I Return! With Saving Emily

Wow, it was forever since I posted. I am so sorry to have vanished like that. After I got sick, I basically spent the next month and half treading water with homework while trying to get a costume sewn for my part in the medieval fair this year and…yeah, it was chaos incarnate.

I come offering some news, though? My first story has gone up on Kindle. ^_^ I’ll post a link to this post once it gets finalized up there, and also on another page where I’ll keep a running list of my published works. Especially since I managed to create my own version of Tortall, curses. But more on the Spiral City later.

What I really wanted to talk about in this post was the story that will soon be up, Saving Emily. It feels really strange to me that it is the first story I’m ever publishing. Not because I’m not proud of it or anything. I love my characters, Isaac and Emily. I’ve always loved action flicks, and it was a lot of fun to actually write one of those gruff heroes. And then I threw a teenage girl at him. X3. Poor baby, but it was so entertaining to do. At the same time, I saw so much growth in both Isaac and Emily that it really made me happy with what I did. Once a lot of my works become available, you’ll see that I’m BIG about character interaction and growth and an inner arc of change, to the point I sometimes forget I need a plot (oops).

At the same time I feel proud, I feel like I really stepped out of what I normally write for this, and it might end up being a one-short type of story. See, it’s a sci-fi/horror tale.

Nothing against horror readers and writers! Honestly, I think if I was a slightly different person I would love horror. The elements of the story are amazing, and I like incorporating facets of the genre into my own work without making it fall into the genre itself. Why?

…Because I have too much imagination for my own good.

Yeah, times like these my brain is actually a hindrance rather than an aid. Normal people can go see those movies, get the tar scared out of them, and have a laugh about it later and go home. I might laugh, but it will be hysterically. Sleep will be slow to come. Nightmares, not so much.

Hell, people, the endings of the Portal games gave me nightmares! Even the little two-player side game in the second one!

Writing Saving Emily was such an extra challenge to me. I had to have help even plotting it out, because of my lack of experience with horror, and then writing it was slow going due to the fact that writing the creepier scenes at night freaked me out. And thank you, Mel, for having me put the stupid thing underground in TUNNELS. Which my brain then went, “Oh, hey, water, water makes it creepier, yes?” And the answer to that is yes, water does make it creepier, especially for someone like me who is mildly afraid of water in the sense that if I can avoid it, I will. (…Before anyone gets an WEIRD ideas, I mean things like lakes, ponds, bad thunderstorms, sewers, that sort of water.) Editing at night was not any better, but thankfully my professor who was serving as editor was very patient with me about my reluctance to even look at the silly thing after dark. And I still had bad moments where I’d jerk away if something so much as brushed my shoulders afterwards.

I’m so glad some of my work is now up though, and even if it is a little outside of what I normally write, I feel like it is a step in the right direction. So go read it!

EDIT: It’s up! Saving Emily on Kindle.