Why "Optional First Chapter"?

Since I'm sitting up with a wakeful baby anyway, I thought I'd address a question that no one has asked me yet but that I'm sure people will. Why title my first chapter "Optional First Chapter?"

Well, Chapter Two was originally my first chapter, minus a bit of explanation that is now given in the new first chapter. I loved the idea of starting it that way; I felt it was exciting and attention-grabbing. But every time someone would read that first portion of my story to critique it, they were left feeling confused and wondering if I hadn't given them the beginning of the story. So, after talking with my sister-in-law, I decided to write a prologue to give the readers a little more information to start off with. I tried to make it engaging and interesting, but wasn't sure I'd done as good of a job as I wanted. Then I read some writing advice that warned against prologues. And I have to admit, I feel a little put-off by books with lengthy prologues; I want to get to the story! But my prologue wasn't one set in the past, or from the point of view of some other random character. It could easily just be chapter one, so I made it that. But it still wasn't as engaging a beginning as I felt the now Chapter 2 was, so I decided to title in "Optional First Chapter," I figured maybe that would amuse readers a little, and if they found it too boring they could just skip ahead. And if they got too lost, they could go back and read it knowing that there was more interesting stuff ahead. So there you have it; my weird logic behind the first chapter :)

Published!!!!!

Well people, I've done it! I submitted it to Amazon to be published on Kindle! I want to publish a softback copy through Amazon't CreateSpace too, but first I'm going to wait and see if I run into any issues publishing the ebook first. Still, if all goes well it should be published within the next 24 to 48 hours. 

So what's next? Well, I have an idea or two for a prequel and maybe a sequel, but that's not what I'm focusing on right now. Another idea grabbed me almost out of nowhere, so that's what I'm focusing on next. After all, if I don't love the idea, how can I make the reader love it? I really do want to write the prequel and possibly other sequels, but I think it will be good for me to take this break and step into another story for a bit.

What's this new story, you ask? Well, it's still set in the same world as Elf Tears, but it takes place on another continent; one populated mostly by humans. Other beings do exist, however, and the main character is one of them. She is a shapeshifter and  was once a being of high power, serving under the Aquinix. But she let that power get to her head and was cast down to wander the world for millenia, serving others and seeking redemption. At the beginning of the story she comes across a battle and is led to save an older officer about to be killed. She'll team up with and have some kind of adventure with him. If all goes well for her, she'll hopefully find some kind of peace by the story's end. I guess we'll see where it leads me!

New Backer Reward!!!

I am adding a new backer reward! Because I'm not getting many backers, I've decided to publish an early edition of the book, and anyone who pledges at least five dollars will receive a copy of it as soon as it is out (I estimate mid- to late- January.) Then, if my funding goal is met, I can use that money to get it edited and get the pictures I want and publish a better second edition. (And, of course, fund all my advertising plans!) If my funding goal is not met, then I will find other ways to pay for the editing so I can still publish a polished second edition. I'm looking forward to this! :) 

The book will be made available just as soon as my beautiful artist adds some color to the picture of Erron overlooking the forest so I can use it as cover art. It isn't the picture we're working on for the final cover art, but it's gorgeous and we can modify it fairly quickly so that I can get the book out until I can afford to pay her for the other picture for the second edition. Yay!!!

Kickstarter's Up!!!

Just letting you all know I now have a Kickstarter project up to get my book published! Thank you all for following my blog, and go check it out and pass it on! Thanks so much!!!


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1515947860/elf-tears-war-magic-and-forgiveness

Prologue

I have finally finished my semifinal draft of Elf Tears! All that's left now is to get the Kickstarter for it up and running so I can have it professionally edited (as well as advertise it and all that jazz). Then I will prepare the final draft and publish it! In celebration, I am sharing the prologue with you all. It still needs edited as it is only first draft quality, so feel free to tell me what does and doesn't work.

Prologue

“I can't take it anymore, Phen,” elf princess Éadra told her best friend. The pair stared outside the castle window watching the sun set beyond their forest home.“Our troops are tired, our people are tired, and I'm tired. I'm tired of healing our soldiers day after day, only to see them go out to fight again, or even get killed. A war fought entirely on the defensive can never be won.”

“I'm tired too,” Phen replied, “but how can we ever take the fighting back to Erron if we can't even find his fortress?”

“That's the question, isn't it?” Éadra's voice was bitter. “I'm about ready to explore those mountains myself, see what Erron's hiding in there and how he's keeping us out.”

“Don't even think about it,” Phen said. He took Éadra by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes.

“What?” she said. “You know I wouldn't really.”

“Yes, you would.”

Éadra hung her head. “I just have to do something, Phen.” She fiddled with the diamond that hung on a chain around her neck. “I wonder what mother would have done?”

“She would have put your safety first. Yours and Learé's. That's what she always did. She wouldn't want you risking your life like that.”

“I know, I know.” She paused for a moment, then changed the subject.

“I found something interesting in my chamber the other day,” she said. “I dropped this necklace behind my bed, and when I moved the bed to find it, I discovered a mural of a unicorn.”

A teasing look crossed Phen's face. “You don't think it's hiding a secret passageway, do you?”

Éadra laughed. “Phen, we're not kids anymore. I'm not going to go running through the castle looking for secret tunnels.”

“We wouldn't be running through the castle,” he replied, voice innocent, “just checking a single room.”

“Come on, Phen, why would a mural of a unicorn be hiding a passageway?”

“Why does that diamond have 'Heloth Uniqa' engraved on it?”

Éadra shrugged. “My mother was obsessed with that mountain. She believed there were unicorns still living there on its unreachable peak.”

“And your chambers used to be your mother's. Maybe she knew more than she let on.”

Éadra chuckled. “You're insane.”

“Please?” said Phen. “Humor me?”

“Fine,” said Éadra.

They walked to her room and shoved the bed aside again.

“Good grief,” said Phen as they pushed, “this bed is heavy.”

“It's a big bed, and the canopy doesn't exactly help. Why do you think I'd never moved it before? Come on, one more push and we have it.” They shoved and the bed moved, exposing the larger-than-life rearing unicorn that had been hidden by the canopy.

Phen immediately ran up to the wall and began to study it. “I don't see or feel anything that suggests this is anything other than a wall, but that doesn't mean there isn't something here.”

“Well hurry up; I can't spend all day here.”

“Oh, lighten up, Éadra,” he said with a smile. “That meeting isn't for another few hours.”

“Maybe there's some kind of magic password,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” said Phen. “Now, what could it be?”

“I don't know, there are probably thousands of possible combinations.”

“It's probably something related to unicorns.”

“Like what? Horn? Hoof? Heloth Uniqa?”

The wall opened, and Éadra and Phen stumbled back in surprise.

“You have to be kidding me,” said Éadra.

“Wow. We have to come back later and explore it.” But Éadra was already stepping into the tunnel. She turned back to Phen.

“This could be the answer to everything,” she said.

Phen looked confused. “How?”

“If this leads to Heloth Uniqa, if mother was right and there are unicorns there, maybe they could help us. Unicorns were supposed too be vicious fighters. Who knows? They might even be able to get into Erron's mountains.”

“Now you're just being unrealistic. Besides, if they could help,don't you think your mother would have asked for their help long ago?”

Éadra sighed. “Maybe, but I still have to try.”

“This is the kind of impulsive thing we were just talking about, Éadra.”

“Says the one who insisted on checking for a secret passage.”

Phen shook his head. “I was just having fun, I didn't think there was really something here. Look, at least go to the meeting first. Tell your councilors about the tunnel and see what they say.” Something in his voice made Éadra pause.

“I don't know that I want to take this to the council,” she said. “They bicker and debate for months on end sometimes, and our need is urgent. Besides, if I wait, I'm going to talk myself out of this. sIf I'm going to go, I have to go now.”

“Don't you at least want to tell your sister?”

Éadra shook her head. “I don't want to get her hopes up. I'll tell her if it works. Just make up an excuse for me, okay?”

Phen took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said.

Éadra gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks Phen. You're the best.” She took off down the tunnel, leaving her friend behind.

Character Profile: Éadra

So I realize that it's been a while since I last posted, and I need to remedy that. I'd been hoping to have my next blog post be announcing fundraising for my book on Kickstarter, but I decided to make some changes to the Kickstarter project to make it better, and it's taking a while. Still, I hope to at least have it up by the end of the month and the book out by the end of the year. This is all taking longer than I would have liked, but I really think it's for the best and my book will be better for it.

In the meantime, I would like to introduce Éadra, the healer twin and the character who's been with me for the longest time :) .

Name: Éadra
Species: elf
Hair Color: black
Eye color: green
Height: 5'4"
Likes: exploring, climbing trees, hiking, reading, riding griffins
Dislikes: competition, large dogs
random character trait: highly impulsive, to the point of idiotic at times. This impulsiveness can stem from either curiosity or desperation.

Excerpt (from her servitude in Erron's fortress):

“Oh, my,” she said when she saw the flood in the room. She rushed to create a barricade in the doorway with her towels in the doorway to prevent the water from spreading any further.

“Yes,” said a small man with graying hair. He was sitting in front of a strange contraption with lots of stone tubes. “I'm afraid that experiment didn't go quite as planned.”

Éadra chuckled in spite of her irritation at having to clean such a huge mess. “I should say not,” she muttered. This is going to take a lot of towels to clean, she thought. Then an idea struck her. She knew that water was a good conductor of magic, and she'd had to direct the flow of blood a few times in her healing, like when she'd healed the soldier's concussion. Could she control the water like she'd controlled the blood?

The man had a few empty pails in one corner of the room, most likely what he'd used to bring the water in. She grabbed one of them and took it to the center of the room, and then knelt down, shut her eyes, and put her hands in the water.

Directing her magic into the water was easy; she'd done it thousands of times before. But this time, instead of letting it flow through the water into something else, she restrained it and tried to make it attach to the water itself. It was easier than she'd expected; blood must be more like water than she'd thought. She pulled back on the magic, and the water followed. She opened her eyes again and managed to direct some of the water into the pail beside her. She felt a strange sense of exhilaration. This was fun! She realized just how much she'd missed using magic this past while. She stuck her hands back in the water and tried again. Soon she found that she could get a steady flow going by smoothly alternating which hand she was putting in the water and which one she was pulling out. It was a simple task, much easier than healing, but she was hungry and had little energy. After filling the first pail, she stopped and wiped sweat off of her forehead. She felt eyes on her, and turned around to see the human staring at her.

“How are you doing that?” he asked.

“Magic,” she said, touching one of her pointed ears.

“Oh, right, you're an elf,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing you people work magic like that.”

She gave him a half-smile and grabbed another pail from the corner. “You probably shouldn't be talking to me,” she said.

“Oh I'm sorry, I don't mean to disturb your work.” He shuffled back to his strange machine and started muttering to himself over it.

Éadra immediately felt bad. “You aren't disturbing me,” she said. “I just don't want you to get caught. Erron says he'll kill anyone who talks to me.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “That's you? I didn't realize...I'll just get back to my work. It never happened.” He winked at her, making her smile.

She filled a second bucket, then plopped down on her bottom and put her head in her hands. Her belly rumbled. The man looked at her and left the room, returning moments later with towels in his hands. He wordlessly started laying them down to soak up the remaining water, pausing for a moment when he reached the last towel. He unfolded it to reveal a hidden apple, which he allowed to roll to the floor.

“Oops,” he said to no one in particular. “I seem to have dropped my apple. I don't like them bruised. I'll pick it up later.” He gave her a small smile and jerked his head towards the apple. She smiled back, grateful, and grabbed one of the towels he'd laid down and started drying, working her way over to the apple. When she reached it, she scooped it up along with the now-soaked towel. She then picked up the rest of his towels, as well as the ones in the doorway, and took them out to the laundry. It was evening now, and by sticking to the shadows on her way back to the castle she was able to eat the gift without being caught.  Even here, it seemed, she was never without a friend.

Another picture by my awesome artrist. This one's of the twins!

Healing, Anthrax, and Avoiding the Dreaded "Mary Sue" (and an awesome picture, just for fun)

One of my main character used to be a full-blown, sickly-sweet "Mary Sue." I admit it. She was so bad she made my mom cringe, and my mom usually likes what I write, even when I don't! Once she pointed that out to me I rewrote the story trying to fix that, but in my latest draft I came across a problem that could potentially make her look that way again, which is what today's blog post is about.

See, at one point in the story, Éadra is tasked with healing three patients in Erron's infirmary, and I felt it was important that she fail this time. Also, the disease had to at least appear to be very contagious; the other healers had to be scared enough to refuse to treat the patients for Éadra to have to heal them. This presented me with a problem; if the disease was highly contagious and she couldn't cure it, she would likely catch it and die from it. This would not work at all for my story! However, the situation was too important for me to just drop it. I could just have her not catch it, but without a good reason for it I was afraid this would send her straight back into Mary Sue territory, making her too perfect and special to ever get sick. Through research I finally hit upon a solution, but I couldn't make the reasoning clear in my book, so I will lay it out here. Perhaps someone with greater medical knowledge can correct me if my reasoning is too faulty :) .

I discovered that anthrax was around in the Middle Ages. From what I gathered, it's a hard-to-kill spore but not airborn. So, I made the original patient a tanner who tanned an infected cow skin. The spores got on his clothes, so both the healer and the elf who washed those clothes had direct contact with the spores and came down with the disease as well. This would make it appear to be highly contagious at first, but by the time Éadra gets there, the remaining spores are all the patients' bodies (the rest having been tossed away with the laundry water). She has no direct contact with the spores and so doesn't get sick.

So, thoughts? Is my logic sound, or at least sound enough that any flaws can be chalked up to artistic license?


In other news, my awesome sister-in-law is going to be my artist, and has made me my first picture for the story. It will be part of a presentation on kickstarter, helping me fund-raise to get this book out there! Take a look!

Finally, a decent picture on my blog!!!