Ate my own words

Ok I ate my own words and hadn’t been writing for several months again. Good news: part 1 is finally complete. Bad news: I structure a book into 4 parts. The procrastinator in me always thinks: Why toil over something I constantly get stuck on when there are so many Chinese BL out there waiting for me to read them? I can’t even write well anyway. Then again, I do want to finish telling this story so I can move onto the other ideas in my head.

And thus, I realized yet again I’ve almost forgotten all the previous research I’ve done, as my notes were incomplete. Spent half of today researching back what I forgot, and now I finally have a direction again. Let’s just hope this time I can persist a little longer amid recruitment and all the fics in my to-read list… Hopefully I can at least get part 2 done by the end of this month.

Cultural Diversity in Books: Why there aren’t more culturally diverse stories (Guest Post by Relics of Gods Author Yeyu)

Covers, DSP Publications, and yes I am Procrastinating

Sometimes when I look at covers for MMRomance novels…. I know you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but there’s one reason I like DreamSpinner Press. They can produce some pretty nice covers, and authors have a say in how they want the covers to look like. I just hate ugly covers…I mean if I can do a better job, this really says something about how bad the cover is.

Cover artists probably hate working with me. I’m so anal and specific about the cover I might as well do it myself. But I’m no pro at Photoshop, so I end up bugging the hell out of cover artists, LOL. If I ever have to publish with another publisher…I’d check out the covers first. Yeah, I’m shallow. I can’t help it. Why would I want to publish a book with an ass-ugly cover? No one likes ass-ugly covers. If I had only one contract offer, but the publisher offering it does not have pretty covers…I’d rather my story be free. Really. I published primarily because I wanted professional editors to fix/polish the story I wrote. The secondary motivation is wanting to stroke my ego in knowing at least someone liked the story. The third reason is I wanted a cover made just for my story. So, no nice cover, no go! ┌( ´_ゝ` )┐

Anyhow…. A while back in May or something DSP asked me if they could republish Erasing Shame under the new DSP Publications imprint, which explains why you might not be able to find it in the DreamSpinner Press store at the moment. DSP Publications is an imprint for mainstream genre fiction with characters who happen to be gay, and so when they asked me, I was like…why not LOL, it’s not as though Erasing Shame is ever going to be popular with romance-only readers…hell, if I weren’t the author, I wouldn’t even read my own fic…. What can I say. I dislike angst. And I tend to not read tragedies. Despite the fact that 5 out of 7 fics I wrote in the past had not-so-happy endings. Yeah, I know. I am weird like that ʅ（´◔౪◔）ʃ

I was actually worried that there was too much romance in Erasing Shame for it to be genre fiction. But hey, turns out DSP Publications is still mostly romance so it’s A-OK, and I’m honored to be a part of it ╰(๑◕ ▽ ◕๑)╯. Supposedly the official DSP Publications site will be fully functional around December, 2014, and for the nonexistent people who are interested, the republish date of Erasing Shame is December 2nd, 2014….

As for that new fic of mine, the Relics of Gods…it will be published January 6th, 2015. It was originally slated for July~August 2014 but since DSP kindly asked me if I was interested in publishing it through their new imprint as well, I was like, ok! Even though, again, I worry there is too much romantic focus…but then I also feared people would complain there was not enough romance if I published through DreamSpinner Press, so all is well. I am so glad I got those extra months, since I’ve made some last minute changes while I slugged along with book 2 (yes I am currently procrastinating again, so sue me! I can never understand those authors who write so fast (especially those Mainland authors who also write as a hobby and frickin’ churn out daily updates). I write like 100 words a day because I keep getting distracted (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`) Best I can do is 2k a week with a day job. Yeah, a week. I estimate needing 20~30k words to wrap up the second book, and I told DSP I’d ideally send the manuscript in December. Ahahahaha…. As the saying goes, “No zuo, no die.” Which am doing the opposite of and 作死ing, especially since I foresee myself making many revisions after I finish the manuscript. Will I make it in time? I dunno. It’s 1:01AM, and I’m going to do the laundry now (￣▽￣)

Being a pantster is excruciating….

…And it will be the death of me! ARGH. Yes, I am a pantster, but I hope it doesn’t show in whatever I write (nah, it probably does. I just know it does. I can merely pray people won’t find it too obvious).

Plot? Background story? Ahem. I haz zeh ideas.

In my head.

Yup. I don’t write any detailed character sheets, don’t outline the story’s plot (shhhhhhhhh), and don’t even frickin’ make a timeline (which I have come to DEEPLY regret). And despite all that lack of organization, I am also a bit anal about research and consistency. Does that make sense? No? I thought not.

Why am I writing this Chinese historical fantasy that requires so much frickin’ research?! And worse, those mythos are ALL OVER THE PLACE. I want to grab those ancient dudes by the shoulders and shake them, asking them why the inconsistency? WHY? They’re just making shit up with every new version and interpretation, it’s so obvious they’re making shit up but they’re scholars from 500~1000+ years ago so whatever they say can be considered canon. Coupled with a bunch of nationalistic attempts to make the mythology history, it’s just torturous. So…inconsistencies pile on top of each other, with mythology and history mixing together, and mythical history ends up as a big, hot mess… I want to cry.

Nah. It just has to do with my own indecisive nature. I didn’t think the whole background/mythology through (I only rolled with the vague ideas swimming in my feeble mind). It all started when I tried to write the approximate age of a side character while typing up book 2…and I ended up thinking: dang, I need a timeline to calculate this character’s age, and also the approximate time she asked a certain question.

A timeline spanning 4000 years at the least, just because I suddenly decided I should do the entire thing, down to all the events that supposedly happened in the past.

I shoulda done it earlier. Who the hell writes epic-ish fantasy without a timeline of events?

*Cough* That would be moi. Up until now.

Anyhow. After deciding to finally do the dreaded timeline, I tried to calculate the history and jot down a series of prehistory events, tried to find if there were any particular happenings of note I could utilize, and then, and then….

Well, I ended up ditching a version of the mythology I included in the glossary/notes in book 1 =_,= WHY oh WHY did I choose to torture myself with this historical fantasy?! It would’ve been SOOOO much easier to do the timeline if I just needed to make everything up from the top of my head, instead of looking at the mythical history and scratching my head and thinking, wait-a-minute…but I want this to happen at this time, it doesn’t match up with the event I intend to use!

And so forth. I finally decided to ditch the whole prehistory “history”. Mythological all the way, screw the historical timeline! Those calculated approximate timelines weren’t even made up by Chinese people anyway, the Jesuits wanted to link the timeline to the bible. And somehow the Chinese scholars of that time accepted it, so it’s now seen as canon among some particularly nationalistic Chinese?! To hell with those, I’ve decided to do this thang my way.

Thankfully I did leave most things vague and to be explained in book 1 as all book 1s are prone to be like, so the confirmed timeline didn’t affect the story details…I think. The only thing I had to change was the glossary/notes for book 1, and even more luckily, it ain’t published yet, so I can saves the errors of my idiocy. *Wipes sweat*. Yes, I wrote book 1 without a timeline, so sue me! I know I probably shouldn’t tell potential readers about how disorganized I am with the writing process, but I am. I don’t plot. I don’t!!!

…Ok, that isn’t entirely true. After I got into zis serious writer’s block when writing the first 11 or so chapters of book 2, I began to plan ahead a little, mostly the outlines of an arc. (Of course, I don’t always stick to the plan, because they always change or I’m always changing my mind. I am such a wishy-washy author, I know.) Still, I don’t have any long-term solution in my mind.

As for when the book will be published? I don’t know. It was supposedly slated for July/August this year, but then things happened, and yeah…. Publication date is probably bumped down to December this year. Or January 2015? Or even later….? ~”~ Very nervous about the release nonetheless. I shall hide under rocks when it does to avoid any eggs thrown at me. Or avoid seeing how desolate the readership is. *Sits in a dark corner and pokes mushroom with a stick*