Story Behind the Story

OMG, it's Anda!

Note: the following link is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. DO YOU HEAR ME? NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

Ahem.

So my friend Nobilis posted this today on Twitter and all I could think was, holy carp! It's Anda!

http://tmblr.co/ZRcZ4tfebiUX

Boobs could be a little bigger, hair a lot longer, but otherwise, it's her! What do you think?

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Wed, 03/06/2013 - 1:21pm

An interview with me--correction, TWO interviews with me

Jeff Shear has interviewed me as part of his Writers Speak series! We'll be doing a Skype chat soon and he'll be adding that to the interview in a few days. Leave comments there.

And no sooner do I send this out than I get a note that Scott Walker has put up his interview with me over at Shared Story Worlds.

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Fri, 09/07/2012 - 9:15am

New for Patrons: Access to the draft of "The Machine God"

If you're a patron, you now have access to the draft of The Machine God, my novel in the shared-universe series The Drifting Isle Chronicles. Mine is the last chronologically in the series; the other writers are Joseph Robert Lewis, Charlotte E. English, Katherine Tomlinson and Coral Moore.

Only the first chapter is up. I'll be putting the rest up as I have time and as they are finished, but the first eight should be up within a week. I'm on chapter ten now, closing in on the end of the second act. I'm on track to finish the whole thing in early September, in time to ship it off to Annette Ribken, the fabulous editor.

And I'll be starting a Kickstarter campaign to fund the cover and editing in the next two weeks so mark your calendars! Among the rewards will be half-pounds of coffee from Portland's own Cellar Door Coffee Roasters, so you'll want to watch for that. I'll be releasing the first chapter to everyone (possibly more) so they'll know whether they want to back the project or not. I'm debating a paperback, we'll see what the other four folks are doing.

The covers are gonna be super cool; put side by side, they'll form one long panorama from Charlotte's Autogyro through Joe's The Kaiser Affair, Coral's Songbird's Lament, Katherine's Starspeaker and my own The Machine God. This project has been a kick in the pants in more than one way. I'm writing stuff I would never have thought to do otherwise, and I look forward to collaborating with other writers. So. Freaking. Fun.

Oh, and a quick note about patronage: When you become a patron here you get access to the old drafts of the History, coupons for free copies of the Aria Afton Presents novellas, exclusive graphics and short stories, and other bits and bobs no one else gets to see. It's $5 a month. You can buy as many or as few months as you please at once.

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Wed, 08/15/2012 - 2:30pm

Your first snippet of Book Three

So I actually put the first real strung-together words of book three together, as opposed to outlining. I count the book process as beginning with the outlining, and that started earlier this week, but here are the very first words I've written of what will eventually become book three. Edit: I realized too late there's a major spoiler for book 2 in this, so I'm spoilering it:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Temmin sighted down his saber, its point aimed at a man standing some thirty feet away: Lord Crecient, the youngest son of the Duke of Alzeh. He lowered the blade, whipping it through the air, and his opponent's face blanched beneath his olive skin. Temmin handed the blade to the violently red-haired servant standing beside him. "It will suffice," said Temmin. He wished it were a cavalry saber, but he didn't have the right; he hadn't entered formal training yet. The cavalry must wait until the Queen had been dead for a year. Her bones might even be clean and ready to be moved to the royal chapel by then.

Temmin stripped off his gray half-mourning gloves and coat, piling them into Wallek's arms. Would that he could strip his grief away so easily, but if he gave himself time to think on it, he clung to it more than it clung to him. Consequently, he didn't give himself much time to think on it.

"Your Highness, is this necesssary?" murmured Wallek. "You're both drunk--"

"I am as sober as Pagg," said Temmin.

"I'm just sayin this whole thing seems pointless! He said…well, he said somethin I really don' wanna repeat."

So there's that.

Keep in mind that this is the draftiest of drafts. This scene mightn't even remain in the book. But those are the first official words I've written, and I wanted to share them with you.

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 6:40pm

Book Three Is Officially Under Way

I've been taking notes, doing research and pondering since book two launched, and a little before, really. But today I began actually assembling the story for book three. That, for me, constitutes the real beginning of the writing.

You're going to see duels, desperate escape attempts, heartbreak, a little hot sex, and the story of Ilhovin and Macca--which doesn't go quite the way it did in the first draft. Don't worry, the basics are there, but some elements will be radically different. Featured characters include Lord Litta, Rodder Pawl, Connin, Brinnid, and of course Temmin, his retainers and his family. We'll be in Inchar, the Northern Wastes and Sairland. And we'll discover the great secret Allis and Issak used to blackmail Litta in book one.

As soon as I have the first draft finished I'll be putting up the Kickstarter for editing and production. Don't look for it for a while, but look for it!

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Wed, 06/20/2012 - 7:52pm

What I'm Up To: an excerpt from "The Machine God"

I'm currently working on the History book 3, the related story collection Whithorse and the collaboration The Machine God, part of a set of novels we're calling The Drifting Isle Chronicles. I'm going to share with you a bit of The Machine God. As things stand, this is the opening of the book. I'm really excited about it, and I hope you'll get a little idea of what the book's going to be like.

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 2:34pm

An interview with me and a heads-up: Free ebooks for tax day! (Updated)

Kate Danley interviewed me at her blog today--thanks, Kate! Why the interview:

A bunch of fantasy writers, self and Kate included, are doing a free ebook giveaway for Tax Day (the US tax day, anyway). Among the books will be Lovers and Beloveds. It'll be free April 17th only at Amazon. LaB, like all my books, is DRM-free, which means you can pop it into Calibre and convert it to whatever format you'd like. (It also means for the next 90 days LaB will only be available at Amazon--it's a marketing thing I couldn't afford to pass up, though I'm not keeping it in that program past the 90 days.)

Watch this space on the 17th for details and descriptions of the books. There are at least a dozen, and they include some real knock-out stories.

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Sun, 04/15/2012 - 12:54pm

Temmin's Journey in "Son in Sorrow," in Two Songs

I often think of songs as I work--not so much soundtracks, but inspirations. Sometimes I get story inspirations wholesale, as in the case of Iron & Wine's "Woman King"--that entire EP spawned dozens of ideas in me, and in fact Woman King is the working title of book three. Nickel Creek's Why Should The Fire Die? has the same effect on me, though I can't tell you exactly what songs track to what bits of book business.

And sometimes I associate songs with particular characters, or their particular story arcs. For Son in Sorrow, I kept coming back to these two songs, both favorites. I once thought one of them belonged to Tennoc, one of the main characters in the story-in-story, but on further reflection they both belong to Temmin.

Tem starts here, and ends up here just before the climax of the book.

I haven't found anything yet for Tem's state of mind at the very end.

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Mon, 03/26/2012 - 7:15pm

Martial peeps: I need some help

I need a consult on small skirmish on horseback techniques, especially spears vs swords! Three of each, swords have element of surprise, fairly narrow environs--ambush environment. If this is a stupid scenario, I need to know that too. THANK YOU!

Story Behind the Story

Submitted by MeiLin on Tue, 08/23/2011 - 5:30pm

Hard writing

I hope I can talk about this without spoilers or too much conjecture:

I just wrote the pivotal scene in book two. It's a scene that I have dreaded writing since I outlined the book. I thought of every way to avoid it, but after a long talk with Netta I knew it's what had to happen.

I have danced around this scene with an adroitness I didn't know I possessed. I have put it off, distracted myself, written around it. Over time the writing began to circle closer and closer to it, like one of those funnels you drop a coin into. Yesterday morning the coin finally fell. I woke up with the scene in my head. I started crying.

I wrote the scene yesterday. I spent today editing and expanding it. I've cried off and on throughout. To get this miserable about things I've made up in my head strikes me as a sign that perhaps I really am mad. But there it is.

I'm more than halfway through the book; because of this scene I've been writing out of order, and now that it's finally written I feel that things are falling into place. I just wish they didn't have to fall into place like this. But they do.