Category Archives: gothic fiction

Now Available: The Water-Irises

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And here’s the last short story of this collection, finally available. :) “The Water-Irises” is a French fairy tale, which I wrote about five or so years ago. Hugh LaCaille is also the prototype of Garrick Mortimer from the Desmond and Garrick series.

Hugh LaCaille’s quiet, scholarly life is interrupted one day by a wealthy but obnoxious businessman who hires Hugh as a tutor to his young son. Ignace Fournier is incensed Aubin’s passion for nature and poetry is a threat to his dream of seeing the boy grow up to be just as successful as his father in commerce. When Hugh finally meets Aubin, he realizes there’s a great deal more than what meets the eye as far as the boy’s concerned … particularly his curious and outlandish stories involving a strange kingdom found at the bottom of a pond filled with water-irises.

The most alarming claim Aubin makes touches on a special friendship he’s nurtured with the young ruler of that mysterious kingdom. Forced under time pressure to instill discipline into the boy, Hugh grapples with questions he’s never before faced, and he finds himself looking deeper into his heart for difficult answers … and even more difficult choices.

You can purchase the story and read an excerpt over here.

And here’s a bonus for you – while Queerteen Press usually offers a 20% for all new releases, they’re offering a site-wide special for the Memorial Day weekend, and all books purchased from the site are offered at a 30% discount through Monday. :)

Why Movie Soundtracks Rock

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Because some pieces make for fantastic muse fuel for future stories. Like this one:

Or this one (okay, so it’s not a movie soundtrack, but a TV series theme):

And especially this:

Yeah, I get far more musically inspired for historical fantasy fiction than contemporary fiction. Go me. :D This blog post, by the way, is really more of a note to myself. I need to save and file away these videos for future use.

And She Emerges All Bloodied and Battered

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Yowza. What the hell just happened? What a way to start the year – month after month of increasing agitation and a crisis of confidence that comes to a head in April. That’s like 1/3 of the year already done, and I’m left reeling and confused. But things are finally settling down, and I’m getting back into a rhythm.

I hate second-guessing my decisions and my work, but I guess those moments are important. They force me to sit back and think seriously about my goals – if I have any, that is – and to reassess the direction I’ve taken. I mean, I continue to be haunted by dozens of “what ifs” regarding my market. Having one of my co-workers retire recently in order to pursue his true passion in art really ate away at me and made me question so many things.

I was actually tempted to take May off from writing LGBT YA fiction in order to focus on producing a fantasy novella that has a more mainstream appeal, but I tried that before, and it fell flat. Sad to think that I was ready to sell out just so I could quit my day job and just focus on my writing. In the end I just had to let that feeling work its way out of my system, and today, I was able to sit down and hammer out 5,000 words for Helleville.

The doubts are still there, though, but they’re not as harsh as before. I haven’t thought about historical fantasy fiction in a long time now, and for that I’m glad. Letting go of that genre indefinitely was a bitter pill to swallow, but I got over it, and now I’m just focused on contemporary stuff and am enjoying my new work-in-progress.

I guess the doubts that linger now touch on my chosen subject matter for Helleville, which revolves around a single mom and her gay kid who’re both tossed into an alternate world by the Soul Warriors as a way of rehabilitating them back into “virtuous” living as defined by the grandparents, who’re both social conservatives. In previous books, I tried to avoid being preachy or outrightly critical of certain people, but this book is different, and it’s necessary for me to make a point regarding the nature of the alternate world in order to establish the conflict arising from the choices that the trapped residents ultimately have to make.

It’ll be a tricky balancing act, and I’ll be going over the pedantic elements during the revision process and will be making them more subtle. Hopefully, anyway, the dark humor of the whole thing will help, but I won’t shy away from my purpose. Too many kids are getting hurt, and having grown up in a conservative Catholic household, I feel pretty confident in my criticisms.

A Bit of a Wonky Transition

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And so the winner of the epic work-in-progress stare-down last week turned out to be Helleville, which wasn’t surprising, seeing as how that story’s already nicely outlined in my writing journal, while the fairy tale I began was more like a let’s-see-what-happens-next thing.

On one hand, I’ve been able to make significant progress with the new book. As of today, I’ve got over 8,000 words written, and so far, so good. I’m slowly getting the hang of Noah’s voice as well as his mother’s, and I’m about to let loose with the setting.

My inspiration for 'Helleville'.

On the other hand, I’ve been having a pretty tough time transitioning from Eric’s point of view to Noah’s. I don’t want Noah to sound like Eric at all and give readers the same old, same old.

That said, I do find it difficult to fully get inside Noah’s head. He’s Eric’s complete opposite by way of temperament, and Helleville is written in third person limited omniscient, so there’s even more distance between the reader and the main character. Since I’m still in the process of writing it, I’m way too emotionally and mentally close to the story, so I can’t make any objective judgments about how the story’s turning out overall. That won’t happen till the massive revisions after the first draft’s written, but I do wish I could accurately assess it right now.

I must admit that I’ve been tempted to just chuck any attempt at new contemporary fantasy series and simply focus on expanding Masks to however many volumes it’ll take me to write it (I initially gave myself no more than ten books for the series) and then publish occasional short fantasy fiction on the side to keep my historical fantasy skills up to date.

But I don’t know how that would work out. I’m currently reading a historical mystery series that runs eight volumes long as I type this, and the author told me that she’s just resurrected her characters and is working on a new installment. I wonder if she’s doing that because of the same issues I’m currently having, switching over to a new character and a new world in the same genre after being fully immersed in something else for six volumes of the series. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is, and I empathize completely.

At any rate, it’s full steam ahead with Helleville, and while it looks like this book will end up being a full novel, I’m still not sure whether or not to turn this into a series.

Now Available: Erl-King

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After a few weeks’ break due to the release of Mimi Attacks!, the next short story is finally available.

Baltasar grows up in a world of absolutes, of black and white, right and wrong. Just as his brothers and sisters who went before him, the boy is groomed to follow only one road, at the end of which is a life no different from his parents’ and grandparents’. His parents’ strict teachings and the naïveté that results, however, render him ignored and friendless, and Baltasar spends much time alone.

During one of his solitary wanderings in the countryside, he stumbles across an enchanted land and its melancholy, ageless ruler — a land full of color and magic, and a bond that defies everything he’s always known about the world. But what’s unusual, tempting, and exciting doesn’t always lead to a clearer path, and Baltasar is forced to choose between two wildly diverging worlds, with each exacting a high price.

“Erl-King” is a retelling of Goethe’s ballad by the same title.

Since this is a short story, not a novel, it’s only available in e-book format. If you purchase directly from the publisher, you’ll receive a 20% new release discount, which will be good for a limited time. You’ll also see an excerpt posted there, and if you do purchase the story, I hope you enjoy it!