'Wollstone' and Fantasy Boarding School Romances

Wollstone was my attempt at writing a boarding school romance, which was also greatly inspired by classic Boys' Love manga I read eons ago. I also read a few gay literary fiction from the early half of the 20th century (Christ, I sound like I'm talking about ancient history), and those were more reality-based stories. In all of those litfic novels, the gay characters died (or almost all of them, anyway), which was par for the course then as the tragedy of a queer person's existence was the focal point of the story. For the manga, character death was more about doomed love stories and not queerness.

Fast-forward to the late 1990s and early 2000s when I reacquainted myself with anime and came across this amazing series:

Now granted I've only seen the first arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena's three-arc series, but that was enough to get me thoroughly hooked on fantasy-based boarding school stories or boarding school stories with heavy fantasy elements. I felt then (and still do) that boarding school romances work well with folklore influences, hence my decision to lean heavily on folklore when I came up with Wollstone.

It's supposed to read like a fairy tale -- a gothic fairy tale set in boarding school that straddles reality and the otherworldly. And me being me, I wanted to work a lot of gothic elements into the story as well. Having grown up in a conservative Catholic environment, my books tend to be heavily influenced by Catholicism, too, even though I'm an atheist (agnostic at most), so there's also lots of that in this book but presented along more fantastical lines.

I'd love to go back and write another gothic boarding school romance, and I was originally planning on doing that with Compline, but that WiP got the better of me, and it's now something else entirely. 

As part of my 2025 Backlist Bonanza, Wollstone is currently 50% off at different online vendors throughout January.

Happy New Year! Also... Yay, Backlist Bonanza!

But first:

image by pngtree

As promised, I'm now doing a year-long backlist sale of my books from three collections: Curiosities, Arcana Europa, and Miscellaneous Books. Two e-books each month will be on sale for 50% off, and that's on all sales channels. If you buy from Kobo, Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, etc., it doesn't matter. The books will be on sale for the entire month.

And we're starting off with two books from my backlist of republished gay YA and New Adult stuff:

Wollstone 

The moment Emil Gogean sets foot inside Wollstone Academy's fairy tale-like campus, he realizes his freshman year in high school is bound to be a very strange one. The school itself, a uniquely romanticized boarding school for boys, boasts remarkable elements that appear to be deliberate -- as though a hidden power has chosen woodland details, a chapel ruin, and school masters who seem to hearken back to a long-gone age, with a clear purpose in mind.

When strange things begin to happen to Emil, an unnerving warning from his late grandmother returns to haunt him. A warning about Emil attracting the attention of the king of the dead.

Strange faces in wood patterns and mullioned windows. The apparition of a boy among the trees. The unfathomable feeling of sadness permeating the idyllic environment. Emil gradually learns that Wollstone is more than just a school, that the answers to a three-hundred-year-old mystery surrounding a tragic romance lie in the ruined stones of a small chapel and in Nature itself. And that Emil, whose appearance in school has set certain wheels in motion, will have to place himself at the mercy of three mysterious students if he wishes to learn the truth about Wollstone, the boy lost in the woods, and himself.

and The Winter Garden and Other Stories

Strange music from a legendary haunted glade can only be heard by a special boy. A grieving young man turns to the dark arts to bring his deceased lover back. A soiled and tired knight protects the innocent from the threat of a dragon. Young love blooms in a desolate garden.

Familiar and original fairy tales, myths, and legends explore the complexities in a gay teen's coming-of-age through allegory and metaphor. Rain-drenched circuses, old wives' tales involving candles in windows, water-irises deep in a wood, lonely fairy kings, and magical Christmas parties. These stories not only present valuable lessons, but also provide an escape into worlds in which a gay teen can see himself as the center of adventure, romance, horror, tragedy, and triumph.

Contains the following stories: "Clouds' Illusions", "Erl-King", "Out of the Depths", "The Bridge", "The Dollhouse", "The Haunted Glade", "The Knight", "The Water-Irises", and "The Winter Garden".

Both books are regularly priced at $2.99, but all this month they're at $1.49. Just click the links to go to their respective book pages, and from there you can find out where you can get a copy. And as I've mentioned before, I'll be taking advantage of these sales to post about the books throughout the month (but not every day, mind you -- it's more like an occasional posting).  

So yeah! If you're curious about the books, now's a good time to get a copy. And if you do, thanks so much for your support!

Season's Greetings!

However (or whether) you celebrate the day or the season, may it be a good, safe one for you and yours. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the French sure came up with the prettiest carols.

Updates: the Winter Solstice Edition

I actually started writing this yesterday but got bogged down by chores to get the whole thing done. Anyway...

Hello, winter! I love me some longer dark hours, so I'm going to milk what's left of this weekend for all its worth. It's all going to be lighter and lighter from here on, so yep -- enjoy the moody season while I can.

image taken from Pinterest, no artist's name given

I've already set up the calendar for the first "Backlist Bonanza" 50% off sale for January, 2025. I plan to do this every month throughout the year (in addition to the normal release schedule I have set up already) and will be making this a yearly cycle. 

There'll be two books per month that I'll be discounting, and that'll include all the books in the Curiosities, Arcana Europa, and Miscellaneous Books collections. That totals 24 books all in all, which will give me a tidy schedule of two discounted books per month. Easy peasy!

Since I'm only dedicating my gallery pages to my Grotesqueries collection and the sequels to Ghosts and Tea, these monthly sales will allow me to talk up my backlist (most of it) for the benefit of new readers or those who've yet to try books they haven't read. So, yeah -- each month-long sale promo will take the place of what would have been the books' gallery pages in a way, and I'm even considering spreading the information throughout the month and not just limit the write-ups to one day per book. 

The past couple or so months gave me the time and space (sort of on the space thing) to reflect on what I've accomplished so far and where I hope to go. What also helped me turn down that path was my rereading of Nightshade's Emporium, a book that deviated from my original plan because I was in the process of writing the book when my youngest nephew died. 

I dedicated that book to him if you've read it and spotted his name in the dedication page. His loss was a massive blow to the family because of the circumstances surrounding his death as well as his age at 17. So the book turned into me dealing with grief, which affected the book's trajectory, and I ended up dumping all the notes I initially wrote for the book. I'm very happy with the results even if the journey from start to finish was quite heavy on philosophical ruminations on mortality. 

Anyway, I'm hoping to settle back down to a more straightforward way of telling a story even if the plot involves complicated issues that I want to explore in a book. This year ends with Voices in the Briars, which is also pretty heavy on issues that mean a lot to me, and that'll carry over though hopefully with a lighter touch next year with the new books in the pipeline. 

And speaking of losses, it looks like my forays into the Nightshade world are shadowed by grief. For The Perfect Rochester, it's my oldest sister who succumbed to brain cancer back in June, and it's to her I'm dedicating this book. Appropriately enough -- just like it was when Kai passed away -- this book fits her since it's more outwardly a rom-com, and she was the romantic of the family. 

I mentioned before that I'm tempted to dive back into the Nightshade world down the line with future adventures. Hopefully with no more heavy losses on my end. But the urge to follow through is real, and it'll mean some rescheduling of other books in the pipeline since it appears my dips into the Nightshade world happen once a year. Huh.

Dammit, Beavis!

Course correction time! I had to restart Compline because the first four chapters I recently completed didn't sit well with me. Couldn't wrap my head around why until I realized the single-person epistolary approach was making the story too heavy and plodding. It doesn't help that the book's not a comedy, and this approach also reminded me why I stopped being a fan of first-person POVs (single narrator) in writing. 

Frankly, I think the epistolary approach works best on a comedy a la Ghosts and Tea and as part of a hybrid narrative like Primavera. But an extended narrative that's all drama and just one POV isn't going to cut it. I think it's safe to say I'm ready to move on from first person narratives as a writer though I'm cool with it as a reader. 

So the first version of the book is currently shelved, and I started over with a new chapter this weekend and am back to square one. Third person POV this time and a much snappier pace, and after a wobbly start, I still had to go back and hack away at what I'd written and rewrite large chunks of the material. I am taking previously written stuff from the first version and weaving it into this new one, so it's not as though I'm giving the original up completely.

Psst! You forgot to add "tea" to the list!

Anyway...

With the holidays in full swing, it's been busy at the day job, hence my lack of updates. One good bit of news, though, doesn't involve me but other indie writers -- at least those participating in Smashwords' 2024 End of the Year Sale. It lasts all month long, so head on over yonder if you'd like to discover new writers and support indies. 

I'm NOT participating, by the way. I don't participate in these sales however much I want to because writers don't have a choice as to which books go on sale when they sign up. In 2025, I'll be offering my backlist for discounted prices on Smashwords outside of these site-wide sales, and I'll be posting about each book here. At the moment I'm planning to offer one book at a discount per month, which will be a mix of titles from my entire catalogue prior to Ghosts and Tea. At any rate, watch this space.