Letters to Psyche--A Valentine's Day Read

Looking for a short story to read for Valentine's Day? How about one told by the God of Love himself? This short story of mine actually features two famous couples: Cupid and Psyche, and Romeo and Juliet. Here's the blurb:

When the Greek god Cupid visits Verona, he foresees no problems uniting the Montague and Capulet families. But when Elisabeth Capulet and Giovanni Montague's love ends in tragedy, Elisabeth places a powerful curse not on just the families, but Cupid himself. Unable to visit his wife Psyche, he sends her letters detailing his efforts to undo the curse. Can the two of them save another generation of lovers, or will Cupid and Psyche be forever parted?

You can buy it as a stand-alone short story for $0.99, or get it as part of Ordinary Wonders: A Fantasy Short Story Collection, for $2.99. Both links are universal.

Ebook of Ordinary Wonders Available!

Although I don't normally post on Fridays anymore, I have some news that I should have shared a couple of weeks ago. I've published my first short story collection. It's called Ordinary Wonders: A Fantasy Short Story Collection, and it contains eleven short stories. Some of them were independently published, some are reprints from anthologies, and a few of them are completely new. This collection also includes the four short stories from Young Seasons. (I had originally planned to prepare a print version of Young Seasons but decided it was too short.) Here's the full list of stories:

Letters to Psyche         

The Owl and the Spider’s Son  

Silver Rain      

Bugged Out at the Museum      

Caps in Red and Gray  

Blood for Sap, Sap for Blood   

Henry’s Harness          

But Not Today

Last Locomotive from Wistica 

To Name the Anilink   

Jenna’s Rosebush

Currently, this collection is only available as an ebook. I have to go through both KDP and Draft2Digital for the paper version, and it's more difficult than I expected, especially since I decided to experiment and create my own cover. (Sorry, Maria.) I'll post again once I have it figured out. In the meantime, the eBook is available for $2.99, which is a great bargain. Click this link for a list of available retailers.

IWSG--Reworking Old Stories

It's hard to believe it's already March, isn't it? Only one month left before the 2017 A-Z Blogging Challenge begins. I already have all of my blog posts written for April, which makes it ironic that I don't have this month's blogging planned.

Anyway, it's time for another post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. This month, our co-hosts are Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson.Our question this month is this: "Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?"

I feel like much of my work would qualify for this question. I have no idea how many drafts I went through for Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, and they changed significantly from first draft to final. However, I don't think they sat around as long as some of my other stories. So I'll focus my answer on two projects: "Letters to Psyche" and the Season Avatars series.

I'm not sure how old the original version of "Letters to Psyche" is. The original idea was inspired by a writing prompt for a now-defunct magazine, and the working title was "Antidote for a Family Feud." The story is about Cupid's involvement with the Montague and Capulet families prior to Romeo and Juliet. I don't think I ever submitted the original story to the magazine, but I workshopped it online. One of my reviewers made me realize Cupid didn't have any personal stake in the story events, so I found a way for a mortal to curse a god. Since Cupid was separated from his wife, Psyche, I rewrote the story to make it a series of letters from him to her. "Letters to Psyche" has been well-received by readers, so I think the revision worked out. You can determine that for yourself by checking out the story through this link.

Even older than "Letters to Psyche" is my Season Avatars series. I wrote the first version of the first book (then called Day of All Seasons) over twenty years ago. Even after revision, this book was over 170,000 words long. It's no surprise that it got rejected by traditional publishing. (An editor who's no longer with Tor did request the full manuscript, but he never got back to me with comments as he promised to.) I finished the second book in this series and started a third, then shelved this project until self-publishing came along.

When I decided to return to the world of Challen, I kept the characters, concept, and setting, but ignored my drafts and started over. I wrote Seasons' Beginnings as a prequel to explain how Chaos Season started and to expand on the relationships between the characters. Day of All Seasons showed both how the "Fem Four" quartet came together and how they tamed their first storm. I finally managed to split this part of the story into two books: Scattered Seasons and Chaos Season. Part of how I managed that is by limiting my point-of-view character to only one per book. (The original story had multiple POV characters.) Books Four and Five (Fifth Season and Summon the Seasons, which is currently being edited for publication later this year) have the same titles as Books Two and Three in my original plans, and they cover the same parts of the overall story. However, they're told differently, and I followed a different path to the same ending I had in mind so many years ago. The series may not be a big seller (perhaps that will change once Summon the Seasons is published), but I'm happy with how it worked out, and I hope readers are too.

If you've reworked old stories, what did you change and why? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

Excerpt from Letters to Psyche

Since Valentine's Day is on a Tuesday this year, my husband and I plan to celebrate the holiday late. However, I thought I'd share with you an excerpt from my short story, "Letters to Psyche." It's about Cupid's attempts to unite the houses of Montague and Capulet (the families of Romeo and Juliet) with love. If he fails, a curse will separate him forever from his own beloved wife, Psyche. The story is told from Cupid's point of view:

I was in the middle of shooting a youth when Elisabeth’s first curse crashed into me, causing me to misfire. I thought it was a fluke until several more curses hit me with enough force to make me turn visible. Luckily, I became transparent and rushed to her bedchamber before the youth noticed me.

I didn’t recognize Elisabeth; she was bone-thin with her wavy hair clipped short. I gleamed what had happened when the Christian priest came to hear her confession. Once he left the room and took his faith with him, I allowed myself to appear. She was close enough to death to keep my presence secret, and she didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“I grieve for your loss, my lady,” I told her. “It is my task to unite your houses as an example of love, not drive them apart.”

“But if we were your example, why didn’t you help us?” she whispered.

“I only spark love, my lady. Once it catches fire, it’s up to the couple to keep it burning. How can I focus on one couple when there are so many others who need me?”

“Have you no pity for us humans, Cupid?” Her eyes appeared smudged in their sockets. “The poets say even you were pricked by your own arrow. Why do you allow so many obstacles in the path of true love?”

A pox on the poets, my dearest, for revealing what should have been kept secret. As Elisabeth spoke, I remembered eavesdropping as my mother tasked you with sorting seeds, fetching golden fleece, and even sending you to Hades. How I had to sneak around to find sympathetic helpers for you. Even with them on our side, we nearly lost each other. But would we have realized how much we needed each other if we had not been parted for a while? Nothing worth winning was ever gained easily, but greedy mortals always demand the gods make their paths as smooth as silk. So I answered her as Athena had advised us, with the words, “It is the wisdom of the gods, Lady.”

“Wisdom, Cupid, or a wish to keep us blind?”

This was arrogance I would not tolerate. I was about to leave when she coughed herself into a spasm, enough to make me pity her.

She beckoned me closer. “Cupid, God of Love, I pray you hear my final request.”

This story is available at the stores listed here for only $0.99.

No matter how--or if--you celebrate Valentine's Day, I hope you have a good one!

 

Shakespeare and My Stories

According to Goodreads, this is the start of Shakespeare Week. Goodreads has some activities planned on their site, but they didn't appeal to me. Instead, I thought it would be more interesting to talk about how Shakespeare has influenced my work.

Shakespeare borrowed many of his plots, and in turn many other writers have borrowed his plays and lines. One way to borrow a play is to transfer it to a different setting. Twinned Universes takes Hamlet to a spaceship traveling through a wormhole to a parallel universe. The protagonist, Paul Harrison, is a young actor who dreams of playing Hamlet some day and quotes constantly from Shakespeare. When Paul's mother dies, he's convinced his great-uncle is behind the death, even though his friends and family think him a little mad for doing so. They even want him to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Rose Stern. (Yes, that name is a deliberate reference to Rosenkrnatz and Guildenstern.) How does Paul plan to test his suspicion? Why, by staging a play to catch "the conscience of the king," of course. Does Paul's story end in tragedy like Hamlet's? You'll have to read Twinned Universes to find out.

I'm not sure if Romeo and Juliet is more famous or popular than Hamlet, but it's definitely a very well-known play. In "Letters to Psyche," I explored the history between the two feuding families and brought Cupid and Psyche into the mix. An earlier romance between the Montagues and Capulets goes awry, and Cupid learns much about humans as the curse affects generations of the two families.

Sometimes it's good to get away from tragedy and enjoy a little comedy, as I did with a Beatles fanfic story called (I think) "A Hard Midsummer's Night." The Beatles actually performed a skit from the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream." You can catch it on YouTube:



My story had the Fab Four tangling with the fairies from the play--with some not so fab results. I think this appeared in an issue of Indie Writers Monthly, which no longer seems to be available. Maybe when I revive my mailing list, I can share this story with subscribers as a bonus.

Do you love or loathe Shakespeare? Even if you don't like the original plays, are there pop culture references to Shakespeare that you like? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Selecting KDP Select or Not?

A couple of days ago, Amazon announced a major change to how authors in the Kindle Unlimited program would be compensated. When KU was formed last year, authors were paid if a reader read past 10% of the book length. This led to a lot of authors putting short stories and serials into the program. To encourage authors to add longer books, Amazon will start paying them next month by the number of pages read.

Currently, I only have one short story, "Letters to Psyche," in Select. I prefer to put my work in wide distribution, both to benefit readers and to make sure each book has the potential to give me multiple income streams. That said, most of my sales do come from Amazon. I get a few by distributing through Draft to Digital, even less via Smashwords, and so far none through Google Play. I have put some of my work in Select for brief periods of time. For example, Seasons' Beginnings was in Select for the first three months before I put it in wide distribution. I got a few borrows, but it wasn't hugely popular. However, I put Scattered Seasons in wide distribution from the start because the first book was available everywhere. Since there is a big shift in the Season Avatars series between books One and Two, I plan to write a short story collection featuring the characters from Scattered Seasons and use that as a way to introduce readers to the series. The question now is whether I should make the collection perrmafree everywhere or put it in KU first and see how it works. I face the same decision with "The Unnumbered World," the next story in the Catalyst Chronicles series. All novels from both series will be in wide distribution, but at some point, I may write another series and keep it exclusive to Amazon.

What do you think of the KU Program? Are you signed up for it as a reader or writer? Please let me know in the comments.

Letters to Psyche

With Valentine's Day coming up this weekend, I thought it was worth reminding people that I have a short story available that's perfect for this holiday. It's called "Letters to Psyche," and it's a cross between the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche and Romeo and Juliet. Here's the blurb:

When the Greek god Cupid visits Verona, he foresees no problems uniting the Montague and Capulet families. But when Elisabeth Capulet and Giovanni Montague's love ends in tragedy, Elisabeth places a powerful curse not on just the families, but Cupid himself. Unable to visit his wife Psyche, he sends her letters detailing his efforts to undo the curse. Can the two of them save another generation of lovers, or will Cupid and Psyche be forever parted?

You can get it here on Amazon for $0.99. I hope you enjoy it!

Letters to Psyche Part of Kindle Unlimited!

As an experiment, I've made my fantasy short story "Letters to Psyche" part of Kindle Unlimted for a few months. This means that if you're part of KU, you can read it for free! Here's the blurb:

When the Greek god Cupid visits Verona, he foresees no problems uniting the Montague and Capulet families. But when Elisabeth Capulet and Giovanni Montague's love ends in tragedy, Elisabeth places a powerful curse not on just the families, but Cupid himself. Unable to visit his wife Psyche, he sends her letters detailing his efforts to undo the curse. Can the two of them save another generation of lovers, or will Cupid and Psyche be forever parted?

Even if you're not part of KU, the story is still only $0.99. I haven't decided yet if I'll run a free promotion of this story when it's in Select, but if I do, I'll post the dates here.

It's a Summer Smashwords Sale!

If it's July, then Smashwords must be holding their annual Summer/Winter Sale. This year, I have four works enrolled in the sale:

Click here for "Letters to Psyche" and use code SW100 at checkout to get it for free.
Cupid must find a way to break a curse on love between the Montagues and Capulets. If he doesn't, he'll never see his beloved Psyche again.

Click here for "The Mommy Clone" and use code SW100 at checkout to get it for free.
Set between Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes. Bouncy houses prove to be more scary than fun when a kidnapper stalks the clone of a rock star.

Click here for Lyon's Legacy and use code SW50 at checkout (Normally $2.99, on sale for $1.50).
A geneticist who blames her rock star ancestor for ruining her life is forced to travel back in time to clone him.

Finally, click here for Twinned Universes and use code SW50 at checkout (Normally $4.99, on sale for $2.50). 
 The way to solve a murder may be in an alternate universe--but an assassin lurks there too.

If you want to sideload one of these stories to your Kindle, all you have to do is look up your Kindle e-mail address (go into "Manage Your Content and Devices" on Amazon, then click the "Your Devices" tab) and e-mail the mobi file to that address. 

This sale runs through July 31, so make sure to take advantage of it. As Shakespeare said, "Summer's lease hath all too short a date."

Letters to Psyche Featured on Mark of the Stars

Jessica E. Subject kindly featured my short story "Letters to Psyche" today on her blog, Mark of the Stars. Click here to check it out.

Back on the Blog Chain: Not Finishing What You...

It's my turn to pick the topic for this round of the blog chain. Naturally, I have to make it a tough one:

Is there a writing project you've failed to finish? If so, why? Are you planning to return to it at some point? Alternatively, describe a book you started to read but didn't finish and why you didn't finish. You don't have to name the book.

I have a slew of partial short stories that I've abandoned, at least for now. Some of them are several years old, while others are more recent. Probably my biggest reason for abandoning them is plot--or rather, not knowing how to resolve the plot. Some of these stories no longer interest me, but there are a couple that I would like to finish and publish. There's always the possibility that I may take the story idea and rework it into something else, the way I transformed an old short story called "Antidote for a Family Feud" into "Letters to Psyche."

I have to admit I do have some abandoned novels as well. One of them is the final volume in the Season Avatars series. I wrote the first two books when I was trying to traditionally publish them, but I dropped the series when I failed to get anywhere with it and became interested in what's now the Catalyst Chronicles series. Now that I can independently publish the Season Avatars series, I've regained my interest in it. However, since I'm starting with a brand new prequel, and since I've made several changes to the world, I'm going to have to revise what's already been written anyway. So perhaps it wasn't so terrible of me to leave that first draft unfinished. Also unfinished is a NaNoWriMo project I started a few years ago about a pair of shapeshifting sisters. I've discovered NaNoWriMo, although fun, doesn't really work well for me in terms of finishing a story, not just putting 50,000 words down. Again, maybe someday in the future, when I've cleared some of my current projects from my brain, I can return to that story. While there's life, there's hope, right? And hopefully I'll have fewer abandoned projects as my writing career continues.

To follow the rest of the chain, check out what Kate said yesterday, then visit Christine's blog tomorrow.