And now for something completely different....

I know it's nothing to do with writing, but I'm happy with it.  This is the first (hopefully successful) attempt at creating art on my new cintiq drawing tablet.   I had to fiddle with the colour calibration when I took it off the tablet and put it on my main computer screen, so hopefully she doesn't look oddly coloured to anyone.

I should probably go write something now...

Why Bees?

I found myself chatting with Autumn Dawn recently, a very nice author who's over at http://www.authorautumndawn.blogspot.com/ and who gave THE BATTLE SYLPH a sweet little plug.  She'd just got herself a new beehive and the idea of hives and queens in the sylph universe appealed to her.  She asked me why I used that idea.

It's kind of hard to say what I was thinking when I came up with it.  I've said before somewhere that the sylphs were inspired by bees and tengu and all sorts of stuff.  I tend to play with concepts in my writing, even if I'm the only one who knows it, and I do recall that I brought in the bee idea because I wanted to explore the idea of power.  I've read a lot of books, both good and bad, which have characters with immense power, and immense power over other people.  That's great.  But usually those with the greatest power end up with those they have power over going "Hey!  Cut it out!" Look at all the books where the the protagonists are out to stop the evil king/god/demon/priest/whatever who's crushing their freedom.  I can't think off the top of my head of any books where the characters are under that sort of absolute power and are perfectly fine with it.  It would be a rare sylph indeed who didn't want to have a master/queen (*shifty look towards book six*)  Anyway, bees are happy with the whole hive mentality, and I kind of liked that for the sylphs.  It certainly wouldn't work in any universe - humans are notoriously bad at bee-like behaviour - but it worked in this one.

My website's fixed

Yay, I figured it out, so it's not longer saying that Midwinter still is coming out at Christmas or that Queen is releasing in March.  Sorry for everyone who was misled by that.  I'm pondering doing an overhaul of the site's entire look, but I primarily want to use this blog for updating and make the other site as simple as possible.

I've also added a little widget thing at the bottom of each entry so people can click to give their thoughts on whatever I put out there.  I thought it was kind of cute, though I may end up regretting adding the WTF? option....

I'm nominated!

I got an email yesterday giving me some good news.

A Midwinter Fantasy has been nominated by TRR reviewers for Best in Anthology (Romance) for 2010 at The Romance Reviews (“TRR”), and

The Battle Sylph has been nominated by TRR reviewers for Best in Fantasy Romance for 2010 at The Romance Reviews (“TRR”).

Thanks for everyone who voted for me!  I didn't expect to do even this well.

Where I am

Barbaranramos commented on one of my posts about being happy to hear I'm writing book six of the Sylph series.  I should give an update on all of that.

Books four and five of the Sylph series are written and edited.  Dorchester gave me a contract to buy them back in September, but I turned it down.  Much as I love my editor there, I'm not happy at their new publishing direction towards E-books only, followed by expensive trades.   My agent is looking for a different house to publish them instead, who'll release them in paperback as well as e-format.  Dorchester still owns the rights to the first three books though, and it's hard to sell the second half of a series to a publishing house when they can't get control of the first half.

So, THE SYLPH HUNTER and WAR OF THE SYLPHS aren't coming out anytime soon that I know of.  DOOR TO THE SYLPHS is on hold for a couple of reasons.  One is because it's coming out more as straight fantasy than romantic fantasy and another is because I'm not happy with it and have it in the mental simmer pot.  The third reason is because I'm writing something else.

My agent, who is awesome, has two finished books of mine in her hands.  HUNTING THE RAPTURE is straight fantasy and THE CLIFFS OF SHAKIRI is sci-fi young adult.  Neither are romantic fantasy.  I don't think of myself specifically as a romantic fantasy author, to be honest.  But I do have a series that does have it as part of the storyline and is actually quite a bit steamier than the Sylph books, I think.

THE CUCKOO is written and has gone through a first edit and is in my agent's hands.  I'm halfway through writing THE HOMUNCULUS and will follow it up with THE REVENANT.  I'm hoping to sell all three at once and get the first drafts written so that I can edit them as a whole.  Completely different universe from the Sylphs, different characters, different everything.  Still fantasy, though.

So that's where I am, along with working a full time job that's getting a little crazy right now.  I'm writing, but the release of the books themselves is completely out of my hands.  I'm just trying to get through them and find a reliable beta reader.  And fix the website.  I know it's kinda outdated.  I'm having problems logging in.  Sorry.