I have been pretty sick for the last few months. Some sort of super virus that I literally had for 3 months. I guess I pulled the short straw in the health lottery this Spring. So I got to read a lot but with surgery in December, The New Year and hosting some intergalactic illness my commitment to my blog became a low priority. Stop the press! Or maybe it’s, Start the press! Either way I am restructuring and reformatting my little corner of the world so that it suits my true loves… Reading, reading, reading and writing. With a little more writing mixed in.

I have one book completed. I have flip flopped on it’s name a butt-load of times but I am still referring to it as le Cirque when I talk about so that must be it’s name. I have nine chapters of a contemporary YA book called It Feels Like Home. I really love the hero in that book, he’s very charming. (Is it bad to have a crush on your own fictional creation?) Another story I am really excited about is one that I began a few months ago and then got side tracked and stopped working on. It’s marked in my Google Drive in a folder that just says, Valley, the name of the heroine. Her world is a little crazy, but she doesn’t fight it, she jumps right in and makes it her own. I only have three chapters written on it, but they are averaging about 9000 words per chapter so it’s not really a slouch effort. The last book I am working on is part of a planned trilogy that I will call The Soul Wars.

My current focus actually is the first book of The Soul Wars. In the last week I have written 45,850 words for it. The original idea was a faerie book and I had the prologue and two chapters written for it. I get most of my ideas for books from dreams I have. I am blessed by a nice mix of mood stabilizers to have very vivid dreams and most of my ideas are impressively elaborate. Generally the inspiration I get from dreams is enough to write a very detailed summary which follows a firm story arc. Often I do that thing that you hear is impossible… when I wake up while dreaming, I have no problem getting up and doing things, then laying back down, thinking about where my dream just left off and going right back into it. A lot of nights I will have one dream that focuses on a complete story. I sort of look at as God made me Bipolar, which sucks a lot of time, but in doing so he gave me the tools I need to develop some very imaginative ideas.

When I began writing, what was then known as The Faerie Wars, I had this weak idea that felt so similar to other Fae books that it was hard to work on. Since it failed to inspire it was near impossible to go further. So I appreciated it when my subconscious sent my heroine to me with a shopping list of all the things that were wrong, I wanted to write her a thank you note.

Two weeks ago, I sat down and read it and it became clear to me what story I had to tell really was and those dang faeries died a painless death at the hand of my delete button. I kept only the prologue that introduced the main character, Min. From there I wrote the story based on the same main figures but gave them a new world, purpose and make-over and they blossomed, literally, overnight.

I am loving what I have been writing, but I shamefully admit that I have allowed the bad habit of tweaking previous chapters rule me. I know I should just keep writing but it is like when I crave chocolate, I can’t seem to just let it go. Unlike le Cirque or It Feels Like Home, Min and Jet are fickle and demand that I fix the small things that keep me allow me to go to the next chapter. Just the other day I wrote all day and the next morning I realized that the new character, Trist, was a little boring. I knew my story need an arrogant bastard with a sharp tongue and I spent an hour and half giving him a personality upgrade. Trist thanked me and proceeded to blister the ears of everyone who encountered him and look hot as hell when he did it.

Le Cirque was a very structured process, I had a chapter outline and although there was a little deviation in places, it is basically what I had in mind when I first thought of it. I had a personality chart when I was writing It Feels Like Home and I knew both Teagan and Jacelyn really well. I didn’t make the outline like I had for le Cirque I made a list of bullet points with one word references to events in each chapter. Valley’s story was born simply of a little extra energy from a couple days of hypo-mania. The Soul Wars is like prepared chaos. I write whatever comes to mind and the spontaneity is guided with a loose plan that I have only for that particular chapter. I think each night of what should happen next and when I sit down I let the characters misbehave. Viola. Min and Jet are writing their story more than I am.

I hope to use my new and re-branded blog space to post little bits and pieces of my work. I plan to share my thoughtson books I’ve read often too. It would be great if  I use this place to look a little more critically at the way other books I read are written; talk about what I think works and what I feel I would have done differently. Without insulting some of the authors I like most, I am even thinking about taking small parts of their works and rewriting them in my style as writing exercises. Many of the books I love are written in first person POV and authors post extras of alternative perspectives occasionally on their own blogs. I like it a lot since it tells you so much about a character who you are only seeing from the narrator’s eyes. I want to try doing that for not just my characters but those in other stories as well to show what my impression of them is. I guess that could be defined by the word “fanfic” although I pray all the time that my writing quality is better than most of the horror I encounter looking at fan fiction. I feel dirty when I read slash fic and I don’t think there will ever be a time when I give up all self-respect and ship Ironman/Hawkeye or something equally twisted. I actually found someone who had written Bible slash a few months ago, Cain/Abel.

Below is a little bit of a conversation between Jet and Trist when they first meet. It’s a good introduction to them.

“If you continue to make illusions of that sort I will carve your heart before you can make it to the door.”
“Ah, I see you are a romantic. I wonder if my cousin likes that sort of virile manly man thing.”
“You have three minutes to finish your story and convince me to do anything other than what I have already promised.”
“No sense of humor. How dull.” He rolled his eyes and continued, “When she turned eighteen her mother blessed her with the position of protector of the D’iphemeri and then took her own life. You know the people of the D’phemeri believe her soul was taken by some piece of shit who will have her burn for all eternity for her heartbreak.”
“You now have two minutes.”

Thank you for reading my contribution to the internet.

Ali <3