Saturday 30 May 2015

Words & Wonders (3)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Written 1,111 words of The Legend Mirror book 3. For why I've written so little this week, see how many pages I edited!!

- Second drafted 76 pages of The Dryad of Callaire. I've realised this book is a lot less involved with finding Fray than surviving Numina attempts to murder everyone. Which is a great subplot but not ... y'know, the actual plot. So the first draft of DRYAD is going to look significantly different to the final, because I need to overhaul the main plot, remove a lot of chapters, and add a lot of chapters. Which isn't the best news, since this draft is already a good 25K over my desired word-count. 

But yesterday I went editing crazy because I was so desperate to be finished, and I second drafted 29 pages, so I'm happy with that achievement at least! And now I can move on to fixing all the problems with the book, which should be interesting.


Almost killed another pen!!
In my life:

- Not much, to be honest. Mostly I've been editing like mad and reading in the gaps between working.

On the internet, this week I found useful:

- Maggie Stiefvater's post on literary devices
- Chuck Wendig's post on Mad Max: Fury Road, which I still haven't seen yet but want to a little more with every new thing I learn about it!
- The Weird Story Planning Stage, by Jodi Meadows
- A post in favour of healthy friendships in books (a matter that is SO important to me, too!)

Here is a book I have loved recently:




A tense, action-packed superhero/supervillain story where the heroes are the bad guys, an ordinary girl is forced to find power in herself when her mum goes missing, and a rag-tag gang have to shut down the hero agenda before they kill more villains. It's HELLA awesome and kinda broke my heart at the end. You can read my full review over on my review blog and also enter to win a copy of the book and a necklace!

Hope you're all having a great weekend!
~Saruuh

Tuesday 26 May 2015

The Legend Mirror guide

The second edition of The Beast of Callaire is coming out in a couple month's time (late August), with a totally new cover, book design, updated text, and just general overhaul. So I thought it would be pretty cool to post the guide to The Legend Mirror that you can find in the front of the books. 

If you ever wanted a clear guide to Legend-Bloods and Numina, you now have it!! If you got your version of The Beast of Callaire from Smashwords, you can now download a new version with the guide in the front. And if you haven't read The Beast of Callaire, from tomorrow all Kindle editions will have the guide, and in a couple days you'll be able to get it from Barnes & Noble too!

And for those who can't update the versions they already have, you can find the guide below!
~Saruuh

A GUIDE TO THE BEINGS OF
THE LEGEND MIRROR

NUMEN
These ancient beings can be classified into two categories, Gods and Creatures. These are a species, like human or canine.

GODS (e.g. Juno, Jupiter, Venus)
How mythological? The original Gods the Romans worshipped.
Magic? Enough to cause a world war.
Dangerous? Hella.

CREATURES (e.g. the Manticore, the Phoenix)
How mythological? The original Creatures of folklore and bedtime stories.
Magic? Enough to Change forms at will and tear through armies of Legendaries.
Dangerous? Hella.

LEGENDARY
Legendaries are the descendants of the Numina, and can be classified into two categories depending on how much Legend is in their DNA. These are also a species.

LEGEND-BLOOD (e.g. Yasmin, Cornelia, Mavers)

How mythological? Pretty mythical.
Human DNA? None at all.
How many Legendary or Numina parents? Two.
Magic? If they have God ancestors, it’s very likely.
Do they Change form? If they have Creature ancestors, it’s very likely.
Dangerous? About as much as a lion.

CROSS-BLOOD (e.g. Vic, Guy, Willa)

How mythological? Fairly mythical.
Human DNA? Yep.
How much human DNA? Depends. A Cross-Blood could have one human parent, a human grandparent, or a human many-greats ancestor. It all results in a weakening of Legend, and makes them a Cross-Blood—though some are much stronger than others.
Magic? Unlikely, and it’s weak in the rare cases its present.
Do they Change form? Extremely unlikely, since they wouldn’t have enough Legend to spark the Change.
Dangerous? About as much as a household cat.

Breed of Legendary

Depending on what Numina ancestors a Legendary has, they can belong to one of two (or both!) of the following breeds. Returning to the canine example, if you have a dog they might be a Labrador or a Poodle. If you have a Legendary, they might be Dei or Crea.

Example: the child of a human and a Legend-Blood descendant of Mars would be a Cross-Blood Dei because 1) human and 2) God. Things get tricky when a child is a descendant of a God and a Creature—for example, the child of a Legend-Blood descendant of Juno and a Legend-Blood descendant of the Phoenix would be a Legend-Blood Crea and Dei (like Yasmin Wikke!)

DEI (e.g. Minnie, Guy, Mavers)

Descended from Gods? Yep.
Descended from Creatures? Nope.
Can be either Legend- or Cross-Blood? Yep.
Magic? Yes, although Cross-Bloods with majority human DNA will only have weak Majick—Aqua Majick with an ability to only influence water temperature, for example, instead of being able to manipulate water into any form like most Legend-Bloods with Aqua.

CREA (e.g. Ran, Willa, Vic)

Descended from Gods? Nope.
Descended from Creatures? Yep.
Can be either Legend- or Cross-Blood? Yep.
Magic? Extremely rare, and only ever elemental Majick connected to their location of Change. If they change near the sea, they’d most likely develop Aqua Majick, for example. Majick in a Crea only ever occurs when the Legendary has a God ancestor.

PURE
The children of all-human ancestors.

Any mythological ties? Nope.

Any magic? Nope. 

Saturday 23 May 2015

Words & Wonders (2)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Struggled with the plot of the third Legend Mirror book. It was supposed to be two story lines that take place concurrently, but I realised there needs to be another happening too, which means another POV. And it got super complicated and hectic for a while midweek. BUT I've bulked out my main story/voice so Yasmin doesn't get drowned out by other POVs, and I'm happy with where I've ended up. 

(The third storyline does involve writing poetry, though ... which is a relatively new thing for this series! I'm crossing my fingers that it works out. Here's a snippet:


And so Pluto used his great power
to fashion a second eruption in
the belly of Vesuvius,
and the survivors of the first quake
did not survive the second.)

- Written 5,926 words of The Legend Mirror book 3. I'm sure there would have been more words if not for the major plot hiccup but I'm feeling happy to have written anything at all.

- Second drafted 44 pages of The Dryad of Callaire, and my output decreased fairly significantly compared to the last few weeks. I'm around 75% done with this second draft, though!

In my life:

- I am so darn hyped for Eurovision. I've been watching the semi finals, and my faves are Israel, Belgium, Latvia, and Australia. I also think I like Malta, but I can't remember who they were, oops. For livetweeting be sure to follow me on Twitter!

- It's the time of year I fall in love with Emmelie De Forest again. I love her music so so much, and if you haven't heard of her please listen to her album Only Teardrops (my favourite songs are Force of Nature and Soldier of Love because they're atmospheric and emotional, but if you like an 80s synth vibe, listen to Change!!)

On the internet, this week I found:

What Lessons From What Stories, by Chuck Wendig (language warning for this post!)
 - Creating An Authentic Historical Atmosphere by Elizabeth May

Hope all your Eurovision faves do well!!
~Saruuh

Saturday 16 May 2015

Words & Wonders (1)

Welcome to my new feature, Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

First off I wanna PSA a giveaway I have going on Facebook, where you can win a Guardians dove brooch. Just comment on the status with your favourite book/TV/film rebel, be that Katniss or Peter Pan. It's open internationally!



In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Written 3,940 words of The Legend Mirror book 3, whi\ch is pretty dire for me during drafting. It's difficult to get back into the routine of writing after so long with no laptop to write on, but I think I'm getting there. Nothing can ever be as bad as writing The Wandering, when I had a 3 month writing block slap bang in the middle of drafting.

- Second drafted 45.5 pages of The Dryad of Callaire, and I am LOVING Susan Dennard's second draft method. I'm catching so many big picture issues that may have been otherwise overlooked. 

In my life:

- My laptop is terribly broken and in two parts (the screen back is literally hanging off) and I'm still waiting for the parts to arrive in the repairs shop. It's been three weeks since he was unbroken :(

- I found out my favourite show got cancelled. Farewell, Revenge, you were good (and awful) to me.

- I've rediscovered my love for Freelance Whales's Weathervanes, which happens literally every summer and is awesome.

On the internet, this week I found:

-Nothing, because I'm in a dark semi-internet cave while I focus on getting back into writing (because of my dire word output this week!) but I promise there'll be links in this section some time in the future! 

Here is a book I have loved recently:



The romance and characters in this are just perfect, and it's action-packed and has a great spy dragon thing going on! If you're interested in my full review, you can read that here.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

~Saruuh