in the glaring phosphorescence of the buildings that surrounded them.

            His feet thudded heavily on the wooden floorboards, and they creaked. No one looked up save for one young girl bedecked in plastic pearls, and she smiled at him as winningly as she could with a mouthful of graying teeth.

            The man looked away, focusing on the rough grain of the wood. A group of men to his right slapped their table, making the dishware rattle.

            “Over here, Nella!” The girl's wide hips swayed invitingly as she walked, the folds of her blue dress brushing the man's ear as she strode by. She turned to smile at him, a ruby rictus, before a long haired man grabbed her with one arm, pulling her into his lap.

            “You're good luck, beauty.” He chuckled, and she bit her lip as she adjusted herself to straddle the burly man's knee. His thick arm completely covered her waist, and she slumped in his grasp.

            The tall man turned away, carefully placing the battered briefcase under the table. For a time he closed his eyes, basked in the presence of other people, letting their conversations wash over him. He had traveled alone for a long time.

            “Ouch! Don't bite me!”

            “Four aces!”

            “Have you heard? Another youth gang hit the food stores.”

            “Oh really? Then why do we have this then?”

            “You think this is any good?! I shoulda ordered the pork. And this beer tastes like weasel piss.”

            “There are no weasels here, idiot.”

            Forks clanged on plates, feet tapped on the floor, and laughter rose and fell. Low voices discussed sweet nothings in the room above the lounge, and he tried to make out what they said.

            A tap on his shoulder finally stirred him from his concentration. “You can't sleep in here, you know. You need a room for that.” The slim hipped woman from before stood over him, a twang of annoyance in her voice hiding behind her plaster smile.

            “I'm merely relaxing,” he spoke, his voice a rasping whisper. “May I order a meal?”

            The woman blinked  long lashes in surprise at his voice, and her mouth turned down. “What do you want?”

            “The pork.”

            “To drink?”

            “Just water.”

            The woman sashayed away to fulfill the request. The man closed his eyes, letting the voices in the room wash over him once more, until a clatter at the table caught his attention.

            A dark haired man had sat down across from him.

            “What's your name?” he asked hurriedly, his voice pitched low.

            “Aldric.” The man answered, pain finally blooming in his throat as he spoke. He tensed as he watched the other man's eyes rove around the room like a hunted animal. His damaged, rasping voice, ordinarily offputting to the people he met, didn't seem to faze this one.

            “Alright, Aldric, just pretend you know me. Please? Just...talk.”

            “What about?” Aldric listened. There was nothing dangerous here that he could sense, no indication of what this man could be running from. Then again, with no real law enforcement, no structure since the end of the war save for one rule-survive as long as you can-a certain amount of paranoia was expected.

            “Where do you live around here? I don't recognize you.”

            Aldric sighed. “I am a traveler. I've come from...inland.”

            “A traveler?” Some of the tension left his companion, replaced with curiosity. “How far have you come?”

            Aldric looked away from the other man's gaze, watching as the woman who was supposed to be serving him water got waylaid by two men who stared at his new companion out of the corner of their eyes. One of them palmed the woman’s breasts, and the other whispered in her ear.  She smiled and her eyes met his. “A long way.”

            “I'd love to hear about your travels,” the man said, speaking just a bit louder to get his attention. Aldric shifted his gaze, wondering if his new table companion had noticed the two men. His eyes were fixed on Aldric. “No one here has ever left and come back.”

            “Is it...nice here?” Where had the two men gone? Now there was only the woman, filling the pitcher, and the other one, called Nella, shrieked as some other man tickled her.

            Finally the other man followed his gaze. “Look, I'll buy you a nice woman for the night if you just-”

            Aldric stood and caught the knife that had whistled through the air inches from the dark haired man's ear, the blade slicing through the fabric of his glove and then stopping. He turned and locked eyes with one of the men, the one who had whispered to the girl, who ran out the door. Voices quieted for only a moment before the buzz resumed. Something like this was not uncommon here.

            The dark haired man's eyes boggled. “Are...is your hand alright?” He reached for it, and Aldric snatched it away, pocketing the knife.

            “There's still one more. You should leave.”

            “Alone?” the man squeaked. “Why not come with me?” When Aldric narrowed his eyes, he continued, “If you're a traveler, you need a place to stay, and you've already saved my life once. Let me repay you? C’mon, I need your help.”

            Aldric raised an eyebrow. If he was desperate enough to be begging strangers... “Lead on then.”

            The two stood up together and headed out into the dirty night air. Aldric had not gotten his meal, or even a glass of water. At least he didn’t have to pay.

            As he followed the man, who walked hunched to hide himself, the dingy shops gave way to shacks and houses, gaping holes in the sides on some of them signaling either the presence of an inhabitant or lack of one. No shortage of housing here. Mud began to squelch around Aldric's boots as he walked further, and though the streets were more mired and pitted, at least the houses began to look nicer as they moved away from the heart of the city.

            Aldric watched his new companion closely. He had seen his like before, the same furtive, nervous walk that betrayed a long time of persecution, coupled with a strong desire to live. What did this man have to live for? Who targeted him? This curiosity led Aldric to walk silently behind Daniel, using years of training to accomplish the same vigilance that Daniel clumsily tried to perform.

            He sensed them long before Daniel did, and gave no sign of it. Three men and a dog. The dog attacked first, growls cutting the night, and Aldric stepped in front of its target, throwing him arm up as the animal leapt for Daniel.

            Teeth clamped down, and Aldric spun and threw the animal to the ground, shoulder muscles straining under the weight. With a pivot he faced the men who had begun to run toward them with clubs held high. The fingers of his right arm twitched, as though preparing to fire a gun he did not hold.

             The men slowed and stopped when they saw the dog limping away, realizing their ambush had failed. The two groups faced each other for a moment before the men shrank back into the shadows, scattering and disappearing behind houses and fallen wood.

            “Once again, thank you.” Daniel moved close to him, so close Aldric could smell his piney scent. He kept clean, too. Unusual in a place like this.

            “Is you arm alright?” Aldric took a step back, giving Daniel a firm nod. The man stared, his gaze fixed for a moment, before shrugging and turning.

            “Come on. We're almost there, and I don't think they'll try anything again tonight.”

            ***

            They crossed a muddy, pitted track that was once probably a creek or stream, the forest looming close and the lights and stink of the city receding. Fitting.

            “Here we are.” Daniel jogged up the steps of a stone house that looked to once have housed at least two families. Unlocking numerous deadbolts from keys on his belt, he thrust the heavy metal door open and waved Aldric inside. Fluorescent lights stung his eyes as he entered, ducking through the warped doorway. It looked almost like a bunker.

            “Let me see your hand. Take off your gloves.” Daniel moved toward him, arms outstretched.

            “No.” Aldric firmly stepped away. “I am fine.”

            “That dog bit you! I saw it! And the knife...” He trailed off in the face of Aldric's firm stare.

            “So you're really fine?” Aldric nodded, standing stiffly in the foyer.

            “Fine then. Well...I guess I owe you hospitality, and breakfast too, since you saved me twice. Do you want to sleep now, or maybe you could tell me about your-”

            “Sleep.” Aldric said gruffly, ignoring Daniel's disappointment. “Do you...have running water here?”

            “I do. There's a bathroom and sink down the hall. You can sleep here on the floor, or if you don't mind, we can share the bed in the other room.”

             The offer tempted him. Once such an offer would mean something, but now Aldric knew that sharing a bed was simply a necessity of the times, a comfortable place to sleep snatched whenever and wherever it could be. Even so...he couldn't risk it.

            “The floor is fine.”

            “Really? Well, if you're sure...”         

            “I am.”

            “Alright. I have extra blankets. There's no heat, but that hasn't been a problem for years now.” He flashed a sad smile. “I guess I'll head to bed. Um, thanks again for your help. I hope...I mean, well...”

            Aldric cocked his head, waiting.

            “It's nothing. I'll take you out for breakfast in the morning. Good night. Give me ten and then the bathroom is all yours.”

            Aldric ran a gloved hand through his hair, setting up his blankets into a makeshift bed on the floor. Daniel confused him, being kind-or perhaps desperate-enough to invite him into his home after having barely known him. Other people in his travels had rarely been so caring.

            It would certainly not last, so he may as well try to enjoy it. Aldric prepared for sleep after Daniel entered the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Rummaging through his suitcase, Aldric moved his gun and tools out of the way and took out a change of clothes, then locked it up again. He slept in the clothes he had worn that day, down to the gloves. He would change in the morning, before Daniel awoke. It would not do if the other man saw him.

            Sleep came easily, unusual for Aldric.