Growing Pains
Discomfort is part of the process
“Unpublish”.
I stared at the button for a long time. Clicked off the page and put it at the back of my mind for a time. Surely, there had to be something I could do other than obliterate my novel from existence.
I halfway sought solutions, looked at plot holes and threads I could tighten up and simply release a revised 2nd edition in the not-too-distant future. One of the perks of being self published is that we’re infinitely capable of upgrading our work.
Days came and went. Weeks. Now it’s been about six months. And I finally pulled the trigger this morning, and unpublished my novel “Blood from Stone”.
“But you’ll lose your reviews!” All 3 of them? 10 ratings in total? That’s fine. Easy enough to make up, some day. Or not.
Either way, this is about reflection and realizing that sometimes the best thing to do is to let go.
I fully intend to come back to that universe and tell the tale of the Winterbournes and the ones who love them, because I do thoroughly enjoy my weird take on vampires in that world. But for now, it’s time to put Liliana and Co to the side. I haven’t had any sales or KU reads of the book for several months, but we’ll ignore that largely being due to me doing zero marketing…
(I’m also using too many ellipses and someone’s going to think I’m AI, but they can suck a fat one. Thanks, ‘Stranger Things’ for bringing that phrase back into my lexicon!)
“Blood from Stone” was an important part of my journey back to considering myself an author. It was the first full length novel I managed to publish post-divorce. Without getting too into the mess of things between my ex husband and I, writing spicy fiction for fun and profit wasn’t something he approved of, nor allowed time for.
Getting that book out into the world, while being a single mother and working my ass off at my primary profession (licensed massage therapist) was my assurance to myself that yes: I could do this. I could fucking do this, and I would. If for no other reason than spite and to prove that I could make it happen. And I did it!
With my current circumstances, I can’t do rapid release. It’s just not feasible, at current. I’m working on a way to get closer to making that happen, but it’s in the formative stages in my brain.
“Blood from Stone” wasn’t RUSHED, per se, but it wasn’t fully formed when I kicked it out into the world and expected it to just float along and eventually soar on its own. No follow-up even halfway complete. No real executable plan for getting it in front of people. And as I’ve been attempting to work on the sequel, and plan out the rest of the series, that reality punched me right in the gut.
To err is human, but to admit you fucked up and do the work to correct it… That’s a big sign of growth and internal healing.
BfS is a reverse harem story with a heroine who ends up in a relationship with 7 vampires who are (mostly) brothers. The other themes in the book (found family, learning to love yourself, healing from trauma, finding your place and purpose in the world: just to name a few) are important. But in trying to satisfy the need for smut to be prevalent, anyone other than very discerning readers likely missed the other parts.
And don’t get me wrong: I love smut. Writing it, reading it. You can learn a great deal about characters through the way they interact with others in such an intimate setting, so I’m absolutely not trying to demonize the presence of sexual content in books written for adults. Quite the opposite, in fact.
However, after doing a lot of reflection, I realized why I leaned so hard (ha!) into the smut in this book. I’m a paranormal/horror reader, primarily. Before “paranormal” had to be followed by the word “romance”, and it wasn’t really called urban fantasy.
That being said, I’m also a big fan of action movies and anime and manga. I like fight scenes. I LOVE writing the choreography of a scene that has big epic battles. And you know what smut scenes are, at their core? Especially if writing multiple partners all interacting at once? Choreography. Keeping track of who’s doing what, and where, and making sure it all makes sense while painting an emotional picture of WHY it’s all happening.
Aside from a sparring scene or two, there aren’t any big fight scenes in BfS. But there are more than a few extremely involved smut scenes, which may occasionally go for more than a chapter. And that mostly satisfied my need for describing the way folks’ bodies interact with each other.
Re-reading my novel reminded me of the books that really interested me in becoming an author, back when self publishing was so new that it wasn’t an option quite yet. Rob Thurman’s “Cal Leandros” series, which is fully paranormal/urban fantasy/modern magical realism or whatever the hell you want to classify it as now. And Laurell K. Hamilton’s “Anita Blake” and “Merry Gentry” books.
Rob Thurman’s series, mostly told through the POV of Caliban Leandros, had a lot of introspection about being part monster, and external expression through fight scenes and a constant edge of danger. Whether the issue was local, or eventually a much larger threat to humanity, there were always big stakes. No “cozy” here. Quite the opposite, in fact. I loved it so much because it felt like the gritty, gothic punk setting described in White Wolf Games Vampire: the Masquerade (and all the other bits in the same vein).
Enter Anita Blake. Petite vampire hunter and zombie raiser. Absolute ass-kicker of a heroine. I think it wasn’t until book 8-10 or later in the series that she even hooked up with the ever present, immortally patient Jean Claude. Also gritty, badass mystery urban fantasy stuff. Until Anita’s weird paranormal affliction that feeds on lust energy resulted in her having a harem so large that I couldn’t even tell you how many people (I use this term loosely) she needed to bone to not go nuclear.
I think I was around book 20 when I finally couldn’t see the plot past all the whining about Anita being poly and nobody understanding that these were all her boyfriends. I re-read the first portion of the series regularly, though. Turns out the author, herself, is polyamorous. So I understand that a lot of things in this series are her working through that. And good for her, frankly.
The Merry Gentry series was buff, beefy elf/fairy smut right out of the gate. And I found that series with a book off the shelf from the local pharmacy, back in the wonderful heyday of mass market paperbacks, when I was a sophomore in high school. So anybody who says that ACOTAR was the beginning of muscular elves and fae in fiction… Wrong.
When I discovered Anita Blake, it was in the horror section at our local Borders bookstore(RIP). The themes of zombies, vampires, werewolves and the like very much belonged there. This was before “paranormal romance” was its own entity. And long before “romantasy” took over the industry.
I’m not knocking romance, because I enjoy indulging in it as both a reader and author. However… I miss when romance was the subplot. From taking the entire last year reading nothing but horror (from extreme to cosmic), and being totally unable to finish ANYTHING where romance was the primary genre, it’s made me rethink how I want to write and frame my own work.
And that’s why I’m shelving BfS for now, and doing a full rewrite of the story I’m referring to as “Project: Idol” until a good title slaps me in the face. I want the plot and the paranormal elements and the WORLD BUILDING to be the primary focus.
So much current writing advice, outside of swords and sorcery fantasy, says that world building is something readers just don’t care about. And I went with that. But when I’m presenting a world so different from our own, you know what? It IS important. And that’s a big part of the writing process that I truly enjoy.
On top of that, I like setting descriptions. The bland, sad greige-ification of settings and characters is something I will not abide by. You don’t want to know what a character looks like? That’s not me. I want every detail, about every damned thing, in dripping lurid technicolor 4k. If the scene doesn’t roll through your brain like a scene in a movie, then I’m missing something and need to tweak it.
I realize now that’s my style, and that’s what I’ll be doing going forward. Not everyone will enjoy it, and that’s fine. Not every book is for everybody, and I think a lot of weird reader entitlement has shaped the way authors execute their craft. Not in a good way.
If you don’t like it, you know the solution? Go read a different book that fits your tastes. I just turned 40 a few months ago, and I feel like it’s led me to a wonderful level of “my give a damn’s busted” that will help me move forward in my author journey and life. I’m done chopping myself, and my writing, into tiny digestible chunks.
If you made it this far, thanks for your time! Have you had any recent revelations about your life or craft that have been total game changers? Leave me a comment and let me know! And don’t forget to subscribe for more mildly unhinged blogs!
~Miranda K. Darq