Category: urban fantasy

Two more, and maybe another

~ Judi Lynn ~ 5 Comments

The digital rights director at my literary agency is letting me put up my old urban fantasy stories on my own as self-published.  First, she has to take them down, and then I can load them under my own name: Judith Post.  It hasn’t been quite as easy as I expected it to be, but we’re getting there.

At the beginning of the transition, we worked on the Fallen Angels series.  Then Wolf’s Bane.  This week, she took down Empty Altars, Spinners of Misfortune, and Fabric of Life.  We hit a hiccup with the Fabric file, but we’ll get there.  There were only two books in the Tyr and Diana series.  I’d hit too many deadends for urban fantasy by then and moved onto writing romances before I tried a third.

In the meantime, I wrote a lot of short novellas and collected them into bundles.  That’s what we’ll work on next.  I’m especially happy I’m going to get to put up all of the Babet & Prosper stories.  All of you know, I have a fondness for witches and supernaturals working together.  Stick them in a fake version of New Orleans, and those were just plain fun to write.

Empty Altars and Spinners of Misfortune were special for me, though.  I love Greek myths and dabbled a little in Norse myths, too.  In this series, I got to combine the two.  Diana, goddess of the hunt and the moon, also known as Hecate to witches, is the protagonist in those stories.  She’s not a warm, nurturing goddess.  In fact, when it comes to survival of the fittest, she can be ruthless, just as Nature can be.  She also can call on hellhounds to do her bidding.  And at the dark of the moon, she can hunt predators to exact justice.

Diana’s runes call her to a modern-day, Norse meadow, but the mortals who live there have kept the old ways and still sacrifice to the old gods.  Someone, however, is trying to destroy the old traditions and to defy the gods.  Diana finds herself working with the Norse god, Tyr, Thor, and the goddess Freya to restore order to their world.

Almost everyone recognizes Thor because of the movies, but his other name is Donar, and he has wild, red hair.  I’d heard of Tyr but never paid attention to him until I started these books.  Tyr placed his right hand in the wolf Fenrir’s mouth so that the world would be safer.  When the wolf realized the trap, Fenrir bit off Tyr’s hand, and the god of war and justice now is an expert sword wielder…with his left hand.  Freya is the goddess of love and lust.  She and her brother, Frey, inspired the Norse Maypole tradition–and it wasn’t just about ribbons and wishing people a happy spring.  She makes Venus look maidenly.

It was fun combining the two sets of myths into stories.  Fabric of Life, if I ever get it loaded:), is a standalone.  I’m a horoscope junkie and teeter back and forth on the idea of destiny, so it was interesting to write about a modern day woman who has to take over the job of the ancient Greek Fates.  Before a new soul can come to earth, it has to stand on a scale, and Thea Patek weaves a bookmark of each bounce back and forth that create the journey of that person’s life and cut the thread at the end.  The bounces only create a map.  How the person reacts and deals with each turning point is his or her choice.  So, yes, the person’s journey is preordained, but not their life.  Freedom of choice determines that.

I’ve left ideas of gods and goddesses behind, for now, and I’ve moved to writing mysteries.  But that’s still a matter of life and death.  And mysteries pose their own questions.  That’s part of the joy of writing, isn’t it?  Asking a question at the beginning of a book and answering it at the end.

Happy Writing!

 

A new cover!

~ Judi Lynn ~ 5 Comments

I’m trading back and forth, working on Lux #2 and a new Muddy River short fiction.  I’ve surprised myself, and Lux is getting close to done.  Then I can spend all of my time on Raven and Hester while my critique partners mark up Heirlooms To Die For before giving it back to me.

For Muddy River, this time, I’m trying a different type of cover.  So far, I’ve used images of people with a background I hope hints at magic.  This time, I found an image that I think captures the theme of the story.  See what you think:

SU

And since I’m sharing the cover, I thought I’d share the opening scene of SURVIVAL, too:

Muddy River’s spring vacation usually brings bad weather.  I never schedule coven meetings during that time, so that I’m free of all responsibilities.  I love my young witches, but by early April, I’m as eager for a week away from them as they are to be free of lessons and me.

Days can be almost balmy right up until students leave my classroom on Friday, but that’s just to tease us.  Soon, clouds gather to deliver torrential rain, blinding snow, or hail.  It’s as though the heavens don’t condone our week off.

This year, we were supposed to get lucky.  According to Meda, one of my coven, her bespelled weather vanes predicted the sun would shine the entire month and the temperatures would be mild. I hummed as I waved my hand to lock the school before crossing the field to my yellow Victorian house.  A week of good weather.  A miracle.

Claws ran ahead of me, only stopping to check both ways before crossing the street.

“Don’t go too far!” I called to him.  “We’re leaving as soon as Raven gets home.”  My fire demon had decided that we should spend the week at the lake cottage he’d bought for getaways.  He was craving a little privacy.

His Lamborghini wasn’t in the drive, so I kicked off my shoes and headed straight to the kitchen.  I poured a glass of wine, ready to celebrate my last day of school.  Looking out the kitchen window, I saw Claws prowling the river bank that bordered the back of our property.  He could burn off some energy before we made the hour drive to our cottage.

I was sipping pinot grigio, letting my mind drift, when I heard Raven’s car pull into the garage.  A minute later, he pushed through the kitchen door.  Six-five and corded with muscle, with black hair and amber eyes, he locked gazes with me, and his look sizzled.  “Is everything packed?” When I nodded, he grinned.  “Brown’s covering the office while I’m gone, and Strike’s promised to help out if needed.  We have an entire week to ourselves, just you, me, and Claws.  I have plans for you, witch.”

It was about time.  Raven was Muddy River’s enforcer.  Between his job and mine, it was hard for either of us to get away.  I pointed to the suitcases and coolers sitting in the corner.  Swallowing the last of my wine, I stood.  “Let me change, and I’m ready.”

He licked his lips.  “Need any help?”

“If you want to get to the cabin by supper time, it would be safer if I did it myself.”

“Right.”  His expression turned lascivious.  “Everything in due time.”  He went to start loading my SUV.  Twenty minutes later, Claws curled on the backseat and I rode shotgun, wearing my worn jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.  Raven turned away from Muddy River, and we headed north to enjoy ourselves and each other.

 

Hope you enjoy these.  I still have a decent amount to write for Raven and Hester.

Harry Dresden

~ Judi Lynn ~ 4 Comments

I’ve been deluged by fans of Harry Dresden lately.  Lynn Cahoon, Midu Hadi, and Mae Clair.  So many who are so enthusiastic, I had to see what I was missing.  So I bought the first Harry Dresden book–Storm Front.  And for the first couple of chapters, I did an inward shrug.  What was the fuss about?  And then I got seriously hooked.

What is it about wizards named Harry?  Well, both of the ones I know are pretty much alone in the world.  Their parents, like every Disney animated movie I watched growing up, are past tense.  Kaput.  The establishment isn’t too fond of them.  And they have more talent than any single person (even a wizard) should have.  Add to that, that they’re up against monumental odds.  Odds they shouldn’t survive.  And neither of them take themselves too seriously.

Dresden has a great mix of lethal and humor.  People die horrible deaths, but the skull in the basement who helps him make potions, bargains for a weekend of ribald entertainment.  And the women in their lives are no shrinking violets.  When Dresden apologizes to Murphy, she hobbles into his hospital room to throw the flowers he sent her in his face.  The action made my adrenaline pump.  The monsters are scary.  And the villain’s scarier than the things he creates.  But even with magic bouncing off walls, Dresden felt REAL.  Because I could relate to him as a person.

When I finished Storm Front, I downloaded book two.  I never read books back to back, but I’m looking forward to the next story to see what Dresden does next.  Now I know what the fuss is about.  Harry Dresden is one fun series to read!

The old is new again

~ Judi Lynn ~ 4 Comments

When I found my agent–the wonderful Lauren Abramo–she wasn’t sold on self-publishing.  She did like my writing, though, and she was pedaling my book Fallen Angels, an urban fantasy.  Editors wrote nice notes about it but didn’t like having a human detective and a serial killer thrown into an urban fantasy.  That only encouraged me to write more books, but ones that didn’t include mortals mingling with supernaturals.  And those didn’t sell either.  Editors said that they had too many urban fantasies, that the market was glutted, and they didn’t want any more no matter what they were like.

Lauren still believed in my writing, so Sharon Pelletier at the Dystel & Goderich Agency formatted my manuscripts and loaded them online as e-books.  That was years ago.  And I didn’t do anything with those books–no ads, no blogs, no marketing–so they just languished.  But I’ve started playing with supernaturals again with the Muddy River series.  And it made me think of them again.  So a while ago, I asked Sharon to make Wolf’s Bane free for five days, and she told me that some of their authors have asked to have their books back to self-publish, and that Dystel & Goderich would be happy to send me all of the files for my urban fantasies and let me load them myself on Amazon.  That way, I can reduce prices, pay for ads, and have a lot more freedom to market them.  I jumped at the chance.

So far, we’ve only removed the three Wolf’s Bane books from Dystel & Goderich, along with the three Fallen Angels novels.  Little by little, I’m hoping to swap them all over to self-publishing by me.  There are a lot more, so I’m only going to bother with a few a week.  I’ve started with books.  The two Empty Altars novels and my very first book that Lauren took–Fabric of Life–will be next.  And then I can start on bundles.  I love writing short fiction, and I let myself write a wide variety of series.  Death & Loralei is about Death, who materializes into a man when he comes home to his own home with his wife, Loralei.  Christian and Brina has four medieval stories about a castle trying to defend itself against vampires and other supernatural villains.

Transferring them from Dystel & Goderich to me is going to take a while, but it will be a labor of love.  I’m not expecting huge sales or finding an army of fans.  I’m just glad that the books will no longer be thrown into the digital wasteland of forgotten stories.  It’s nice connecting with them again.

I’m still pounding the keys for Lux.  I can transfer three books at a time in my spare time, and they won’t litter my Judi Lynn page.  I wrote all of those as Judith Post.  It’s sort of nice to keep them separate from my newer works.  Between writing and transferring books, I shouldn’t be bored for a long time.  Hope you have plenty of things to keep you excited, too.

Happy Writing!

 

Smart Might Not Always Be Best. Maybe?

~ Judi Lynn ~ 6 Comments

I pride myself on having some writing discipline.  When I finish writing one book, I already have ideas for the next book, and probably the one after that.  I usually let myself write the first chapter, sometimes even the first few chapters, before I make myself stop to work on plot points and character wheels.  I won’t let myself play with more chapters until I have enough plot points to finish the entire book.  I’ve learned the hard way that if I cheat, I pay for it later.  I’m SO not good at winging it.

All that said, my left brain and my right brain don’t always agree.  Some characters and some books pull at me even when I tell them to go away.  That’s how I am with Muddy River.  I have ALL of the plot points I need to write my next Lux mystery.  I’ve even started it, and I like it.  I’m excited about it.  I have 20 plot points for the first half of my 7th Jazzi mystery–the book I mean to write when I finish Lux.  And I’ve written the first chapter of that book, too.  And it feels good.

BUT…today I sat down and started a new Muddy River.  I couldn’t help it.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get excited enough about either of my other mysteries to push the stupid thing away.  Muddy River is where I let my imagination off its leash.  It’s NOT smart for me to write another supernatural mystery.  They’re not selling.  But my brain needs to have some fun before I devote myself to anything else.  And Muddy River, for me, is where that happens.

This time, and from now on, I’m compromising by not writing a full length book.  I’m going to aim for 40-60 pages and self-publish it as an Amazon Kindle short read.  I don’t need to write 300 pages to make my brain happy.  Just a short play time will do the trick.  I’m not expecting much to come from it, so I can’t be disappointed when it bombs like the others.  And that should worry me, right?  But it doesn’t.  I’m giving myself permission to write a few almost certain failures, because if I don’t, I’ll fizzle and burn out and my writing will become forced.  So, for the next week or more, I’m going to be fighting bounty hunters in Muddy River, battling shapeshifters and Succubi, and having a really good time.

Here’s hoping you’re enjoying yourself, too.  And happy writing.

Some Things Don’t Work

~ Judi Lynn ~ 7 Comments

A while ago, when I had extra time to write between contracts, I decided to self-publish some supernatural mysteries because I enjoy writing them so much.  I knew it was a bit of a risk since urban fantasy is still pretty glutted, but I’d seen some paranormal witch mysteries that were doing well on Amazon and thought it was worth a try.  I had a lot of fun writing them, but I’ve given them a decent shot, and they’re still dead in the water.  I can’t get them off the ground.  So I came to a crossroads.  Do I keep writing them and hope the fifth or sixth one clicks, or do I admit defeat and try something new?

My agent loved the urban fantasies I wrote forever ago but got one rejection after another because no one was buying UF anymore.  I spent a lot of years trying to sell stories that no matter how well done, no one wanted to buy.  And I don’t want to do that again.  So this time, I’m throwing the towel in early.  Right or wrong, I’ve learned the hard way that some things are easier to sell than others.  So I felt sorry for myself, licked my wounded pride for a day, and then sat down and started to work on something different.  I don’t want to write a second cozy series.  I know a lot of writers juggle two or more of them, but I’d have too much trouble trying to keep track of which is which if they were that much alike.  I mean, cozies have some similarities.  If I’m going to do a second series, it has to be different enough from Jazzi to help me find balance between the two.

I’m sharing this, not to garner sympathy, but because when I like writing something, that’s what I want to write.  I don’t want to change or go in a different direction.  But I’ve found that I need to.  When my agent asked me to try to write a romance, I didn’t want to.  I’d never considered it.  Ever.  The plot points felt weird to me–hurt feelings and misunderstandings instead of attacks and battles.  The thing is, I learned a lot by writing the Mill Pond series.  I had to concentrate on character more than plot, and my tacklebox of writing tools grew richer for it.  I took some of those tools with me when my editor asked if I’d like to try my hand at a mystery.

This might sound crazy to you, but if you’re writing really well but your work won’t sell, maybe you should try something outside your comfort zone.  There’s so much to writing that we can’t control.  If editors decide a market is tight or dead, soon it will be, because they won’t buy anything in that genre.  If the market really is glutted, it’s even hard to find readers if you self-publish.  There are just too many things for them to choose from.  Markets come and go.  Literary fiction, I’m told, is a hard sell right now.  Sometimes, selling comes down to a current preference.  It’s harder to sell writing in present tense  now because there’s a bias against it.  Some editors prefer third person, single POV, over first person.  Some of that depends on what genre you write in, but I’ve read reviews where readers prefer third over first.  That doesn’t mean what you write won’t sell, but it means it will be harder.

For now, I’m going to try something new.  A straight mystery instead of a supernatural.  And I’m writing it in first person.  Then I’ll see what happens.  But it doesn’t hurt to flex your writing muscles and experiment a little.  You can start with something short and go from there.  Maybe try a one-hour read.  Play with a new genre, a different style.  But it’s hard to put your best into something, over and over again, know that it’s good (and I’m not just talking ego or confidence here, but comments from critique partners and editors or agents), and keep getting rejections.  When that happens, it might not have anything to do with how well you write, but a lot to do with what you write.  But let’s face it.  In writing, there’s no one right answer, and what works for one person doesn’t work for someone else.  But I’m ready to try to tilt the odds in my favor instead of against me.  So wish me luck.  And good luck to you and whatever you’re working on and Happy Writing!

 

I only think I’m prepared

~ Judi Lynn

I like to be organized.  Maybe a little too much.  We go to the grocery store twice a month these days.  Well, actually, HH only goes to pick up the groceries we’ve ordered online.  I always worry I won’t have enough (not that we’ve EVER run out) and that we have all of the ingredients I want for each meal, so I make out menus.  I plan our suppers for every night before we’ll order groceries again.  And when I scribble down each night’s meal, I list the ingredients we’ll need for it.

For example, for our last list, I served chicken piccata, buttered noodles, and green beans on Monday; BBQ ribs, mashed potatoes, and broccoli on Tuesday; salmon with fried rice and brussel sprouts on Wednesday; almond noodle bowls with ramen on Thursday; etc.  When I’m done, I know I’m prepared.  Even though there’s always something we run out of between each trip to the store–milk, juice, bread–those pesky everyday things.

The same holds true with my writing.  I’m so far from being a pantser, I’d probably break out in a rash if I just sat down and decided to wing it.  A lot of people can do it.  It’s not in my nature.  So I make a plot point for every chapter of my book.  I include the things that I think are important that I should cover.  And when I finish, in theory, I have enough plot twists, clues, interactions to have a novel.  For Muddy River One, it took 34 plot points to come up with 57,000 words.  This time, for whatever reason, I expected each chapter to be longer, more involved.  I wrote two or three different scenes for quite a few of them.  I had two subplots.  So I only listed 26 of them.  And guess what?  There’s no possible way I can reach my word count unless I come up with more.

So, I sat down tonight, after much fussing–my poor husband–and redid the last ten chapters of Muddy River Two.  It looks great on paper, and I should have enough, or at least, really close to enough to meet my goal, but who knows?  Every book is different.  The mystery’s rogue incubus is a lot more clever than I expected, and he’s a lot more ruthless, too.  Suspects that I thought Raven and Hester could question end up dead before they get there.  Now that blows a few nice scenes.  You can’t interrogate a person who’s been drained dry.  But even though I do my best to whip my characters into shape to obey me, they don’t always listen.  And if they don’t get too crazy, I’m willing to give them some leeway.  Then I need to stop somewhere in my writing and restructure the story.  Which I did.  And hopefully, it works.  It should this time:)

Nag, nag, nag

~ Judi Lynn ~ 5 Comments

A while ago, over on the Story Empire blog, Staci Troilo was host and asked What is the Favorite Book you’ve written and why?  I read all five of the writers’ answers who take turns hosting the blog to see which book they chose and why it was their favorite.  Their answers were interesting.  You can find the link here:

https://storyempire.com/2019/03/29/bonus-friday-favorite-book/

At the end of the blog, Staci opened up the comments section to other authors to share. I tried to think of the favorite novel I wrote, but I couldn’t settle on one.  I love every book I write, or else I’d never be able to slog through 60,000-100,000 words to finish them.  But then–and every writer will know this feeling–the question just wouldn’t go away.  It rattled around in my head and kept nagging me.  Until I finally came up with an answer for myself.

If I had to choose, I’d pick FALLEN ANGELS, an urban fantasy I wrote as Judith Post.  It was my first true attempt at urban fantasy.  Not that I got it right.  Every editor who commented on it said that NO humans should play a major part in an urban fantasy.  And what did I do?  I made Danny, the detective, work with Enoch, the fallen angel, as a partner.  I did a few other things wrong as well, but I learned a lot while I muddled through it.  And mistakes and all, I was really proud of that book when my agent finally approved it.  First, every time I redid a scene, the book got longer.  It’s the longest book I’ve ever done.  I’d never written a battle scene before, and I had all kinds of them scattered through the story.  I had Enoch–the angel who tackled his friend so he couldn’t join Lucifer’s rebellion–watch Caleb get thrown to Earth as punishment anyway.  And when Caleb bites humans to drink their blood to sustain his own energy, he infects them with his immortality and creates the first race of vampires.  Who don’t behave well, so Enoch’s sent to Earth to clean up after Caleb.

I liked the ideas I played with for this story.  And I was happy that I’d created a character–Enoch’s best friend, Caleb–who was so selfish, but charming–that you waffled between hating him and cutting him some slack.  I tried, but didn’t completely succeed, to create a romantic interest who was so hurt that she pushed everyone away.  That was trickier than I imagined.  Some readers felt sorry for her, and others could have done without her:)

I guess the reason I’d choose FALLEN ANGELS as the favorite novel I’ve written is because it challenged me to leave my comfort zone and write things I’d never tried before. Enoch was a protagonist who didn’t want the job he’d been given.  He didn’t want to be a hero.  All he wanted to do was convince Caleb to go Home with him.  But Caleb LIKED the freedom he’d found on Earth.  He never wanted to repent and be forgiven.  So Enoch was stuck.  Probably for a long time–a brooding hero.

What about you?  Which book would you choose?  And why?  (Be careful.  If you don’t answer, the question might nag you for a long time).

Happy writing!

Stan Lee

~ Judi Lynn ~ 2 Comments

I don’t buy comic books and I don’t know much about any of the heroes, but when my grandsons lived with us, they dragged me to see a lot of Iron Man, Avengers, and X Men movies.  And I enjoyed almost all of them.  Just like the urban fantasies that I love, comic book heroes always face overwhelming odds.  Good always versus evil.  The fate of the world is at stake.  And there’s so much action.  How fun is that?  So it surprised me when I listened to a quote by Stan Lee, after his death, where he said, “I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: Entertainment is one of the most important things in people’s lives. Without it, they might go off the deep end.”  (I got that quote from Screen Rant’s list of 10 most important quotes from Stan Lee:  https://screenrant.com/10-inspirational-stan-lee-quotes/ )

I love his words.  When I was a kid, I always wanted to do something important with my life.    It wasn’t about making oodles of money.  It was about changing the world, and in my eight-year-old mind that equated to becoming a teacher.  To me, teachers shaped kids’ minds and kids were our future.  And I didn’t change my opinion all through school and college.  That’s why I taught elementary for six years.  But it dawned on me that yes, teaching was important, but there were so many other factors that shaped a child, my influence was like a pebble dropping into an ocean.  And when laws changed, and Indiana wouldn’t hire anyone with a Master’s Degree anymore when I wanted to return to my old job, I told myself that raising two awesome daughters could change the world, too.  Still believe that.  And then when I discovered writing, I thought I’d found the perfect vehicle for more.

Somewhere in time, though, I realized that serious fiction might not be for me.  I was more drawn to genre novels.  At the first writers’ conference that I ever attended, the speaker asked us to raise our hands if we wrote genre.  My friend and I lifted our arms, and he sneered at us and informed us that we were hack writers, that we only worked for money.  (I wish).  Now, I knew that I’d never be compared to Margaret Atwood or Shakespeare, but that still ticked me off.  I took pride in what I wrote whether he thought it was worthy of literature or not.

A few writer conferences later (and I chose ones that focused on genre fiction), and the speaker asked one of the really talented romance writers why she chose to write “beneath” her.  Again, I silently fumed while the poor writer struggled for an answer.  (She came up with a good one, too.  Not that it satisfied Mr. Smirky Pants).  Since then, I’ve decided that it’s hard to write ANYTHING well.  And if you do a good job, you’ve earned my respect.  I’ve also learned that some people STILL have to have an hierarchy of what’s important literature and what’s not.  That’s their problem, not mine.  But I still fussed about the things that, in my mind, I couldn’t write well.

That’s part of the reason I had so much fun writing outside of my comfort zone for the three short stories I posted on my webpage for the beginning of October.  I’d told myself that I couldn’t write dark and dismal very well.  And when I posted those three stories, I was pretty satisfied with them.  I’d achieved my goal.  And do you know what?  It wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be.  Because they’re not the real me.  Yes, I could write them.  Did I want to write any more?  Not really.  And that was a revelation for me.  I’m happy writing what I write.  That’s why Stan Lee’s quote struck such a chord for me.

I’m grateful to all of the authors who write the books that I love to read, the ones that bring me so much enjoyment.  Stan Lee’s right.  Offering entertainment is an end in itself.  Yes, serious, weighty volumes inspire me, but so do cozy mysteries and smalltown romances.  The world needs people who care about what they do, whether they collect garbage, perform surgeries, sing and dance, or write comic books.  Do what you feel passionate about (within reason:)

P.S.  I won’t be posting another blog until after Thanksgiving, so enjoy the holiday.  And happy writing!