Turkey Day Update: 'Compline' Has Begun

All right, I know I told myself to hold off till December to get going with Compline, but I have a four-day weekend with today being Thanksgiving, so I figured, why the hell not? Especially since I'm all but completely done with The Perfect Rochester. 

art by Chris Rawlins on Deviant Art

There's a detail about the fairy tale that I'm exploring, and I'm gothying it up (Is that a word? It is now!) by mixing it up with traditional ghost fiction, and as a hat-tip to the legend, it's set in a historical fantasy Germany even if Hamelin isn't anywhere in the book at all. Sort of like Voices in the Briars, which I set in a historical fantasy Hungary, this one will have a bunch of made-up place names. No vampires involved. 

I've also been trawling Tumblr a lot lately for visual inspiration not only for this book, but for future ones as well. That's the one social media platform I love the best largely because of its user base, which skews not so much younger but more creative in outside-the-box ways compared to places like Instagram. I did resurrect my old account not to post anything, but to have access to people's art, which I goggle at whenever I'm there, and I write notes as ideas happen. 

There's been a surge of inspiration from that site alone for elements I can use in future books like The Twilight Lover, which follows Compline. I might even be amassing fun stuff for Camera Obscura, but that's not for a long while still. It doesn't hurt jotting down notes as I go, though.

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UPDATE: Oh, yeah -- forgot to mention. If you're interested in previewing The Perfect Rochester, you can go to the book's Smashwords page and click "read the sample online" under the book cover. It's got a generous sampling for customers, and you can read up to the first three chapters. 

UPDATE II:  Aha. So it looks like you have to be logged in to Smashwords in order to read the sample. Never mind. Sorry, everyone. Kobo Books will let you check it out if you're interested.