Isla’s Inheritance teaser: meet Dominic and Jack
Posted: July 19, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: Isla's Inheritance 2 CommentsBefore I start, I wanted to let you guys know that I’m going to have a giveaway when Isla’s Inheritance gets to 50 adds on Goodreads. Only 15 to go!
I think I’ve already mentioned that I’ve been working off some of that “my book comes out this year” nervous energy by playing with Photoshop, making little teaser pictures and promos and so forth. I’ve shared this one with you already:
I thought to celebrate the fact that there are less than three months to go till Isla’s Inheritance hits the virtual shelves (the paperback may take a teeny bit longer; I’m not sure), I’d share another couple of pictures — these of Dominic and Jack, both of whom feature in the book’s blurb.
Isla was content to let her father keep his secrets, but now she can’t stand the touch of iron and her dreams are developing a life of their own. She must discover the truth — before it’s too late.
Seventeen-year-old Isla Blackman only agrees to participate in a Halloween party séance because Dominic, an old crush, wants to. She is sure nothing will happen when they try to contact the spirit of her mother. But the séance receives a chilling reply.
SHE IS NOT DEAD.
Isla doesn’t want to upset her father by prying into the family history he never discusses. When the mysterious and unearthly Jack offers to help her discover the truth, Isla must master her new abilities to protect her loved ones from enemies she never knew existed.
Dominic
Dominic was in the same year at school as Isla’s older cousin, Ryan, making him a couple of years older than her. She had a crush on him in high school, which she’s totally over. Until he kisses her at a Halloween party.
Jack
Isla meets Jack after her life takes a turn for the weird. He is very polite and proper, and has these, um, ears… (As an aside, I could stare at this picture all day. A high-res version of it is actually my desktop wallpaper right now.)
Both of these pictures have been made with legally purchased stock so they are safe to share around. You know, if you wanted to. *shuffles feet*
WOOHOO!
Posted: July 5, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: Isla's Inheritance 6 CommentsNot a very useful blog post title, I grant you, but I’m pretty pumped.
Because I just finished writing the first draft of the third book in the Isla’s Inheritance trilogy.
My fourth completed novel.
Holy cow.
To celebrate, here are some fireworks. (Also because it may still be the Fourth of July somewhere in America – hi, America!) I’d prefer cupcake cannons but I don’t have a picture of those.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! *spins away in excitement*
‘Isla’s Inheritance’ is on Goodreads
Posted: June 20, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: Goodreads, Isla's Inheritance 6 CommentsEven though the subject says almost everything you need to know about the matter, I feel like I should write some extra words. So, yes, my very first book baby, Isla’s Inheritance, is on Goodreads. I don’t have a cover yet (when I do I’ll be organising a reveal; yay!) but there is a blurb. And I can pat the screen and stare at it like my dogs stare at us when we’re eating dinner. You can too, if you like. I don’t mind sharing.
Isla’s Goodreads page
The way I feel right now is really best said with animated gifs. Which is a sad state of affairs for a writer, but OMG!
I feel like this!
And then I think of people actually reading it — after spending money on it — and I feel like this.
(I also feel sick, like I might throw up. But it’s probably best if we don’t animate that.)
Anyway, if you’re a Goodreads user and you want to add Isla’s Inheritance to your To Be Read shelf, I’d love you forever. Really. With hearts and chocolates*! ❤
*Chocolates may be claimed in person only.
Beautiful People: Character Interviews – Isla Blackman
Posted: June 17, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: Isla's Inheritance 3 Comments
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic didn’t work for me, so I’ve decided to reject that reality and substitute my own. The Notebook Sisters’ Beautiful People is a new meme designed to help writers (and anyone that reads the writers’ blogs!) learn about their characters.
So here are ten questions about Isla Blackman, she of Isla’s Inheritance fame. (Fame? Just go with it.)
What is their full name and is there a story behind why they got it?
Isla Rose Blackman. Isla is a Scottish name and, although she has no Scottish heritage that she knows of, her parents met in Edinburgh. And roses were her mother’s favourite flower, or so her father told her once. Her mother died giving birth to Isla, so she doesn’t know for certain.
How old are they, and when were they born?
She is 17 at the start of Isla’s Inheritance, although her birthday is a week later. She was born almost eighteen years ago. (I originally finished the novel three years ago so it was eighteen years before that…but it’s a sliding scale till release day!)
Describe their physical appearance. (Bonus questions: 1. What is their race/nationality/ethnicity? 2. Do you have a picture of them? If so, include it!)
Isla is 5′ 4″ with brown wavy hair, usually worn in a ponytail, and brown eyes. She has pale skin and burns easily. Her father is English and her mother’s heritage is a bit of a mystery, but she’s where Isla got her looks from.
Jenna-Louise Coleman, who looks a lot like I imagine Isla would. (Source.)
Describe your character’s personality first in one word, and then elaborate with a few sentences.
Pragmatic. Isla was raised by her father to have a sceptical, logical mind. She never really got into crystals, ghosts and incense when her cousin Sarah did. The fact she agrees to participate in a seance at all is only because Dominic wanted to, and he’s hot. 😉
What theme song(s) fit their personality and story arc?
This song is the hardest one here, because I don’t write to music, so I don’t automatically associate my characters with music. All I can think of are parts of Wake Me Up by Evanescence, except the person that song is about is coming from a much darker place than Isla is so it’s not quite perfect.
Which one of the seven deadly sins describes your character?
None of them, really; she’s a lot more complex than that. She has moments of sloth, envy, lust, wrath and pride. Not really much gluttony to speak of, although she does love her coffee. Who doesn’t?
If they were an element (fire, water, earth, air), which one would they be?
Earth.
What is their favourite word?
“Sorry!”
Who’s one person they really miss? (It could be someone who’s passed away, or someone they’re not close to anymore, or someone who’s moved away.)
Isla never met her mother, but she misses the idea of having a mother more than anything, even though her Aunt Elizabeth has been a surrogate mother, especially since Isla moved in with her aunt and two cousins when she started high school. (Her dad lives on a farm an hour out of Canberra, so it was easier for Isla to move than to commute all the time.)
What sights, sounds, and smells remind them of that person?
None, really, because she has no basis for comparison. She hasn’t even seen a picture of her mother. It wasn’t her idea to try and summon her at the seance, and afterwards she wishes it had never been suggested…
50k words dance
Posted: May 17, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: music 2 CommentsI like round numbers. And 50k is the NaNoWriMo target. So it’s pretty exciting to me when a MS gets to 50k, like Isla#3 just did — even though it will be at least another 20k words before I’m done. And it took me almost six months to get this far, not one.
When I tweeted my victory, Wendy made the following suggestion:
So, gentle reader, I would like you to imagine me dancing like this (only with less coordination and more singing along; Jamiroquai is very catchy!):
Meet my character: Isla Blackman
Posted: April 25, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: blog hop, Isla's Inheritance 5 CommentsI was tagged in the Meet My Character blog hop by the fabulous historical fiction author Nicole Evelina. (Thanks, Nicole!) The idea is that you can write about a character in a new release or WIP. Given my impending release and WIP are both about Isla, she was my obvious choice.
However, I’ve written this based on the first book, for reasons.
Jenna-Louise Coleman, who looks a lot like I imagine Isla would. (Source.)
What is the name of your character? Is she fictional or a historical person?
Her name is Isla Rose Blackman, and she’s about to turn eighteen. Her father is David Andrew Blackman, a small farmer and hobbyist ironmonger with a farm outside Canberra. Isla lives with her aunt, Elizabeth Kent, and cousins, Sarah and Ryan. But she sees her father regularly and adores him.
This meme started among the histfic writers, hence the second half of the question. Since I write urban fantasy, the answer is always going to be “fictional”. As much as it might be hilarious to write a vampire story involving a real life politician, for example, I suspect I’d be sued shortly afterwards!
When and where is the story set?
For the most part, it is set in Canberra—Isla moved in with her aunt when she started high school so she’d be closer to class. And it is a contemporary story…in timeframe if not always in subject matter.
What should we know about Isla?
Isla has a good head on her shoulders. Her father raised her to be practical and have a critical mind; for example, she never went through the new age phase Sarah did as a teenager. When her cousins drag her to a Halloween party, she thinks it’s all a bit of fun but nothing more—an excuse to dress up. She only ever agreed to take part in the séance because Dominic was there, and she’d had a crush on him when she was younger.
Turns out he’s still hot.
What is the main conflict? What messes up her life?
The first speedbump in the road is when the séance tries to contact Isla’s mother, who passed away in childbirth, and the “spirits” reply “SHE IS NOT DEAD”. Isla can’t understand why the girl running the séance would set her up like that, given they’ve never met before…but then all sorts of weird things start happening.
What is the personal goal of the character?
At first, Isla hopes for a lightbulb moment where she suddenly knows what she wants to do with her life. She has the grades for university, but decides to take a gap year because she isn’t sure what she wants to study.
After a while, though, she just wants everything to go back to normal.
When can we expect Isla’s Inheritance to be published?
October 2014. *faints*
Who’s next in this blog hop?
I’m tagging two awesome writers, contemporary author Lauren K. McKellar, and fantasy and urban fantasy author K. A. Last. I loved both of their recent releases, The Problem With Crazy and Immagica respectively. Check them out!
Isla’s Inheritance word cloud
Posted: March 24, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy | Tags: Isla's Inheritance 6 CommentsSomething fun from me today. I was stalking getting a link from Tess Grant‘s blog for her spot on This Writer’s Space in a couple of weeks, and I saw her post about an awesome word cloud app called Wordle. You paste in a selection of text and it ignores the common English (or other langauge) words and gives you a word cloud of the rest.
The results weren’t perfect – it didn’t seem to acknowledge the apostrophes as part of a word so there were a handful of fragments — such as “don” and “ll”. Once I removed those, I really liked the result.
Can you tell that Dominic features pretty heavily in that chapter? 😉
I’d love to see these results for other novels. If you do it, link me your blog in the comments so I can check it out!
Limiting your superpowers
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy, On the Lucid Dreaming duology | Tags: protagonists, urban fantasy 2 CommentsI’m a huge fan of superpowers—special abilities beyond the norm—having downsides or weaknesses. There’s nothing more boring (IMO YMMV ETC) than Captain Cheesecake, the speculative fiction superhero main character who can do anything. I’m looking at you, Superman—although he had kryptonite, his day-to-day abilities are over the top compared to other superheroes.
The contemporary equivalent of Captain Cheesecake is, of course, Ms Mary Sue (or Mr Mary Stu), the beautiful, talented and charming main character who seems to get whatever she wants and has men falling all over her. You particularly see her in fan fiction—and that’s where the term Mary Sue came from—but she crops up in traditional publishing from time to time as well.
Forgive me for saying it, Twilight fans, but Bella is a good example of a Mary Sue.
If a main character is going to have a supernatural ability, it’s important to me as a reader that it have clearly articulated limitations. It’s important as a writer too, because it’s hard to convolute your character’s life if he or she can just wave a magical doodad and unkink the twists in your plot.
And life is always more fun with a little kink.
Did she just say…?
Vampires become weak from lack of blood, and usually can’t go in the sun. Mages burn their own internal reserves, an act that limits their magical capacity. Wizards have wands, which can be lost or broken, or need special ingredients that are hard to find. Werewolves have issues with silver and hairy palms. Physically enhanced characters have limitations on how much damage they can take or how far they can push themselves before they keel over (except Captain Cheesecake Superman).
I’m a big fan of an energy limitation because it can be applied in so many different ways—vampires’ requirement for blood is a good example. I’ve used these types of limitations with the main characters in both my novels/series to date: Isla (of Isla’s Inheritance, funnily enough) and Melaina (from Lucid Dreaming).
In Isla’s case particularly, I also wanted to show the consequences of misusing special powers: what happens when they get out of control. It’s hard to give examples—because hello, spoilers—but think Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Or Renfield in Dracula.
(It’s really like neither of those things except only peripherally, but that’s the best I can think of.)
Also, another thing to consider is this: moral dilemmas are fun. Just because you can do a thing, should you? This subject could be a whole other blog post (and probably will be one day)—but a character’s morals can impose as much of a limitation on the use of a power or talent as any other, more-physical impediment to their use. (I guess this is where Superman redeems himself. Ok, fine, you can come out of the naughty corner, Clark.)
If you’re a speculative fiction writer, how have you stopped your main characters or bad guys from using their special abilities to wreak complete havoc with your plot and the world around them? And for the readers, what are your favourite examples of a writer putting the breaks on a power?
If you want to do something right…
Posted: January 26, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy, On the Lucid Dreaming duology, On writing | Tags: aussie-owned, Australia, blog hop, contests 6 Comments
(Okay, that may not be the most inspirational title for an Australia Day blog post, but I think it sums up what I am about to say pretty well.)
I love urban fantasy. Love it! I’ve felt that way since I didn’t know what the genre was called—back when Interview With the Vampire was filed in the sci-fi and fantasy section of the bookstore and the paranormal shelves didn’t exist. (Say what you will about it, we have Twilight to thank for their creation.) I thoroughly enjoyed Anita Blake’s early adventures, and loved Sookie Stackhouse when she came along too.
When I started thinking about the sort of novel I might write, I toyed with fantasy, but urban fantasy drew me back like a lodestone.
Then I’d think about where to set the book, and come unstuck. Because all the urban fantasy novels I read were set in America or, less usually, England. Wouldn’t Americans (who, lets be honest, are the biggest market of English-speaking readers in the world) prefer to read books set in their own country? The streets of New Orleans, Chicago, New York—those were the places haunted and hunted by the supernatural. Not sunny Australia.
I could’ve tried to write a book set in the States—I did think about it—but I felt like a fraud. I knew my Australian slang would reveal the lie. I’ve never even been to America. How could I pull that off?
So I didn’t write the book. Because “write what you know”, right?
Over the past few years, urban fantasies—and their kissing cousin, the paranormal romance—have started to appear, set in Australia. Maybe they’ve been around for longer and I only just began to notice them through the blanket coverage of foreign authors in Australian chain bookstores.
Okay, I thought, I can do this. Only… those books were all set in Sydney or Melbourne. Could Canberra, with its population of 360,000, be a viable setting for an urban fantasy? It may be the nation’s capital, but almost no one outside Australia has heard of it. Two out of three tourists think Sydney is the capital. (I just made that stat up, but I’d bet it’s true!)
And then it hit me like a boomerang in the face: if someone needs to do it to test the water, to see whether it’s a viable location for an urban fantasy, why shouldn’t that be me? I’ve lived here all my life so it definitely ticks the “write what you know” box. I love this city, with its wide open spaces, bush corridors, national monuments and occasionally dubious public art*.
Of course my books are set here.
*If you want to see what I’m talking about, do a Google image search for “Belconnen owl” and tell me what you think it looks like from behind. Then search for “Skywhale”, because LOL.
This post is part of Aussie Owned and Read’s Australia Day/Blogaversary blog hop. You can find other participating blogs or register your own here. And there is a GIANT GIVEAWAY too, which you can enter here.
Beginnings: starting in the right place
Posted: January 6, 2014 Filed under: On the Isla's Inheritance trilogy, On writing | Tags: editing, Isla's Inheritance, writing 4 Comments
Starting your journey… Source
One bit of advice you’ll often hear from agents and various other book people—such as PitchWars mentors and other competition judges—is to make sure your book starts in the right place. I’m basically giving you that same message, but thought I’d do it with an example.
The inciting event—the first big, life-changing incident that triggers the plot—in Isla’s Inheritance happens at a Halloween party. That event is in the first chapter of the novel, and always was…but the first draft of that chapter started with Isla and her cousin Sarah receiving the party invitation and sorting out costumes. I’m still fond of that scene, because it sets up the relationship between the two characters, and Sarah is a lot of fun to write. But it wasn’t the best place. Isla thinking about whether she had time to get her homework done before the party wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that hooked the reader.
In my defence, it was my first novel, and I learned by making the mistake. :p
The fact my opening sucked bugged me all through drafting the book, so after I’d finished and taken the time to get a bit of distance from the writing, I went back again. (The distance is crucial. As I said, I was fond of the costume-choosing scene, which meant I needed to take the time to see it for what it was.) I cut the first part, and started the scene instead with the two girls and Sarah’s older brother, Ryan, arriving at the party. That’s better, I thought!
That was the version of the book I started querying. I entered it in PitchWars at the end of 2012, and the feedback I got from mentors really shook me. I was still starting in the wrong place, damnit! Again, I was still taking time to establish the characters. I had Sarah and Isla giggle over an old school crush. Dance. I thought I was setting the scene, but it was still slow.
I went back and amputated even more from the scene. By this point I’d probably removed around 2000 words. Now it starts with Isla, at the party, meeting Dominic—her eventual boyfriend—and getting invited to participate in a séance. Sarah doesn’t even appear until the end of the chapter.
Whether that ends up being the perfect starting point for the book will ultimately be decided by my editor at Turquoise Morning Press, and—if she is happy with it—by the reader. But it is far, far better than where I began.
If you’re getting told your book starts too slowly, have a look at what you’re trying to show the reader in your opening scene. For example, say you start with your character jogging, thinking about their life (apparently this is a very common beginning, as is staring into a mirror). You want the reader to see upfront that your main character is a physical creature who has problems that need pondering. Instead, why not start with the manifestation of the problems. You can always have the character jog later, or mention the athletics trophies being knocked to the ground during a zombie attack—that sort of thing.
Obviously there are exceptions to every rule. (For example, if your character is doing a marathon and they rupture their Achilles tendon in the first page, or get hit by a car, because the rest of the story is about their healing journey.)
I’d like to think I’ve learned this lesson now. I’ve started three other novels, and all of them have a much quicker beginning to the plot. But I learned it the hard way. Avoid my mistake, grasshopper!
In case you missed it, check out my latest advice post over at Aussie Owned and Read… Querying agents and publishers: a glossary.
Cassandra Page 