Writing Projects

[osprey_archer]

I’m galloping toward the end of Ashlin & Olivia - finally found a good picture for the cover! Very curious to see if the paperback sells more if it comes out concurrently with the ebook. But the paperback will be coming out either way, because I’m selling books at Pride this year. My mother thinks I should also try to reach out to local bookstores. Is that a thing self-pubbed authors do?

But if I did reach out to bookstores, that would be an opportunity to do something with the paperback version of The English Breakfast Affair (I put it together as a Mother’s Day present because it’s my mother’s favorite of my books), which is unsuitable for Pride but might find an audience at bookstores. Hmm.

But anyway! I’m also getting my ducks in a row for my next writing projects. First, I have another charity fic to write (offer still open, incidentally, probably as long as Trump is president). This one takes place sometime after the end of Reciprocity and will feature, among other charms, this exchange:

Bucky: “Do you know what was wrong with the orphanage stories, Steve? They weren’t grim enough.”

Steve: “....No. I never thought that was what was wrong with the orphanage stories.”

Then I need to do revisions on my rough draft of a modern-day retelling of “Goblin Market” set at a university.

After that! I have three potential ideas to choose from!

1. In the waning days of World War I, a princess (serving in disguise as a fighter pilot) rushes back to her tiny homeland to rescue her brother, the crown prince, from the Communist revolutionaries who want to behead him...who just happen to be led by the princess’s best friend from Swiss finishing school.

Pros: THE DRAMA.

Cons: The research. It’s not so much the World War I that concerns me as the German background.

2. A Little Red Riding Hood retelling that begins in tsarist Russia and ends in the theaters of Paris, where our heroine has been performing as Little Red Riding Hood with her wolf friend, who is actually a student revolutionary transformed into a wolf by her fellow anarchists once she tried to defect from their plan to topple the tsar by making a deal with the devil.

Pros: THE DRAMA.

Cons: I don’t know how to end this one. How can a girl and a wolf can defeat half a dozen Satanic anarchists? Also, the fact that one of the heroines spends most of the book as a wolf strikes me as an insuperable barrier to romance.

3. A silent film actress-turned-director recruits an old friend/ex-lover to make car chase movie together during the waning days of independent silent film production.

Pros: This one is slightly less DRAMA but it still has lots of exciting possibilities. The girls will be doing their own stunts and you know someone’s going to get hurt and there will be h/c POSSIBILITIES.

Cons: This one might be all pro, actually. I’ve already lined up some more books to read about women behind the camera in silent film.

4. I would also like to write another m/m story, but I have no specific ideas for this one, only a stew of vague “this would be cool to use in a story someday” ideas. Springtime! A glass-bottomed chain ferry! (I wanted to use that one in Ashlin and Olivia but I just couldn’t make it fit.) Maybe I should go somewhere cool just to work it into a story.

Comments

[isis]

I vote #2. It sounds amazing.

[osprey_archer]

That one will definitely get done eventually (although it may be some time; I still need to work out a denouement); I feel like I'm pretty good at retellings and they're also SO easy to explain to people, because the hook is RIGHT THERE.

[rachelmanija]

3 sounds especially awesome to me.

[osprey_archer]

Noted!

Do you have an opinion on trying to sell self-published books in bookstores? Is it something you've ever done, or is it just not worth the hassle?

[rachelmanija]

I have and TBH it didn't go well - really a hassle and then no one bought them. I now stick to ebooks and making my books available in paperback for mail order.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, I kind of figured. There are a couple of bookstores where I have personal connections so I might give that a try (especially if I'm left with books in hand after Pride), but I probably ought to look on it as a way to build experience rather than a likely money-spinner.

[rachelmanija]

Yeah, I think that's definitely the right attitude.

[thisbluespirit]

My mother thinks I should also try to reach out to local bookstores. Is that a thing self-pubbed authors do?

Yes, they do. They also randomly donate copies to libraries for increased exposure whether we want them or not and then we have to keep the things forever because they're a local author. But, yes, seriously, it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

#3 sounds the most fun all round.

[osprey_archer]

The life of a librarian isn't easy!

[skygiants]

I was about to be like "#3 sounds extremely like my jam" except then I went and reread all the pitches here and all of them are in fact a thousand percent my jam. Cross-dressing revolutionary romance!! Anarchist werewolves!! So this is very unhelpful and you should probably just ignore me.

[osprey_archer]

Hahaha, it is entirely possible that you are my perfect reader. Sometimes it seems weird to me that there isn't more overlap in the books we've read!

[skygiants]

Me too, but it's always so useful to go back to your write-ups of things I haven't read every time my TBR starts looking scanty!

[evelyn_b]

It's definitely something self-published authors do! It's normal for you to ask and normal for the bookstores to say no (they may have restrictions on what they can carry that have nothing at all to do with the worthiness of books), but also normal for them to say yes, or "yes, but. . ." (for example, some of the bookstores near me host signings for local authors whose books they don't carry, or carry only one of on a tiny "local authors" shelf, the rest of the year) - so go forth without embarrassment.

These are all potentially good ideas. #3 sounds delightful in a down-to-earth way, but #2 has an overripe fairy-tale dream quality I like a lot. Maybe the anarchists can only be defeated by accident, and it ends by continuing. (Maybe don't listen to me, as I'm the least marketable person alive and never finish anything).

[osprey_archer]

You have actual experience as a bookseller! Thank you, bookseller guru!

I don't think it's necessary to defeat the anarchists totally (after all, the book takes place right before Russia heads into a real bad place, so a few black magic anarchists running wild probably wouldn't have made anything *worse*), just defeated enough that the heroines get away and it seems believable that the anarchists won't come after them anymore.

[littlerhymes]

I want all of them but particularly #2 or #3.

I don't think being a wolf is NECESSARILY a total barrier to the endgame romance, tbh... I mean it may have to be more of a post-wolf meet-cute than a happily-ever-after but it could happen!

Are the anarchists defeated by rationality, i.e. the Tsar being toppled by very human means and then being trampled underfoot by the revolutionaries with guns rather than Satanic rituals? Or perhaps they are defeated very fantastically, by beating the devil at his own game.

[osprey_archer]

It might have to end in a "sometime in the future they'll probably get together!" place rather than a "and then they lived happily ever after!" place, but as long as I don't market it as a romance that should probably be okay, right?

I think the anarchists need to be defeated or at least stymied by the girl and the wolf - it would be kind of anticlimactic if our heroines are Saved By WWI. They don't need to defeat the anarchists totally - it's okay if the anarchists live to go back to Russia & cause problems - but to make the anarchists stop trying to force their former associate to come back to the coven.

There's a point earlier in the story where the grandmother holds them at bay through the Power of Faith, so I think the final defeat needs to rely on something other than that.

[asakiyume]

I am partial to No. 1 and No. 2!