Tag Archives: Klone’s Stronghold

On names and Klone’s Stronghold

Back when I was in junior high, I discovered that someone else shared my first and last name (but thankfully not the middle name). Since the other Joyce had a propensity for getting into trouble, I started using my middle name at school and other kid activities. But it wasn’t just a simple use of my middle name, Marie–I used variants of my name such as J. Marie, Marie J., Marie Mary, and so on.

That pretty much continued from 7th through 12th grades. Then the other Joyce and I took different routes, with only occasional confusion between us (there was yet another Joyce, an insurance saleswoman), such as the time the other Joyce had a baby with an ex-brother-in-law, and people got confused because they thought it was me.

So I tend to be a bit blase about people using multiple names for themselves. That hasn’t caught up with me until Klone’s Stronghold. Reeni and her uncle Jayanesh exhibit the same casualness about Reeni’s real name, which is Marie Irene. But it gets flipped around by Jayanesh and Reeni herself. I thought about correcting it when working on the final draft, but decided to let it stand because I wanted the usage to make a statement about Reeni’s confused identity. From Jayanesh, it shows his contempt for what Reeni truly is. From Reeni, it reflects her own confusion about her identity. It also gives me an opening to explore just why Reeni flips her name around in the next book–I could have put it into Stronghold but it just didn’t fit.

However, when I start work on Book Two next year, I intend to work with this concept of identity a bit more.

I promise.

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New book day! KLONE’S STRONGHOLD

Well, release day was actually YESTERDAY…but I wasn’t feeling well, and I’ve learned that doing promo work while not feeling well is not always the best thing to do.

Anyway, it’s out! My first foray into long-form contemporary fiction, Klone’s Stronghold, is now available online!

In a world of supernatural beings, not knowing what you are is dangerous.
 
After Reeni Dutta’s ex-husband Karl attacks her at a music festival, she finds a refuge teaching cryptid construct children at Klone’s Stronghold in northeastern Oregon’s isolated Bucket Mountains. But things are not as they seem at the Stronghold, from the older proprietors of a nearby store and the Stronghold’s leader Alexander Reed Klone, to Reeni herself. She discovers it’s not just Karl who seeks to control who and what she is, but forces from her past that threaten her present. Can she learn the truth about herself and do what is needed in time to defend the Stronghold?
 
Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, and other places.
Books2Read link (takes you to Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and iBooks) https://www.books2read.com/u/m2vZDG

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Writing processes–the year of finishing book projects

You know, for the most part I’m a plotter sort of writer. Except when I’m not, especially when I’m dedicating time to attacking those unfinished fragments on my hard drive. Quilters talk about UFOs (unfinished objects); well, I have bits and pieces of books. Unfinished Book Projects. UBPs.

The last two rough drafts I’ve finished, Klone’s Stronghold and Bearing Witness, are both significant deviations from the process I’ve been using for novel writing over the past two years because they’re UBPs. I’ve got the plotting process down to a version that works for me when I build a book from scratch.

But.

Stronghold and Witness are different because they’re UBPs. The previous books I wrote using my favorite plot matrix system were part of my two series’, Goddess’s Honor and Netwalk Sequence. Creating my plot matrix was part of the worldbuilding/character development process. However, both Stronghold and Witness started out as long short stories that became short novels, with Stronghold coming in at 60k words and Witness at a respectable novella length, 21k.

I often don’t rigorously plot my short stories. When I do that, either the story goes dead on me, or it decides to mutate into a first chapter. It’s just the way I am when I create. Give me half a chance and I’ll start trying to thread in more and more complexities and…yeah. Doesn’t work well for short stories.

With these two works, one novella, one short novel, I’m still figuring out the process when I pick up a UBP from several years back–and that means anticipating a lot more rewrite action. With both works, plot elements started warping both stories from what I originally intended. As a result, I have to go back and insert breadcrumbs to support the later plot developments. Arrgh. Yes, I am a very good rewrite writer–probably better at rewrites than rough drafts–but in this sort of situation, rewrites mean lots of organization in order to pull it all together. The more rigorously plotted and planned novels don’t require significant rewrite worldbuilding. What I’m facing right now is…a lot of revision.

Both books will come out longer, but not by too much. I’m guesstimating an additional 20k for Stronghold and 10k for Witness, max. In part that’s because there will be edits and deletions and so on to balance a certain amount of the rewrite.

Ah well, it’s part of the ongoing writer development. After all, both of these books are UBPs, the first of a number of projects I’ve got lined up. Now that I’ve finished the Netwalk Sequence and am two-thirds of the way through Goddess’s Honor, it’s time for me to attack some of the UBPs I have on hand. So it’s time to figure out a new planning process, just because I want to get these UBPs out into the world.

But arrgh. The degree of rewrite I’m facing on Stronghold is daunting. On the other hand, when I’m done, the story might could just launch another series. We’ll see what comes of it–and the same is true of Witness.

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