K.S. Trenten

It’s begun, it’s begun, #BloggingFromAZAprilProject! Both Cauldrons (The Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com and the Formerly Forbidden Cauldron at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com) will be participating. This April’s theme is Character Poems.

Ah, poetry…I’ve got a passion for certain poets’s works such as Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, Shelley, Lord Byron, and William Blake’s. I’ve posted poems of my own at both Cauldrons, often inspired by the prompts of P.T. Wyant at ptwyant.com. This month I’m offering a poem every day at each Cauldron to one of my characters. We’ll see how much they appreciate them. (wry grin)

Once more I’m not officially participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, but I am writing. I’ve been expanding At Her Service, working on a few of my fanfictions, along with bits and pieces of other projects. It’s been slow-going. I’m still adjusting to getting up earlier. The weather got a lot warmer where I live. I’m having to walk a lot earlier. This means I’m going to bed earlier. I’ve lost time in which I used to work. Spaces where I used to work in are flooded with harsh sunlight, making them stuffy and uncomfortable. Blinds don’t always help in this. Real life has been difficult lately, making me want to hide from it. This hasn’t helped my enthusiasm. Plus I learned something which made me wonder if my own tastes are at odds with the public, if I’m writing in the wrong genre, if maybe I should be aiming for readers of literary fiction. Only I’m not entirely sure how to aim. Perhaps the mentality of the market is against me. As an avid reader I felt my opinion as far as books are concerned mattered, but perhaps they’re too specialized to matter enough. I’m someone who loves to play with literary ambiguity facing a demand to define themselves. I wonder and worry about these things.

Forgive me my funk. I know the antidote for it. Give myself a success. Do something, accomplish something in spite of the funk, even if it’s something small.

Wish me luck.

Next April I’ll be Blogging From AZ. At both Cauldrons. Yes, I’ve managed to load pictures onto posts again at the Formerly Forbidden Cauldron at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com. No, I won’t be returning there for regular Wednesday posts. They’re there to stay at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com. I might do a monthly something at the Formerly Forbidden Cauldron. I haven’t made up my mind what.

The theme of Blogging From AZ: April Project is Characters Poems. Yes, it’s the same characters who’ll be appeared at the Cauldrons. Ariadne, Byron, Christopher, Damian, Elizabeth, Fiona, Gabrielle, Hebe, Isolde, Juno, Kyra, ‘Lyssa, Melyssa, Nevalyn, Ouroborous, Peter, Questioning, Rhodry, Shelley, Troile, Una, Vanessa, Westerleigh, Xian, Yuri, and Zenobia will be visiting the Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com. Amberwyne, Briar, Caerac, Dyvian, Danyel, Tayel (Tayel used to be Dayel, but he refuses to leave Danyel, his twin, so he ends up under D regardless), Emma, Faith, Grace, Hector, Harold, Iama, Jupitre, Kevin, Leiwell, Map, Nathalie, Oleander, Phaedra, Quartz, Rhane, Seraphix, Thomas, Undine, Varwyth, Xylanthe, Ylynessa, and Zoe will be visiting the Former Formerly Forbidden Cauldron at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com. I’ll write a poem to each character (or characters) on the day of their particular letter. I’ve found it very helpful to remind myself of these particular characters. It gives me a chance to promote those in published works. It reminds me of those in formerly published works whom need me to finish revising their stories. It gives me the impetus to give a little attention to characters whose stories are still in progress.

I’ve got a lot of stories in progress; My Tool, My Treasure; Web of Inspiration, My Cusps Runneth Over, Trouble at Caerac Keep, On the Other Side of the Mask, A Portrait Is Worth a Thousand Words, The Players Are the Thing, A Suitor’s Challenge, Lift Your Gaze to the Heavens, and No Flying Saucers in the Vineyard, to name a few. Plus there’s my stories awaiting revision; Stealing Myself From Shadows, The Hand and the Eye of the Tower, A Godling for Your Thoughts, Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins, plus I’ve decided revise Fairest, expand some of the parts I summarized. I’m in the middle of revising At Her Service right now. There are also my ongoing fanfictions I’m writing at Archive of Our Own I need to complete; A Hopeless Situation (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel), More Than a Jinrou (Shiki), and Sisterhood of the Witchblade (a Witchblade/Angel/Wonderfalls/Dead Like Me x-over) There’s lots to work on during Camp NaNoWriMo April, although I’m not sure if I’ll officially register. I’ll probably trying to be a little more vocal in my Facebook group; Camp NaNoWriMo: End of the Rainbow Cabin.

All of my blog activity will be put on hold in April for Blogging From AZ except for Rainbow Snippets. I’ll still post Rainbow Snippets on Sundays. Much of what I’m doing is rushing around getting these set up while continuing my Works in Progress. Morning Pages have become a way of life for me. They help me organize myself, think of what I’m going to write next, what I’m going to work on next.

I’ve become a lot more regular about Artist’s Rewards since social isolation. I can no longer go to art galleries, or visit places I used to. I’ve starting making them about the DVDs I watch, my impressions of what I’ve seen. A really trippy Artist’s Reward I wrote was a stream of consciousness piece regarding episodes of Hannibal Season 3. Doing this helped me get back to writing when I faltered during social isolation. They’ve also become a source of solace.

I’m getting back to my goals. Having the rights of Fairest and At Her Service sent me into a state of panic, or failure. Yes, I should have expected this. The contract I had for Once Upon a Rainbow Volumes 1 and 2 was only for a few years. I still felt like I’d been unpublished, that I’d taken a huge step backwards. I’ve been trying to regain my balance, feel like I’m moving forward again. This is after all an opportunity to improve both stories, to write certain scenes I just summarized in Fairest and to expand At Her Service, changing parts readers found objectionable which really aren’t essential to the story.

There are a lot of balls of juggle and I’m having trouble catching them, although I’m getting better with practice.

Wish me luck.

Self-publishing. It’s something I need to do, step by step.

First thing is first. Finish the product. Finish Stealing Myself From Shadows which needs to be polished up and made ready to publish. Finish Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins which I finished a draft of last year and also wants polishing up.

Only Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins is the sequel to Fairest. Fairest, which is no longer in print since it’s contracted time is up in Once Upon a Rainbow Volume 1 as is At Her Service in Once Upon a Rainbow Volume 2. Those are products ready for re-publication or are they?

I’ve received a measure of criticism for At Her Service for a scene I inserted to make the story longer, a scene some readers found offensive. The scene has its place in the story but it could be fixed up. The entire story could be fixed up.

It’s not necessary but I could have a better story and a better product as a result. The same is true of Fairest. I fixed a lot of things which bothered me when I re-submitted it, but there are large segments I summarized.

I keep thinking about the novel, Hannibal, by Thomas Harris which I’ve finally broken down and read after being madly in love with the TV series Hannibal for so long. How I didn’t enjoy the ending with Hannibal and Clarice, although much of their relationship throughout the books had been beautifully written and beautifully portrayed in cinema. I never could quite accept the ending in the book the way I accepted what happened between Hannibal and Will in the TV series, even though the latter made my head spin at times.

Too much was summarized in those conversations after the Verger Farm. Those conversations signalled the change in their relationship, leading up to the end. I feel they should have played out, the way Will and Hannibal’s conversations did the series. As a reader, I didn’t feel the change. There may have been excellent reasons for those summarizations; such as a word, page, or chapter limit. How would I feel about the ending if those scenes had played out?

Criticism is useless unless I learn something from it. How much better will Fairest be if I let those scenes play out? How much better will At Her Service be if I go through, detect any summarizations, and let them play out?

I’ve got the rights back to Fairest and At Her Service. This is an opportunity to do something about those summarizations, the parts of the stories I’m still not happy with.

I guess I’m going back to that first step. Finish the product. I’ll worry about the other steps while I’m completing that one. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for information that’ll help make the next steps less intimidating.

Wish me luck.

The song Love Crime by Siouxsie Sioux and Brian Reitzell keeps playing in my head, the one at the end of the TV series Hannibal. Watching its episodes, commentaries, and extras on BluRay was one of the things that got me through 2020. Somehow the image of the two men, bleeding, wounded, embracing on the cliff’s edge while the lyrics “I will survive/Live and thrive” sum up my almost defiant relief at leaving 2020 behind and doing my best to plunge into 2021.

I’m a lot heavier. I don’t want to be this heavy. I finished a rough draft of an original story I’m not sure about and a ton of Hannigram fanfic as rhodrymavelyne which is now posted at Archive of Our Own. I’m looking at a couple of original stories of mine which were orphaned once again when the anthologies were in reached their expiration dates. I’m considering self-publication with woefully empty pockets. I’m wasting time, doing too many things wrong, yet every step feels like wading into shark-infested waters. I wish I found the business side of writing more fun. It seems I could make it more fun if I started thinking creatively about certain entrenched marketing notions, if I figured out ways to directly appeal to potential fans of my work. How can I use the market to find them? What resources can I use to find them? One of the most effective methods I had of reaching out were conventions. I haven’t been able to go to those. I’m not sure if I’d be as effective at promoting my work at an online convention as I am in person. I hope a vaccine is found to the virus, allowing people to go to conventions again, but right now online conventions are the only conventions available.

I hope we can go back to doing a lot of things once a vaccine is found, but the hard truth is the world has changed and I’m going to have to cope with that change. While I’m trying to cope, time is wasting, and my finite time is running out.

My first impulse is to put aside the tasks I’m unsure of and concentrate on the ones I can do, like finishing my stories. Making money off stories published so I could earn enough to self-publish has been a complete bust. Maybe it’s time to concentrate on the stories that I’ve set aside for too long, the ones straining to get out in blog posts at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com.

I haven’t made any resolutions. I don’t trust myself enough to make them. I would, however, like to finish a few, incomplete projects and tasks in 2021, ones which have been left unfinished for too long. I’ve made progress on a few, but I never complete as many tasks as I hope to.

Wish me luck, energy, and zest in finishing the ones I can.

To say 2020 has been challening seems to be putting it so mildly as to be laughable. It hasn’t been as bad for me as it could have been. I’ve had nightmares along with moments of silence, staring at the blank page, the wall, or a computer screen, gripped with visions of how much worse life could be. Such visions have filled me with fear. I’m afraid to go outside my home. I’ve had to force myself to take walks. Walks were once an activity I loved, the freedom to allow my mind to drift and wander. Now I feel like a squirrel foraging for food, looking this way and that for potential predators.

No, it’s not that bad. I do have to keep my eye out for other walkers. It’s taken a lot of the fun out of walking for me. It also takes the fun out for other walkers, who have to deal with a fearful me trying to keep my social distance. It’s easier when the walkers are trying to keep their social distance as well and have some sympathy for my unease. It’s harder when the walkers don’t keep their social distance, have no sympathy, grumble and/or mock my attempts to get out of their way. Sorry for the trouble but I really need the exercise. I’ve put on twenty pounds since lockdown. It turns out I’m an anxiety eater. When I’m anxious, I turn to the chocolate, the cheese, the wine. I’ve also had an equally anxious husband cooking much richer fare than I’m used to making for myself, often preparing such items (like homemade potato chips) much later at night than when I eat. I haven’t exactly been iron-willed about saying no to such items. I’ve been more in a “I’m not sure how long I’ll be healthy enough to enjoy such things so eat them while I can” frame of mind. Digging into the homemade potato chips and the chocolate is a distraction from thoughts like, “I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to enjoy such things” and “Maybe the earth is tired of humanity polluting it and all the other things we do to make our small lives more comfortable. The virus may be the equivalent of a human squashing a bug.” Such thoughts have preyed upon my mind since I learned the canals in Venice are clearer than they’ve been in years. I loved visiting Venice, taking a boat ride down the canals. Can I blame other people for wanting to do the same? How much damage did we do, all of us, taking that boat ride?

Trying to escape from my own gloomy thoughts, I’ve hidden behind the TV, behind my favorite series on DVD or BluRay. I’ve taken refuge in patterns, in lists, in small things which gave me a sense of accomplishment or control. I found myself unable to read, not wanting to let my mind wander too much. I’ve forced myself to keep on writing but I keep wanting to hide from my own words.

Nothing satisfies me or gives me more of a feeling of accomplishment than writing, no matter how much my own words scare me. Few things are a more fruitful source of creative wonder for me than books. Trapped in lockdown, in isolation, I need my books. I need the words. I need them to return to myself, to venture out of hiding.

Bit by bit I’ve been writing more. Bit by bit, I’ve been reading once more, getting myself going with old loves. I’ve had a notebook handy so I can write things down as I read; reactions to particular parts, story ideas of my own. I’ve been writing my reactions to the TV series I’ve been watching again. Recently it was a movie I reacted to. (I’m still wondering if I want to post the gloomy Flight of Fanciful Fandom I came up with at rhodrymavelyne.dreamwidth.org or not.) I’ve written a ton of Hannigram and Hannibal fanfic snippets which I’ve polished up and turned into stories. Archive of Our Own has exploded with rhodrymavelyne’s work. I added a few chapters to my ongoing Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel fanfic, A Hopeless Situation. Bit by bit I finished a draft of Quartz’s story, Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins, a draft I’ve taken a step back from.

I’m very glad I didn’t do NaNoWriMo. I’ve written way over 50K this past November but it hasn’t been creating a rough draft. I did get some rewriting for Stealing Myself From Shadows done, not as much as I’d like, but there’s been progress.

The hardest part has been the holidays. Hiding on Halloween was hard. Thanksgiving was better. Joining a Zoom party was a lot of fun, plus it was a chance for guests who can’t usually make it to Thanskgiving in person to be there. I had some conflicted feelings on Black Friday, thinking about all the places Don and I would have gone to on our way home from visiting the family, wondering if those little businesses have survived the epidemic. I had about zero Christmas spirit until a generous cousin sent me a Jacqui Lawson Advent Calendar. It’s been lifting those spirits, bit by bit.

2020 had been hard but it could have been harder. It’s not over yet. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get worse. Here’s hoping it gets better, bit by bit.

To NaNoWriMo or not to NaNoWriMo? That is the question.

I’d planned to NaNoWriMo. I was going to pick up My Tool, My Treasure in November, see if I could finish a draft of it.

Only the NaNoWriMo site changed. I noticed it during Camp NaNoWriMo and had trouble working with the altered links and posting applications. I went back recently with my updated Operating System, wondering if it would be an easier. It was a little, links no longer overlap quite as much, yet it still feels jumbled with options popping out at me rather than an orderly layout where I can see everything and find everything. No, the site is still too difficult for me. I decided not to sign up as a result.

This doesn’t mean I’m not going to write. On the contrary, I’ve been writing constantly since lockdown. Some of it has been random, much has been fanfic, or just keeping up with my blog posts. Bit by bit I cranked out a draft of Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins. There are problems with this draft, problems I’m too close to see. I need to take a step back, give myself some distance so I can look at the story with clarity.

The result is I’m picking up Stealing Myself From Shadows, rewriting it with Waiting for Rebirth as the beginning. Waiting for Rebirth was a story I shared in segments at the Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration (inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com). This is Christopher’s story, the character who’s become the host of Conversations with Christopher at the Cauldron. Stealing Myself From Shadows is the first novel I intend to self-publish in my Tales of the Navel: The Shadow Forest series. The Hand and the Eye of the Tower, A Godling for Your Thoughts, and My Tool, My Treasure are all part of this series. Too long have rough drafts (or secondary or third drafts) lay neglected while I tried to finish stories for publishers. Now after Fairest becomes homeless again (its time period as part of the Once Upon a Rainbow anthology has expired), leaving me wondering if I should consider self-publishing it along with Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins (Quartz’s sequel), I turn to the books I was saving for self-publication, saving up to self-publish.

No way is the revenue I’ve earned from my published works going to pay for the self-publishing costs as I’d once hoped. Maybe it’s time to turn my attention back to the Shadow Forest and start moving forward with its stories even as I cringe from the practicalities I must face to realize my dream.

Wish me luck. I’m really going to need it.

There are many different promotional paths. I’m not sure if we’ve explored them all. Particular ones tend to dominate and many people follow them.

One method that seems to work is committing to the path you’ve decided to follow on a regular basis. I’ve continued to update the Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com. It’s gained followers over the years in spite of being a free method of promotion. My persistence and steady work is paying off slowly.

Right now a new path of promotion is opening up, one I’m not sure about. It’s very popular with a lot of writers, but I’m uncertain if it’s right for me.

I keep remembering advice I gleaned from self-publishing books about promotion, to choose the methods I myself can have fun at, which I can commit to. There’s no guarantee my promotional techniques will work, will yield monetary rewards for the time I put into them. This said, I might as well enjoy the time spent. If I’m not having fun with my own promo, how can I expect anyone else to enjoy it?

My efforts at this particular method have left me, shall we say, deeply disillusioned at my own capabilities. (wry grin) Is the problem that I’m simply inexperienced at this particular form of promotion? Or it wrong for me? Should I give it another chance? Or should I invest my time in other promotional gambits, ones I'm confident I'll enjoy and I’ll be able to pull off?

I don't know what the answer is, what I should do. Perhaps the best I can come up with is some sort of compromise? I'm simply not sure what to do next.

Wish me luck in figuring out a solution.

It’s frustrating when I rewrite a story, piecing together the fragments into a rewritten whole, only to discover I like the original fragments better than the revised version. At least I know which version is better, which I should use. What’s even more frustrating is when I can’t decide which is better, when I rewrite a scene in a story, love this, only to realize it contradicts a freebie story in a blog post.

Good thing these blogs aren’t part of a published, finished canon story. They’re rough snatches of story, offering a taste of my characters and their tales. They’re not the finished product. I still feel like I contradicted the continuity of my own canon, something which drives me crazy as a fan, a reader, and/or a watcher. I hate to do this to other people, truly hate it, but it’s unavoidable now. For the first time I’m glad the Formerly Forbidden Cauldron at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com doesn’t have any followers. I’m being forced to abandon that blog any way in mid-October, due to updates to blogger which make it impossible for me to post there. Actually I’ve already abandoned the Formerly Forbidden Cauldron. I just set up stories and poems in advance there, which will continued to go live until mid-October.

Perhaps it’s just as well. I’ve been told I have too many blogs. I started with the Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com, only to find out I couldn’t share Torquere blogs there. This was back in 2015 after Prizm Books first accepted Fairest. I was told by Torquere Press I needed a blog, a Facebook account, and a Twitter account at the very least as one of their writers. Eager to please, I also got a tumblr account and two additional blogs besides the ones at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com and the one at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com (which could interact with Torquere’s blogs). When I could no longer access my old livejournal account as rhodrymavelyne, I created this one. I started a blog at rhodrymavelyne.dreamwidth.org. Torquere is long gone. My blogs have evolved into their own unique identities. The Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration at inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com has weekly Conversations with Christopher, where Christopher, a major character from my Tales of the Navel: The Shadow Forest stories in progress breaks the fourth wall on a weekly basis and talks to my other characters. The Cauldron also participates in Rainbow Snippets, where weekend samples from LGBTQIA+ stories are offered to readers. rhodrymavelyne.dreamwidth.org is where I indulge in Flights of Fanciful Fandom, a place to speculate, fangirl, and go on about other people’s stories or series.

This site, cauldronkeeper.livejournal.com, is more of a traditional blog. Other writers stop by to promote their releases and I share a little monthly update about what’s up with me, particularly in my writing.

The Formerly Forbidden Cauldron is at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com. Its official title is also the Cauldron of Eternal Inspiration, but I call it the Formerly Forbidden Cauldron to differentiate it from the one at wordpress, because it was blocked for years by Facebook. I used this particular blog to share poems and stories weekly, samples of my works, almost always inspired by prompts provided by P.T. Wyant at ptwyant.com. Often the stories are freebies from a work in progress. Sometimes they’re rewritten to become part of that work in progress.

Rewriting these stories is trickier than I thought it would be. I’m finding this out as I piece together stories and fragments which are becoming part of Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins.

It’s hard work as I said. I sincerely hope readers will love the end result.

I didn’t officially participate this month in Camp. I didn’t do enough. Too many distractions awaited me, including my first live reading. I’m of two minds about live readings. The voice, the presence, the physicality of the reader distracts me from the words. They disrupt their magic, keeping me from being absorbed with the characters, the story itself. At the same time, the reader’s voice, presence, and physicality can draw attention to the story, generate interest in it. Doing a reading myself was a learning experience which sank into my blogs and my characters’s conversations at the Cauldron. (inspirationcauldron.wordpress.com). Sometimes these conversations gave me ideas, affecting the direction for Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins. Once while doing research on rocks, I found myself distracted by an idea for Quartz, for a crucial scene in the book. I found myself jotting it down, summarizing it, only I drawn deep into the surreal details of the scene itself. I haven’t incorporated that scene into the actual draft I’m writing for Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins. I’ve followed the sequence of events in the story for the draft. The scene is in a separate file as are many fragments which have come to me in a spontaneous burst of creativity. I go back to those scenes when it’s time for them in the draft. I piece them together, rewriting them in the actual story. They often come out different, once they’re rewritten. It’s quite a job, piecing all those fragments together, more and less difficult than simply writing from scratch. I’m not finished with Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins, but I’ve made considerable progress. I may even be at the halfway point or very close. The size of this story still takes me by surprise. I never expected to swell into something of novel length. It’s Quartz’s story, though, the story he wants to tell. I’m going to go on telling it, until it’s finished. I’ll worry about trimming it, if it needs to be trimmed once he’s said what he wants to say.

I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month and I’m not doing Camp NaNoWriMo. I am going to concentrate on a single story this July, Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins. I won’t be signing up at the official Camp NaNoWriMo website. I’m not comfortable with the changes which have been made there, changes which made it difficult if not outright impossible to socially interact there the way I once did as a cabin administrator. I’m going to see what I can do in my Facebook Group, Camp NaNoWriMo: End of the World Cabin, which ended up substituting for a cabin a lot in April, due to the problems I had with being a group administrator. I’m not going to worry about my word count. I’m just going to concentrate on the story and see where it leads me.

Ideas are already popping up for ways Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins could go, details I could flesh for its world and its characters. I’ve already written a lot of freebie stories involving both, thanks to the prompts of P.T. Wyant at ptwyant.com, stories I’ve posted at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com. Some of these are bing rewritten and incorporated into the body of the story. Of Cuckoo Clocks and Crystal Coffins is swelling into a novel-sized project. I never thought Quartz’s story would get so big, but it wants to expand. There’s a lot more to the oldest of the seven dwarves than I realized, something he never stops reminding me of. Incorporating his passion for rocks into his story has been quite a challenge, along with a learning experience. I’m reading a lot about quartz crystals as I write, discovering how much I have left to learn. It would be only too easy to allow my ignorance, along with my fear of my own ignorance to slow me down as I have many times working on this story. Getting past all of that will be one more challenge I’ll be facing as I write this. </p>

One thing I’ve noticed about both NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo is I almost never accomplish as much as I’d hope but I always accomplish something. I learn more about my characters whom often surprise me. I’m not always comfortable with these surprises, yet tackling them is rewarding. My story becomes more and more focused as I do. I get frustrated when I encounter a problem, an inconsistency, and I’m not sure what to do. Maddening as those moments are, it’s rewarding when I finally push through and find a way out of the problem. 

I’m guessing there will be surprises and frustration awaiting me this month. Here’s hoping I can use one and push through the other to get to the rewards.