Selkies' Skins

Selkies' Skins
Current book in series Temple and Skinquest. Enjoy Castle and Well from Amazon, B&N and Smashwords while waiting for that and the prequel's audiobook "Pearls of Sea and Stone: Book of Seals".

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Musings on 3 series, audience, and driving force

I'm thinking tomorrow may be a good day to go over Dragon Shaman 3's chapter outline in between other projects (I often will go between several a day). I don't have writer's block, but there is some increased pressure from those interested in BlowingWind's adventures. If I have that set then when it is time to work on that manuscript it will go swifter.

I also very desperately need to sit down with the book projects that are accepted already, double check the prioritization, and adjust work schedules to take into account upcoming university classes. Selkies' Skins having to split the first book into two books changes the work order significantly.

It is a very good thing that BlowingWind, Kirsty, Ryu, and David get along in the shared mental space (and there have not been any disagreements that Amehana has had to intervene with). Maybe one of these days I'll take some fun time and do up a sketch of 'Wind and Kirsty's arm wrestling bouts. Listening to David and Ryu discuss things during this time [even though David is my mate's (my version of David is slightly different from his version due to the standpoints we think from, and for later stories he is more involved in the creation of he will be labeled co-author if he'll let me) it is entertaining how characters all take on lives of their own outside of their stories and/or RPs]. Although the story starts at a very young age (just entering mid middle school and will go through the end of high school) in some ways it will be more adult since Kirsty herself is an interesting mix of 'adult too early' and 'kid.'

Every author has a specific audience that they write for. I have heard it said that it works best to choose one specific person and write to that person to help keep focus. Selkies' Skins is for my mate (and he's the one that gave me the 'spark' in the first place by giving me a reason to use the selkie I'd had forming in my mind). The Dragon Shaman books started out as for myself. BlowingWind came of life experiences that I had in being a child trying to take back the various cultures that my heritage springs from physically and spiritually. But it also came because of a series I had started before that (as well as other factors). They spring from the end of high school to early college 'energy.'

The Shadow Chronicles still has the first book unfinished as follows BlowingWind's friend (Willow Sanchez/Angelina) from Big Valley. When returned to it will tell the story of awakening to the magical and spiritual world in a very different way than that taken by BlowingWind (born to it) and Kirsty (also born to it). Each of these characters can be said to be an aspect of myself in some ways–some which I'm not fully comfortable speaking of in public since all three lines stem from psychological processes I have gone through at points in my life–but also of you, the reader. The stories that will be in that series have their seeds in a time where my stories were meant for my childhood friends...and we were a very tight bunch. Those spring from my middle school and high school years from roughly 1991 to 1998.

If you are an author, who do you write for? What is your core narrative? Does it change, perhaps changing as you do? Do you feel your own personal psychology has any bearing on how you write?

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