Smashwords’ Summer/Winter Sale Continues until the end of the month, so grab some discounted goodies before they’re all gone. If you’re so inclined, check out my list of books here.
Promo done and out of the way, let’s move on to the sneak peak!
Tag: Wolves of Sorrow
A Sale and a Snippet
Hello and welcome back. Yes, the spiders have taken over again, but I actually have a decent reason this time. I’m still working on both Wolves of Sorrow: Shoba and Draxton’s Destiny! Shoba has morphed from a flash piece to 50,000 words and growing, while Draxton needs only the final battle and wrap up chapters. It’s going slowly but steadily. In the meantime, I’ve placed all my titles on Smashwords into their mid-year sale. The three novels are half off, the novella/short story anthology is Free. If you’d like to check one of them out, mosey on over and see if one is right for you.
Continue reading “A Sale and a Snippet”An apology, an announcement, and a new project
So, wow, I just checked the last date on this site and it was 2019, just prior to *gestures* all the things. It’s been a strange year. I had all the time to create and absolutely no brain function to do so. I played a lot of Animal Crossing. A lot. More than is healthy, really. I’m sure I’m not alone. With the vaccines rolling out, and an end to refusing to step outside my house for anything but the necessities in sight, I started to get that itch to create. I pop in to see the site is all dusty, full of cobwebs and regret, and I think I spotted a spider or two. Time to clean it up, evict the dust bunnies, and get things back on track. Which leads me to the other two parts of this post.
First, the announcement. I am two-thirds of the way through with the revision of Draxton’s Destiny, the second in the Edgeworld Chronicles. These are sci-fi lite, M/M romance, set in a distant future. The first, Subject 5691: Petri, was a joy to write. Draxton is a little tougher. Both began their lives as flash serials, but I found parts of the original to be problematic and needing a deep rewrite. At this point, I’m keeping the old text as reference but am otherwise rewriting the book from scratch. It will still need several editing passes as well as beta read-throughs, but there is forward progress being made which is more than I can say about anything in a rather long time. I’m hoping for an end of year release at the lastest, but… we all know how I am with deadlines. I love the sounds they make as they whoosh overhead.
The new project came out of nowhere, completely unplanned, but helped with Draxton as it made writing fun again. It’s loosely tied to the same scifi universe, only with a M/F pairing. Once upon a time, I wrote a flash piece called The Wolves of Sorrow based on a prompt from Chuck Wendig (back when he did flash prompts). Set on Earth Prime, the abandoned homeworld of the humans who make up the Alliance in the Edgeworld books, it owes a lot of its premise to the Isle of Dr. Moreau. Back when the Genetics Modification department which created Petri was shiny and new, it blended human and animal DNA in an attempt at creating humans with a wolf’s endurance or a cheetah’s speed. Few of those early experiments left Earth Prime, but those that did are rumored to be the origins of many of the more bestial races, such as Fieryl, the jag’haar who’s Kasseus Minshaar’s best friend.
Anyhoot (as Blathers would say), back to the new project. Several crafty folks I know decided to do some flash pieces, and we all know how much I love my flash prompts, so I joined in. The first prompt was first meetings, real-life or fictional. I floundered for a while, bouncing from idea to idea, but nothing stuck. A few days (a week?) before the deadline, I got the idea to return to Earth Prime and Sorrow. At the end of the short, Mercer had sent out a distress call. What if someone answered? Who would it be and where did they come from? Enter the Rifaniir ship, the Kaleidoscope, and Captain Vaistu Elloufen of Korlyn’s Glen on the planet Barif. I decided to bring in a new character from the village of Sorrow, someone not as beloved as Mercer but just as strong. Thus, Shoba was born in all her growly, snarly glory.
The story, just under novel length at arount 35,000 words, takes place on the Kaleidoscope as they journey from Earth Prime to Barif and was an absolute delight to write. I wrote the entire first draft in about three weeks! The words flowed so smoothly, it was like the characters jumped out of my head onto the computer screen. It took over my life, y’all! It’s sitting with beta readers now (and if anyone is interested, I could use one or two more) as I ponder which title to give it – it’ll either be Wolves of Sorrow: Shoba like in the header or Caught. There are reasons for both. I haven’t decided if I’m releasing it once it’s ready or after I’ve got a draft of book two, but as of now, it’s seen a second pass, a new prologue, and progress toward a cover.
Other than writing news, there’s not much going on. I live in a very red county in a very red state, so I’m astonished (not really) by the idiocy around me on the daily. I haven’t experienced the anti-mask screaming Karens yet, and I don’t feel left out. Prison orange is not my color. My quarantine bubble remains healthy with everyone either fully vaccinated or have had their first dose. We are a mix of J&J, Pfizer, and Moderna so if there are side effects to be had, we might see one or two lol I hope everyone is staying safe, washing hands, wearing masks, and on the list for the vaccine and maybe we’ll all be here if I forget to post for another year.
Elaina Roberts 