All Hallows Write Tonight!

Quick blog post for today, with the promise of a larger coming tomorrow.

Tonight I'm going to stay up all night and write a scary story. Because it's Halloween, and because that's the kind of thing that sounds like fun to me.

So tomorrow, there will be a brand new, hot-off-the-laptop scary story up on this blog for you to read. Hopefully it will be good. I have a plan for it, but according to the rules I made up for All Hallows Write, I can't put that plan on paper until sunset tonight, and that means I can't quite see how all the pieces are going to fit together yet.

And of course, these things always change in the writing anyway.

Why do this? Why have the rules? Why not break them?

For the same reason poets write haiku and sonnets and villanelles and sestinas. Sometimes having rules makes you more creative.

Anyway, it's going to be fun. If you're a Twitterer, you can follow the action starting at sunset (6:45 EST where I am) at the hashtag #AllHallowsWrite. If you're a Facebooker, you can watch my Facebook page, where my updates will stream automatically.

Hope you'll join in for a few hours and come back tomorrow to see what I've done. The plan is...ambitious.

But I have two energy drinks and am anticipating a surplus of Halloween candy to fuel me.

What could possibly go wrong?

News for the Week of 10.21.13: Soulwoven Comes Together, and All Hallows Write is Soon

Hello, friends and readers!

I was up until 1:00 a.m. last night reading the second book of Soulwoven to my fiancee, so I’m exhausted as I write this today. But it was worth it. The book’s coming together very well. It’s darker and deeper and harder than the first one was, but I think readers liked those things about the first one, and if you did, you’ll like the second even more. I hope to start posting chapters of it on Wattpad around the same time the first book launches commercially (February 2014).

Speaking! Of! Which! The commercial edition of Soulwoven is starting to look really exciting. The new cover is approaching a finished state, and it’s going to blow the doors off the one I’ve got now (especially in print). I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to handle page design and layout, and I’m really excited about the way the whole package is coming together. I’ve always thought of books as pieces of art, of which the text is just the heart. And I think that Soulwoven is turning into a piece of art, and it’s incredibly satisfying to watch.

More news! On Oct. 31, I’ll be staying up all night with a couple other authors for a scary story writing marathon we’re calling All Hallows Write (more info at allhallowswrite.com). That means I should have a new short story up here for you guys on Nov. 1. It’ll be a bit of a departure from my usual style, but I think it’ll still be recognizable as mine, and it’ll still be good. Hopefully. I’ve never tried anything like this before, and that’s half the fun.

Finally: Nadya. Nadya’s mired in the muck of the traditional publishing process, searching for the needle in the haystack that will be the agent who loves her. I’ll know in a month or two whether that’s going to happen. I’ve gotten lots of nibbles so far, but no bites. Everyone has been in concurrence that it’s a good book. It’s just a matter of finding the right home for it.

So there’s more coming from me to you shortly, in one form or another.

Stay tuned, thanks for reading, and if you want to give me a wonderful birthday present, head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of Three Dances. :-)

Yours dearly,

Jeff

News for the Week of 10.4.13: Soulwoven and All Hallows Write!

Hello, dear friends and readers!

Sorry for the long time between updates. I’ve been busy!

Thing of note number one! I went to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference in Denver and had a blast. I met lots of cool people, like indie bestseller Laura Kreitzer and fellow Kickstarter alum TravisHeermann, and I saw some old friends and made some new contacts with people in publishing doing interesting things. I also gave a workshop on how to write cover copy, which I’ll be presenting again online for Delve Writing on Oct. 15. As far as I’m aware, you can log in and watch as a guest. If you’re thinking about checking it out, let me know and I’ll double check.

Thing of note number two! I finished my last round of revisions on Soulwoven before it goes off to my editor Rose Fox. It went well. I’m confident that I’ve written a good book. And really, that’s all any author can ask. New cover art for it is in the works, and I can’t wait to share it with you. And mark February down in your calendars, because that’s when the print version comes out. It’ll be available worldwide on Amazon, and you should all buy a copy.

Thing of note number three! Maybe most exciting for the Wattpad audience, I’ve started the Cass round of revisions on Soulwoven: Exile, in which the story of Litnig and Cole and their friends darkens and broadens and spreads out. This is always the most terrifying round of revisions for me, because it’s the first time I share it with anyone, and it’s such an intimate experience. I always find flaws, and they always make me feel like there’s more work left to be done than I can possibly handle and that I’m a terrible writer. But when it’s over, the book is approaching a state of readiness for sharing with a wider audience. I want to start getting chapters out around the same time the print version of Soulwoven comes out. Fingers crossed I can hit that deadline.

Thing of note number four! All Hallows Write is coming up at the end of the month. I’m excited about the story idea I’ve got cooking for it, which involves thunderstorms and a creature from another dimension and bad parents and loving brothers and a level of gore somewhere between moderate and “yuck.” The aforementioned Travis Heermann will be joining me on the adventure, and I’ll be contacting some other indie writers over the next month to see if I can’t con anyone else into staying up all night with me and writing scary things.

Thanks for tuning in, thanks for reading, and thanks for believing,

Jeff

News for the Week of 9.13.13: All the Things!

Hello, dear friends and readers!

I cannot believe two weeks have passed since the Kickstarter closed. It's been a crazy last month and a half for me, and I am late on informing the world of several things.

First: I will be at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference from September 20-22. On the 20th, I'll be one of many authors signing books. Come on down! You don't need a conference registration to come buy books (or you didn't last time I went). On the 21st, I'll be giving a workshop on cover copy for the indie author. You DO need to register for the conference to attend that. :-)

Second! One of my authors' first books with Carina launched in August (link here). It's called The Adorned, and it's a male/male fantasy romance. I won't apologize for that, because that's what the author writes and loves, but I will say that it is to me first and foremost a great fantasy, with incredible world building and beautiful prose. Yes, there's a love story (and it's a great one), and yes, that love story is between two men. But this story deserves to be read without preconceptions, because it's extraordinarily well written (if you don't believe me, read the reviews). If you're into fantasy, amazing prose, and great books in general, you should check it out.

Third! Wattpad BLEW UP for about the last 30 days before finally cooling off last night. There are now nearly 14,000 people following me there. That number boggles my imagination. I do not understand what it is to be able to click a button and send a message to 14,000 people, other than very, very cool. I have a lot of thoughts bubbling on Wattpad, but they deserve their own post. I'll share them soon.

Fourth! I have fun projects on the way for the fall. Last year I wrote Nadya Skylung and the Cloud Pirates during NaNoWriMo, and I think it's my best work to date. I owe The Unlikely Candidates a debt of gratitude for inspiring this year's crazy fall project, which I'm very excited about and which I have been doing a boatload of reading in preparation for (and which, I should note, will not impinge at all on the schedule for Soulwoven---this is a necessary precondition of its existence). I don't want to say too much for fear of jinxing it (and also because I may fail entirely in executing it---that's part of the magic of the crazy fall project). I'll also be writing a scary story in a marathon on Halloween, possibly alone and possibly at the same time as other writers.

So in short, I should have more good stuff for you soon.

Much love and thanks for your patience. I now have to go catch a plane to Wyoming.
-Jeff

P.S. The front range of Colorado is flooding. I grew up there and it means a lot to me. You can help it react and recover here.

Kickstarter Success!

So as you all can see from the widget over that way ------>

The Soulwoven Kickstarter successfully funded at midnight last night. It's going to take me a few days, I think, to fully process my thoughts on this, because there are a lot of them.

For now, I just want to share a couple of pictures.

This is what Kickstarter success looks like when you're facing a computer screen.

And this is what Kickstarter success looks like if you're a computer screen looking out.

I'll be back soon to tell you what it feels like to be an author who just successfully completed a Kickstarter, but we can start with the following:

It feels great.

-J

A Post About a Kitten

When I started this blog, it was under the assumption that the only people reading it would be probably be a.) people who knew me already, or b.) people who were much more interested in learning things about writing and editing than anything else.

But nowadays there are more people following me. I'm happy just to have them around. Like, really happy just to have them around.

But I know I like learning little things about the authors I follow. So I've been wondering how best to share little bits about myself over the Internet, and the other day I was texting things to my fiancee about our new kitten, and I realized that what I notice and deem worth taking the time to text about says an awful lot about who I am.

So I thought I'd share some of those texts.

Also this kitten has taken over my life, and that seems noteworthy to me.

Enjoy!

-Jeff

For the concerned: She's fine. They gave us medicine, which we gave to her, and now she's running around like a turbofurball causing havoc in the house whenever possible.

And this is what she looks like.

For New Readers

Note: I wrote this post originally to reach out to several thousand new followers of mine on Wattpad. But once it was written, I realized it might be worth sharing with a wider audience as well. So here goes!

TL;DR Thanks for taking a chance on me. I mostly write fantasy for young people. You can find a lot of my work on Wattpad. I appreciate your support and love talking to readers.

Hello friends and readers!

This post is mostly aimed at my new followers. Those of you who’ve been around for a while can feel free to carry on with your Wattpadding uninterrupted. :-)

But to the rest of you: a special hello! Many of you are completely new to Wattpad, and I want to thank you guys for choosing me as one of the first authors you’ve followed. I know a lot of you haven’t had the chance to read any of my work yet. That’s cool with me. I want to earn your support and readership, and I figure I’ll start by extending a welcoming hand and giving you a brief introduction to what I’ve posted here.

NADYA SKYLUNG AND THE CLOUD PIRATES is a fantasy steampunkish adventure written with middle-grade readers (11-14 or so) in mind. Judging by early reactions to it, it is by far the best thing I’ve ever written. There are only three chapters of it up on Wattpad, because I’m waiting to introduce it to the world with a bang, but it’s a good place to start and get an idea of what I write. 

SOULWOVEN is the reason most of you are here. Wattpad spotted it when I started posting it last year and asked to feature it. It’s an epic fantasy about brotherhood, friendship, young love, saving the world, losing your identity, and what we have left when everything is taken from us. It’s ambitious, and it’s a little dense, and it’s aimed at lovers of fantasy and literature ages 15 and up. 

Finally, THREE DANCES is a short story collection I published earlier this year. It’s five literary fiction stories done in a magical realist style that deal with tricks of language and myth, gender and sexuality, and growing up. It’s aimed pretty squarely at adults, but it’s a good read if you like its niche. 

I hope you find a book you love on my list. And if you do, I hope you take the time to let me know by voting and commenting (ed: or by buying Three Dances or backing the Soulwoven Kickstarter!). Those things are what make the world go round for us authors. And if you just want to say hi, drop me a line for that too. I’d love to talk to you. :-) 

Cheers, Jeff