I love my readers. No, really, I do. I write under four (*ahem* or more *ahem*) pen names and so far, nearly every reader for books published under every pen name has been a delight to interact with. But some of you are getting a little impatient. A couple of months ago, I received an email from a fan of the Vampyr Series (V.R. Cumming) that pushed me to write a post detailing exactly what’s been going on in my…
It’s fairly common knowledge among my readers that I write under multiple pen names. What isn’t so common knowledge is that some of my stories across those pen names share the same story world, in this case the Sunshine Walkingstick Series (Celia Roman) and the Cullowhee Witches Series (Lucy Varna). The Cullowhee Witches Series came first and began life as the Witches of Cullowhee Series, which never generated much enthusiasm. I rebranded the covers for both books and republished them…
On 9 February 2014, I published my first novel, The Prophecy, under the pen name Lucy Varna. I’ve talked endlessly (ok, a lot) about the process I underwent to go from being a published author of non-fiction to being a published author of fiction, so I won’t repeat all that here. Even in blog posts, I hate repeating myself. What I never imagined half a decade ago is that I would go on to achieve so much in such a…
A few weeks ago, I decided to write a completely new short story just for my monthly newsletter subscribers, a Dark Fantasy taken from a list of ideas I compiled last year when I was working on stories for Dreaming of a Dark Christmas. (That’s on sale for $.99 (US) right now, so if you haven’t read it, hop on over and pick up a copy.) The story is about a mischievous imp who, inspired by the hymn “Joy to…
When I first started writing, I fell into a natural pattern and process. I didn’t think about it, didn’t try to force anything or conform to anyone else’s standards. I just did what worked for me at the time, which turned out to be fortuitous. While I had that schedule, I was incredibly productive and loved every single minute of writing. A couple of years in, I decided that I needed to try to “fix” my process so that I…
A few things have happened recently that point to a small problem aspiring authors seem to have. If you haven’t figured it out yet from the title, then here are three examples as illustrations: At a recent book signing by David Joy, one of the guests (inevitably, I think) asked Joy how he came up with ideas for his stories and whether finding ideas was a problem. Not long ago, a reader with in-depth subject knowledge emailed me with intricately…
While writing “Lightning Crack, Thunder Roll,” it occurred to me that other writers might benefit from a discussion of the length of time a story takes to write. Of course, the first answer is the obvious: It depends upon the writing speed (usually measured in words per hour) of the writer. For example, a writer who can crack out 2,000 words per hour can finish the first draft of a novel (say, 70,000 words long) in half the time of…
Some time back, I was discussing submitting stories to short form fiction magazines with an author friend of mine. When I mentioned the high rejection rate for the paying markets, he was appalled. An average 97-99% rejection rate? What author could weather that? The truth is, though, that writers face a ton of rejection no matter which path we take. Aspiring authors used to query agents or, rarely, editors and publishers, a process that usually took years before a manuscript…
Some people know what they want out of life, seemingly from birth. My sister is one of those. From the time she started school until today, she’s devoted most of her time and energy to becoming and being the best teacher, coach, and parent she can be. She’s wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember, and her single minded devotion to that duty has driven her to levels of success others can only dream of…
I was just reading the (mostly favorable) reviews of the Sunshine Walkingstick Series over on GoodReads, and it occurred to me that some of the frustrations I had while writing Sunny were the same frustrations readers had with her. Let me back up a bit and add some background on the series and why I wrote it. During the first year or so after I began writing fiction, characters would pop into my head on a regular basis. Some were…