Category Archives: young adult

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!

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

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A serendipitous discovery of an amazing and touching short animated film.

Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. (IMDB)

After yesterday’s angst-ridden post regarding certain genre books that I love writing, this brilliant animated film gave me a much-needed shot of comfort. So forget the naysayers. There’s always been – and always will be – more than one way of exploring a gay kid’s coming-of-age.

Now if I could only remind myself about that everyday, I wouldn’t subject myself to so many wasted hours spent gnashing my teeth.

Now Available: Mimi Attacks!

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And the day finally arrives for this book to be available, LOL! I do feel pretty badly, though, skipping all of 2011 and not keeping the Masks series updated till now. But I am trying to make up for that by (hopefully) releasing Dr. Morbid later this year.

So here’s the blurb:

Following Arachnaman’s bigoted, hateful attacks, life in beleaguered Vintage City finally quiets down, but it doesn’t last long. Eric’s father begins to show symptoms of extreme fatigue, symptoms that Eric notices in a number of other people he sees elsewhere. Along with the superheroes, he tries to find a common denominator in all this, the surprising result being a new perfume shop that hawks very strong fragrances. A familiar pair of supervillains is suspected, but before the heroes can further investigate the motives behind this threat, people exhibiting symptoms of illness are transformed in the most shocking way, throwing Vintage City in a state of panic.

In the meantime, Eric monitors the Unofficial Calais Fan Club, which is now exploding with romantic Mary Sue fanfiction involving Calais as well as curious messages posted by a girl who’s apparently wildly in love with the superhero. References to her making “new friends” alert Eric to suspect that she and the current mayhem being inflicted on Vintage City are somehow tied together. The stakes are now raised for Eric, whose father has become a victim to a new crime wave and whose superhero boyfriend might also be under threat. All this, and he’s yet to survive school and find a job.

And all y’all know the drill, yeah? If you purchase directly from the publisher, you’ll receive a 20% new release discount, which will be offered up to a week after the release date.

The e-book is officially released today, and you can purchase a copy here. The print book, though technically scheduled for release on March 31, is already live at the publisher’s site, which I’m guessing means that you can pre-order a print copy now. :)

The coming week will see me neck-deep in revision work for Dr. Morbid, and once that’s done (can’t say for sure how long that phase will take me), I’m starting on the new series I mentioned before. I’ve been thinking about it on and off while working on Dr. Morbid, and I’m getting really hyper. I can’t wait to get started on it. Even though it’s another contemporary fantasy, I’m hoping that the new scenery and new characters will stoke the fires well enough to keep that dreaded burnout from happening. It tends to eat me up whenever I work on two or more stories back-to-back in the same genre.

It’s best to focus on the positive and the “what ifs”. So I’ll do that. :)

Wanted: New Series

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Okay, make that “desperately needed” instead, followed by, “Ha! Voila!” I noted before that I’ve been thinking about what new series to write to take the place of Masks when that one ends its run. That’s not going to happen anytime soon, for sure, but it will eventually, and as much as I’d hate to say goodbye to Eric and the gang, I’d rather quit while I’m ahead and before the series stagnates.

I’m definitely not interested in writing a historical fantasy series because, sadly, historical fantasy remains a hard sell in the LGBT YA market despite readers’ calls for more books outside contemporary problem novels. I’ll still be writing historical fantasy, to be sure, but those titles will be limited quite a bit.

I’ve also noted before that I’m on a horror kick. It’s not really difficult to shift gears and immerse myself in this, seeing as how I grew up in a family of horror fans. Lately I’ve been mulling over ideas for a new series, which will be contemporary fantasy like Masks, and I’ve been wracking my brain for ways on how I can use John Kenn’s fantastic monster illustrations as inspiration for a plotbunny that’s kind of like Eureka. That is, the story takes place in a town that’s peopled with monsters and ghouls living side-by-side with warm-blooded humans. In Eureka, we’ve got scientific geniuses instead.

Like Masks, I’m not interested in writing anything angst-ridden. There’ll be some minor angst elements, sure, but I’m not – and never was – keen on overly dramatic plots, especially angst for angst’s sake as a cheap way of drawing reader sympathies. And since I’m a huge horror fan, I’d like to write something like a dark comedy series. I was able to do that (to a point) with Desmond and Garrick, but the ghoulish elements in that series were strictly limited to vampires. This time around, I want to expand those to all kinds of supernatural creatures.

Anyway, after weeks and weeks of tossing ideas around, I think I finally found something that I can use for the foundation of a series that involves ghouls or monsters and is a dark comedy. I’m sharing images from Beetlejuice and The Corpse Bride because those movies are a couple of sources of inspiration for me, though the main plot still needs quite a bit of shaping. At the moment things are fairly nebulous but definitely easy to nail down, if that makes any sense.

I might begin work on it after finishing Dr. Morbid’s Castle of Blood (or Masks #6), at least to get it started while the inspiration’s there. I must admit that motivation to write another historical fantasy novel for gay teens has been low recently, but I’m keeping my options open.