It’s been dust and tears all round for the past week. And madness, obviously, as per the post title. The follow-up story to The Clockwork Bluebird is a complicated one, very dark, with intertwined fairytale retellings. I left it partially written with pages of notes several months ago when my book cover art workload got too heavy to even think about it. I was working late each night and also weekends and getting very stressed out. So I went on a hiatus of sorts and gradually worked my way through all of the existing cover work until I reached a point where I only had a few left to do. Yes, I as a working freelancer got rid of all my paying work. Yikes.

That madness aside, once I was able to go back to the second manuscript I found a pile of rubbish and pages of notes that no longer made any sense to me. You have to understand that in this book I have intertwined main stories based on the Goose Girl and The Red Shoes. There are notes relating to Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty (don’t ever let anyone tell you that your reading habits as an angst-ridden goth teen won’t serve you well in later life), Commedia dell’Arte and the exotic animal trade in Victorian England. We have a King of the Cats subplot and steampunk technology fueled by Fae magic.

And I don’t remember how much of it fit together. It all made sense at one point…but now? Dust and tears.

I think most people have seen this image of JK Rowling’s plot spreadsheet for the Harry Potter books. I have something a bit more high-tech but just as messy in Scrivener right now and I’ve been trying to beat the whole thing into submission or die trying.

After a week of literally hurting my brain (incurring stress headaches) I think I have most of it again. The moral to this story is write while it’s hot, don’t wait until the time is right. You’ll never have that span of interruption- and responsibility-free writing time, so just make do. Write the goddamn thing at the point when it wants to be written, or risk losing it.

Part of what it makes me remember is growing up and being a massive sci fi reader, idolising Robert Heinlein and all the other science fiction authors who were so much a part of my childhood and teens. I kept a scrapbook of every NASA-related article that I could find and wanted more than anything else in the world to be an astronaut. Christa McAuliffe was one of my personal heroes. Would I, as a regular person, have taken the chance to enter space even if I knew what would eventually happen? Yes, in a second. I would still do it.

So once again, here it is…

“Far away, in the meadow, shadows flickered in the Mirror’s Maze, as if parts of someone’s life, yet unborn, were trapped there, waiting to be lived.”
- Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Mirror Maze was the most dreamlike part of the Carnival. It lived one level underneath the main midway area in the forgotten deep runs of the Underground. There was a very ornate sign hanging above the tiled archway leading down to the maze, and its bright gilded curlicues and rich paint belied the dim hallway that led down to the maze.

Arriving in the maze was like entering a dream which starts innocently, but gradually darkens to nightmare. The first room was charming, a rotating room with multiple mirrors that spun to tinkling music as though one had stepped into a kaleidoscope, or walked through the small door in the centre of a carousel into its reverse world. Light shattered into shards of light and spun through the room, showering over the upturned faces of the entranced visitors to the maze. The small crowd laughed, entranced, and then wandered through side passages into the maze.

There was a room furnished in opulent Victorian style, brocades and velvets and thick red oriental carpet underfoot. The mirrors in this room, however, reflected dark things moving in the shadows that one could only see out of the corner of one’s eye. Looked at directly, they disappeared into comfortable normalcy but as soon as one looked away the shadows rose, stalked, grew behind uneasy visitors.

A long, dark room was filled with tall, thin shards of mirror that rose into the darkness of the ceiling like a forest of cruel trees. The mirrors were set close, at odd angles to one another, forcing the person traversing the room to weave their way through the mirrors, each reflective surface circumnavigated leading only to more of them until the whole became oppressive and disorientating. This was an unpleasant room, and most preferred to traverse it as quickly as possible, breathing a sigh of relief upon reaching the other side.

A young couple could be seen slipping into a small side room, presumably in hopes of finding a corner quiet enough for a stolen kiss. This room featured an assortment of various distorting mirrors of the type that can be found in most travelling carnivals and the boy and girl posed in front of several of them, laughing.

“Oh, look! How thin we are.”

“And this one…my dear, you’re fat as a goose!” She pretended to slap him and he caught her wrist, placing a kiss upon the back of her glove. His arm around her waist drew her closer, daringly close, as they moved to the next mirror.

This mirror showed two strangers, two older people. Since it is impossible for the young to believe that they will eventually become old, it took them several minutes to realise that they were looking at aged versions of themselves and gradually their laughter turned to appalled silence. His thick hair had thinned and receded, and his eyes showed the pouchiness of dissipation and excess. He looked mean and small, like a man who had forgotten kindness. She looked at a woman who had aggressively attempted to retain a fading youth, with bright hennaed hair and rouged cheeks which could not hide the frown lines that rode parallel between her eyes. The tight-laced corset couldn’t hide the thickened middle, and her bright lips turned down at the corners in disappointment and resentment. The older couple stood together like a couple who had spent decades making each other miserable, blaming the other for missed opportunities and unrealised expectations.

Silently the young couple left the room, no longer interested in stolen kisses. They didn’t hold hands, as though each believed that the other could pass the contagion along that would someday turn them into the person in the reflection. The next couple entered, laughing.

“My mind absorbed everything in the spell book I clutched tightly to me. Pages ruffled inside of my head, urging me to remember things and then to forget them. Voices chanted with tempo rising at the breaking points of pain until the book vanished and words to an ancient spell scribed across my arms. Each stroke brought blood to the surface, imprinting words I could not read; words that would forever change who I was.”

Jade had spent the majority of her life running from the Triad. The Triad, are a powerful group, who would stop at nothing to obtain Jade and the missing spell book for leader, Lorenzo’s, nefarious plans. And now that she has absorbed the highly coveted magic contained inside the missing book, there is nowhere left for her to hide.

With the help of her friends, Jade steps out from the shadows and learns how to fight back. But no one is prepared for Elinor-the woman bound inside of the book that’s trapped in Jade’s mind. Now she not only needs to protect herself from the Triad, but from what’s hiding inside her mind as well.

Jade never expected the answer to it all would revolve around love.

Edge is dark, mysterious, and a sworn member of the Triad. He also hides a secret past that threatens the thin line he walks between good and evil. Lives are at stake when Jade and Edge’s two worlds collide. Can Jade learn to trust him when he says he is her pre-ordained and vows to do everything he can to protect her? But more importantly, can she trust herself and the woman in her mind?

About the Author

Sonya Loveday, first and foremost is a reader, an avid one. It is of that love that brought her to the realization that this was the answer to the nagging persistent feeling that ‘there’s got to be something more’.

The dream came alive in 2009 when she purchased her laptop and began the tedious step of becoming a published author.

When she’s not reading, she’s writing. When she’s not writing, she’s reading. And when she’s not doing either of those things she’s sleeping, shuttling her children back and forth to school, letting the dogs and cats in and out of the house for the umpteenth time in the last hour and dreaming of a clean house.

You can find Sonya Loveday on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and WordPress on the links below:

Facebook
Goodreads
Twitter @SonyaLoveday
www.sonyaloveday.wordpress.com

The graphics weren’t great, as expected from something based on Dungeons & Dragons, but they weren’t so horrible that I couldn’t play. I have never been able to play MMOs such as EQ/EQII, Vanguard, etc., because of the dated look and feel; I’m an eye-candy whore for games such as Guild Wars 2. The fact that I haven’t taken any screenshots to accompany this post should tell you something.

I hated the “action combat” system initially and then got used to it. I rolled a cleric, though, and healing when you can’t actually target anything is miserable. I’m hoping for more aoe-based heals as she levels, because trying to land a single-target heal in a crowd of mobs and companions and players who don’t need healing is horrible – there is always something running between you and the person in low health as you’re trying to land a needed heal.

I have to admit, though…I am having a lot of fun. It’s free, which is a good thing, and the cash shop (although very expensive) hasn’t been necessary yet. I did consider a Founder’s Pack and then decided against it when I realised that Cryptic is one of those companies that charge EU players more than US players. How difficult can it be to keep relative pricing fair for different groups of players? I haven’t bothered working it out properly, but I would guess that EU players are paying something like a third more than US ones. I don’t believe in supporting companies that do this. How will they learn if we reward them for poor business practices? :D

As far as classes go, Cleric is great if you normally play with a partner or in a group. It’s a bit slower if you only solo. Trickster Rogue, especially if you can afford a cleric companion fairly early on, is an overpowered blast which I fully expect to be nerfed at some point. Try it before they do, as being a spinning whirlwind of dual-daggered death is tons of fun. Phil was really enjoying the Control Wizard, and with only two character slots I haven’t had the chance to try any of the other classes.

The Foundry (player-created content) is pretty amazing for the most part, even though it has received a recent xp/drop nerf due to exploiters. This is why we can’t have nice things, people. I’m looking forward to delving into it and creating some of my own content.

Overall, I’d recommend it highly as a second game, or main game for a casual player. For me it’s not worth dropping tons of money into, but I’ve very much enjoyed the time that I’ve spent so far.

Related:
10 Tips To Make Your First Few Days In Neverwinter A Little Easier

Next steps for both books:

• Each will receive detailed beta reader feedback
• Each will receive a cover
• Each will receive proofreading after the final draft

A Grimm Legacy will receive a professional edit by Bram Stoker award-winning editor Judi Rohrig and a book tour put together by Kellie Sheridan. (I will be featuring both books here.)

Congratulations to both authors. Watch for these two…they are going to produce some kickass books.

And what stories they are. Two very different books, but both great reads. I was really looking forward to the moments that I could steal to curl up with them and if I’d actually bought them I would have considered it money well spent. You are all in for a treat!

It’s been a couple of months since Emma and Lana entered the Praxos Academy and life has been hectic ever since. What with regular A level classes combined with learning all about the supernatural world, control classes, self defence and fight night, the girls are constantly busy.

But when their world seems to stop right in front of them, they and their fellow Watchers, have a huge mystery to solve. A mystery which will lead them on a long road trip across south west England where they will meet all kinds of strange creatures, some intent on causing harm and others desperate to put a stop to the problem.

The Temporal Stone is the second full length novel in The Morgan Sisters series. The first book is entitled The Ghost of Josiah Grimshaw. There is also a free novella, Daisy Madigan’s Paradise.

I also want to think about a change to the way that I do covers. Unique stock is difficult to come by and with the growth of self-publishing there are a lot of covers out there all using the same stock models. What I want to do is shoot my own stock and offer bespoke covers that will be truly unique to your project.

That’s the plan, anyway. In the meantime I’m going to be working on getting my happy thoughts back. Like Tootle’s marbles, they’ve somehow gone missing. :)

]]> http://www.ravven.com/blog/2013/04/covers-on-hiatus/feed/ 9 http://www.ravven.com/blog/2013/04/small-things/ http://www.ravven.com/blog/2013/04/small-things/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 08:06:05 +0000 Ravven http://www.ravven.com/blog/?p=4866 This blog began as a personal account of my move to the UK. Originally using Graymatter (which corrupted), then Livejournal (which I outgrew), then WordPress.com to a final self-hosted WordPress, it’s been through a number of changes, most of which have something to do with pretension and the amount of work involved.

I loved writing small anecdotes about my experiences in England, how it differed from what I expected and how I felt at home. Since most of my expectations were based on research done on BBC America (so I could start to understand the accents better) and shows such as The Royle Family and Coupling, I suppose it differed quite a bit from what I expected. I wrote about how strange it feels, both nice and uncomfortable, to have total strangers in shops call you Love and Sweetness and Duck. I wrote about food, and how quaint everything was.* As my career progressed I wrote about the differences in the workplace, and specifically with tech teams, between the two countries. Slang and the misunderstandings that occur therefrom. (I still cannot hear someone use the word fag, as in “I’m stepping out back for a quick fag” without my shoulders tightening up. Interesting image though, thanks.)

It was a small blog, with short entries written without much thought – feelings and funny stories. It didn’t try to be pretentious.

Then I got into MMOs (damn you, Phil!) and slowly it became a gamer blog. The problem with that is that you start with personal stories and then other gamers start reading it. You like that, so you try to add more content. This is fine if you are good at reviewing, or you’re a theorycrafter, but to be honest I’m not. I’ll keep up with gaming news and the latest developments in game but I’m not really a min-maxer. I’ll look up the current build-of-the-month and religiously apply that, but that is other people’s work. It is part of the reason I no longer play EVE – you really have to know what you’re doing, and how the stats on everything associated with your ship works. You use spreadsheets to figure it all out…and that bores me to tears.

I stopped writing about games because I couldn’t move to that next level and be a “proper” game blogger. And this blog, which I’ve kept for over a decade, has fallen into disrepair. Things are dusty, and there are spiderwebs on the ceiling.

So I’m going to go back to what my flighty goldfish mind does best…writing about this and that. There will be nothing of consequence aside from the occasional rant, and most probably nothing of interest to see here. You have been warned.

*I have been forbidden to use the word “quaint” when referring to anything in the UK. Evidently they find that offensive. :)