Step 57: Stand By Me

In light of how many hours I put into the darn thing, I feel compelled to write a personal review of Final Fantasy XV, which I finally finished a few days ago. It's taken me that long to let the finale sink in and let my thoughts percolate in my brain, but after rewatching the ending several times remember the days before YouTube when you could only watch a scene the one time you played it?? haha yeah those days sucked and reading 3904820934787 fan theories on how to interpret the ending, I think I'm ready to share my feelings about it. (Heavy end-game spoilers and .gifs after the jump--you've been warned!)

Step 56: Confess (Day 11/12/13)

NGL, I've been slacking off on #authorconfession because I've been playing waaaaaay too much Final Fantasy XV.

Just look at this smarmy fuck. How can you not spend obscene amounts of time gazing into his sultry eyes?

So without further ado, here are my catch-up answers:

Day 11. WORD COUNT REPORT!

At the present time, I have three WIPs in various stages of completion. Their word counts are as follows:

• WIP #1: ~90,000 words (way too long)
• WIP #2: ~70,000 words (much more reasonable)
• WIP #3: ~50,000 words (but I expect it to land somewhere between WIP #1 and WIP #2's length)
• Final Fantasy XV: 90+ hours (I have no life)

Considering it's only been fairly recently that I've taken writing seriously, the fact that I've literally written nearly three entire books in less than two years definitely feels like I've leveled up as a creative artist.

Fist bump, anyone? No? Well, okay then.

Day 12. Rate your WIP from tame to steamy.

Here's a little TMI tidbit about myself: I love steamy books. When I was an early teenager, I used to pilfer my mom's trashy romance novels from her when she wasn't looking and skip ahead to the hot stuff. I wrote filthy Star Wars fanfiction long before I ever lost my virginity, and now that I'm hoping to write professionally for a living, you can bet I'm going to try and shoehorn sexy scenes into my WIPs when and where appropriate.

Final Fantasy XV: The gif(t) that keeps on giving.

That said, there actually isn't a lot of gratuitous smut in any of my WIPs. They're contemporary YA books, not adult romance novels, which means that the sexy stuff serves the plot instead of visa versa. WIP #1 has a few steamy kisses, but no actual copulation; WIP #2 does have a sex scene in it, but the deed is less Cruel Intentions-level sexy and more The 40 Year Old Virgin-level embarrassing; WIP #3 depicts yet another sex scene, but one of the characters is fantasizing about a former lover rather than the one currently between their legs.

Like this, but even more awkward.

Day 13. Who'd make the worst couple in your WIP?

Focusing on the most "complete" of my WIPs, I'd argue that the worst couple in my MS had already gotten together and broken up prior to the events of the book. It's one of the sources of conflict in the story--ex flame meets new flame, chaos ensues--and as bad as they were for each other when they were a couple, at the same time they were seemingly the only people on the planet who could love the other in spite of their faults.

I'm terrified of accidentally spoiling the FFXV plot by looking for more gifs, so here's one from the Bad Romance video instead.

And that's all for today! Keep an eye out for more thinly veiled excuses to spam this blog with Final Fantasy XV trash #authorconfession posts!

Step 55: Confess (Day 9/10)

I finally figured out how to save all those photos Prompto takes in Final Fantasy XV to my hard drive, and boy do I have some gems.

brb getting my ass kicked

I still have a million about 149 more to go through, so until I get them all downloaded I'll catch up on yesterday and today's #authorconfession:

Day 9. Meanest thing you've done to a character?

I suppose the easy answer to this would be to simply refer readers of this blog to yesterday's post, but where's the fun in that? Other than physically killing one off, the second meanest thing I've probably done to any character is put them through a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. A series of unfortunate events, if we're running with the bad literary puns. Their day starts off with so much potential, but after stepping in puke, discovering their car won't start, having their secret outed by a friend, and ending up in one of the most awkward and embarrassing sexual situations of their life, their spirit is finally broken.

And then someone dies.

My MC, after Chapter 18.

Day 10. You'd be most excited to see your WIP _______.

Embraced. That's all I could really ask for as a writer--to have readers embrace the story I've woven. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's the best I was able to spin with the literary skills I have currently available to me, and if even one person reads the book and then immediately hugs their Kindle after finishing it, it would make me a very *happy camper.

*You know what else makes me a happy camper? Ignis camping happily.

A secondary pipe dream would be to see either parts of the book illustrated, or eventually entirely adapted into graphic novel form; the story began life as a comic book, and I think it would be really cool to watch it come full circle from how I had originally envisioned it ten years ago. One person on the #authorconfession Twitter feed mentioned how they'd love to see their story on the big screen, and while I don't think my book would really be great movie fodder, I could totally imagine it being translated into a shōjo-style anime à la Kareshi Kanojo no Jijō.

Where it's hard to tell apart the boys from the girls.

Step 54: Confess (Day 8)

Today in Final Fantasy XV news: I need to work on my aim when spellcasting.

Even Noctis is judging my poor hand-eye coordination.

Which is tangentially related to today's #authorconfession:

Day 8. How do you cope with killing your darlings?

To date, I have only killed off one character in any my WIPs, which is one more than my liking. The answer is: it was hard. I knew when I started that particular manuscript that the character was going to die, and had hoped that by accepting their fate early on, I'd be able to fortify my resolve to go through with it when the time came.

Spoilers: I waffled. A lot.

In the end, I did manage to pull the trigger (so to speak), but I experienced an odd period of mourning over the loss of a fictional character conceived entirely in my own head. Said character wasn't particularly likable, to be perfectly frank--they were always meant to be somewhat of an antagonist to the MC. An antithesis, if you will, of what the MC could have been had their life taken a different path.

But the character grew on me over the course of writing the book, and their untimely death was a direct result of the tragedies they sustained in life. In some ways their demise was preventable, and in other ways it wasn't; in the end, my hope is that the impact they left in their wake will keep them alive in the minds of readers and other characters alike.

Step 53: Guard Those Secrets (Bonus Blog Post!)

 

My awesome friend Brenda Drake's book GUARDIANS OF SECRETS (Library Jumpers #2) is out today! She is the driving force behind #PitchWars and is an all-around amazing person to work with, and I'm thrilled to be participating in her release day blog blitz! Check out the teaser excerpt, and be sure to enter the giveaway via Rafflecopter below!

GUARDIAN OF SECRETS (Library Jumpers #2) by Brenda Drake
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Publication Date: February 7, 2017

Being a Sentinel isn’t all fairytales and secret gardens.

Sure, jumping through books into the world’s most beautiful libraries to protect humans from mystical creatures is awesome. No one knows that better than Gia Kearns, but she could do without the part where people are always trying to kill her. Oh, and the fact that Pop and her had to move away from her friends and life as she knew it.

And if that isn’t enough, her boyfriend, Arik, is acting strangely. Like, maybe she should be calling him “ex,” since he’s so into another girl. But she doesn’t have time to be mad or even jealous, because someone has to save the world from the upcoming apocalypse, and it looks like that’s going to be Gia.

Maybe. If she survives.

Thief of Lies (Library Jumpers #1):

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Guardian of Secrets (Library Jumpers #2):

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes

Excerpt from GUARDIAN OF SECRETS

She did a U-turn and drove off. I sprinted to the area where I spotted the lightning. A shadowed figure sat on a white bench near the water. Another flash of light kissed the sky and illuminated Nick. Since discovering he was a wizard, Nick struggled with his new magic. And he was careless. Anyone could spot him out here. How would he explain it to someone who was human and not from the Mystik realm? I couldn’t imagine how it felt to have that much power. Unlike him, I was a Sentinel. I had little magic and relied on my battle training to best wizards and other-world creatures. He only needed to shock or electrocute his adversaries.

“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, approaching.

He almost fell off the bench. “Shit, Gia. Don’t sneak up on a person like that.”

“Seriously, Nick? What are you doing? Someone might see you, and then we’d be discovered.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“I’m not going to just leave you alone.” I sat down on the bench beside him. A light breeze swept loose strands of my hair across my face. The briny smell of the ocean filled my nose. “Talk to me. You’re my best friend, Nick. I’m here for you.”

He formed an electric charge on his palm. I created my pink globe and tossed it on his hand, snuffing out the charge.

He made another electric ball and I cast another globe at it.

“Quit doing that.”

“You stop it.”

“I get it. Your globe is badass. It can counter magic and shield people, but it makes you weak. I can do this all night and wear you out.”

“You’re not nice.”

He buried his face in his hands. The knuckles on his right one were torn, with blood coagulating around the wounds. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can’t stop myself. I know I’m being mean to Deidre, to my parents…to everyone.”

“You haven’t been that mean to me, yet. That has to say something. I’m the most annoying one of the bunch.”

He snorted. “Did you just snort?”

“No.” He looked startled. “It was a sneeze.”

“I think you snorted.”

His face brightened. “I know what you’re trying to do. And it’s working.”

“I’m not trying to do anything. That was a full-on snort.” I wrapped my arm over his back and watched the water lap against the retaining wall in front of us. “I know you can’t see a therapist for this, ’cause what would you say? That you just found out you’re the son of the most evil wizard of the Mystik world and the curers recently released your magic?”

He gave me a half smile. “Yeah, that might not go over too well.”

“Or maybe you could. They’d think you were delusional, and you’d score some drugs.”

“Drugs make me nauseous.”

He stared at his hands, and I stared at the water, searching for the right words to say. “This has to be tough for you. I get it. I’ve been there. It’ll take time to adjust. How about I be your counselor? Anytime you feel anxious or angry, you call me and we’ll punch some bags or whatever. It always helps me to relax. Plus, my services are cheap.”

“Violence would make you relax.” He was pleased with his retort and laughed, which was followed by another snort.

Be sure to add GUARDIAN OF SECRETS to your Goodreads to-read list, and grab your copy today!

About Brenda Drake

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest | Instagram

Brenda Drake is a New York Times bestselling author of Thief of Lies (Library Jumpers #1), Guardian of Secrets (Library Jumpers #2), Touching Fate (Fated Series #1), and Cursing Fate (Fated Series #2). She grew up the youngest of three children, an Air Force brat, and the continual new kid at school. She hosts workshops and contests for writers such as Pitch Wars and Pitch Madness on her blog, and holds Twitter pitch parties on the hashtag, #PitMad. When she’s not writing or hanging out with her family, she haunts libraries, bookstores, and coffee shops, or reads someplace quiet and not at all exotic (much to her disappointment). Look for her upcoming novels, Thunderstruck, Seeking Fate (Fated Series #3), and Assassin of Truths (Library Jumpers #3) coming soon from Entangled Teen.

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Step 52: Confess (Day 7)

I'm going to start tagging some of these posts with a #FinalFantasyXV label becAUSE OMG THIS GAME GIVES ME ALL THE FEELSSSSS

CHOCOBROS 4 LIFE Y'ALL

Ahem. Onto the #authorconfession:

Day 7. Tell us about a CONFLICT in your WIP

My current MS is a YA contemporary romance, so most of the conflict in the book revolves around the usual teen angst: bad grades, problematic exes, school bullies, etc. The two MCs find common ground that helps them to resolve these issues, but there's a slow-burning mystery that I think is the real meat-and-potatoes of the plot.

LAYERS UPON LAYERS

Without delving into massive spoilers, my hope is that upon finishing the book readers will realize how this mystery ultimately influenced the choices of one of the characters throughout the story, and perhaps encourage them to reread the novel with this newly enlightened knowledge. Barring that, it certainly sets up some interesting dilemmas for any *future installments!

*Which may or may never see the light of day depending on whether my first book crashes and burns.

Step 51: Confess (Day 4/5/6)

I didn't keep up with #authorconfession over the weekend because I was too busy being complete and utter Final Fantasy XV trash (apologies to my Twitter followers).

I REGRET NOTHING

But I'm back at it again with the white vans, so here are my answers for the last three days worth of questions, compiled into one blog post for all two of you who might be reading this!

Day 4. Which celeb would play your MC?

The narrator of my WIP is sort of an everygirl, and is essentially just an avatar for the reader to project themselves onto. To that end, I spared most of the details of her appearance so that the reader might conjure up their own image of her.

The secondary MC, on the other hand, has a very specific set of physical attributes defined in the novel. I described her as a strange beauty with "elven-like features that were angular yet delicate" and hair so red it was "as if Hades himself had lit a pilot light over her head and had forgotten to turn the stove off". I've cycled through various celebrity comparisons in my brain over the course of writing the book, and I think I've finally settled on the love child of Tilda Swinton and a young David Bowie.

They're kind of the same person anyway TBH

Day 5. Be honest: How's your world building?

One of the earliest critiques I received from a beta reader was my weak world building. The setting of my current WIP is a small town in New Hampshire, and yet I had done nothing to really describe the uniqueness of life in the far Northeast. Sure, there was snowy weather in my book, but exactly what kind of snow? Was it the fluffy kind that feels chewy when you eat it, or the miserable wet kind that leaves residue from the salt-treated sidewalk on your nice leather boots? It took this Southern California native going to New Hampshire over the course of three Christmases and strolling around rural neighborhoods in sub-freezing temperatures to fully absorb the nuanced details of what living there was really like.

It's kind of like that.

So I can confidently say that my world building has improved a great deal from my earliest drafts. I may not have invented a whole new Planetos à la George R. R. Martin in A Song of Ice and Fire, but at least my teenagers are now eating lunch in the dead of winter inside an actual cafeteria building instead of outside on a quad because that's all I knew when I was in high school.

Day 6. How do you show diversity in your work?

We're treading dangerously close to spoiler territory, so I'll have to remain tight-lipped on the details of this answer. Admittedly, my cast is almost entirely white (an unfortunate byproduct of it being set in Caucasianland, NH), but I hope to rectify that oversight in future novels. What I can say is that this book is firmly rooted in the LGBTQ+ genre, so hopefully some underrepresented voices will find enjoyment with my story.

It's gonna bE FABULOUUUUUUUUUSSSS

Step 50: Confess (Day 3)

Day 3 of #authorconfession! Today's prompt(o)***:

What is the best compliment you've had?

This is a tough question to answer, because A) I haven't shown my WIP to too many people yet, and B) validation often comes disguised in the form of a rejection. I've had several agents read my full and compliment my strong writing and voice even when they've passed on the MS, and my current WIP was selected for #PitchWars, which says to me that someone out there felt like I had a story worth telling.

I write lies for a living. Please buy my lies.

Still, I haven't had anyone say in no uncertain terms "ZOMG BEST BOOK EVAR!!!11oneeleven", and the longer it's been since I mailed out that first agent query, the less confidence I have in my own storytelling abilities. Some days I wonder if I'm chasing a dead dream, if my book sucks monkey balls, if I'm wasting my time trying to answer a question no one asked. But then I think about the characters in my story, who live and breath and triumph in my imagination, and I'm compelled to continue moving forward.

So maybe the best compliment I ever received is from myself: Yes, Shea, your story does matter.

***I finally (heh) picked up Final Fantasy XV yesterday. Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto send their regards from my Xbox One.

This .gif about sums up my feelings.

Step 49: Confess (Day 2)

I just got word that an illustration project I've been working so hard on has had its original February 17th deadline pushed back to June. What a relief!

I'M FREEEEEE for now

Which means I can blog without feeling guilty for wasting time hahaha. Onward to Day 2 of #authorconfession:

What is the WORST thing you have written?

Since this is #authorconfession, I confess: A fanfiction.net account I created in 2001 is still in existence to this day. And before you ask, the answer is: No, I will never tell you what the account name is. I'm taking that shit with me to the grave. It's filled with a handful of Star Wars Expanded Universe fanfiction focusing on my favorite EU characters (Jaina Solo and Wedge Antilles) and one mushy Rurouni Kenshin fic. If you want to do the digging yourself and see just how bad of a writer I was as recently as 2008, by all means, go for it. But to quote the great Jedi Master Yoda: "If into the [depths of Shea's fanfiction.net account] you go, only pain will you find."

And that's not even the worst fanfiction I've ever written. When I first got into the Star Wars EU back in 1997, I used to write scenes featuring Jaina Solo by hand in the back pages of my notebook during class, and I'm sure I still have them laying around in a storage box somewhere because I'm a hoarder and can't bring myself to throw anything away no matter how awful it is. I'll give myself a pass on those ones, though, on account of my being 12 years old at the time.

Looking back, some of my writing at the height of my fanfiction.net days still retains some of its charm. I made a ton of rookie mistakes, to be sure--purple prose, beat tags with EVERY line of dialogue, repetitive adjective use (seriously how did I not know of the existence of a freaking thesaurus)--but I can see the influence of my favorite author, Aaron Allston, in those early works that I still carry with me in my writing to this day.

I also drew copious amounts of bad fan art, but that's another beast entirely.

On a more recent note, I was digging through my hard drive in search of who-the-fuck-knows-what and I stumbled upon my very first draft of my current WIP. NGL, I almost died of secondhand embarrassment reading just a few short paragraphs, and I cringe just thinking about the wannabe author I was trying to portray myself as in that early draft. Thankfully, I've improved in leaps and bounds in just a few short years I think, but it's humbling to recall just how awful a writer I was not even that long ago.

All I gotta say is, thank GOD for beta readers.

Step 48: Confess (Day 1)

Now that I've returned to the Twitterverse, I ran across a fun little game J.M. Sullivan is hosting called #authorconfession for the month of February. Since I'm in dire need of things to blog about other than the fact that the world going to hell in a hand basket, I thought I'd expand on the short answers I posted on Twitter here. It goes a little something like this:

Every day asks the author a different question, and today's prompt is: 

What do you listen to while writing?

My answer? Nothing. Not. A. Damn. Thing. I have to write in near-total silence in order to concentrate, and in the past I've even taken to using ear plugs to block out the sound of birds chirping and the husband playing Fallout 4. And it's not because I'm a heathen who hates music; on the contrary, I love singing badly at the top of my lungs to my favorite tunes. I even have a "Book Playlist" on Spotify with songs that correspond to certain chapters of my books, because obviously there is plenty of music out there that inspires me.

But I have a tendency to get distracted easily, to the point where sometimes I have to pause a song just to write a tweet, and oftentimes I'll interrupt my own half of a conversation just to belt out an awesome jam that came on the radio in my car. Oddly enough, I don't have this problem when I'm drawing; throw on a good playlist or a Ken Burns documentary in the background, and I can zone out for hours on end. It probably has something to do with using different parts of my brain (or lack thereof, in the case of doodling) when I'm working.

That said, there are a few songs out there that I listen to when I'm re-reading certain chapters of my WIPs, and one in particular has me obsessed to the point that I fear if I listen to it one more time I'll get sick of it. It's a cover of David Bowie's Life on Mars? performed by Aurora for HBO's Girls soundtrack (get some tissues ready):

Step 47: Leave The Past In The Past

I learned a few tough lessons last year, and one experience in particular had me fleeing social media for months on end (hence why I haven't posted here in ages). The trust I had placed in people whom I thought I could confide in had been betrayed, and as a result I failed to uphold the trust others had placed in me. It was a lose-lose situation all around, and those bridges dumpsters have regrettably been burned.

An apt metaphor for 2016 on the whole.

It took me several months, but I've finally pruned most of my social media accounts to remove any vestiges of whatever might threaten to remind me of that awful period in my life. Not because I harbor any ill will toward anyone, but because I live in a perpetual state of anxiety and the thought of imposing my online presence on anyone who wants me to go die in a fire turns my insides into knots. If for whatever reason I unfollowed or unfriended anyone reading this by mistake, please consider sending me a message and I will correct my error.

Feel free to slide right on into my DMs.

Now that that's out of the way, I have... well, really nothing new to report. I'm working on another illustration project at the moment that will be announced sometime in the near-ish future, and it's all very glamorous work (and by glamorous, I mean me sitting in my studio hovering over my tablet for hours on end and drinking copious amounts of coffee). I'd like to think that I'll have much more to write about soon considering everything I have queued up in the pipeline, but we all might die in a nuclear fallout tomorrow, so who knows. At the very least, you can find me posting on Twitter and Facebook once again.

Still better than Donald Trump's Twitter account.