Quick Chat

So, I’ve gotten what I considered a bulk chunk of new subscribers, and I just want to make a few things clear.

I am a fantasy writer. I tend to write in what I think of as the in-between spaces.

I am not into market writing. I have a great inability to write according to trends, and I’m in the middle of what is turning into a beast of a project that I’m even questioning my timeline for getting things done. Claws of Ice Wings of Fire.

It is a fantasy with a heavy romance subplot. For purposes of future marketing on my part when I’m talking about this novel. It’s “dawnward fantasy.

I went on an entire spiel about it in my previous post.

A week ago, I was running around GalaxyCon in Raleigh, NC, and I’ve been, to be honest, exhausted since. I can deal with crowds, but as an introvert, that social battery started draining the moment I walked in, and by the time my husband and I drove back to our Airbnb, I binged watched X-Men 97 fell asleep and then went home feeling displaced, and it took me a week to regain normalcy back.

So, you folks almost didn’t get a post. In fact, I wasn’t planning on writing anything this week, and then I made a mistake asking how one gets a beta reader in Substack’s notes.

And to be clear, I wasn’t thinking I was going to be bombarded with offers and I needed time to think. So here is where I’m at:

The manuscript is currently at 141K+ words long. Clearly I need to shorten it for this endeavor even more. The rough draft actually ended at 160k+ Yes, it was very bloated then, mostly due to epic levels of redundancy on my part.

The “I need to edit this but don’t want to get started and I’m using SubStack to force myself to do so” version is up for a few more months before I will take it down because that version of the story is out of date and I’m not applying an update patch.

Here is a quick plot:

Woman after a horrific tragedy and magical accident. Woman finds herself in a new world and learns her newly found magical powers are turning her into ice. However, the only person who can help her is a telepath, and she doesn’t trust him.

The story is an emotional journey, not a heroic one.

Yes, I realize that isn’t a good pitch, but I didn’t write it like one. I don’t have time. I’m editing this while having two dogs staring at me. These two to be exact:

Yes, they are outside in this photo and would like to act out this photo again

They want me to go outside already.

The old first chapter is here, but it is not what I will be asking you to read over:

Claws of Ice Wings of Fire: Chapter 1

This is the updated list of the content warnings:

• Domestic/emotional abuse

• Child loss due to murder of children

• Suicide ideation / self-harm

• Grief

• Fantasy racism and ableism

Also, now that I have gathered my thoughts after being bombarded with offers, I want to share where I am at: Here’s where I am at:

There is a grant I am trying to win that will help towards editing the novel. I have to submit to this grant by Oct. 7. I will know sometime in November if I won or not.

What I need to get done before then is to figure out how much money I should ask for. It’s less money than previous years. There are fewer winners than previous years. So it’s competitive this year. There is a good chance I will not be a winner. This is through an art council for a five-county region in my state. It is open to both artists and writers. My plan if I don’t win?

I shake a magic 8 ball

“Reply hazy, try again.”

Rolls D20 for a skill check to ask magic 8 ball again for a more positive outlook with zero modifiers:

rolls a 2

Tries to be surprised at my foul luck

Anyway, I think the best thing for me to do is ask for a beta reader to go through my 1st chapter.

I need a sample of my writing to submit, so why not the 1st chapter of the very project I am asking for?

That is what I need soon. Just a 1st chapter beta read. I am trying to give myself enough time away from my work so I can work on it again.

What about the rest of the manuscript?

Folks, I’m going to be honest with you, I feel like I need to be picky about this.

I am dyslexic and also a Black writer, which, honestly, shouldn’t matter, but, um, have you looked out through the window of the internet? It’s a place right now.

Yes, a few of my experiences as both have inspired some of the happenings in the novel. Not 1:1. While I’m not here to hit readers over the head with things, I tend to be a realist. And because of this, somehow, it makes me “woke.” In fact, to some extreme individuals, my mere existence is considered “woke.”

There is a group of fantasy readers and writers who expect me to be “universal” and be “more like them.” That the only goal of writing fantasy is escapism or to take up the mantle of Tolkien and just copy the themes he used.

On the flip side of that, folks, I am not here to write a “correct” representation of my race or culture, for that matter. In fact, most of the cast of this novel are shades of brown. I did not design them based off of a particular culture. The entire story takes place in a secondary world. All main characters, save one, are not human. They have their own world, with inequalities that reflect the nature of their world. I am not here to write a character following the “correct” representation of dyslexia either. If you think there is a “correct” representation that is supposed to be relatable to everyone, you are very incorrect.

So basically, if you have a narrow view of fantasy, its subgenres and what a person should and shouldn’t write about, I don’t believe you want to read anything I write. Save us both the trouble. Here is a goodbye bag of mixed nuts. Sorry if you have a peanut allergy. It’s not a good pack of mixed nuts because I’m cheap. I know they’re more like “peanuts and friends” rather than mixed nuts.

This novel was originally written to be a cozy fantasy romance, but apparently I’m terrible at writing “true cozy” so it might read like a bit of a cozy fantasy novel but it isn’t.

Anything else?

No, not right now. Eventually I will have fiction to present. So much of my year has been focused on getting edits to a certain point. I have a short story in mind. No, I’ve yet to start it.

I’m almost done with Nona the Ninth. All I can say is I want the onion to end. Like, how many layers to this onion are there?