Forging of Souls, Duology; Book Two, A Wanted Woman

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All the rules have changed.

Separated from her lover, Catreen An'dello is forced to forge new alliances with the underground world of thieves, whores, and renegade magi. Catreen must learn to negotiate in a society when the wrong move can mean death and discovers that the fate of kingdoms suddenly rest in the hands of a leaderless hodgepodge of talented assassins, ruthless murderers, and selfish courtesans. Can Catreen find the key to protecting these fringe citizens while thwarting Aleck Merril's world dominating ambitions?

In the hands of his enemies, Bastian Hooke is ensorcelled by ancient, dark magic. He witnesses the forging of a new soulstone and discovers the horrific reasons for their creation. Remorseless, soulless, he is set loose on the city with only one thought; Kill Catreen. Fractured by magic gone horribly wrong, will Bastian be able to mend his broken soul before he destroys everything that he loves and betrays everything that he is?

~~*~~

The dedication to this book changed while I was writing it.

It was dedicated to some friends from an old BBS roleplaying game I used to play -- Bastian was a character there in an earlier incarnation... 

But just before the book was complete and while I was in the middle of the last set of edits, I lost my beloved cat, Grendel. Named for the monster in Beowulf -- an old English epic poem, which is quite good and that I once translated in college -- he'd been a part of my life for the last 15 years. Losing him has been a shock, and I'm still not really settled into my routine post-cat. 

I've shared my living space with cats for most of my entire life -- no one really owns a cat, after all -- but I've almost always had two at a time. Little Bit and Ugly Face (that's not my fault, and he was remarkably ugly, after all... sweet, and I loved him, but ugly...), Puff and Bear, then later Sandi and Bear (same Bear, different companion) and then Sandi with Sterling, then Sterling and Grendel. Sterling left us a few years ago... and we decided that Grendel was just too old to put up with a new cat companion. 

So, ever since we moved into our house, there's only been the one cat.

Strange how empty a house seems when there's no cat.

At some point, I'll write another novel and dedicate it to those friends who missed out on this one... 

A Wanted Woman

Sequel to A Marked Man, the Forging of Souls Duology concludes this June with A Wanted Woman.

'blurb

All the rules have changed.

Separated from her lover, Catreen An'dello is forced to forge new alliances with the underground world of thieves, whores, and renegade magi. Catreen must learn to negotiate in a society when the wrong move can mean death and discover that the fate of kingdoms suddenly rest in the hands of a leaderless hodgepodge of talented assassins, ruthless murderers, and selfish courtesans. Can Catreen find the key to protecting these fringe citizens while thwarting Aleck's world dominating ambitions?

In the hands of his enemies, Bastian Hooke is ensorcelled by ancient, dark magic. He witnesses the forging of a new soulstone and discovers the horrific reasons for their creation. Remorseless, soulless, he is set loose on the city with only one thought; Kill Catreen. Fractured by magic gone horribly wrong, will Bastian be able to mend his broken soul before he destroys everything that he loves and betrays everything that he is?

Irony, Actually

Yesterday, I was talking both on Facebook, and with the man, about my productivity and measurements thereof.

I think I go through this semi-regularly, so you know, it's also very likely that I'm neurotic.

Last week, I wrote about 5,000 words for Book Three of Rainbow Connections and I've already done almost 4,000 for this week.

It never seems like enough, somehow. I always feel like I'm slacking off, I'm not working hard enough, I'm not publishing enough. I'm lazy, worthless, an impostor. I swear, I have impostor syndrome that's so active it ought to have its own secret identity.

So, I'm going over this with the man last night, generally bitching about my lack of productivity. He's sitting there on the sofa watching me with that little smirk like he does when he knows I'm being ridiculous, which - for whatever reason - tends to goad me into longer bouts of self-hatred. It's like I want to prove to him that I'm serious, that any rational adult would run screaming rather than being in a relationship with me.

At the same time, I am aware that I'm being ridiculous.

I may have issues.

After I wrapped up my rant - he didn't say a word, not really - I decided to check email before going to bed.

If you don't know where this is going, it's because you're unfamiliar with dramatic irony (not the Alanis Morissette version, which is just unpleasant coincidence and not irony at all...)

I had an email from my publisher, containing a contract for A Marked Man and A Wanted Woman.

Because, you know, publishing 2 novels a year isn't enough for me.

Contract signed. As usual, you'll know more when I know.


Rough draft 'blurb and tagline

Tagline

His word is his bond; will a beautiful warrior force him to destroy himself to keep his vow?

'blurb

Bastian Hooke, known to the underworld as Mace, is an assassin and a thief. He was the last person expected to carry out great deeds. But comes the Seeress with her prophecy and a sack of gemstones, and Bastian finds himself thrown headfirst into a quest he cannot possibly understand. Sought by a dark sorcerer, surrounded by secrets and lies on all sides, he is charged with the protection of the last of the dragonslayers... the very last thing he meant to do was fall in love.

Catreen An'dello has been divorced from her soul for ten years. Betrayed by her former lover to the dragon, imprisoned inside a living statue and nearly driven mad, she wishes nothing more than to forget. Desperate to ease her guilt and soothe her pain, Catreen drives a demon's bargain with the man who saved her soul.

Can an assassin and a dragonslayer find the strength of will to save the kingdom from destruction?

But that Happened Last Year

So, the contract for Blues - offered last week - has been signed. That's moving forward. It'll probably be a few weeks before I have a tentative publication date... altho Torquere is pretty good about not moving the date too much after it's set. In any case, like everything, I'll let you know when I know more details. I've already selected a cover image and I'm ready to go with a lot of the administrative stuff (marketing plans, blurb, back of the book blurb, etc) that I know they'll want from me... helps to have been working with the same publisher for a while. I already know what's expected from me.

Yesterday I was working on Classic, which is book three. It is not the final book of the series, but it is the last book in which Beau and Vin will be main characters. Punked Up will be fronted by Ann-Marie, although at least the first few chapters will have Beau and Vin in them... from the bits of story I have worked on so far, Punked Up will take place about two years after Beau graduates from college. (Classic covers his junior year...)

All that Jazz, which will be told primarily from Hector's point of view, will probably have the boys in cameo roles, and I'm not sure of the timeline just yet. I have a few scenes for that book planned out, but since Hector was already graduated and an "adult" during Roll, he's not as much with the college crowd as Beau and Vin.

Anyway, I was writing Classic, and I did about 1,200 words or so, finished Chapter Two which I may need to go back in and re-write because I sometimes make Vin's grandparents a lot more awful than I want them to be. They are a little awful, and terribly clueless, but they're not abusive, as they sometimes come across in a rough draft. After which, as I tend to do, I posted my word count on my Facebook page.

(side note: I have a real life friend who will not "like" my author page because she hates word counts, step counts, pounds lost, or any other sort of public progress tracking that people do. I'm never quite sure how I feel about this. Conflicted.)

A few minutes after the post went up, I got a somewhat frantic-sounding message from a fan "Did I miss book 2?"

There's a very strange disconnect between writing, editing, and the book actually ending up in a reader's hands.

Just to give you an example of the timeline; in 2013, I started writing Roll in April. I finished it by the second week of June, did the revision in July/August and submitted it at the end of August/beginning of September. I then spent September and October doing a revision of Blood Sight. And November, I started writing Blues. I wrote the majority of the novel during NaNoWriMo and completed the finishing touches in January (taking most of December for vacation and real life stuff...)

Blues was finished its rough draft before I did final edits for Roll.

Roll came out in February 2014, about 10 months after I started writing it. Because I am now balancing two (and possibly three) different novel series, the timeline has altered a bit.

I ended up waiting until June to start the second draft of Blues and sent it in on the 26th of June. It was about 30 days between submission and contract, which is a good turn around.

But for me, stuff that happened in Blues happened in my mental map of last year. I accidentally spoilered a friend of mine on the book because I was so excited about starting Classic that I said "Oh, yeah, well, after the thing with <redacted>, Vin's going to <redacted> and then..." in my mind, Blues is the past and Classic is the now. She said, "What? When did <redacted>? Jeez, spoiler much?"

Oh. Right. Sorry.

Anyway, my current schedule looks like this:

• Write Classic (tentatively finish around the 1st of October...)
• Start looking over the short stories for Coming Together:Among the Stars (August 15th - Sept 30th) Yes, I realize this runs consecutively with writing Classic, but it should be okay, since I'm just in the selection process here...
• Second draft of Howling Bitch in October
• November (NaNoWriMo) write Sins of Angels
• Edit Wanted Woman in December (assuming that A Marked Man is picked up, because there's no point in editing book 2 if book 1 doesn't have a home yet...)
• Also, edit and compile stories for Coming Together during December, turn in.
• January 2015, finish writing Sins of Angels if it's not done yet
• February get in final edits of Howling Bitch for publication in March

At some point, I may wish to get a life...