December 31, 2012 by EM Castellan

2012 : My Writing Year In Retrospect

Hello gentle reader,

I have been writing for 15 years but to me 2012 was the year I became a writer. Here is how it happened…

January: I am sitting on top of a pile of unpublished manuscripts in a castle in England, when my friends and family unwittingly suggest “Why don’t you try and get one of those published?” and I say, well, why not?

February: I read several books about getting published. I have a hunch this won’t be easy. I decide on focusing on my YA High Fantasy THE LAST QUEEN.

March: I start my blog. To my surprise, people other than my father follow it.

April: I attend the London Book Fair. I realise there are many would-be-published writers out there and this “get a book published” endeavour might not be as easy as I thought. I decide nothing can stop me now. I start the “A Round of Words in 80 Days” writing challenge.

May: I send a query to 3 agents, get 1 request, then a final rejection. I decide it’s time I take this ~~vampire~~ writing thing seriously.

June: I join in JuNoWriMo (June Novel Writing Month) and find out writing a book in a month is not for me. I decide this sort of challenge can’t be for everyone.

July: I take part in the Hookers and Hangers Blogfest (hosted by Falling For Fiction) and I post the first and last lines of THE LAST QUEEN on my blog. I get good feedback as well as a record number of comments, and I connect with many awesome people.

August: 3 words: Write On Con. More critiques, more awesome people, more connections, more motivation.

September: my blog is 6 months old and for some reason it is taking off.

October: with the help of some wonderful CPs and beta readers (especially Aimee L. Salter and Jessica Montgomery) I revise THE LAST QUEEN in depth. I have conversations with people about my MC Elian as if he were a real person. He thinks it’s odd too.

November: I start querying THE LAST QUEEN, for good this time. I send out ten queries and get a full request within one week.

December: everyone is on holidays, including the agents I queried. I am sitting in a castle in England and working on a new manuscript. I have writerly friends on Twitter, Facebook, There And Draft Again, and my blog. Life is good.

That’s it for me in 2012! How was your year? Leave me a comment below and have a fun New Year’s Eve tonight!

See you next year…

December 28, 2012 by EM Castellan

The Best Of 2012 – Movies

Hello gentle reader,

This is my last post looking back at 2012… I already mentioned the TV shows I watched this year in this post and my favourite 2012 books here.Today I’m finishing this series of posts with movies I watched in 2012. This year I watched a total of 30 new releases (most of them at the theatre) and I have picked 10 to share with you…

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Dark Knight Rises

The Hunger Games

Twilight – Breaking Dawn – Part 2

Underworld – Awakening

Snow White and the Huntsman

Lock-out

The Avengers

Dark Shadows

Immortals

What did you watch this year? Any movies you’d recommend? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

December 26, 2012 by EM Castellan

The Best Of 2012 – Books by Debut Authors

Hello gentle reader,

I hope you had a lovely Christmas!

As the end of the year draws near, I am looking back at 2012… I already mentioned a few TV shows I watched this year in this post. And today I’d like to give you a list of my favourite 2012 debut authors. I have interviewed a few of them on my blog and you can click on their names to read those interviews.

The Gathering Dark (aka Shadow and Bone) by Leigh Bardugo (YA High Fantasy)

Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard (YA Steampunk/Horror)

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (YA High Fantasy)

Skylark by Meagan Spooner (YA Dystopia)

Hollow Pike by James Dawson (YA Paranormal)

The Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse (YA Dystopia)

Struck by Jennifer Bosworth (YA Paranormal)

The Cavendish Home For Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand (MG Gothic Fantasy)

Black City by Elizabeth Richards (YA Dystopia)

What did you read in 2012? Which debut author did you discover? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

December 22, 2012 by EM Castellan

The Best Of 2012 – TV Shows

Hello gentle reader,

As the end of the year draws near, it is now time to look back at 2012… Fans of Sci-Fi and Fantasy had many TV shows to choose from this year. Here are a few I watched…

Game of Thrones (Series 2 – HBO) Epic Fantasy

Merlin (Series 5 (final series) – BBC): Arthurian Fantasy

Misfits (Series 4 – E4): Science Fiction (Superheroes)

Doctor Who (Series 7 – BBC): Science Fiction (Time-travel)

Revolution (Series 1 – NBC): Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Being Human US (Series 2 – Syfy): Supernatural Drama

The Walking Dead (Series 3 – AMC): Post-Apocalyptic Horror (Zombies)

The Vampire Diaries (Series 4 – CW): Supernatural Drama

Teen Wolf (Series 2- MTV): Supernatural Drama

What did you watch this year?

December 19, 2012 by EM Castellan

ROW80: Final Check-In

Hello gentle reader,

And we’ve come to the end of this 4th round of A Round Of Words in 80 Days (aka ROW80). My goal for this round was to write or edit every day and I’m pleased to say this has been my most productive round so far (this was my third participation). For at least 6 weeks I had a 100% sucess rate and even in the last few weeks, when work really got crazy and I couldn’t find the time to write every day, I did get a lot done.

So this round, I have:

– edited my WIP The Last Queen (thanks to a few awesome CPs and beta readers) and started querying it.

– added a few chapters to my two other WIPs.

– took part in the launch of a new blog along some writerly friends. The blog is called There And Draft Again and you can check it out here.

Here I’d like to thank Juliana Haygert and Lauren Garafalo for cheering me along during the Twitter sprints. You ladies are awesome!

See you all next round!

In the meantime, keep writing…

December 13, 2012 by EM Castellan

End of the World Giveaway! (closed)

Hello gentle reader,

This week I’m taking part in the

Hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer & My Life With Books

12/21/12

The Mayan Calendar Ends!

Does it mean the end of the World?

Probably not but just in case…

Which books would you save if the world was coming to an end?

The giveaway runs from today until Friday, December 21st 2012 and it is a chance for me to share with you a book about the end of the world. I have chosen to give away A SIGNED COPY of Eve by Anna Carey (paperback, US edition). The giveaway is international. Assuming the worlds is still spinning the winner will have a new YA Dystopian book just in time to start off the new year right!

Giveaway is now closed – Thanks to all who entered!

The winner will be contacted by email.

Giveaway information:

The giveaway is open until Friday, December 21^st 2012 at midnight (BST time)

To enter please fill in the contact form below with your name and email.

If you follow my blog by email, WordPress or RSS feed, if you are a Twitter follower , if you like my page on Facebook or if you tweet about the giveaway, this will grant you an extra entry. Mention it below.

Entrants must be at least 13 years of age.

This giveaway is open Internationally.

The winner will be chosen randomly, notified by email and will have 72 hours to reply or a new winner will be chosen.

I am not responsible for items lost in the mail.

I hold the right to end the giveaway before its original deadline without any prior notice.

I hold the right to disqualify any entry as I see fit.

Privacy information: no information given for this giveaway will be used for other purpose than this giveaway. All information provided (names, emails and mail addresses) will be deleted after the giveaway.

Good luck and feel free to leave me a comment below…

This is a blog hop! Visit the other giveaways here.

December 12, 2012 by EM Castellan

Book of the Week – 16

Hello gentle reader,

This week I have finally been reading The Gathering Dark (Book 1 in the Grisha trilogy) (aka Shadow and Bone) by Leigh Bardugo.

This book was published in May 2012 and I was VERY excited about it. I bought it as soon as it came out, I read the first two chapters that same night… and I didn’t open it for 7 months. As those months went by, I read raving reviews about the book, I kept having people recommend it to me, and yet I couldn’t seem to find the will to dive back into it.

I’m not sure what it was.

It is a beautifully written YA High Fantasy book with a great plot and compelling characters, but I guess I had to read it at the right time to finally enjoy it. To me this was “a winter book”: a book to read snuggled under a blanket, when there’s snow outside and with a cup of tea at hand.

I’m glad I finally read The Gathering Dark. Have you ever had a book that sat on your TBR pile forever when you were initially looking forward to reading it?

From Goodreads:

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

What are you reading this week?

December 9, 2012 by EM Castellan

ROW80 Check-In 10: Garth Nix on Parting Company with Your Book

Hello gentle reader,

And… it’s time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows: Write or edit every day.

So this week was again quite stressful at work and I didn’t manage to write every day. However, I did write. I wrote 5115 words in 3 days! Yes, that’s a big number for me. *Cue happy dance* I also added a post on my blog about Originality and Writing a book that doesn’t already exist. Feel free to join the conversation here.

Now, here is an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing Garth Nix’s Nine Stages of a Novel. In this post published on his website, the Australian author explains the creative lifecycle of his books. For those of you who don’t know him, Garth Nix is a Young Adult Fantasy writer, author of the Old Kingdom series, The Seventh Tower series, and The Keys to the Kingdom series.

Here I’m only sharing Stage Nine: Parting Company with Your Book, because this is where I am now with my novel The Last Queen, which I am currently querying.

“Stage Nine: Parting Company

Responding to the structural edit and then later checking the copy-edit (which is where the prose is smoothed and minor inconsistencies are corrected) always feels like a strange afterthought to me. Emotionally I have already moved on to the next book, and the editing is purely a craft process, done with the head not the heart.

I think you need to let a book go when all the work is done, and it’s important to move on. In my years in publishing I often met authors whose whole self was entirely bound up in a single book, usually their first. Their lives would rise or fall depending solely on that book’s fate, and in this business, that’s an incredibly foolhardy and dangerous gamble to make.

I’m all for investing all your passion and self into the writing of a book, indeed, you need to put a lot of your soul into the story. But when the writing and editing is all done, I think you need to withdraw somewhat. It’s likely there will be many months before the book hits the shelves. It may even be a year away, and thinking about it and wondering how it will do and obsessing over it for that entire time is not healthy.

You need to say ‘goodbye and good luck, my friend’ and start on the next book. (…)

I’m always really pleased to see one of my finished books. I get a great feeling of accomplishment when I hold that first copy in my hand, a feeling that is undiminished from the very first time, way back in 1990.

But I also feel detached, and I think that is a good thing. I probably already have a new book partly written, or at least the outline is there and the prologue. I look at this finished book and I flick through the pages, and even though I can remember every part of writing it, sometimes I read a bit and I feel like I’m reading someone else’s story. A real book, not one of my own. I like that feeling, because it means I’ve succeeded in my ultimate ambition: writing the sort of book that I like to read.”

How are you other ROWers doing? Here is the Linky to support each other!

December 6, 2012 by EM Castellan

On originality and writing a book that doesn’t already exist

Hello gentle reader,

Today is Thursday and I thought a post about the writing process was in order.

I was actually inspired by this post written by YA author Aimee L. Salter on 19^th November 2012. In her post, Aimee made a list of all the good reasons we writers have to read other people’s books. Among other things, she mentioned the importance of knowing the competition and of understanding what works (or doesn’t work) in other books.

On that same day, Epic Fantasy writer Jeff Hargett published a blog post in which he admitted to having just realised his book (which he has been working on for ten years) was very similar to the TV show/movie Airbender and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time book series.

It reminded me of another blog post I read in February 2012. Back then, YA author Elizabeth May published a great post entitled The Unfortunate Case of the Book that Looked Just Like Someone Else’s, in which she confessed having written, edited and queried a manuscript that was extremely similar to a published book that she bought later on Amazon. When she found out about it, she felt embarrassed and she shelved her manuscript, feeling that she had somewhat wasted her time and the agents’ time.

So what’s the moral of these stories? Listen to Aimee’s advice and READ. If your story is derivative of other works, you need to be aware of it and it needs to be intentional. Being derivative by accident is the worst thing that could happen to you as a writer.

Let’s face it. If you live in the US, Europe or Down Under, chances are you are influenced by the same things that other writers are. We all watch the same movies and TV shows, we all hear about the news from around the world and we have all read the same books as children. This means that it is likely we will write stories that remind us of other stories.

And it’s fine, AS LONG AS YOU ARE AWARE OF IT.

Discovering that the book you’ve worked so hard on already exists is crushing. To avoid it, read the books that are already out there. Read books in your genre and category. Read publishing news and newly published books. Agents do. Publishers do. You won’t have the excuse of not knowing once you try to get your own story published.

I’ll finish this post with my own little experience in the matter: I finished writing the first draft of THE LAST QUEEN in the summer of 2011. Then I heard about a series of books entitled THE SEVEN REALMS (by Cinda Williams Chima). The blurb goes like this: “Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for for his family. Meanwhile, Raisa ana’Marianna, princess heir of the Fells, has her own battles to fight. Her mother’s plans for her include marriage to a suitor who goes against everything the queendom stands for.” My heart dropped. This sounded A LOT like THE LAST QUEEN. Especially the Princess Heir part. So I bought the book, read it (loved it) and realised that this book had nothing in common with mine. Cue sigh of relief.

But I keep reading YA High Fantasy books. For my pleasure, to know the competition, and to make sure no one has already written and published a book similar to mine.

What about you? Have you had that kind of experience? Have you written a book then found out it was similar to another book? What did you do? I’d love to read your comments!

December 4, 2012 by EM Castellan

The Next Big Thing – Week 27 (#2)

Hello gentle reader,

So if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve already read what follows. Back in early October, I was tagged for The Next Big Thing blog hop and I answered questions about my Work In Progress. But since then, this blog has gained new followers and I keep getting tagged for this blog hop. I have actually lost track of who tagged me and when, but last week I was tagged again by Craig Schmidt and I decided it was time to repost my answers to the Next Big Thing questions…

What is the working title of your book?

THE LAST QUEEN (Book I in THE DARKLANDS trilogy)

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I started thinking about this story ten years ago. I wanted to write a story where the main character would be a teenage girl (like I was at the time). I also liked the idea of a fantasy land where humans were the lesser people. Finally I wanted to write a love story that would be as realistic as possible, although set in an imaginary land.

What genre does your book fall under?

YA high fantasy.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In the dangerous Darklands, a power struggle between Elves, Wolfmen and Humans is igniting, shattering the lives of a young princess, a warrior and a slave boy whose destinies seem meant to intertwine.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I’m going to cheat for that one 😉 I have no idea who would play my characters on screen, but I can tell you who inspired me while I was writing The Last Queen. I need to have a clear picture of my characters in my head in order to bring them to life, and I’m usually inspired by actors. With that in mind, here goes:

Elian is my main character. He is a 16-year-old slave whose life has been quite traumatic until he meets Araminta. He was directly based on English actor Eddie Redmayne, who was in countless historical movies between 2007 and 2010. Every time I saw him on screen I thought “This is Elian!” So here it is: Elian.

Araminta is 14 years old. She is an Elf, and a Queen. She is strong-willed, smart and quiet. When I described her in my WIP, I thought of English actress Lucy Griffiths.

Theron is 19 years old and he is Araminta’s husband. He is a Wolfman and the son of a lord, who loses all at the beginning of my WIP. He is a short-tempered warrior who happens to be very good-looking. Since I have had a crush on British actor Henry Cavill since, well, forever, I pictured Theron looking like him.

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

Call me crazy, but I’m going for the traditional route.

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

Seven months for the first draft. Then six months for the first round of revision. I have battled with a high word count, instances of telling instead of showing, repetitions, adverbs, passive form and everything you shouldn’t do when you write. I’m still working on this manuscript, hoping one day I will get it in shape for the query process.

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

That’s a tough one. If you don’t know what High or Epic Fantasy is, think Game of Thrones and The Lord Of The Rings. But I can’t compare my WIP to those masterpieces. Since it’s YA, I guess it could be compared to The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima.

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

My favourite character in the book (beside Elian) is Araminta’s bodyguard/slave/assassin Jerod. I actually wrote a short story about him entitled The First Guardian, because I felt he deserved his own story since he is, you know, awesome.

Thanks to all who nominated me!

EM Castellan

YA author, worlds builder and insatiable reader

Monthly Archives: December 2012

2012 : My Writing Year In Retrospect

The Best Of 2012 – Movies

The Best Of 2012 – Books by Debut Authors

The Best Of 2012 – TV Shows

ROW80: Final Check-In

End of the World Giveaway! (closed)

Book of the Week – 16

ROW80 Check-In 10: Garth Nix on Parting Company with Your Book

On originality and writing a book that doesn’t already exist

The Next Big Thing – Week 27 (#2)

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