the more plausible evil

WIP Wednesday: The More Plausible Evil

The excerpt of the day is from The More Plausible Evil, which is still very much a work in progress–I haven’t finished my second draft, which is undergoing expansion before I send it to the publisher for editing. I’m posting at the urging of Jamie Sullivan, another talented author to check out!

This means the manuscript is likely to change quite a bit between now and the final draft! Even this excerpt is unlikely to remain untouched. Even the blurb will most definitely be transformed! And I don’t have a cover for you, but I do have a summary. The More Plausible Evil will be released some time next year, to be determined.

    “During his confession pending the night before Evan’s execution, he reveals the details of a lifetime’s worth of killings that shed light on his motives, and brings forward the curious short-lived claim that a vampire is at the heart of his salvation.”

“Are you even sure it’s Rafe?” Evan clenched his hands into fists as he looked through the windshield. His jaw was tight. He was beginning to doubt the necessity of frequent abandonments of everything they had, since he hadn’t seen so much as a golden hair from Rafe since he was a child.

“It’s always Rafe,” Alastair replied tensely, gloved hands taut on the wheel of his fast, expensive car. He pushed the accelerator and shot them forward at even greater speed. “I know the signs by now, pet; he’s only been catching my trail and dogging it for the past two centuries or so.”

“Why does he want to find you so badly? What’s he hoping to accomplish?” Evan pulled in a huff of breath, expelling it in a brief, angry noise. “My laptop … all my notes on the study of criminal psychology … not to mention, I liked the set of clothes I have now.” He folded his arms and looked out the side window into the darkness that wrapped around the car. He wasn’t going to mention that he’d lost certain gifts that Alastair had gotten him, small keepsakes but important to him because they’d come from Alastair, and he’d never get those back now. Even if Alastair was to re-purchase anything—and one ancient dagger, at least, had been one of a kind—the sentiment connecting Evan to the object would be gone, lost with the original.

“All of your things can be replaced.”

“Maybe I wanted for us not to have to, for a change! Even my cell phone …”

“You’d need a new one anyhow,” Alastair reminded him. “We always change numbers when we move. New place, new phone. No bridges left behind.”

“Right.” Evan set his jaw again. He’d noticed Alastair dodged the question of Rafe, and he was too proud to revisit the topic in an attempt to drag some answers out of him.

“I need to keep you safe, my pet. Things can be replaced. You know that. And I am … sorry … that we must do it so often, but better to ensure you’re still alive and beside me than lost forever.”

Evan couldn’t reply to that. He was still too angry, slumped in the passenger’s seat and stinging over the loss. Instead, he attacked the choice of words. “I’m not your pet. I’m a person. Or is that really all I am to you?”

The aggressive statement was answered with long silence. The only sound in the car was the hum of the engine and the distant throb of the wheels hitting irregular patches of highway.

“Vampires become fixated on those things, places, or people that are most important to them.” Alastair spoke up at length, his voice almost lower than the engine noise that filtered through to the cabin. “Rafe is obsessed with the idea of me. And I … I have that capacity for attachment as well. Once an attachment is formed, it becomes more important to us than almost any other thing beyond survival. And with mine, the two are intertwined.”

Evan settled on his side, finding a more or less comfortable position for his head, and didn’t know how to respond. Instead, he pretended to sleep.

The next city they settled in was more than halfway across the nation. It was of a sizeable population; that was always Alastair’s first criteria, a place with sufficient urban density to support good schools and high enough crime rates so that he could prey unnoticed.

They went through the familiar, well-oiled mechanism of re-establishing their lives again. Alastair took him on a lavish spending spree, but Evan was listless through most of it. He had the latest, best laptop on the market. He had the newest model of smart phone. He had a newly refurbished library of books and graphic novels, and a brand new room. Instead of being excited over the fresh reinvention, as Alastair billed it with each move, Evan found himself thinking of the things he’d left behind.

They were at the mall, finishing up their last purchases, and Alastair slid out of the dressing room in a brand new pair of jeans and a finely tailored cashmere blazer that made his tall, lean form elegant. One thing that constantly rendered anonymity more difficult was Alastair’s looks; he was gaunt and striking, his high-cheekboned face turning heads wherever they went. His black hair had been styled into an impeccable coif resembling a pompadour. As always, he had remodeled himself more thoroughly than their latest apartment.

“Ta-da,” Alastair trilled, skidding to a halt in front of Evan.

Evan looked up from the browser on his phone to survey Alastair with critical eyes. “Fantastic,” he said in an unenthusiastic tone. “Acid washed jeans went out about thirty years ago.”

Alastair’s expectant face fell. “Yes, but … it’s back in style again. So they tell me. And I know when it was in style—I was there.”

Evan shrugged. “I wasn’t, but I’ve seen pictures of the eighties, and they want your jeans back.”

“I think it looks good.”

“So buy it,” Evan replied. “Not like my opinion matters.” He turned his attention back to his phone’s display and swiped a finger, switching applications and calling up a game he’d been playing when Alastair had gone into the dressing room with a pile of clothes in his arms.

Alastair turned and vanished.

In his wake, Evan regretted the harsh words but was still too choked with frustration he couldn’t voice to make any attempt to take them back. He was deprived of a choice, of any say in how they did things, and he wasn’t an equal. He was a pet, and no matter how fond Alastair was of him, he would always be a pet to him.

Surfeit: A Review; and Current Projects

Out of nowhere, a blog entry!

I’ve been resting and recuperating after my week-long Appetite Tour de Foodie (and giving all of you a break), but I’m back and ready to talk about what I’m working on as well as my upcoming projects, and confess the fact that I may have gotten my head under water.

First and proudly foremost!

Surfeit for the Senses has netted its first blog review over at Joyfully Jay.

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Crissy at Joyfully Jay has high praise, and says “As a reader, I love to be shown the author’s vision and Andor certainly showed me everything she saw from the food, to the characters, to the restaurants, to the city. I simply loved it.” Check out the rest of her review to see what she has to say; it makes me really happy, of course, because not only is it a great review but seeing her talk about all those things is what I was really trying to bring forward and convey, so it’s always fantastic to feel like you got it right.

She concludes the review wishing she could see more of Alex and Nik, and I have to say, I’m hoping it’s not the last we’ve seen of them, either. I’d like to write two more novellas of their continuing adventures in cuisine, and already have the storylines handy for both. So if you thought I wrapped it up neatly, think again; there are more than enough recipes (and potential issues) to delve into the realm of Appetite again. Crossing my fingers hopefully that I can get to them next year!

Next on tap!

rockinghard1_225

I have the galley proof for Rocking Hard in my inbox, and it’s top of my priority list for this weekend to get that looked over and returned to the press. It features a slew of the rocking good serials that premiered at Less Than Three Press, bound together in one musically-driven anthology.

My story, Courage Wolf Never Sings the Gorram Blues, is part of the anthology, and I’ve been told I am now “on the list” of authors who’ve made themselves troublesome with long titles. Oops?

Courage Wolf Never Sings the Gorram Blues is the story of Bailey Kravitz (no relation to Lenny), the flashy and high-strung frontman for Courage Wolf Sings the Gorram Blues, a saucy internet sensation whose music-making duo enjoys riffing on memes and other social-networking jokes. Bailey goes on the prowl for bandmate Gunner Lansing, but when his interest is harshly rebuffed, his recoil threatens to tear the band apart.

It’s no longer available through the serial site, but you can pick it up with the anthology on Oct. 1st. I’ll unpack what went into the band’s name a bit closer to the release date. But if you already understand it, then you forever have my heart.

Also on my list for this weekend, Convergence is back from edits and I have some work to dig into. I’ve also secured the services of someone to Britpick it for me, because the main character, Chris Bryant, is a Brit and I completely failed to Briticise the spelling. (See what I did there? It’s a start.) First stop, figuring out how to re-configure my Word spellcheck to make it think we’re in the U.K.

In terms of what I’m writing, Klaxon at the Core is wrapped at a hair under 90k, I’m really happy with my pre-reader’s reception to the story, and it’s off for its first edit pre-submission. Body Option first draft is done, and I’m finishing up my own re-read and self-edit before I send it to its pre-reader and first edit. Next up is re-reading The More Plausible Evil to work it over for expansion, and I have some fan projects going on as well, with one of those due at the end of the month.

After I’m done with The More Plausible Evil, I want to write My Sexual Superhero for Less Than Three’s Satisfaction Guaranteed call, and I thought my dance card would be open for NaNoWriMo, but it’s filling up fast.

Piper Vaughn put out a call for Project Fierce, and I’m signed up, pending inspiration. (I did put dibs on a fairy tale I might like to re-imagine. Oops, now I have a title. The rest will come in time.)

Also, Less Than Three put up Geek Out – a trans* call, and I got a brain tickle for that one, don’t have a title yet but the ideas are slowly forming. I also have a story that would work very well for their Damsels in Distress call, but have to either pull it from SSBB, or re-draft it substantially enough to be considered brand-new.

Consider as well the fact that The Fall Guide will be out during the tail end of Fall, December 3rd. So I have those edits yet ahead of me.

Busy author? Yes, feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment, but loving it. I also have three things on my wish list project: a sequel for Fireborn, the final installment of a fan project I started years ago, and my pre-reader for Klaxon at the Core sparked ideas for a potential third novel in the Signal to Noise universe. Not to mention those after-Appetite novellas. (Should I call them Aperitifs?) And did I mention I want to write a sexy, short one-shot over the weekend?

A writer’s work never ends. Bless.

Where inspiration flows

I want to work on two stories right now: my mecha story, Body Option, and the outline for a later submission call, My Sexual Superhero. Of course, neither of them is what I’m supposed to be working on right now. I need to finish Klaxon and really, really need to expand my outline for The More Plausible Evil, because I’ve been putting off taking that back to second draft for far too long.

“Waiting for inspiration” is a concept that many writers seem to abide by, but the best advice (for me) is to keep on writing, keep pushing on, regardless of the presence or lack of inspiration. Writing isn’t only a creative endeavor; it’s a practiced skill. One of the easiest, and most important, ways to get better at it is to write, and write, and write some more.

As such, my method tends to involve a lot of comprehensive outline work and linear writing. That’s not always what I need, though. Sometimes, when you push the wall, it pushes you back and you land on your ass.

While I was on vacation, I didn’t do any writing at all. I did a lot of thinking about writing (I can’t disengage that part of my brain ever) but we were out and about at all kinds of fun locations, places that were new to me, and scenic. I’ve got more than enough projects to keep me afloat for the next two years, but the ideas kept flowing!

The short list of what I came up with during my trip:

– A romance between a townie and a rich visitor
– A romance between an island resident and a tour guide
– A romance between T—–, a Japanese exchange student working at Japadog, and nightlife-loving K—–, which seeks destined to be only summer romance until K—– enrolls at a local Vancouver school
– A kickass witch with unconventional character flaws
– A story where the hero breaks up with his love interest before he goes on a doomed mission to save the world, and intended to send him a final message proposing marriage should he safely return, but his last message was cut off

Whether I’ll end up writing them at some future point is anyone’s guess, but I’ve got the inspiration, and it all came from different places and experiences on this trip.

When I came back, I chilled out for an extra day and didn’t even try to write. It was on the list, but I spent the day reading instead. And, as important as it is to write and be consistent and push to practice that skill, it’s definitely necessary to recharge the batteries, too. I’d driven for eight and a half hours the previous day, I’d been away from home for six days, and it was important to simply relax. Finally I let go and did that without guilt.

Today I started up Klaxon at the Core again and got right back into the full swing of things. I’m really pleased with the results, and getting to the creepy, intense parts of the story. I’ll definitely finish it this month.

As for The More Plausible Evil, I’m starting to suspect either the outline approach isn’t going to work for this one, or I’ll need to unplug the internet and shut myself in a room until I get the damned thing done. There is, after all, no waiting for inspiration!

You can find it all around you, but don’t ever depend on riding its coattails. The biggest part of writing is the hard road: sitting down and just doing it.

Vancouver, B.C. was beautiful and I hope to post a few pictures soon. Everyone have a great rest of the week! Two days until Pacific Rim for me. I’m so hyped about the movie, I did a jaeger-inspired manicure.

Upcoming content … when I find the time!

Things I have meant to blog, not ranked in any particular order:

Book reviews:

I meant to roll out a book review feature every other week or so, but the sad fact of the matter is that I don’t get to read as many books as I’d like to. I have a veritable stack, physical and virtual – Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker, the new Melanie Rawn fantasy, and a pile of ebooks, including the copy of Queer Fear that I won during the Hop Against Homophobia.

Last month I finished a couple of books. I could review Bound, but it’s hardly a new release. Quite a popular book, though!

Consider the prospect of book reviews a work in progress. I managed a mega-review a couple of weeks ago; I may be able to roll out one a month and have to consider that good.

Conference/meet-up news:

I’m registered as an author for Rainbow Con 2014, so more on that later. What it means for the immediate future is I won’t be able to take my typical two-month writing vacation in November. I’ve got to reserve a week for February, because my parents rented a guest house in Florida and want me to join them, and I need another week for April to attend the conference. It’s going to be way too much fun, I can tell already, though I feel somewhat presumptuous attending as a full-fledged author.

Tips and tricks of the trade:

Coming soonest, hopefully, a brief tutorial on how to use the Word Track Changes feature, on MS Word 2010 and the earlier edition. (The two are very different, and now that I’m used to it, I prefer Word 2010’s version.)

It still surprises me that a lot of writers don’t know how to use this feature. It’s a basic staple of editorial work, so when the author doesn’t know how to use that feature to incorporate edits, it can make everyone’s job harder.

My plan is to give a quick rundown on how to turn it on and how to use it to accept/reject edits and add comments. The three basics! I really hope it’ll be something people may find useful. I planned on getting that posted this past Saturday, but the weekend provided some unexpected challenges.

No rest for the wicked:

I can’t remember the last time I talked about my current projects in any depth, but this summer is shaping up to be super busy.

Klaxon at the Core is the sequel to Signal to Noise, and I’m currently writing that one. It’s progressing really well, and I hope to be finished by the end of the month. The original beta editor for Signal to Noise volunteered to beta Klaxon before I submit it for publication, which is fantastic because not only is he a superfan, but yay continuity!

The More Plausible Evil is back to the outline-wrangling stage. An editor friend that I’ve had a writer/editor relationship with has reconnected with me, and we’re going to be working together to usher this from first rough draft to a much better, fully developed second draft! Right now the outline is giving me trouble (and there are only so many hours in the day) and I intended to have to outline finished last weekend. This weekend or bust! The More Plausible Evil is due in November.

Body Option is a mecha story I’m planning to write for a September anthology. So long as I get started by August, I think I’ll still be okay on this. There will be action, sci fi, and a man and his mech. It’s not intended to be a long story, and my outline is only two pages – that’s a good sign, for me. (Watch it end up being 40k.)

Somewhere in there I expect I’ll be incorporating edits and doing any necessary re-writes for Convergence and The Fall Guide.

And after that! You’d think I’d take a break, but I’ll be writing My Sexual Superhero, a story about a geek and the charismatic hook-up who saves him from his sexual doldrums. It’s for a submission call for December, and it’s early enough in the planning stages that making my poor geeky protagonist work two retail jobs will fit in just fine.

That’s it for updates – more to come! And if you’ve got content for the author blog to suggest, I’d love to hear it. 🙂 Have a great rest of the week, everyone!

Sales, glorious sales

So many amazing books are up for sale at Less Than Three Press this month!

Rather than only those two chosen for Book of the Month, Less Than Three is featuring all books that went up on the poll at a generous 40% discount. How cool is that?

This includes my own A Cut Above the Rest… and it’s a great time to announce that From the Inside Out is now available in trade paper as well as ebook format!

Add your desired books from the poll roster to your cart, enter coupon BOM40, and woohoo! 40% off the featured books!

And spread the word, we can always use more love.

In other news, I’ve submitted The More Plausible Evil, and I’m finishing up my impromptu story, now titled Convergence.

Not to mention, it’s finally May and I have two awesome releases I can’t wait for people to read! More to follow.

Caution: Writing works in progress

A few small updates…

I haven’t been writing so much this month; I finished three stories last month, finished a chapter of something else this month, and I suppose I’ve been taking a bit of a break.

Top priority: finishing edits on The Competitive Edge and getting them back to the editor for final review. And I need to get that done, soonest, because: *drumroll*

Substantial edits have come back for The More Plausible Evil. The in-document edits aren’t so bad, I think I could blaze through them in a day or two. But the overall story has two major issues, one that I could probably resolve, the other that I can’t because my beta thinks the story is too short for everything that’s happening. She thinks it would work better around my usual length, which is ~80-100k.

Tough one. So, I’ll incorporate the edits to bring it to a good second draft, submit it, and present it to the press to get their take.

The Fall Guide has a publication date of December 4th, 2013, and I have to think what to put on the cover. This is one of those where I’m contemplating saying “…dealer’s choice?” All I can think of is palm trees. That…yeah, probably better not.

What else? Oh yes, this month I need to finish plotting the sequel for Signal to Noise, because I’m going to start writing it this month and it’s next month’s focus point.

Final word: don’t forget to sign up for my giveaway! Tomorrow is the last day to win a free book. :3

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

I learned about The Next Big Thing Blog Hop a few weeks ago from Lacie Archer, who went on to answer her questions and tag me yesterday.

What’s a blog hop? Why, it’s something between a skip and a jump going from one place to the next, in this case to learn more about authors and their stories, and chain it along to the next talented author in the link.

Take a look at Lacie’s entry and come back to see my answers on the same theme!

Without further ado…

What is the working title of your next book?

I have a few that I’m working on right now: The More Plausible Evil, which is completed and awaiting edits from a friend, and The Fall Guide, which has two chapters yet to go. There’s also Appetite: A Cut Above, pending publication.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The More Plausible Evil came together for me as I was pondering ideas for a new submission call for Less Than Three Press. I wanted to do a different kind of vampire story, one with a unique twist and a different angle, and I think I found it.

The Fall Guide came together from my love of nail polish, haunting nail polish blogs, and my increased exposure to fashion trends because of it. I outlined it pretty simply, but the characters have really grown and flourished during the writing process and I’m so pleased with them.

For Appetite: A Cut Above, I’ll talk more about that during the blog tour that will accompany its release week.

What genre does your book fall under?

All three books fall under the general category of “m/m fiction” but The More Plausible Evil is definitely the supernatural sub-genre, specifically vampires. The Fall Guide is contemporary m/m romance. And Appetite: A Cut Above is definitely food porn. I mean. M/m contemporary romance with a side of food porn?

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

That’s tough … there’s what I’d prefer for the casting, and what I think I could get. I think I’d pick Nicholas Hoult for Evan and Ezra Miller for Alastair. For The Fall Guide, I might choose Ben Whishaw for Eric, and a young Lenny Kravitz would be an awesome Devon.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The More Plausible Evil: During his confession pending the night before Evan’s execution, he reveals the details of a lifetime’s worth of killings that shed light on his motives, and brings forward the curious short-lived claim that a vampire is at the heart of his salvation.

The Fall Guide: A young male beauty blogger experiences failure to launch, and relies on the help of a smooth producer who happens to treat him better than his boyfriend does.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’ll be submitting both The More Plausible Evil and The Fall Guide to Less Than Three Press, and Appetite: A Cut Above the Rest is already represented by Less Than Three. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The More Plausible Evil took me around twenty-five days, because I wrote it during Nanowrimo 2012. For The Fall Guide, I’ve been writing it in stages and I have two more chapters to go. I started it last … May? … and I hope to finish it in a week or less. Normally I can hammer out two chapters in a week, but I’ve been very busy this past year!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

When I’m plotting and writing, I don’t think of my stories in terms of genre conventions or other authors’ works. I can’t think of anything they are particularly comparable to because I’m trying to write something different. I write things I want to see that aren’t already there for me to read.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

For The More Plausible Evil, definitely Less Than Three’s submission call—they wanted unrepentant vampires, so I brainstormed along those lines and found a twist unlikely to be covered by other authors. For The Fall Guide, it was very much inspired by my love of nail polish, at the core of it, and the storyline kind of grew organically from there. It’s surprised me in the growth I’ve seen with its main characters, and I totally love it. And for Appetite: A Cut Above the Rest, I’m going to cover that during its release blog hop. 🙂

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

As a reader, I value an engaging plot and interesting characters in addition to romantic and sexual elements of the story. That’s definitely the kind of story I strive to write: I want my readers wrapped up in the world I’ve created.

The More Plausible Evil has some unfolding mysteries to it, but at the heart of it, a couple of characters I hope you’ll enjoy. It’s a bit of spin on the concept of a ‘moral monster.’

The Fall Guide is a story that I’ve had so much fun writing—often after I’ve finished a session with it, I come away smiling and excited! Eric and Devon have become so much more than I penned from a simple outline, and I’ve loved presiding over their growth as characters and the way things have evolved. I can’t abide cheating in fiction or real life, so I set out to write a story where these two guys experienced a powerful attraction, and how that would turn out if Eric felt the same way about cheating as I do.

As for A Cut Above the Rest, it brings together my long-standing love affair with food, and my passion for lovely gents falling for each other. My goal was to bring out the sparks with a pair of competitive chefs who would drive each other to be the best they can be … and also, tantalize the readers with a world of tempting cuisine. First my beta reader, and now my editor, have outright said the story ought to come with a warning label because if you don’t eat before you read it, you will want to!

Next, hop on over to E.E. Ottoman’s “This Journey Without a Map” to learn what’s on tap with the continuance of the next big thing.