Shorter Posts?

And mine is one of them. I need to write in this thing. This used to be my little online journal. I loved writing here. I'm trying to remember when that feeling went away, when the impulse to record things fled. 

Maybe I'll try shorter entries, just to get back into the habit again. I need to figure this out, because my URL is up for renewal and I can't justify repurchasing it when I'm leaving this poor blog out in the cold and rain. 

So in the spirit of this idea, I'm going to end this blog post now.

Chasing Echoes: Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You (or at Least Near Me)

Fact: The longer a person goes without writing a blog post, the harder it gets to write a dang post. 

That being said, here are some updates!

I haven't written anything worth mentioning in...forever. I did add a new chapter to Black Lilies, but I ended up scrapping half of it. So my "Why I'm not Writing a Sequel" post is still very much in effect. 

I still teach middle-school, by the way. And it still leaves me feeling like Soggy everyday. 

But I haven't been completely stagnant. I just finished creating a literature unit for Chasing Echoes. And it's beautiful! Here it is:

It's not the outside that's beautiful, it's the inside. Just like an ideal human being. Or a book that wasn't judged by its cover. Or...er...okay, back to the literature guide. I originally started creating it because an 8th grade teacher on my campus purchased a class set of my novel with grant money she received, and asked me for curriculum. But now my school just purchased a class set of my novel (40 books) for ME. Long story short, I get to teach my own book next year! This sort of propelled me to finishing this curriculum. It's now available on Amazon for $5.38 for those who want the "nice" workbook, but I've decided to have the PDF available for free. It seems silly to try to profit from learning material related to my novel.

Oh, another cool update: My daughter and I created a children's book titled Jacob Jax and the Watermelon Tree...my first (and likely only) children's book. I'll write more about that in a future post. For now I'll just say that it's all finished, we're just in the throes of publishing-insanity with this one. There are a lot more hoops to jump through for children's lit than YA. This book has been both a sweet little delight and a stinging bull thorn in my heel (I'm trying to avoid saying 'pain in my ass'). 

That's it for project updates. Unless art counts? If so, here's my latest:

Cheshire Cat for Mom

Charcoal/Pastel on 18x24 charcoal paper

This is the look I have plastered on my face during a typical workday. A grin frozen somewhere between bewilderment and mania.

Dragon Rose

Dragon Rose by Christine Pope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed Dragon Rose, but I did come out of it feeling like I was a little led-on by a synopsis that sounded darker and more exciting than the story actually turned out to be. The blurb on the back isn't misleading at all, it's just that the meat of the story doesn't really start happening until the last 15-20% of the novel. The first 80% features an optimistic Rhyanne adjusting to her new life at Black's Keep.

Between Pope's beautiful world building and an irresistibly compelling storyline, I struggled to put down the novel in the beginning. But after awhile, the story started to get a little tedious and repetitive. Every day seemed to feature the same events for Rhyanne: Wake up, choose in detail what dress to wear, eat breakfast, paint, eat lunch, paint some more, eat dinner with Theron, experience disturbing dreams at night, rinse and repeat. If there was some progression between her and Theron, either emotionally or physically, that would have lent itself to a more engrossing story. But she and her cursed husband never move forward in their relationship until the very end. I'm a huge fan of slow-burning romances, but when it's this agonizingly slow it's not much more exciting than watching grass grow.

I was really craving more from Theron. In some ways I liked his gentleness, but he was almost too mild-mannered and passive. I felt like Pope was playing it too safe with his character. Sometimes Theron's politeness bordered on dull indifference. (view spoiler)[Like when Rhyanne slips into a two-week fugue, he doesn't visit her bedside. Rhyanne gives him mental kudos for coming to her bedroom door, but I'm sorry--that's not much of a gesture when, as far as he's concerned, she's probably dying. (hide spoiler)] Plus his lack of involvement in Rhyanne's daily activities made for a lot of missed opportunities from the reader's point of view. It would have been awesome to have Theron find Rhyanne at the graveyard and witness that whole volatile exchange. Or for Theron to follow Rhyanne to the previous bride's chamber and flounder to explain why that bride wrote down such chilling words. Shoot, it would have been awesome to have Theron burst into Rhyanne's chamber even once in the story just because he couldn't stop thinking about her. By the end of the novel it's clear why Theron kept Rhyanne at bay, but it's still frustrating, and in my opinion, unnecessary. The tension in the novel would have been much more heightened if Rhyanne had brought out the selfish parts of Theron. He was already "nice" with his other brides, Rhyanne should have been the one to drive him to madness and make him forego his altruistic motives. He should have demanded to spend more time with her and constantly tried to be closer to her, and then, knowing the costs, been tormented by his obsession. Ultimately, Theron does such a good job pretending not to care about Rhyanne that even now, having finished the book, I'm still convinced that he isn't overly interested in her.

Pope does a wonderful (though rushed) job of tying all loose ends by the end of the novel, which is something I greatly appreciate. And I really love Rhyanne's character, and Theron's, when you take out the mild-manneredness aspect. Overall I enjoyed the book a lot, hence the four stars and way-too-long-review (I only ramble like this when a book has left an impression on me). I just feel like the author missed some great opportunities to turn this novel from a good little read to an unforgettable one.

Cover Reveal - No Rest for the Wicked

I know I haven't been on my blog in a bazillion years (other than to complain about my blog virus woes), but this occasion warrants me to rain a little sunshine on my post-drought. I'm thrilled to be amongst the few who gets to reveal the gorgeous new book cover for No Rest for the Wicked, the debut novel from the amazing and talented author Krystal Jane Ruin!

Without further ado, check out this beauty...

Back of the Book Blurb

Since her release from the psychiatric facility and into the smothering guardianship of her aunt, twenty-one-year-old psychic Tatum Torabi has been sneaking away to sell curses and plagues in the underground, a black market known for illegal and supernatural wares. 

Tatum’s unique abilities catch the attention of a hella-creepy trash peddler who offers her a job tracking down people who owe his boss “a favor.” She couldn’t be less interested, but when she refuses, the company forces her compliance by threatening the lives of the only family she has left. 

Because tracking barely scratches the surface of what they really want from her. There’s a reason Tatum is so good at making curses, and they want her to use those skills for a much darker purpose.

May 10

Click here to pre-order from Amazon

Click here to add to Goodreads

About the Author

Krystal Jane Ruin is the author of supernatural and paranormal fiction living in the Tennessee Valley. She can often be found knee deep in Sudoku and other puzzles, in a Youtube hole, or blogging about books, writing, and random things. For updates from Krystal, visit here:

Blog: The Narcissistic Rose

Twitter: @planetkrystal

Goodreads: Goodreads Author Krystal Jane Ruin

Facebook: Author Krystal Jane Ruin

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Nasty Little Widget

My blog virus is gone! It only took...well...a year to get rid of it. The virus was hidden in the html code of my Twitter fanbox widget. Sneaky, sneaky. So that thing is gone now and my blog is all fat and healthy.

I'm not writing a real post right now. I just wanted to get on here and say that my blog is alive again. Hopefully I'm not bringing it to life only to force it to suffer a longer death due to post-starvation. But you know me. That's probably exactly what I'm doing.

Alive!

Blog Virus

Some time ago this blog was inflicted with a redirect virus. In my case, this means that every link that you click on (including older posts) redirects you to a twitter fanbox page. I'm finally frustrated enough by this issue that I'm going to attempt to fix it. Wish me luck.

Why I'm Not Writing My Sequel

I have officially made a life altering decision.

Yeah, it's not really life altering. Or official. In fact, it's almost boring. But it's sort of a big deal for me.

I'm not writing the sequel to Chasing Echoes.

DON'T PANIC. (I think I'm saying this more to myself). I don't mean I'm not writing it ever; I just mean I'm shelving my partially-written manuscript for an indeterminate amount of time so I can work on a different project. (Yeah, I hear it too. It sounds like a sugarcoated way of saying forever).

Why OH WHY would I quit right in the middle of a series? Especially considering Black Lilies is completely outlined, with every major plot point mapped out including the awesome semi-cliffhanger ending?

At this point, I'm tempted to barrage you with a slew of sensible, rational reasons. Like how from a business perspective, it simply doesn't make sense to write the sequel to Chasing Echoes when the current YA market is flooded with fantasy and paranormal romance. Or I could give you my personal excuses; how my husband just started back to college and I'm losing hours upon hours every week helping him with his essays and editing his papers, making that December deadline for Black Lilies seem more and more impossible.

And while the above is all true, it's not the real reason I'm abandoning my novel. The real reason is simple.

My heart's not into it.

I can already hear it. "WHAT?! You're going to leave thousands of readers hanging because your HEART'S NOT INTO IT? Isn't that, like, SO UNPROFESSIONAL?!" My response to this make-believe-question is, "Uh, yeah." (And also, it's only 1,182 readers, according to my recent sales report, so quit being so dramatic Fake Person in My Head).

Here's the thing. I'm not a full-time writer. I teach full-time, which any teacher can tell you is enough to fry your brain on a daily basis, and I write in the little snippets of free time that I scrap together. I have enough love for writing that I'll make the time to do it. But I can't--or won't--write something out of obligation. And that's what Black Lilies has become to me--an obligation. It sucks that it feels this way, because it's not a soggy sequel that's designed to simply take up space between book 1 and book 3. It's a beautiful little story in of its own right. But that doesn't matter. It feels like one big fat homework assignment. Yes, it's an appealing assignment that has its fun moments, but it's an assignment nonetheless, complete with deadlines and a ton of accountability.

Long story short: I wrote Chasing Echoes because I wanted to. I'm writing Black Lilies because I feel like I have to.

And that's not okay. Not only does this affect the quality of my novel, but it's messing with my quality of life, in which I feel this constant nagging guilt when my word count bar isn't budging. I can't even enjoy a simple game of Monopoly with my kids without that little voice chiding me "You should be working on your sequel." (To be fair, Monopoly's a horrid game anyway. But really, the nagging voice makes it worse, especially if I'm stuck in jail for three turns in a row). 

Now if Chasing Echoes was swept up by one of the Big Five (Penguin/Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette or Simon & Schuster) and I was under contract to finish the series, that would be a different story. I would have to quit teaching to be a full-time writer, and I'd be fueled to work on Black Lilies, because it would be my livlihood, and there would be an entire industry who has faith in the series. But until I can make a living as a writer, I will no longer write anything that feels like I'm "forcing" myself through. 

From this moment I hereby decree that I will write only what I feel an itch to write. Like Ray Bradbury aptly put it, my intuition knows what it wants to write, and it's time for me to get out of the way.

And what do I want to write at this moment? Well, I want to get away from the clutches of a series, and write a stand-alone novel called The Apathetics (working title), a dark and gritty dystopian with a ton of heart. It's still too new for me to give out specific details, so for now I'll just say that it has a totally unique premise, and I'm really excited about it. As of now I've written a general outline of the entire novel, a profile of all the characters, and a few pivotal scenes (including the end, which means the novel has a sense of direction). There are a few more decisions I need to make with the story line, and then I will be ready to start the first draft.

I will NOT be setting a deadline for The Apathetics. Well, not until I get closer to finishing it (which at this point my friend Mr. Moore can step in and start smacking me in the head with his shoe to get me across the finish line) (my editor will help with this too). I want this experience to be like Chasing Echoes, where I work on the manuscript at my leisure and actually enjoy the process. Once I give myself a deadline, it becomes a "job" instead of a beloved past-time. So if this book takes me ten years to write, so be it. That gives me more time to appreciate my weird kids and enjoy life with my awesome family. I love writing, but writing isn't all that I am. I'm done shoving so many other important things aside for the sake of some self-imposed deadline. I want to actually enjoy playing Monopoly with my little weirdos and going directly to jail and not collecting my much-deserved $200 (seriously, this game is barbaric, why do people play it?). 

And who knows? Since this new novel actually gets my blood pumping, maybe it will be the magical one. As much as I love and appreciate the miracles of small house publishing, maybe this new novel will be the one that reaches the Big Five, giving Chasing Echoes a chance at something bigger and better instead of barely treading water in an over-flooded market of YA fantasy. Like my sister told me, I owe it to Chasing Echoes--my first love--to give this new idea a shot. I owe it to the future of Black Lilies too. I still love my sweet little sequel; I just need something to make it exciting for me again.

I'll end with this final thought, from elisefallson.blogspot.com:

"So I'm here to say, it's OKAY. It's okay to shelve your manuscript. And it is by no means an indicator that you suck or have failed as a writer. It's just the opposite, it's a sign that you're maturing as a writer and know when it's time to pull the plug to move on to bigger and better writing. Shelving your work breaks down the brick walls of guilt and frees your mind to develop new ideas on a healthier and more positive foundation. And guess what? Shelving your work doesn't have to be permanent, but it can be empowering."

So I'm going to resist the urge to apologize to my readers for not delivering them the sequel to Chasing Echoes. Because you know what? I think you're going to love what's coming next.