Blogger No Longer Updated

Hey everyone!
Some exciting stuff is happening, including a new GraceandWitherbloom.com!

As part of the refresh, the Blogger blog will no longer be updated. Don't worry, all the content is now on the new site. But be sure to go directly to the site for the latest updates.

Story Behind The Story: The Forgotten Fair

Ah, and here we are. The final SBTS for the final book in the series of adventures of Grace & Witherbloom. As with all of these, if you haven't read The Forgotten Fair, not a lot of this is going to make sense and it's going to be very spoiler-filled. So beware!

Plenty of time to turn back (or go to Amazon and get The Forgotten Fair!)...

All right, for those of you who are left, it's time to talk about the final adventure in the series. This one was an odd one for me. You see, I had in my mind a general idea about what I wanted to happen in the final adventure. For one thing, I'd written the premonition (or vision of the future via Bradford's psychochronal projector) that Wilhelmina had years before, as part of writing The Girl Who Died Backwards. So I knew that had to happen.

I also knew I wanted a walloping great big machine for the finale. Maybe that's cliche, but it also just felt right. After all of Ashmore's devices, I wanted the final device to be his most ambitious and daring. In the years between writing the first book and the last book, a thought had begun to form in my mind that the final book should take place during a World's Fair. I liked the symmetry of it. The first book would take place during the Great Exhibition and the final book would take place at a World's Fair. Now, the next event of that type would have been the Exposition Universelle in Paris, France in 1855. Now, a good amount of time passes between the first book and the last book, but not that much time. I could have extended the time that Helen was lost in the Emperor's universe, but I didn't want to stretch that too far, to be honest. Plus, I have to admit... I wanted the finale to take place in New York. In the new world. It just felt right for Ashmore to make that sort of dramatic gesture.

But, the World's Fair didn't take place in New York until 1939. But, that's easy to remedy, really, when you have a time-changing anachroanarchist like Ashmore around, right? Oh, and you know anachroanarchist? That was a term I had thought about refering to Ashmore as in the book. It doesn't exactly slip off the tongue, does it though? I think it's best I didn't go through with that. :) Alternate titles for the series at one point, by the way included "The Anachronica" or "The Anachroanarchist Devices" all of which would have been a bit silly and wordy. But, maybe there's some alternate universe out there where these books are called that.

But, I digress. I knew that I wanted Ashmore to go to New York. I knew I wanted a World's Fair to be taking place. And, it seemed natural that the big device be at the center of the fair. Everything began to take shape, and with it so did Ashmore's grand plan. Now, I just had to get them there.

Originally, Helen was going to tell Josiah her "origin" on the ship ride over to America. It was actually a real problem figuring out where to put her story, actually. Once I thought of the opening with Josiah disguising his identity and confronting Ashmore face to face, I knew that's how the story had to open. And I didn't think opening the story with a bit of exposition from Helen would work. Originally, her origin would have been a separate short story (like Josiah's was planned to be, originally) that would have been bundled with "The Other Key." But, I didn't really think Helen's story could stand on it's own as a complete tale, to be honest. Not for lack of interest in what is going on, but just that it didn't have enough meat to it. I could have gone in and filled in a lot of detail there and made it more of a separate story... but I liked the idea of not filling in too many of the details. And I also didn't want to kill any of the momentum of the story by going into the sidebar of back story for Helen.

I also had the issue that I wanted Ashmore to tell Allisa about who he was, too. So, essentially, Ashmore and Helen had the same thing to tell two different people. I really liked the idea of interspersing their stories together, and originally there was MUCH more back and forth between Helen telling Josiah her story and Ashmore telling Alissa his story. But it just became too much of a confusing jumble. And I think it robbed both moments of their power. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. It avoided being repetitive, and it gave both groups a quiet moment before the finale.

Of course, at this point we begin to really see who Ashmore is. There have been hints along the way that he isn't quite the villain we thought at first. And here we see the true measure of who he is. Arrogant, yes. But not unkind. Just very, very reckless. Which leads us to the major twist in the story. Hopefully, if people have been reading carefully this shouldn't be a complete surprise, or at least it hopefully doesn't come out of left field. Hints were certainly dropped, and Wilhelmina's actions will actually make more sense in previous books. It's no fun to explain a book, so I won't. But if you look back at how easily Wilhelmina (seemed) to adjust to G&W's life, you might find that suspicious now. And Wilhelmina being upset when Helen returned wasn't jealousy, really. She really thought she'd escaped her fate and her mission, which she didn't really want to do any more... and Helen's return changed all that. I really liked Wilhelmina. My friend Laura, who was a beta reader for me, hated her. And I can see that. She's the sort of character in a book that you can come to hate. She starts off so awkward and she's not a good adventurer and she's getting in-between the main duo. But I hope that a lot of readers liked her and felt as betrayed by her actions as G&W did. That was hard to write, her ending. Which, to me, meant it was the right thing.

And I hope people didn't find it TOO cut and dried. Because, in the end, putting aside Wilhelmina's religious motivations, she might have a point. Should anyone wield as much power over events as Helen, Josiah and Ashmore now do? I think it's a valid question, and one I hope the reader thinks about.

I'm not going to say a great deal about the end, because I'd like for it to stand on it's own, for the most part. All in all, I'm really proud of these books. Even months later after the final book was published, I remain happy that they were (hopefully) fun adventure books that also explored some important (to me) themes, if more in the background. The final moments of the book, and the final choices that the characters make are really important to me, not just in the book but in real life as well. It's always so hard to know, when you're writing something, how others will perceive your work. That's why I like to read the reviews people write about them. There are times I'm a bit perplexed by what people have said, but it's always interesting. And I'm so happy that thousands of people have given the book a chance. I hope we can pick up some more, too.

One of the main themes of the book is the concept of time as a spiral. When the thought came to me (independent of the book) all those years ago, I really loved the idea. I doubt it's very scientific. But, the spiral is everywhere in our universe. And there was something so romantically appealing about even the end of everything not really being the end. I'd heard of the theory that the beginning and end of the universe might be the same moment. But a loop sounded so boring. But a spiral, where even time itself can evolve, where the sequence of our lives can grow, and possibly even get better... well, it appealed to me, anyway.

So, is this the end? Perhaps. Or maybe it's the beginning.

Status

There are moments when you'd really like to make a status update. But not just any old status update. THE status update. The real status update that actually means anything (if there is such a thing.) But then there's that part of you that thinks it'd be far too much over sharing. That it's not really what Facebook is for, right? And aren't you just being a bit silly? Isn't this all a bit melodramatic? And how would you even put it into words anyway? So then you write sentence after sentence. And you delete, and then you write it out again. And then you realize it's not the time, or the place. So you click somewhere else instead. And the box pops up - "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" And you say yes, leave this page. And if you return, even a second later, all that is left is the comfort of a perfectly acceptable, perfectly reasonable and perfectly appropriate empty white box.

A Poem for National Poetry Day

October 4th was National Poetry Day!

So, this post is coming a bit late. But to mark the occasion, I attempted to write a poem for the first time since high school, I believe. I mean, I've done jokey acrostic poems at parties (this is what my friends and I do at parties... as part of activity packets... best not to go into detail on that) but nothing where I actually put some effort in.

But, it's National Poetry Day. And I like poems. Though I find them terribly intimidating to write. But fear stops you doing any number of worthwhile things. So here goes.

Shuffle, Shuffle, Skip

Songward, ho, my friend

crystalize each little rip

into jeweled moments—

frozen and hanging—

as anticipation and meaning

and regret

backpedal, backpedal

shuffle, shuffle, skip

a mad dance

for a mad time

with so little time

to be mad

Onward, forward, resend?

Trivialize each intent

into soundbite memory—

flaccid and hanging—

as nothing and no one

and who cares

backpedal, backpedal

shuffle, shuffle, skip

a mad dance

for a mad time

with so little time

to be had

Story Behind The Story: The Other Key

It's that time again. The spoilerific behind the scenes of the next novella in the series of novellas that recount the adventures of Helen Grace and Josiah Witherbloom.

As always, if you've not read the book, you really should. It costs less than a bottle of pop from a machine and it'll last longer.

So, let's head into spoiler territory...

At the climax of the last book, Helen had been spirited away by the Obsidian Emperor into his parallel world. Then, we jumped forward about a year and a half into the future to find Josiah and Wilhelmina searching for a way to get her back, all the while continuing to combat Lord Ashmore's machinations.

First of all, let's address the title. For anyone who read the last book, they knew that there was another key out there to the dimensional gateway to the Emperor's dimension. The original one, in fact. The one that was not to be discovered for another three hundred years. So titling this one "The Other Key" seems a bit like a spoiler. I actually went back and forth on whether to call it that or not. But I really liked the title, and it felt appropriate. And, let's be honest, did anyone think that Helen wouldn't return? As readers, we suspend our disbelief and go along with a story, if it's written well enough. But in the back of our minds certain truths seem very evident. Even though I'd gone through the motions of saying Helen was gone and Josiah and Wilhelmina were now the main characters, it did seem clear to me that most would be expecting Helen's return. So I liked that the title sort of teased that. Because the story really isn't about that.

Sure, it's the plot. But Wilhelmina finds the key pretty early one, really only after just enough time to introduce what her life with Josiah is like now. The Other Key is what gets Josiah and Wilhelmina back to the Emperor's dimension, true, and kicks off the adventure there. But it represents something much more powerful to Wilhelmina as a character and the book as a whole. This is very much a turning point for Wilhelmina. It's the moment when she makes a terrible choice. A choice which the reader really only understands in the next book, and I'll discuss that more in installment for the final book. I do wonder if people are a bit confused, here. Wilhelmina seems almost overly dramatic and almost hard to comprehend, I think, until you read the next book. She just seems jealous and resentful of Helen, and appears to make some rather huge leaps in logic about what her reappearance means. But, hopefully this is seen in a new light in the next book. That's all I'll say for now.

Speaking of Wilhelmina, it's my hope that people like her by this book. If they weren't on board before, I hope they are now. I really liked her. Here we see her mature from the wary maid (seemingly) dragged along by events into the full-fledged adventurer we saw hints of throughout the other books. I really enjoyed her and Josiah's relationship. It's actually slightly weird, especially for the time period. It's all a bit untoward, actually, and I didn't want to shy away from that. I mean, we know that their feelings are genuine, but the outside world doesn't, and certainly doesn't judge them well.

I had a lot of fun with the alternate world. If anything, I wish we could have spent more time there. I had thought to expand it a great deal and introduce more characters and subplots, but they just felt superfluous to the main events. But that world exists in a very visual way in my mind, and I hope I was able to communicate that to the reader so that it lives within their mind as well.

Of course, the other strand running through this story is that we finally catch up to Lord Ashmore and his friends. Ashmore has created for himself a little group that mirrors Helen, Josiah and Wilhelmina in some ways, but they are very different people. While our main characters are very upstanding citizens, Ashmore, Allisa and Jean are all outcasts, thrown together by mere chance, really. You get a tiny hint into what Ashmore has planned, and I hope that threw the readers off a bit when they realize his goal really isn't world domination or anything so prosaic.

We also get to know Baker a little better, after him appearing in very small ways and mentions in previous stories. I enjoyed the short scenes he and Reggie had together. I think they played well off each other, until poor Reggie was done away with.

I really like the ending, where everything seems as though it's gone back to the status quo. But it really hasn't. There are hints around the edges of Helen's character, I hope. She has been changed by her experiences. She's a tiny bit softer. Wilhelmina changes too, in ways that probably don't make sense until the next book. I actually felt really bad for her in that scene at the end. She's putting a whole life away, really, with her adventuring clothes. And when she puts that maid uniform back on, she's giving herself over to destiny. A destiny she knows won't end well for her. To be in that place, to feel like you have no choice... well, it's a terrible thing. A feeling I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Story Behind The Story: The Obsidian Emperor

Here it is! The spoiler-filled review of Grace & Witherbloom Book 5: The Obsidian Emperor!

So fair warning! If you've not read The Obsidian Emperor, then run over to Amazon, Amazon UK or Amazon DE and pick it up. Read it. And then come back here once you're done. I'll wait.

Okay?

Then let's go, because this (and the next book) are quite possibly my favorites of the bunch. Maybe. Actually, as a unit I was very happy with the final three books. Which is good because I suppose you don't want the story to go all boring and wibbly at the end, do you? And, in essence, though each book is pretty much a standalone story (more on that in a bit) it really is one bigger story, too. Part of the reason I liked writing the book as a series of stories was really so that I'd ensure there was no flagging middle. There are lots of starts, middles and ends. But running through them are all the threads that come to a head before resolving themselves in the final book.

But, onto the book itself. The weird thing about this book was that, unlike the first few books, I really had no idea where to take the story as I was writing Book 4. Usually my mind was working forward a couple books at least while I was writing the current book. But not this time. I had a lot of ideas floating around in my head, of course, but most of those were either used in the first four books or were rejected for any number of reasons.

I knew I wanted two more stories before the final story, which had started to take shape in my mind pretty clearly after the first seeds of it started sprouting in my mind while writing the first book, The Girl Who Died Backwards. I suppose I could have gone right into the final book, but the overall story would have felt too short. I feel like we needed more time with Josiah and Helen and Wilhelmina. I wanted them to "simmer," I suppose, and originally I wanted some space between Josiah and Helen's "origin" stories. As I believe I mentioned last time,  "Josiah's Story" (which became The Light On The Moor) was going to be a short story attached to this book, and "Helen's Story" would have been attached to the next book.

Around the time I was writing The Light On The Moor, I visited a museum with my partner. I love museums. This one wasn't huge, but it had some interesting pieces. And that got my mind going about setting an adventure in a museum. Oh, it's been done before, let's not pretend it hasn't. And I wanted one of the displays to come to life and start killing people. Which has also been done before. But I just loved the creepiness of that. It felt very much like a classic scary movie in that way, and seemed to fit Grace & Witherbloom as a series. But it needed a twist. It couldn't be a boring old mummy. It needed something to move it beyond what could be a boring retread of scary museum stories.

The title "The Obsidian Emperor" just sort of came to me, as well as the title villain. Which is probably the most boring thing to say because it doesn't give you any insight into how it happened, but there it is. I've always been fascinated by Chinese jade sculptures since I was young, and when I was a kid I had a hunk of "obsidian" that I used to look at constantly. I used to hold it up to the light and run my hands over it. It was such an intriguing hunk of glass. I'm not entirely sure if it was real obsidian or not, but it certainly looked like it. I'd purchased it from a garage sale somewhere along the way. The wonderful thing about obsidian is that it's much more "evil" looking than jade. It can also be very sharp. So a visual flashed in my head of a very scary and very dangerous villain for the story. Which was a nice change of pace because there are actually very few straight-up villains in the books. It was a refreshing change to have a direct nemesis for Helen and Josiah to play off of.

I really liked the idea of two related exhibits coming together as well, and the gate and the alternate universe from which the Emperor originated again came from a visual that flashed in my head. I thought of huge, floating pagoda cities. I just loved that visual, a merging of a classic architectural style and the very futuristic. That they hovered over a bombed-out wasteland only added to their appeal. From there, everything just sort of snowballed. It was one of those story's whose various story threads came together very naturally.

I knew I wanted to give Wilhelmina a bit of a spotlight, heading off on her own to get herself into (and out of) some trouble without Josiah and Helen around. This was important because Wilhelmina couldn't stay as inexperienced as she started out for too long. I didn't want her to become a jaded adventurer right away, but she was in danger of getting annoying if she couldn't keep up with Helen and Josiah a little bit. This was also a good set-up for the next book.

Speaking of set-ups, yes... this ends on a little big of a cliffhanger. I still feel as though the two books are really fairly distinct stories. It's more that The Other Key is a sequel to this story than it is the second part of the same story. But this is the one instance where you really get maximum satisfaction and resolution by reading two stories and not just the one.

Removing Helen came fairly late in the game, actually. Originally, the story was going to end the way that The Other Key does. But I wanted to see more of the world of the flying pagodas. And I realized that I had a perfect opportunity to develop all three of the main characters in a very substantial way. Breaking up Grace & Witherbloom was the best way to do it.

But I didn't want it to feel like a cheat. I didn't want people to think "Oh, Helen's going to get out of this in two seconds where we pick up." I think, as sophisticated readers, we know that most of the time cliffhangers are resolved fairly quickly in the next story. So I added the coda with Josiah and Wilhelmina to drive the point home. Helen is gone. Over a year has passed. Life has moved on. The Emperor's actions had a real, profound effect on everyone's lives and that wouldn't be undone at the start of the next book.

Quiet Times

Things have slowed down quite a bit sales-wise on the G&W books. It's to be expected. There is no longer the bump of free books to give it any promotion, and I haven't been doing a ton other than these blogs. This is a somewhat planned down time. There are things afoot. Actually, there are things afoot I had planned to talk about sooner, but it'll be a couple more months at least before I can share.

This has all been an interesting road. I just wanted to say thank you again to all the readers who took a chance or are taking a chance on Grace and Witherbloom. It's been great to see a good amount of readers rate it on Goodreads.com. If you haven't already, I encourage you to add the books to your read or to-read list and rate them! I'd love to read some reviews, too, of course there and on Amazon.

I'm intrigued to see what the future brings. I have had my mind percolating on a few ideas about what to write next. But I'm not settled on anything quite yet. In any case, there are still three more installments of the spoilerific Story Behind The Story series. I hope someone has been enjoying reading them or finding them interesting! If not, I'll just tell myself they are here for the sake of posterity. :)

That's all for now. Feel free to drop me a line if the mood strikes you or you have any comments or questions. Until next time.

Story Behind The Story: The Light On The Moor

Ah, "The Light On The Moor" - the fourth book in the Grace & Witherbloom series. It was also one of the more difficult books to get done and the one I worked on right up until it's release.

For those of you just reading for the first time, the Story Behind The Story blogs are VERY spoilerific. If you haven't read Book 4 yet, I heartily recommend you head over to Amazon.com (or .co.uk or .de) and read it first.

Now, "The Light on The Moor" was not difficult to write in the same way "The Flood Lily" was. With the latter, I actually got hung up on the story with doubts about whether the story was going anywhere or was good enough. With TLOTM, I finished it quite quickly. Maybe a little too quickly.

The story was originally called "Josiah's Story" and was always planned as a sort of origin story for Josiah. It was going to have a companion piece called "Helen's Story" that would appear after "The Other Key." These were not going to be stand alone novellas, but rather short stories that were going to be included with books 5 and 6. But, this plan fell apart fairly quickly. For one thing, Helen's story didn't feel right separated out from "The Forgotten Fair." Before I start actually writing, I do a lot of "metal writing" where I work out the story in my head. As I thought forward to the final story, I realized that I wanted Helen and Ashmore to solve the mystery of who they were in the same story and not far removed from each other. It just had more effect.

Once "Helen's Story" was gone, it felt weird to have a story called "Josiah's Story." Without it's companion, it felt out of place. It would just be a random short story placed in front of "The Obsidian Emperor." Also, the title wasn't very Grace and Witherbloom. It just didn't have the same feel and tone. Also, in a weird way the story is much more about Helen than it is Josiah though he tells the story and it is about how he came to be created.

And finally, as I read through the first version of "The Light On The Moor" it just struck me as sort of boring. There was a lot of telling and not showing. I wrote "Helen did this and then she went here and then she said this and stayed with this person..." and so on and so forth. It was almost more like an outline of a story than an actual story. So I set about on a substantial re-write. I added a lot more depth and dialogue to everything. And once I was done I realized that it was long enough to stand on it's own. It's still the shortest of all the novellas, but it felt like a fairly complete whole.

It's interesting, the ratings on Goodreads.com seem to indicate that (of the people who have rated it) this is the story of the seven that people seem to enjoy the least. I can actually identify with that. It still has a very respectable 4/5 rating which I'm happy with, of course. But I do tend to agree it's probably most the slight of the stories. At the same time, I think what it does for Helen's character is important. Helen is presented as very cold and aloof at times. That's one of the things I like about her. There is a merciless quality about her that is quite appealing to write in a character. But a character like that can't grow and change and becomes a bit boring after a while, I think. And she is, in the end, very human. So this was the first peek at her humanity.

Not to mention it set up a few important details for the final book. :)

Next up is probably my favorite book in the series. I think the series really begins to hit it's stride with book 5, even as it starts hurtling towards the end...

Story Behind The Story: The Village That Sleeps

Okay, it's time for another blog entry in the Story Behind The Story series where I give you a little background into how the individual stories in the Grace & Witherbloom series came about.

Same old warning applies - I'll be talking quite freely about The Village That Sleeps, so if you haven't read it yet... I'd suggest coming back here after you've finished.

Now, if you've not read the prototype web comic for Grace & Witherbloom, you may want to do that now as well. It's very short, and the origins of this particular story lie there.

I had quite a few story ideas for the premiere story in the web comic, but the one that appealed to me the most was the concept of the living and the dead trading places. You get VERY little sense of the larger plot from the web comic because so much time is spent setting the story up. It's a failing of the way it was written and is probably part of the reason Zuda rejected it. If the web comic had continued, you would have found out that a scientist had created a device that somehow reversed life and death. All of London (modern day London, as the web comic took place in the present day unlike the book) had fallen under this. What you see in the comic is their neighbor stumbling into Helen and Josiah's house while on a run (notice the trendy at the time iPod Shuffle he sports) and dies. We also find out a mummy Helen had kept in the basement had escaped. Thus, the living were dying and the dying were rising from the grave.

There were a few problems with this concept, some of which plagued me through to the novel. What was the machine DOING exactly? I wanted some idea in my head even if I didn't get into it in depth. I had planned to show these skeletons and half-rotten people just milling about doing their business. There would be a skeletal postman delivering mail, rotted bus drivers driving their routes and so on and so forth. I thought it would be a surreal picture. The point was that these resurrected dead didn't realize they were dead. This would be exemplified by a young female reporter who would seek out G&W for their help. She'd realize something wasn't quite right (as others of the newly undead) but couldn't quite figure it out. But how do skeletons move? All the dead couldn't come back... some were just dust, right? And if all of them came back it'd get very crowded. If all of London was affected, how would the rest of the world react?

I never really got that far in answering those questions. I was confident I could figure it out if Zuda selected the comic. But, of course, they did not.

When it came time to write the novels, the basic notion of the living and the dead coming back to life resurfaced in my head. The female reporter was the first thing that went. The book took place in Victorian times and female reporters were very rare back then and certainly wouldn't be investigative journalists. At least not at the time G&W is set. Without her, I lost the compelling and personal emotional component of the story. I also decided to move the story from London to a relatively isolated village in the Welsh countryside. This was far easier to handle in terms of scale. Also, it allowed me to play with the mystery of it a bit more before the big reveal of what exactly was going on. The idea of the undead postman returned, but he was the more more "fleshed out" (if you'll pardon the pun) character you see in the book. It was his plight that then became part of the emotional core of the book.

In many ways, the pieces of the puzzle for "The Village That Sleeps" fell into place relatively easily. The new format of the book actually solved a lot of the problems I had with the story originally. The scientist wasn't an independent madman with some undefined purpose. He was just a desperate man trying out one of Ashmore's machines. As I crafted the book I thought of the scene with the scientist and his wife. It was a fairly complex task figuring out how to give the audience a few hints as to what was really going on without making it seem to implausible. But I was really happy with the twist at the end and the emotional impact it had. Plus, I got to have a mysterious village, a spooky little girl, and roving masses of mindless undead all in one story.

On top of that, it gave Josiah some time away from Helen, which I think his character needed. It was interesting to see how he operated without Helen. There is a sense in the first couple of stories that Helen is driving everything, I think. You don't really know if Josiah is just going along with everything or has a drive of his own. I think here you see very clearly that he is very much his own man and capable of operating independently of Helen. Though I didn't know it at the time, this would become pretty critical before the end of the book.

One thing I never really did dive much into though was the "how" of what was happening. I'm really not much for technobabble, and let's face it... any explanation I would have given would have been pure technobabble nonsense. It was enough to me to address it slightly—and in a way that I hope seems relatively understandable, if not plausible—and move on. Re-reading it again, I think this was the right direction. Although it'll be a story or two before people understand the nature of the devices Ashmore creates, at least in hindsight the rather fanciful nature of some of them should make total sense.

Writing "The Village That Sleeps" was something of a breeze. The only big change was that I originally was going to have a whole subplot of Helen getting forcibly taken away and cared for by the concerned and strong-willed woman we meet right before G&W enter the town of Ddubryn. I thought it might be a fun set of scenes to see them sort of bounce off each other as Helen resisted the woman's good-natured and motherly attempts to take care of her. But, I realized these scenes really didn't have a point in the greater context of the story, and would probably feel like padding.

One note of trivia - the town of Ddubryn is entirely fictional. I named it by combining the welsh words for black (Ddu) and hill (Bryn.)

Next, up, I'll talk about Book 4, "The Light On The Moor" - which I'll just say right now was probably the hardest one to write of them all.

Grace & Witherbloom - The Comic Strip!?!

Well, here it is! I promised you this way back when in the non-spoilery series of blogs I did on the origins of Grace & Witherbloom. Now, I think enough time has passed from the release of the stories to show this to the world.

For those of you who did not read the other blogs, let me quickly explain. G&W was originally created as a web comic. I submitted it to the now defunct Zuda Comics and it was summarily rejected. You had to tell the start of the story in 8 pages. That is what you'll see here and that's all that exists! There are quite a few differences between this initial comic and the eventual book:

1. Helen is not a kid!
2. She has a young niece called Kathy!
3. The story takes place in modern times!

And a few other things not worthy of exclamation points or numbering. :) The basic plot was slightly similar to what became the Village That Sleeps, although there were significant changes to the locale and the nature of the main threat.

Anyway, enjoy and I'd love to hear what you think of this very different vision. I much prefer what I ended up with in the books, I must confess. Also, please remember this was created over five years ago. So some of the writing isn't indicative of what I do today. :)

The full comic can be seen below.

Open publication - Free publishing - More novel

Story Behind The Story: The Flood Lily

Helloooo internet land.

This is the next installment in a series of blogs about the stories behind the stories. This one, in particular, is about the second book in the Grace & Witherbloom series, The Flood Lily.

Fair warning, SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW. Please don't read on until you've read the second book. It's worth it, I promise!

Now, onto the second book. As I (somewhat ominously) mentioned in my last blog, this is the story that almost caused me to abandon the book altogether. It all started off promisingly enough. As soon as I completed The Girl Who Died Backwards, I dived right into the next book. I wanted an exciting opening for the book, so I set it high up in an unspecified mountain range. Two brave explorers risked life and limb to retrieve a strange artifact. I had been writing this scene in my head for a while before I typed it out as I was finishing up The Girl Who Died Backwards. I was very happy with the way it ended up, and the introduction of Henrietta Durand. So, the action moves to the home of Grace and Witherbloom. We get a little time to catch up with them before they are bounding out on their next adventure...

And this is where I stopped. I just stopped. You see, I made a very amateur mistake. I am always thinking a bit ahead of where I'm writing. I, of course, had a basic notion of what the artifact was and what it was going to do when I started. But now that I was inching closer to revealing the "villain" of the piece, I began to question myself. You see, the story idea for this one actually came from the title. Sometimes a title that appeals to me will just pop into my head. The Flood Lily was one of those. So then I construct a story around it. The basic premise of this story involves (though they are never actually named as such) vampires. I was writing this around the end of 2008. Twilight was a big deal, and it seemed like vampires were every where. And it got me thinking... does the world really need another vampire story?

True, I was going to put a sci-fi twist on it that I thought was kind of interesting and novel. Basically, the vampires were created through nanotechnology. The basic idea of the tech was to turn creatures into the perfect soldiers - undying creatures who fed on the blood of those they killed in battle. I'm sure something like this has been used in some book, film or TV show somewhere along the line. As much as I'd like to think it was a wholly original idea, there doesn't seem to be very many of those. But that didn't matter to me much at first. I figured as long as it was entertainingly done and felt fresh that's all I needed. But I spooked myself. I was so sick of vampires myself. If I had known better, I would have just kept writing. It might have taken a little bit, but I'd either have become comfortable with the idea or I would have figured out a new way to approach it.

Instead, I stopped. And I stopped for over a year and a half. Seriously, I did not write a sentence. It was an incredibly large amount of wasted time. I worked on a few things here and there, but for all intents and purposes I was no longer writing the book. Thankfully, I eventually came back to it. I just remember finding the file for the first book on my computer, and reading through it and thinking how much I enjoyed it and what a shame it was that I hadn't kept going. So I wrote the rest of the scene in the carriage before they reach the Durand Supplies building. But I was still afraid of the basic premise of the book. So I put the book away again until the end of the 2011. Another year down the tubes.

Of course, in the end it all worked out. I found the spark again. I realized that I would enjoy the story, and that was a good start. And you know what? It works. The story really works. I enjoy the initial mystery that is set-up. I like the introduction of Varias and his children. I like the sidetrip (via journal) to Tibet. I like the strange intermingling of vampires, tibetan monks and Victorian London. It's just a lot of fun to me, and I feel a bit silly that I ever worried about it.

As soon as this book was done, I dove right into writing the next book, where I had to fend off the dreaded spectre of... technobabble!

Story Behind The Story: The Girl Who Died Backwards Part 2

Alright, so here we are again with Part 2.

Just as a reminder, this post WILL spoil The Girl Who Died Backwards... so only read after you've read the book!

I focused mostly on the story last time, so this time I'm going to focus on two characters that emerged as I wrote the book. One of them is the mysterious Lord Ashmore. I knew I wanted a main villain for the book who would continually plague Grace & Witherbloom by seeding these anachronistic devices around the world. This was to be the main thrust of the series of stories, in fact.

When I write, I can't really plan too much out. I have an idea of where I want the story to head, the basic plot and a solid grasp of the characters. I do a lot of writing in my head before I ever get anything typed in. But I can't get too specific or fill too much out or I fear getting bored with the story and abandoning it. I feel a little bit less like that now, having been through this process. But that's how I felt back in 2008 as I started writing The Girl Who Died Backwards. So, Ashmore was just a vague notion of a character. In fact, in the original draft of the book you only heard about him. We never actually got to see him "in person" as we did in the final book. I added the coda with Ashmore years later after I'd finished book three and decided I really liked with "ending" with him in the early books. I'm happy with the final scene. It does a lot to set up Ashmore and the entire series (including the finale!) in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

Of course, even at this point I didn't know much more about Ashmore other than I planned him to be handsome, charming and very mysterious. But that's all I needed to know.

Whereas Ashmore had been planned from the start of the book, just sketched in very roughly, Wilhelmina was a very late edition. I had written the opening of the story, set in the shadow of The Great Exhibition. I have always had a fascination with the Crystal Palace, The Great Exhibition and World Fairs. The whole concept, the artwork depicting them and the posters have always intrigued me. I really liked the start of the book. I think it's a great introduction to the characters, and I like how they just sort of breeze into the scene and start causing trouble from the start. I realized I needed a maid character to let G&W interupt Bradford's presentation. So I had an older maid named Francine do it. Francine opened up the door, and promptly went away.

I had gotten a little past the point where Helen is refilling Josiah's water reserves when I began to think about maids. Gray haired Francine was a nice stock character to pull out to open a door. But I thought she was a little boring. And I didn't want the start of my story to be boring, even if it was just the character who opened the door. So I started to think of other maid characters I had liked, and I remembered Gwyneth from the Doctor Who episode "The Unquiet Dead." I instantly liked Gwyneth (as many did, and it's down to Eve Myles's winning performance as much as anything) and I decided I wanted to steal her basic plucky character to open my door for me. Her name would be Wilhelmina. And she would open the door and go away as Francine had done. But she'd be a bit mousy. And she'd have a bit of business where she'd save Bradford's machine from being destroyed. But she would go away.

Then something odd happened. Wilhelmina would not go away. I started to think about the fact that I had jettisoned Kathy from the story after the web comic fell through and how I no longer had anyone to ask dumb questions. Josiah doesn't know everything Helen does, but he knows a lot. If it was just the two of them alone, you couldn't get a lot of those questions that arise for the readers answered without some unnecessary extra work. It's not that I minded doing a little extra work, it's just that I don't like exposition to "show" too much and I like it to be delivered on the fly and as economically as possible. So having an audience identification figure that could be introduced to the world of G&W and ask the questions we might ask just made sense.

And then... well, then I had an idea for Wilhelmina that made it absolutely imperative that she was there. Suddenly, she wasn't just an interesting addition to the book. She was essential to it. Sometimes you're writing and things just sort of happen and you think "Oh yes... oh yes this is it! This is how it was meant to be all along!" Wilhelmina's creation was such a moment. But we'll talk about that more once we get to the final book, shall we?

So, I finished the first book. I read it over and over. I gave it to a couple friends to read over. The first section was done, and I quite liked it. I'd go back and tweak this or that, but for the most part the book was published much as it was first written. The notable exceptions were the addition of the scene with Ashmore, and the way I handled labeling the time jumps. I was really afraid of the time jumps being confusing, so I went through several concepts before settling on labeling each new time jump as "Day 1" or "Day 5." Hopefully those ended up being helpful. Now, it was time to write the second story.

I had the story all figured out. It would be adventurous, and take G&W from the foggy streets of London to far off Tibet! It would see an old genre mainstay reinvented in a (hopefully) novel way. And it almost caused me to abandon the entire project...

Story Behind The Story: The Girl Who Died Backwards Part 1

Well, it's been far too long without an update. There are several reasons for this, but I must admit one of them begins with "Sky" and ends with "rim." I'm not a huge gamer, to be honest, but my life has been sucked away recently by a couple of great games. The other reason though was that I wanted to give a little more time between the release of the last story and before I started this series of blog posts.

I've already went through the origin of Grace & Witherbloom in general. Those were spoiler free. These, however, will not be. So please do not read this unless you've read The Girl Who Died Backwards. If you haven't, click the title, download it and then come back here later. :)

Seriously. Spoilers Ahoy!


The Girl Who Died Backwards

As I detailed in the blogs about the origins of G&W, I had decided to turn the planned web comic into a series of novellas. After some reflection, I thought the concept would be more successful this way. Having completed it now, I can definitely say this is true. Certainly from a creative standpoint. I had made some drastic changes from the web comic already, including making Helen a young girl, doing away with the character of Kathy, and setting the story in Victorian England versus the present day.

I knew that I wanted the series of novellas to function a bit like episodes in the season of a TV series. I wanted little threads to pop up in each story that tied them together and ultimately culminated in the final story. Basically, I wanted the stories to be more connected than just a series of random adventures with the same characters. So I hit upon the idea very early of having these anachronistic devices seeded by the "villain" character that G&W had to shut down. But I wasn't sure what I wanted those adventures to be. I had some ideas swirling around in my head that had been there for a long time. One of these was the plot that was going to be the first story of the web comic. But I didn't want that to be my first novella. For one thing, there were some difficulties present in the idea for the story. I felt like it would require more explanation that would be desirable in an introductory story just for people to understand the main plot. This isn't great for a first story as you also have to introduce the main characters. I was able to work through these difficulties, however, as the basic concept for the web comic story became Book 3, The Village That Sleeps. Of course, there is some irony that this was one of my worries about using this plot, as it could certainly be argued the mechanics of The Girl Who Died Backward are not that much easier to explain! But we'll get to that in a moment...

So, I needed a plot! A month or so before I decided to write the novella, I had been kicking around the idea of pitching to Big Finish to write one of their Doctor Who audio adventures. For those who have not heard of Big Finish, they are a fantastic company who produces these amazing audio plays complete with a full cast, dramatic music and sound effects. They really are so well produced and I'm a huge fan. Sadly, after just a day or so of thinking up ideas for adventures that would work well on audio, I found out that BF do not accept unsolicited submissions. However, one idea that I had for a Doctor Who audio adventure was called "Retro." I had only just sketched the concept out a bit in my mind, but it involved the Doctor having to work through a story's events in reverse. It's one of those things that I was surprised hadn't been done before with Doctor Who as I thought it was a novel way to play with time travel as a device.

So I decided to use this basic concept for G&W. In fact, the story was called "Retro" for a while until I decided that the title didn't really fit the feel of the series. The idea of it being a sort of "mystery" that G&W had to solve appealed to me as well. Every mystery, in essence, is a time travel story. It just a thought process. You find clues and have to mentally work through events to reconstruct them. So the psychochronal projector is a sort of literal extension of that idea. I had always intended to put a twist on the mystery though. There is no clear "killer" in the end. Just a procedure that went horribly wrong. The crime was really more in the cover up than the actual death. Some readers have found the ending a bit perplexing. I must admit, I liked the idea of not having it be too clear. In fact, in an original draft it was even MORE obscure. I never say the word "abortion," for a start. Not that I was avoiding the word, just that it felt odd to spell out in the context of the story and the time period it was taking place in. I had actually done quite a bit of research into how abortion was practiced at that time and the public perception of it, which led me to treating it a bit obscurely. To make matters worse, in the original version I left it something of a question as to whether Mary had died because of the botched procedure or whether she had taken her own life over being depressed when she thought Helen had learned her secret. This was a mistake and made it too muddy. So I did make it as clear as I could (without over-explaining) that Mary had likely died because of an abortion gone awry. At this point, hopefully readers will realize the title of the story was a play on words.

I was a bit nervous about the whole abortion angle, though, I must admit. The series was generally meant to be a fun (though not juvenile) adventure series. I sort of liked how that touch of realism crashed into the fantasy world of G&W, though. And it certainly wasn't something I'd ever read about before in that sort of context. It's easy to romanticize the past, and certainly Victorian England is romanticized, for the most part! I mean, if you think about it, even the seedier sides of Victoriana are pretty much embraced and romanticized these days. So having a little of why living back then wasn't great creep in seemed effective to me. But abortion is a touchy subject, to say the least. I didn't want people to feel like I'd used it as a gimmick, and I hope I've treated it thoughtfully here.

I'll continue on with story behind the story of The Girl Who Died Backwards next time, where I'll focus on the development of the villain of the series, and how needing someone to open a door led to the creation of one of the most important characters in the series...

Patiently Waiting...

The topic of this blog is a blatant lie. I'm actually terribly impatient. I'll explain why in a bit.

First of all, let me say that today was an odd one for me. For the first Tuesday in over a month and a half, I had no new installment of Grace & Witherbloom coming out. I didn't need to check that the book had "live" on Amazon, or make sure all the graphics and web pages were updated and sent to the server to go live as soon as the book was officially available. I didn't need to make the entry on Goodreads for the book or post about it on the various forums I frequent.

No, I just got up, went to work and then came home. On one hand it was sort of a relief not to have to do all that extra bit of work. It wasn't much, but it was a time commitment. On the other hand, it was sort of sad. I liked putting out a new novella every week. Thankfully the last week I've had Mass Effect 3 to occupy my time. I thought it was as brilliant as the others. I'm even one of those rare folk who actually liked the ending.

But I digress. The reason I am getting impatient, I must confess, is that I REALLY want to know what people thought of the ending to the series of adventures for Grace & Witherbloom! Were readers surprised? Were they satisfied? Actually, Mass Effect 3 has got me thinking a lot about endings. If you haven't heard, there has been a huge amount of controversy raised about the ending of the game. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say a lot of passionate fans are very angry. Some of it I can understand, though I don't necessarily agree. Some of it seems a bit overblown. But whatever you think of the reaction, it really goes to show you how a bad ending to a story can really make or break a piece of literature, a movie or a vide game.

I hope my ending in The Forgotten Fair fairs (pun definitely intended) better than Mass Effect 3.

Important Notice: For Those Who Downloaded The Forgotten Fair March 20

Hi everyone - if you downloaded The Forgotten Fair on March 20, you have an old version of the book that still contains some silly errors. The corrected version of the book is up now. To get the corrected version, all you have to do is delete the old version from your device and then re-download from Amazon. You don't have to purchase the book again.

This is only going to affect five people at this point, but as those are the people who downloaded it right away, I wanted to make sure your reading experience isn't negatively impacted.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

The Finale...

It's coming. Just a couple more days. Right now I'm doing one last little read through. Just to fine tune here and there if needed, and hopefully catch any dumb mistakes that somehow slipped through the copy editing process. It's strange to think that in just a couple more days, all seven novellas will have been released. I have to say, I'm really pleased with how the final book, The Forgotten Fair, has turned out. It's always annoying when you read a story (or, in this case, a series of stories) and in the end it kind of peters out. But I think you'll be happy. I hope you'll be happy! But at this point all I can do is make it as exciting and interesting as I can and hope you'll agree.

It's interesting, because the end of the series was pretty firm in my mind by the time I'd finished The Girl Who Died Backwards. Not the exact details, but the general gist of it was definitely there. The reason I trailed off on the last "Origin" blog is that I do plan to pick the story up in further blogs that will go behind the scenes of each book. So I can elaborate there. But for now I'll just say that as much as the ending reflects my original plans, it's interesting to me to see all the depth and characters and details in their final form. There are characters here that I never planned when I started. People do things I didn't expect they'd do, especially as I was starting the first novella.

But perhaps the most surprising thing is how personal the book has become for me. My main goal in all of this was to write an exciting, fun and interesting series of novellas. But I enjoy entertainment that has some meat on its bones. And the thoughts that are constantly swirling through my head have certainly seeped into the book. And, in that way, it's become quite personal and meaningful to me. I don't know if it will be for you. It's sufficient for my purposes that you are entertained and satisfied by the ending.

Not long now. And remember...

Change Is A Matter of Time. :)

The Origins of Grace & Witherbloom! Part Three

If you've read the previous installments, you know that Grace & Witherbloom started life as a web comic. That didn't really take off. I had thought about continuing with the web comic on my own. All it takes to start one is some web space and a web site. As a graphic designer, I could accomplish the latter easily enough. And the former didn't require a ton of money. But I realized that sequential illustration might not be for me.

I realized that the story was what I really craved to tell, and that perhaps there was another—more appropriate—way of telling the stories of Josiah and Helen.

Just a note, for this third (and final installment) there are still no story-specific stories. So if you haven't read the books, you can keep reading...

October 2008

I don't really remember the moment I decided to write a series of novellas, but I can say with certainty that Grace & WItherbloom was always conceived that way. At the time, I had imagined they might be printed and wasn't even considering e-books. I didn't yet have a Kindle or iPad. The iPad was still just a glimmer in Steve Job's eye at that point, I believe. Though rumors of it were to spring up shortly thereafter. The Kindle had been introduced, but I didn't understand the appeal. I have since come to love the Kindle, I should hasten to add. But at the time I liked REAL books and really couldn't imagine reading books in any other way.

I went back and forth on how I might present the novellas though. For a while I considered doing illustrated novellas, but that didn't quite work for me on a number of levels. For one thing, I didn't feel my style of illustration was right for the stories I imagined in my head. It was fine for the comic, but I was afraid if I did my own illustrations that the novellas would feel like kid's books or something. And that wasn't the sort of stories I intended to tell. I also considered the audience for my books. Should they be young adult novels? Well, I decided to let the books sort of tell me that as I wrote them. I decided to write the books I wanted to read and then worry about classifying them. My chief concern was making them entertaining and interesting. But, of course, all of this was purely academic until I actually wrote the thing!

The very first decision I made was that I would go with my initial instinct and set the books in Victorian times. As I had said before, I decided to make the web comic set in modern England partly because I couldn't be bothered to do research. This time, I was going to spend the time to make the book as convincing as I cared to. I will be the first to admit that the era in which G&W live is not meticulously researched. I learned enough to avoid major blunders (I hope,) understand the history of the time and get some fun details to sprinkle throughout the books. The reason for this is that I always planned for the books to clip along at a brisk pace. It's just the way I like to write things. It's fairly rare that people will stand around talking in my books. I try to have conversations on the move, and I try to avoid long chunks of exposition or try to work them in fairly naturally. This is really just because this is the way I like to absorb stories as a reader or a viewer.

The next major decision was getting rid of Kathy. I sort of ended up hating Kathy by the end of the one installment of the web comic. I just realized that she'd probably get annoying fast. Kid sidekicks often do. And there is a part of me that thinks it's very odd when people have kid sidekicks and then go into all sorts of dangerous situations. There is a point where you wonder if the adult in the situation isn't a bit psychopathic... or at least highly irresponsible. Having said that, there is a panel in the comic where Josiah is giving Kathy a cup of cocoa, and you get a sense of the size difference between them. That sparked my imagination and I decided I really liked the image of a young girl with this dapper gentleman character. So I decided to de-age Helen without changing her personality or relationship with Josiah at all. I found this dynamic very appealing, and thought it would be something fun to play off of in the stories.

So, I had my characters and I had my setting. Now, I just needed a plot for my first story. Also, I knew in the back of my mind I wanted some larger story to tie all the individual stories together as well...

The Origins of Grace & Witherbloom! Part Two

Now, at last, it can be... oh wait, I already did that bit.

This is the spoiler free continuation of the origin of Grace & Witherbloom! Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention that in a few hours Book V: The Obsidian Emperor will be available for FREE for a very limited time on Amazon. Why am I making it free? Well, I really like this book. I mean, I REALLY like it. I've enjoyed all the books, frankly, but there's just something about the last three books where everything just feels like it's firing on all cylinders. So I'm hoping to lure some more people into the fold (and hopefully they'll like it enough to go back and get the first four books as well as the last two.) Also, if those of you who have been following all along get a free book out of it, so much the better.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

October, 2007

I now had a very general concept for my new web comic. But now I needed some characters to populate it. The word "Grace" was the first one to fall into place into the title. I liked Grace & ______ as I thought it could have a nice ring to it, depending on what name was paired with it. The name Helen Grace just sort of dropped out of the sky, and into my head. I really have no better way of putting it. Nearly an instant after deciding Grace would be the last name for the female protagonist, the name Helen appeared before it and I loved it instantly. The main reason for this is that I loved the world play in the name. Helen Grace. Hell and Grace. Get it? And as soon as she had the name I knew what sort of character she'd be. She'd be the sort of protagonist that simply wasn't the center of many stories (that I had experienced at least) any more. She's sarcastic, arrogant, and occasionally downright rude. She doesn't have much time for anything or anyone other than what she's focused on at the moment. She's the sort of character that often plays second fiddle to the more classically nice and heroic main character in many stories. Those characters can often be very popular, but (especially around the time I first wrote this) are not often given the spotlight. I liked the idea of a central character who could be, at times,quite unlikable. But Helen is also incredibly humane and caring to those closest to her, of course, and she also happens to be right a lot of the time.

To balance her out though, I did think I needed a nicer sort to be her partner. He would be the one who helped smooth things over when Helen was a bit too rude. He'd be the voice of compassion in the face of Helen's somewhat more pragmatic view. This character took shape in my mind very quickly. But, while this character is very likable and affable, he was also an equal sparring partner when it came to a battle of words with Helen. Although he would be Helen's assistant, he'd feel more than free to question her if he needed to. I just needed a name for the character. I liked the dichotomy inherent in Helen's name. So I searched for something similar to use for the last name of this character. The name Witherbloom was something I created by squishing together two opposite states. I loved the sound of it as soon as I came up with it. Also, it has a great deal of significance in the context of the greater story, which will one day become clear. Josiah was chosen simply because it sounded good with Witherbloom, and it was a nice, sturdy name to contrast the more fanciful surname.

In the last blog entry I mentioned that the web comic version of Grace & Witherbloom was significantly different than the book version. But so far all of this, more or less, sounds like the book, right? In reality, there were three very large differences with this version of G&W:

1. The story took place in present day
That's right, these were not "Adventures in Victorian Sci-Fi." They were just... well, adventures in sci-fi, I suppose. I had flirted with setting it in Victorian times at this point, but decided I wanted something more contemporary. The dress Helen wears in the story is oddly old-fashioned and this was a vestige of my original idea, but that's it. One of the minor characters is even sporting a Nike tracksuit and an iPod Shuffle. So modern!

2. Helen was not a little girl
She was a full-grown woman. This is a fairly significant difference, of course.

3. Helen had a niece named Kathy
Kathy served a function that Wilhelmina would later take up, which is that of the "audience identification" figure that allows us to be introduced to the world of Grace & Witherbloom. She was a young girl who wore a pink hoodie and was dropped off at the front door of Grace & Witherbloom's house by a taxi at the start of the story. She was not Helen's biological niece, however.

The basic "concept" behind the premiere story eventually became the one I used for "The Village That Sleeps," though the actual execution of the concept was completely different. After sketching out the basic panel layouts, I began working on the comic in earnest. At that time, I was still drawing things by hand and then scanning them in to color them. The thing that I discovered while doing this ten page comic was that comics were hard work. I had done some comics now and again, of course, but this was the first sustained narrative of any sort I'd done in quite a while. I also packed an ton of detail into the panels, so penciling, inking and then coloring the story took a ton of my time.

By the end of it, I sort of wondered why I had wanted to be a comic book artist. The truth of it was that I probably didn't have the patience to be a comic artist. I loved telling stories and I liked comics as a storytelling medium but the amount of work that went into it might just not be for me. Especially when I wasn't a 100% happy with the results. Despite this fear, I still wanted to enter the comic. I was proud of it, even though I worried my art skills weren't really up to the task. So, I sent the comic off to Zuda and awaited their decision. At this point, I should say that I do plan to share the comic with everyone at some point. It may seem silly, but I'm a bit hesitant to show it until the books are all out. The reason for this is that I don't want people to see the comic and then build a mental image of the characters based on them. I'd rather you did that on your own based on the descriptions in the book. Although their physical characteristics in the comic are similar to what I had in my head when I wrote the book, they are not the same. But some time after the final book is published I promise to put the pages up for all to read.

February, 2008

I don't remember how long after I submitted the comic it was before the reply came, but on February 26, 2008 I got this rejection:

"We here at Zuda are fortunate enough to have dozens of excellent submissions, from a wide variety of artists, to review each week. Our editorial team carefully reads each and every submission. After much consideration, we have determined that other comics are a better fit for our editorial needs at this time.

Your characters and their motivations need development.
Work on your technical proficiency and craftsmanship.
Work on creating a better sense of depth and dimension in your artwork."

Now, I could get behind the latter two. I knew my artwork needed work. I knew the lettering needed work. The coloring was a bit amateurish. The first one kind of confused me, though. In ten pages I thought I had established the characters as well as I could considering they were meant to be sort of mysterious. Now, many years later, as I look back on it, I can totally understand what they are saying. The truth was, I don't think I introduced the concept in the best way possible with the comic. So, that was that. And I'll be honest, I was nervous about whether making a weekly web comic would really be right for me after my experience with the first ten pages. So I felt like it might have been for the best.

The thing is, Grace & Witherbloom were never far from my mind. I had really come to like the main characters and some of the concepts I had come up with. So for the next eight months or so they would pop back in to say hello and remind me they existed. And usually I'd shoo them away. But I would think about them. And I would think about the fact that if a comic hadn't felt quite right for them, and I didn't want to commit to drawing a comic series... maybe their adventures could take some other form?

It wasn't until October of 2008 that I finally took action on the thoughts that had been swirling through my head...

To Be Continued.

The Origins of Grace & Witherbloom! Part One

Now, at last, it can be told!

Last Tuesday saw the release of The Light on the Moor, which told the origin of Josiah Witherbloom. To celebrate, I thought I'd write a blog (well, a series of blogs, actually) talking about the origin of Grace & Witherbloom. No worries, there won't be any story spoilers here so feel free to read even if you haven't started reading the books. But if you haven't, what are you waiting for? :)

July, 2007

The story of Grace & Witherbloom begins over four years ago. As I type that, I can't actually believe it. But there you go.

In 2007, DC Comics launched the (now defunct) imprint called Zuda. the idea was that the site would act as a sort of "American Idol" of web comics. Creators would enter a 10-page debut story for a possible web comic. The Zuda team selected what they thought were the best comics and concepts, and then readers would read the comics and vote for which one they wanted to become an ongoing comic on Zuda.

I was really excited by this prospect. Part of this was that I was deeply jealous of my friend David Willis and the amazing success he's had in the web comics world with strips like Shortpacked. David and I met in high school, and although we haven't actually seen each other in real life for well over thriteen years now I have always kept track of him and his projects. He's a funny and genuinely nice guy and it makes me happy to see him making a living making comics. It also makes me seethe with barely contained jealousy. I always wanted to be a comic book writer and artist. There's just one thing that separates David and I. He worked his butt off at it. Me? I had a lot of raw talent and a bunch of wishes. Also, I was a tad bit lazy with. But more on that next time.

So, here was my chance! I was going to have a web comic! Success would be mine! But, what to do? What comic to make? I had a couple ideas floating around my head over the years for various comics. Some superhero stuff, some sci-fi stuff and even some "everyday life" kind of ideas. But none of the old ideas felt quite right. So I started to think about the sorts of stories I like to read about and what would be fun to draw day in and day out to get a weekly strip out. That's when I hit upon a fantastic idea... Doctor Who! The thing you always hear about Doctor Who and why it's so great is that it has such a great format. Now, that's not all it took to make a multi-media phenomenon that is about to celebrate it's 50th anniversary, of course. But it is a huge asset. The Doctor can go anywhere in space and time. Just think about that. The possibilities are endless. Only tight budgets have him constantly ending up in London or some small village in the UK. So, what if I could do something like that?

I've been a Doctor Who fan since I was very little. I have found out this is somewhat rare for American Doctor Who fans my age. Most of them either found it in their teens or even later. I've been watching it since I was 8 years old. I used to stay up incredibly late at night to watch in on PBS. Which, for my eight-year-old self, was 10:30pm. They played the 4th Doctor years on a loop. You have to realize, when I first started watching I knew NOTHING about the show. I was watching it in a void without any sort of coverage and absolutely no one I knew had any clue about what it was. A few years later random teachers in their 30's might nod appreciatively if I mentioned it. But that was it. Certainly no other kids knew about it! (It's been even more difficult to find fans of my other great love at the time, Are You Being Served. In fact, it wasn't until I was in college and met my friend Laura that I met another real-life fan of the show.) So when the Doctor changed his face at the end of Logopolis, I was flabbergasted! I was even more confused when the next week they played the 4th Doctor's first story, Robot. Eventually though, my PBS station did play all the stories that are still in existence starting with the 1st Doctor. When I was a kid, I had no idea that the stories were of varying length. PBS stripped them all together into one huge story and aired the whole thing in a night, regardless of length. So for stories that lasted 6 episodes or more this was a HUGE time commitment, and I certainly was not able to stay awake for all of them.

I explain all this to say, Doctor Who is practically ingrained in my DNA. So trying to create a series that could have that sort of mish-mash of genres and elements really appealed to me. I could draw pretty much anything I wanted to, for a start! My initial idea was to have two leads who were time-travelling sleuths. So it would be ____ & _____: Temporal Detectives. I didn't have names at this point, obviously. There are two big flaws with this. First of all, time travel is a pretty well-worn thing. Also, in my mind Doctor Who kind of owns it. I didn't want to remake Doctor Who, I just wanted a story with similar possibilities. Next, the whole mystery angle was also kind of limiting. I like a good mystery, sure, but I didn't want to be writing them all the time. I suppose in some ways The Girl Who Died Backwards in the last little echo of this first idea, though certainly no plots were thought of at this point.

So after doing some thinking, I decided I would come up with a way to have my two leads be long-lived individuals. I played around with ______ & ______: Immortal Detectives too... but again, I wanted to lose the detective angle. So I decided these two would have some foreknowledge of historical events. Now, I can't actually say yet HOW this is, because it hasn't been revealed in the books yet! But I thought my solution was pretty novel and I liked it. My plan was to have the first 10-page story finished just in time for Zuda's launch in fall of 2007.

However, while the comic I submitted to them was, indeed, called Grace & Witherbloom it differed from the eventual books in many ways...

To Be Continued!

GoodReads Q&A Group

Hello everyone! Or the two of you. Actually, I have no idea how many people read this. In any case, I wanted to let you know that a GoodReads Q&A Group is now live and there you can ask all those burning questions about the Grace & Witherbloom series, the individual books or (should you for some reason be interested) me.

Right now it's very funny as I'm the only member. I'm not TOTALLY sure how many people will actually have any questions at this point, but hey it's there for future use if nothing else.

Things have gone very well in the Witherbloomiverse (remind me not to use that word again) the last few days. The third book was released and some very nice reviews are coming in from Amazon for the first and second books. There are some very nice ratings on GoodReads as well. Sales-wise things are going well (thank you for your support!) and seem to be fairly steady. It's exciting that there are already sales of book 3 considering a lot of people may not have gotten to the first book yet. I know how it is with some readers. I'm one of them.

Funnily enough, writing this book has really got me wanting to read some of the books I've got sitting around (either in real life or in my Kindle) and I think I may have to start cracking them open in between doing final read-throughs on future books. I find it strange sort of side-effect, but writing these books has made me realize I don't read nearly as often as I used to or would like to.

Also, I really want to play Skyrim. But I am afraid to until all the books are done and launched. I hear Skyrim will steal away your life if you are not careful. And, I have Mass Effect 3 pre-ordered... so...

The lesson is, there really should be more non-working hours in the day so I can read and play video games.

On Beginnings...

There really is no substitute for experience.

For instance, if I were to go back and do it again, I might have rethought the way "The Village That Sleeps" begins. Then again, I might have decided that the way the book opens was the best option, dramatically. And this is my chief concern.

However, Amazon chooses a chunk of a book to show for its "Look Inside" feature and I always check them after the appear (the author has no control over it) to see how much of a preview someone is given. The first two books start off right into the action. There's strange scientific experiments and dangerous mountain climbing to be found there. But, the third book starts with... making porridge. And serving porridge. And a bit of very chaste flirting. Part of me wonders if that's not quite as "hooky" as previous books. They don't even get to the bit of business with Helen and the porridge which I think is sort of fun from a character standpoint. Oh well.

Then again, some people might really like porridge making and flirting. It could be a whole new audience.

Author! Author?

The other day someone who had read my book mentioned me in a tweet. But rather than indicating my Grace & Witherbloom account (@gandwbooks) he sent the message to my personal account. Which, made sense as it's not as if it was difficult to find and I thought it was a lot of fun to hear back from someone who head read my book. He also kindly left a review on Amazon. Which reminds me - if you've read the book, if you can review it on Amazon and/or GoodReads that would be amazing!

But anyway, I digress. I looked at my personal twitter account and realized it was very much "branded" with my role as a graphic designer. And under my picture the description read "Graphic Designer, Illustrator and a few other things besides." I realized that I was missing something there. So I changed it to read "Author, Graphic Designer, Illustrator and a few other things besides." Which seems fairly straightforward, I suppose.

But here's the thing. It was the first time I'd really thought of myself as an author. Or at least, it was the first time I'd ever actually stated I was an author. Oh sure, I'd filled in little blanks on Amazon, Good Reads or elsewhere that were labeled "Author" with my name when I was uploading the books or starting up an author profile page. But this was something different. It was an odd feeling. And I wondered why I hadn't really thought of myself that way before. What did I think being an author was, anyway if part of me didn't quite believe I was now?

I suppose part of this stems from the fact that when I was writing these books, I didn't actually tell a ton of people. And when it did come up, I always felt a bit weird about it. The reaction was generally something along the lines of "Oh, how nice." In my head, I felt like this was the equivalent of them saying "I'll believe it when I see it." Now, this was not a universal reaction, and close friends and family who found out were generally very supportive. And I admit, some of this was probably created in my own head. But I think there are a lot of people who say they are writing books. A lot of them write those books, and then don't do anything with them. Some write them and publish them. And a greater number simply never finish. So I didn't feel particularly special writing a book. I felt like just another of the numberless masses who starts writing a book with a head full of ideas and a bunch of good intentions. This was probably somewhat magnified by the fact that there are HUGE gaps between the times I actually was writing the book over the course of three years.

In any case, I think I got a bit stuck in that mode. There are a ton of people that I talk to every day (especially at work) that I have not told. This is partly because it doesn't come up in the natural course of a conversation, and partly because it seems like a strange thing to spring on someone. But there's also a part of me that wonders if people will see self-publishing an e-book as REALLY being an author. Maybe I've wondered the same thing myself. I have not had to go out and get an agent. I did not go from publisher to publisher trying to get a book deal. I never have even tried any of those things. I had planned to originally, but about a year ago I decided I'd give self-publishing a go. And I haven't regretted it so far. Intellectually, I really do think I'm an author. I wrote books and now people all over the world are paying to read these books. What else would it take to be an author? It's just too bad realizing something intellectually doesn't make a person truly feel it emotionally.

When an author is published through more traditional means, there is an implied legitimacy to it. A series of professionals (agents, publishers, etc.) have read this book (or part of this book) and made the determination that it is both fit for consumption by the public and also possibly desirable by that same group. There is a certain imagined "seal of quality" that comes with this. Of course, in reality terrible books are published every day. So this entire system can be meaningless.

On the other hand, the fact that anyone can upload their book up to Amazon with no financial risk at all means that there is going to be a LOT of terribly written books out there. And it's only going to get worse. And I say this fully recognizing that there are sure to be people who will lump my book into this category after they've read it. It's inevitable. So I don't blame people if they eye my books with some suspiciousness. And it's also why I celebrate the brave people who decided to give it a try anyway. Because there are a lot of good books out there. And taking away the (sometimes capricious) middle-men will likely open doors for people who might have not been able to make it by more traditional means. Not because they weren't good writers, but because the timing wasn't quite right or they weren't as good at marketing themselves as someone else might be. And then there's the other group of people (like me) who feel their work is good enough to take the more traditional publishing route but simply choose not too.

Now, whether my books really ARE good is not up to me anymore. I think they are, and they are certainly as good as I can make them. And as I read them over again for their last edits before publishing, I have to say I really do enjoy them. And I can be kind of picky. Publishing your own work for the world to see takes a measure of confidence. I really would not bother to sell these books if I did not think they were entertaining. But then there's that part of me that worries and wonders. Are you like those poor souls on American Idol who have been told by their family and friends that they are great singers, and then they get on a national stage and cant' carry a tune to save their lives?

Of course, in the end, despite all of these doubts and questions I did put "Author" in that little twitter description. And ever since then, I've noticed that more and more I'm actually starting to believe it and be more comfortable with it.

Don't Watch The Scale or The Psychology of A Sales Ranking

So, today I reached another milestone in my venture into self-publishing. My books are no longer free. Both Books 1 & 2 in the Grace & Witherbloom series—The Girl Who Died Backwards and The Flood Lily—will now set people back a whopping $.99 each (or the equivalent in other countries.)

Now, I was fully aware of what was coming next. After a surge of downloads of well over a thousand books for the first story and hundreds and hundreds of downloads for the second book, things would slow down. Also, the books would go from being listed in Amazon's free book rankings (where they sat comfortably around #1,000 of all the millions of Kindle books and occupied the top 10 and top 20 of their subgenres, reaching #1 a couple of times) to being listed in the paid section. In the paid section, all of those downloads would no longer be counted.

What I wasn't quite ready for was the psychological effect of going from about #1,000 or so to #280,000 in the rankings. Kindle provides this little graph of your sales rank, and there was a VERY long red line indicating the plummet in rank of the books. It felt as if Amazon had cast my books out into a deep and dark pit.

I had been obsessively checking the downloads, reveling in shock at the huge number of people snapping them up. Now, things have gone quite a bit slower. But I realized something. When you are trying to lose weight they tell you to not check the scale every day. With weight, this is because your weight can fluctuate a lot from day to day due to water weight. It's better to only check your weight once and week so some of these fluctuations are smoothed out and you can concentrate on the accomplishment of the full week. I realized that by checking the sales of the book constantly I was really only driving myself crazy in the same way as someone jumping on a scale every day. And I was letting the heady (and artificially inflated) rush of free book downloads get in the way of enjoying my REAL accomplishment.

As of today, about 12 or so copies of my book have sold for money. Now, that's small potatoes compared to the numbers I was getting, but they are no less special and important than the hundreds and hundreds of downloads that came before. They mean that someone saw the description and perhaps read the sample on Amazon and decided they were worth spending real, hard-earned money on them. And that's an amazing feeling.

Now, I should point out that this doesn't mean I'm not eternally grateful for the people who downloaded the first or second book for free. Quite the opposite. They helped get the book exposure. They are reading them now. They are writing lovely reviews on Amazon and rating it highly on Goodreads.com. They are all wonderful people who saw something completely new and gave it a go. And now hopefully they'll keep wanting to read the books. And they'll tell their friends. But all of these benefits take time to sink it. It's a long game.

So it's time to step off the scale. Sales ranking be damned, I say! I want these books to be successful. I'd love to be a writer full time, and I'm committed to making it happen. So sales are important. They are critical, in fact. But I think it's good to keep them in the proper perspective and really enjoy even these early days, no matter how many red arrows and plunging graph lines Amazon might show me. Oh, and it should be pointed out that it only took a few sales and now the books have shot up to around #40,000 or so in the rankings. So a little goes a long way, and that all happened in a day.

To conclude with, I have posted the synopsis and title for Book 3, due out February 21st on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here too.

Grace & Witherbloom: The Village That Sleeps, Book 3 in the continuing series. What happened to the residents of the picturesque Welsh village of Ddubryn? And why have the authorities closed it off to the rest of the world? Josiah Witherbloom must enter the village alone to uncover its secrets, but finding answers to the mysteries of the village that sleeps will become—quite literally—a matter of life and death.

Schedule Change! Two Weeks is Just Too Long...

So, I had a realization today. Two weeks is just too long between book releases. There are a couple factors involved in this, but part of it is the way that Amazon handles the Kindle releases. I'm fast approaching 1000 downloads for the first book (which is great!) but I found out that once that book switches over to a paid book, all of those sales just disappear ranking-wise. So the visibility of the book will drop down again from the heights it reached when it was free. Of course, the free promo is still great to get readers to try the book, but I think two weeks is just too long to go for a new book series just starting out. So... I'm changing the schedule!

The new schedule is:

Book 2: Tomorrow, February 14! Just in time for Valentines. You know what your loved one might like? An e-book, of course. (Hey, you can't blame me for trying.)

Book 3: February 21

Book 4: February 28

Book 5: March 3

Book 6: March 13

Book 7: March 20

So now the books will be coming out weekly and available on Tuesdays! Thanks for everyone who has supported the book so far... and I can't wait for you to read the rest.

855 and Counting...

855... that's the number of book downloads of The Girl Who Died Backward that have occurred so far at the moment I write this. The free promo period for the first book has been a big hit so far. The bulk of those were on Friday and Saturday. Sunday seems to have slowed down a bit but that only seems natural. There are two more days to go, but I have to say I'm already excited. The book placed in the top 10 of the two sub-genres it's listed in (even making it to #1 on the chart for a while) in the US, UK and Germany. I'm intrigued to see what happens once it's no longer free and starts to sell at the list price of $.99 (or the equivalent in non-US countries) and I'm also interested to see if people will start reviewing it.

There has been a lot of talk about free (or even $.99) Kindle books and whether people actually read them or just end up collecting them, despite their intention to read them eventually. It's an interesting question, and one I probably won't be able to answer in terms of my own experience for a while yet. I think with this sort of thing it's a marathon and not a sprint. Most people have a big reading list piled up (I know I do!) and a new book by an untested author might not jump to the top of the pile. So I'll have to be patient. But I have to say—at the end of the day—I'm delighted that 855 people (so far) could potentially be reading my book. I would love to make a living at writing and hope people will buy this book and the future installments... but I've got to admit, just getting the book out there is really exciting for me.

I just "locked down" Book 2. If you've got Book 1 you already know the title, but I'll announce it on the website (along with the synopsis) on February 17. Having read it several times again in the last couple of days while making final edits, I realized that although I think Book 1 is a great introduction to the characters, Book 2 actually feels a bit more representative of the series in both its tone and execution. I'm really happy with the way it turned out because writing Book 2 ended up being the hardest of all of them, with the possible exception of Book 7. But I'm exceptionally happy with the way it turned out and can't wait to share it with everyone February 24.

Now, I'm off to watch the return of The Walking Dead... I hope they get off that farm soon!

The Girl Who Died Backwards is out... and FREE!

Well, the moment is finally here! Book I: The Girl Who Died Backwards is out worldwide and it's totally free for five days until 2.14.12. So, it's really real at last. I woke up very early today. Which was good because I needed to update the website, post to Facebook, post to Twitter, update the relevant message board posts I'd made and so on and so forth! Now that all of that is done, I'm finally exhaling and enjoying the moment.

Eleven people have already gotten the book as I write this, and I find this utterly amazing. I'm not sure how many of those were before or after the book was free as Amazon doesn't seem to break that down. But I don't care either way, of course. I'm just so happy people are reading it. To me it is amazing that eleven people were interested enough to give it a go. And most of my close friends are still asleep at this early in the morning so I know it wasn't all them. So far people in the US, the UK and Germany have all downloaded the book. As I said... utterly amazing.

There is a huge sense of relief with the release of the first book, of course. And a bit of trepidation. You see, I really want to know what people think. Whether it's good or bad, I want to hear all of it. Of course anyone on a creative endeavor hopes people think it's good and I really hope people will come back for parts 2-7. One of the things I really like about the book is that just seems to ramp up more and more with each book and gets wider in scope.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me so far and thanks in advance to all the people who give my book a shot. It really does mean a lot.

Who Was the Idiot That Set This Release Date?

Seriously, why did Book I—The Girl Who Died Backwards—have to come out on February 10 instead of last Friday? No reason, really. It's all done and edited and uploaded. It has been for some time now. I just have to hit a button and it's all done. I guess I had this notion in my head that I wanted a week or two of buffer time. Just in case I needed to go back and change something before release. But I haven't, and I don't need to. But everything says February 10, and even though I know there are very few people who are even paying attention at this point, it would be weird to just release it on Amazon, right? Right?

I will admit I'm not always the most patient person. I used to be very patient, actually. It was probably one of my best qualities. But as I've gotten older I seem to be less patient. There's probably some reason for this but I can't say what that might be. But one of the side effects is that the past week has driven me nuts. I just want the book out there. I want people reading it! I want to see if anyone will read it! In my first post I talked about feeling like someone setting up for a party and worrying if anyone would come. Well now I feel like someone who set up that party a month early!

The fact is, there is plenty for me to be doing. I should start doing the final read through of the next book in the series, for a start. It'll be out a short two weeks after the Girl Who Died Backwards, after all. Plenty of time to get it properly formatted for Amazon and do a last series of edits before publication, but I could get started now. I think I just needed a break after the intensity of getting the site up, getting the trailer done, and doing all the final edits of Book I.

But what a gloriously intense time it's been though. I really could do this full time for a living. Maybe I will start the final read through on the next book...

The trailer is here, and the site is live...

Well, here we go.

It's the start of... oh, what is it the start of? Time will tell, I suppose. It's partly up to me and partly out of my hands, like everything else.

But it's an exciting day for me. The trailer is now available at the brand-new GraceandWitherbloom.com and you can find it on YouTube here.

I thought a lot about the trailer. I knew I wanted to do one for a long time. I think I decided to do it about halfway through writing the book. But the contents of what it would be changed a lot in my head. I wanted something fairly straightforward that also gave a real taste of the "feel" of the book. Some were probably a bit too ambitious and above my means currently and some just felt too much like a boring advertisement. So what I settled on was presenting the speech that opens the first book, The Girl Who Died Backwards.

(Oh yes, I forgot to mention... the first title and synopsis is up! You can read it on the website if you haven't already.)

But I digress. Once I decided on that speech it just felt right. I found some really wonderful music from composer Kevin Macleod that felt absolutely perfect, as though it had been written for Grace & Witherbloom. I put together the words with the music, with myself providing the dramatic reading. Maybe I was up too late, but while recording it I thought it didn't sound too bad and maybe I could use it as-is for the trailer. It would certainly be easier than going out to find someone to record the lines.

I woke up the next day and listened to what I had recorded, and realized I might have gone temporarily insane the night before. Just to confirm, I had my partner and my best friend Laura listen to it. Laura laughed out loud about 10 seconds into it. Everyone should have a friend like Laura. She saves you from doing some really stupid things. She and Paul both agreed that, while it was nicely dramatic, it had one flaw. My terrible, terrible British accent. Now, I was under no illusion that I was able to mimic a British accent well. But I thought it wasn't terrible. I was very, very wrong. I am no Gwyneth Paltrow.

This realization firm in my mind, I then reached out to various message boards I was a member of for a suitable reader. A volunteer stepped up. His name is David Nagel. His website describes him as a "spiffingly nice guy" and I certainly can't disput that. He went through about seven takes, patiently listening to my feedback and doing a great job in the process.

We are only ten days away from the launch of The Girl Who Died Backwards! It's almost impossible for me to comprehend that all the time working on the book is now going to see an actual result. As I said, it's impossible for me to gauge what sort of reaction the books will get. But to me it's going to be an accomplishment just getting them out in front of people.