Post NaNo

      The was originally going to be a Facebook post, but word limits are annoying.

      A bit of background on me and NaNoWriMo. My first NaNo attempt was back in 2006. Wrote 30k words and then lost steam. 2007 was about the same and interrupted by a week of the death flu. I still can't eat at a certain Mexican restaurant because of it. My first "winning" novel [2008] was a three part story that I ended up lopping off the start and ending sections and working on the middle to expand. Never finished, but I still have it for future work. 2009-2011 efforts were mediocre at best and not really focused all that well.  I could mine them for ideas, but at the basic core, not something I'd work on to expand. 2012 was a series of interconnected short stories with the theme of superhero/villain origins.

      Below is an article that came across my twitter feed [@simms.doug]. A different take on NaNo. I agree with some of what she says, but for me, it's about the approach. You aren't going to write a perfect first draft. Not everything you write is going to make it in or even survive the first edit. I'm not a professional novelist. I might never be. But I like the challenge. Sit your ass in the chair and write. I can crank out 1700 words a day. Might take me 2 hours, but I can do it. If I'm on a roll, that's an hour of work, but I'm not a fast writer. Like her, I have to stop and think about what I'm writing. I don't see that ability and doing NaNo being mutually exclusive.

      The local group had a Thank God Its Over party. One person admitted they hadn't reached the goal. Did we view that as a failure? Nope, we encouraged her to keep going and try again next year. I think she's reading too much into the encouragement that participants give out. For me, it's the effort and willingness, not necessarily crossing the finish line. It's not a given that I'll finish next year. Even if I don't, I'll have something that I can springboard off of. One of the stories in last year's effort has been divorced from the supers theme and become more of an urban fantasy story. Much darker and nasty than anything I've ever written before and since.

      One thing that I will agree upon is that it's not for everyone. Some people don't need it or aren't the right fit. For others, it's the perfect vehicle to get them rolling on an idea. I fall into the latter category and enjoy the hell out of the experience.

http://www.publishingtalk.eu/writing/the-right-time-to-write-nanowrimo

November Musings & NaNoWriMo

November is NaNoWriMo month. Fifty thousand words in thirty days. First draft material all the way. This years project is a prequel story to a previous novella. I decided to work on a character’s back story and explain how he got started as a supernatural troubleshooter. Having lots of fun with the story, which I’ve done a lot of jumping around, working on whatever scene catches my fancy. This year I’m working in Scrivener and finding it works really well in letting me jump around. Each scene is it’s own little section, letting me drag and drop as needed. I’m ahead of the game and not having to rush at the last minute for a change. Course it is the last minute, but who’s counting.

In the meantime, three more short stories were published, bringing the total to six in print, number seven due out in January, and number eight eventually. Three other stories are out to calls and I did manage to write two more short stories that aren’t due until after January 1. On a roll and hoping to keep up the pace in 2014. With a couple of years, I’ll have enough urban fantasy/fairy tale stories that I could slap together as an anthology in my own right. Need to make a bigger name for myself in the meantime.

Handed a couple of books out to some NaNo folks so they could read my stories. Best feedback was one gentlemen that wanted more and he said the opening sentence was quite “descriptive”. Bonus points for hooking them at the start. Looking at the cast of characters that are running through my head, there’s a lot of story potential out there and I want to try other viewpoints. Put the spotlight on the “supporting” characters, develop them further, and see what makes them tick. The best thing I like about writing to the short story calls is being able to pull from the stable and seeing who fits. It’s given me the chance to write a Beauty and the Beast story with a twist. When I started writing it was fantasy or post-apocalypse stories, maybe a couple of hard sci-fi tales. First story sold? Suspense. Second story? Horror. I remember sitting on a panel and one of the speaker said don’t limit yourself to a genre. Now I get it. Write to what works. Let the characters be the focus, tell their stories, and it should work out fine.

As a followup, I broke 50,000 words and won for the 6th year in a row. Still not done with the story, but got an early finish for a change.

NaNoWriMo 2013 & other musings

      It’s been a bit over a year since my first short story was published and I still can’t shake the feeling that it’s a bit unreal.  A small publisher in Delaware took a chance on a unknown author and accepted a 2500 word story about an assassin and his axe. Madame was published in August of 2012. Henri’s appeared in another anthology from Smart Rhino [Perfection in Zippered Flesh 2] and there’s hints of a sequel to Uncommon Assassins. The third story, Riot, is partially written and I’m going to revisit it once December hits. I’m leaving a copy of both anthologies with the folks I’m currently working with and have gotten some very positive feedback from them. And a few strange looks.

      In the meantime, I’ve sold 6 other stories, written twice that number, and revised my novella. Got a slew of rejections, some really good advice on how to improve my writing, and encouragement from friends to keep going. Broken Horn in the anthology Astrologica: Tales of the Zodiac was released on 1st. I can't wait to have that one in hand and to add it to the brag box. That leaves 5 more in the pipeline, a couple of which I'm hoping to see by January. The latest one was submitted and accepted in under 10 hours. To be honest, I was floored with the rapid turn around and thrilled that they liked the story.


      This month is NaNoWriMo. 50K words in 30 days. Working on a prequel to my novella, “Fire and Frost”, going back to when the protagonist took his first steps into the world of changelings, magic, and weirdness. Sort of crap right now, but first draft and all that. Using Scrivener for writing, which lets me breakdown the story into chapters, move around parts, and get a rough outline going. And exports into standard manuscript format, which is sort of a pain as it turns all italics into underlines. Minor quibble, as all the other features make it very useful. Ahead of the writing goal at the moment and I'm aiming to “finish” before Thanksgiving, then push for another 10k. See if I can hit that 60k word goal. This is the eighth year and I've "won" five of the last seven. It's a great exercise in discipline giving me a goal to reach and then exceed. Like I need an excuse to write, but I can at least say, "Sorry, need to write" and go hunker down at the coffee shop for hours while I brainstorm a scene.

Author Bio

Time to update my bio. Six short stories sold in the past 18 months. A good record from what everyone tells me. My novella, Fire and Frost, has been submitted to a publisher and another half a dozen calls are on the list for writing projects. In the next 6 weeks, I'll be packing up and moving to Everett, Washington to pursue new opportunities of employment. Planning for NaNo on top of it all, having the vague ideas for an urban fantasy story with lots of fae, magic, and a delivery company. More introspection in a later post, as a milestone has passed and I want to touch on it. First though, my new bio:

The author lives in the Pacific Northwest and spends his time writing, cooking, gaming, and following the local WHL hockey team. His interest in books and reading started early thanks to his parents, though his serious attempts at writing only started a few years ago. From time to time he blogs about writing and other related topics at The Simms Project at http://thesimmsproject.blogspot.com/. Published works can be found in the anthologies Uncommon Assassins and Zippered Flesh 2 from Smart Rhino and the upcoming anthologies: ATTACK! of the B-Movie Monsters, Someone Wicked, Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac, and A Chimerical World: Tales of the Unseelie Court. His current project is an urban fantasy novella featuring a group of changelings in the modern world. He can be reached on Facebook or simms.doug@gmail.com.

Female Characters

    This is a bit of personal ramble, so bear with me.

    The past few days have gotten me thinking about the various female characters that I've written into my stories. Results have been mixed, bordering on poorly thought out and otherwise bland. This came out of a conversation with a fellow writer in regards to a recent submission. The story is about a very bad man doing very bad things for petty reasons [revenge]. Everyone's a victim in some manner during the story even the main character, but the one strong woman in the story still didn't shine. After the talk, I began to look at her, the situation, and resolution, coming to conclusion that she's just another victim as written. Not a satisfying conclusion as I want to reuse her in later stories. There's some serious potential based on the events in the story. I spent a good 2-3 hours rewriting her part in the story and making her more active and less a victim. She's still a victim, but not one that just rolls over, and she stands up the main character to call him on his shit.

    This leads me to my novella and the main female character therein. One of my beta readers summed it up nicely – she's just a generic love interest. Generic. Boring. Bland. Nothing special. That's a big stumbling block and been the source of more than a few thoughts on how to change it. The solution is simple. She needs a more active role in the story. There's a few scenes early on that I could use in and show why the main character is attracted to her, other than the sex and pretty face. She needs to kick ass just like the boys. She needs to be a full person, not just a name & face or prize to be fought over. It requires a change in my thought process, both in what I write and how I act.

    There's still room for improvement. Lucky for me, I've got seriously good beta readers to keep on the path to being a better writer and a better person.

Busy weekend

    Editors have been busy the last four days. On Friday one of the beta readers sent me back a huge editing pass of Fire & Frost. Fresh eyes found a few weak points in the story & characters. Revisions are underway. Most of the weakness comes at the front of the story & that has the lion's share of my attention at the moment. Prose snipped [and saved], scenes rewritten, and characters altered. I got the dreaded, this is boring [paraphrasing], on one of the pivotal scenes about halfway through the book. That's been marked for special attention.

    I signed a contract for story #4 [details soon], a story got bumped to the next round, and got a rejection on another submission. The last one wasn't 100% surprising. Not my best prose to date. It's getting filed away & reviewed at a later date to be rewritten or incorporated into another story.

Naming the Story

...or how a simple bumper sticker will drive you crazy.

    Back in November of last year, a writing friend of mine suggested that I write a short story with a very specific theme. I hemmed and hawed, not really committing to anything for various reasons. On the way home from a hockey game, we passed a car chugging up the hill. On the rear window was a bumper sticker that read "Truckstop Darlin". My brain latched on to it and went off the rails. Holy crap did it go into undiscovered country. I had to write it. Had to. After two false starts, I finally nailed the story which turned out very different from the initial concept. A much better story given the feedback I got after sending it off to  people to read.

    But there was a problem. The story didn't fit the name any more, the characters no longer matched the concept. I've since renamed the story and sent it off to a call, but that still leaves me with the name "Truckstop Darlin" and it wants to be used.

    Ever helpful, the writing friend pointed out a horror call about dining establishments. Time to saddle up and see how terrifying I can get.

Busy Times & Catch Up

I've been bad and neglected the blog, so time to change that.

March was a busy month in terms of writing. Three new short stories, a revision of Dead Truth [old short story], and finished the third revision of my Fire & Frost. All for calls due by the end of the month or mid-April. The revisions were rejected to my disappointment. Fire and Frost is sort of my baby, getting refined and expanded upon each time I've gone back to it. One of the short stories was also turned down, as it didn't quite fit the need of the call. The two short stories are ones that stretched me in terms of writing. Both covered subject matter that's both touchy and in one case, the protagonist was not a nice person by anyone's definition.

The good news out of effort came as acceptance for the other two short stories. Both came with a request with minor revisions and suggestions on expansion. The first one got a conditional acceptance pending revisions. Sadly, I can't say which story or call yet, as contracts have not been signed, but damn, it's a good one. Story two is Broken Horn and will be published in November by Alchemy Press in the the anthology "Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac". I wrote about Capricorn, not a sign I was familiar. That was a crash course of reading about the sign and coming up with an interesting twist on the sign. Quite proud of it and the fact that I got an "urban fantasy" story in print sometime in November.

May saw a couple of new stories and quite a few false starts. It also entailed a forth revision of Fire & Frost, adding in 6k words, a new subplot, and expanding existing scenes. I've got a publisher targeted for this version and think [cross fingers] that it fits. If not, I'm turning it into a full length novel. That would mean tripling the word count.

Looking at my list, in the past year of writing I've revised Fire & Frost three times, written over a dozen short stories, sold three, and got a forth pending. Not making me rich, but it's a start.

Radcon 2013 - Part 2

Saturday
    This was a full day from 10 am to about 8 pm with only a couple of short breaks between panels. There was a lot of information and my notes aren't quite as good as I hoped. Next year I'm going to be a bit more choosy about panels and give myself more break time. "To Outline or Not To Outline" was first on the menu and an interesting mix of opinions from always, sometimes, and never. I fall into the never as I never follow them. Characters take off and do their own damn thing or I decide to tell a totally different tale. One bit of good advice that I took away from the panel was the suggestion to write an outline if you are stuck. Work out the scene and see what's going to happen or what might happen. Also, make broad outlines, broken up by events or chapters, then worry about the minutia later on. Panel two was "Where have all the heroines gone?" which mentioned Buffy and Wonder Women. Luckily, the panel didn't turn into a Buffyfest, but rather focused on real life examples that would be better and more realistic role models. "Sex, Love and Writing in a Changing World" was an interesting panel as it explored the question of alternate sexuality in fiction and what boundaries were being pushed, both in terms of characters and by authors. I took away that like in previous years, works of sci-fi and fantasy, are willing take that step forward to explore more than just the standard designations and not being bound to convention or society's reluctance to accept those differences. Character gender identification becomes both more and less important to the story. Authors are more than willing to test those boundaries, though a point was brought up as to make sure they weren't a stereotype or cliche. The answer, and really it's sort of a duh thing, is to make them people with all the normal issues and failings and strengths that any other character would have.

    After a break for food, the next panel was "Women in Horror". It was given by a Devi Snively, who teaches horror film courses and makes shorts. She discussed how horror films are given a bad rap for exploiting women, while comedies are given a pretty much free pass. As she points out, in many cases, the last person standing is a girl [smart, clever, resourceful - aka The Final Girl trope], while the men are killed off quickly and efficiently, often for being stupid. There was a strong argument against the Final Girl Trope, as it remakes the heroine into a more masculine figure. [i.e. - male privilege]. The "Mixed Genre" panel consisted of Tanya Huff, John Dalmas, and S Evan Townsend. It started out with Ms. Huff spilling her coffee and swearing, then got better. A few of interesting tidbits included: Why does anyone get paid for writing erotica? Tanya Huff brought that up and asked if they had heard of the internet. Marketing is the root of all genre designations. Her Blood Ties series was originally Dark Fantasy, but is now marketed as Paranormal Romance [It isn't]. John Dalmas wrote a detective novel, but got rejected because it wasn't "sci-fi" enough. So, he wrote a prequel and a sequel that were definitively sci-fi and sold the lot as a collection. Then resold it twice later on to different publishers. Again, marketing, which drives the genre classification on one simple rule: "How many copies can we sell?"

    "Creating Believable Characters" came next and really just hit on the same things that I had heard before. Give your characters issues. Superman is boring without Kryptonite. Batman is boring without the totally messed up background and mental issues. I've been looking at a few of my past stories with a critical eye and thinking "how can I mess with them?" and "are they interesting enough?" Characters are nothing without crisis. When everything's going fine, where's the tension? Toss them in a room, have someone pull a knife of them, and see how they react? Do they run away? Put there hands up? Use someone as a shield? Grab a chair and start beating on the person? One of the panelist, Pat MacEwen, said she uses real people then alters them to avoid being sued. I was not comfortable with that solution, as it seems to be a bit of cheat. But then again, I spent Friday night of the con people-watching in the lobby and getting ideas.

    I got to be a panelist on "Suspension of Disbelief", which I'm pretty sure was planned by two of the other people. Sort of lost in the flow of conversation, which was disappointing, but I did get to make a few points on credibility and buying into a concept. Having done mostly short stories, I've had to put out the concepts up front in only a few sentences and run with it. By other accounts, there's a certain amount of conceit or lower level of plausibility from the genre. Sci-fi and fantasy just by the virtue of the subject matter have a lower bar than say a Tom Clancy novel about a nuclear submarine captain defecting to the US. Last panel of the day was "Understanding Evil", mostly centered around the concept of sociopaths and psychopaths. It was less of a sci-fi / fantasy panel but more of a delve into the human mind and what makes up all the weirdness in out brains. What it really comes down to a few things [and giant grain of salt time]: there is a difference between a sociopath and psychopath [but if you are a sociopath, you're probably a psychopath, but not necessarily the reverse]; just because you're a sociopath doesn't mean you're a killer, just as amoral, controlling, manipulative asshole [Politicians & CEO's]; and it can't be cured. There's a few schools of thought on the numbers which range from 2% of humanity to 4-25% of the business leaders and politicians. My friend, Christine, lent me the book "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson which goes into depth about The Hare Psychopathy Checklist and applying it to people in places of power. If you haven't read it, go get a copy and enjoy.

    That ended the Saturday panels and after a quick meal, we went and caught the last part of a fire-dance troupe called Ignition. They even did a routine to the song "Gangnam Style" which was pretty awesome, even if the flaming bullwhip came apart and nearly set the grass on fire. Next year I think I'll try to get a room that overlooks the courtyard.

Radcon 2013 - Part 1

Introduction
    Back from Radcon 2013 and boy was it a hoot. 3 days of panels and hob-nobbing with a few pros. At the end I was tired and bleary eyed, but happy. So worth the trip and expense. Travel went off without a hitch & while there was a small snafu with the hotel room, it was a minor thing. Along the way we listened to Professor Drout give lectures on writing, which might seem boring but are endlessly fascinating in terms of information and presentation. This is a long review, so I'm going to be breaking it up into multiple posts. I'll be adding a few links that might catch people's interest. Without further ado, here's how things went.

Friday
    I had noticed on the schedule that John Dalmas was giving a talk on sci-fi at 3 pm panel. It was one of the first ones, so we got in with an hour to spare, snagged badges, tossed our bags in the room, and booked it over to the panel. It was early enough that it wasn't crowded and John decided to go off track to read from a current WIP that wasn't sci-fi. Not that we cared, since it was cool to listen to him read and give little bits of commentary about life back in the depression. For those that don't know, John is in his 80's and has some big health issues, but man, he's still got that drive to write. He didn't sell his first book until he was 45, so there's always time. Next was a "Characters with character" panel that was mediocre at best.
    After that was the "Help! I Need an Editor!" panel given by a professional editor [Andrea Howe] and a self-published author [Jason Andrew Bond] that employed an editor. I was the only one to show up at first, which was a bit disconcerting, though by the end we had a handful of people. That panel should have been standing-room-only. No writer is perfect the first time out. Revision and editing is needed on pretty much all  manuscripts. Beta readers that can go over your prose and tell you where it fails is absolutely needed. I try to be good, but I know that I'm just vomiting out words when I write and stuff happens. I noted that I have an issue with leaving out small words or changing thought in mid-stream. Andrea said that sort of information needs to be passed along to any editor that is employed so they know what to look out for. As I was the first one to show up, I got a signed copy of Mr. Bond's book. Score #1 of the weekend.
    Last panel was "The Privilege of a Lifetime". The description was this: Mythologist Joseph Campbell was quoted as saying “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” Just like many of our favorite characters in science fiction and fantasy novels, we are all potentially on our own Hero\'s Journey in life. Are you being true to yourself, making the most of your unique talents and passions? How can we encourage creativity, independent thinking, and personal empowerment in our children? What role does education play, and what can be done to prevent, as Sir Ken Robinson states, \"educating people out of their creative capacities\"? Looking back. I think this was a panel setup by one of the participants and was mostly a pitch on how crippled and stunted the current school system is. While I think it was a bit of an overstatement, I did agree with the idea the our current school system does crush creativity in the name of "practicality". From personal experience, I can attest at least that much is true and I admire the moderator's initiative to create an on-line school that personalizes education for each student.

    

Random writing related links

Grey Matter Press puts up interesting links [on Facebook] from time to time related to writing. Here's a couple that grabbed my attention. Some of them I knew already and others are new.

http://colinfalconer.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/10-great-writing-tips-from-10-great-writers/

Tip #2 & #10 are the ones that hit home the closest for me. I'm always skipping words and been told by my beta-readers, more details!


http://www.onlinecollege.org/2010/05/17/50-iconic-writers-who-were-repeatedly-rejected/
Some of the links are dead, but the others make fora good read. Judy Blume [#40] & Rudyard Kipling [#43] stand out as having received particularly harsh rejections. EE Cummings [#39] got of dig at his detractors in one of his books. On the other hand, I can see what publishers might have stayed away from Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita [#31] and Richard Bach's book about seagulls [#24]. Not that I approve, but I can see why they would be gunshy. New, interesting, and potentially uncomfortable subjects should be written about, not just the stock, formulaic series. Isaac Asimov holds an interesting place for me. I find his stories to be boring. Most of the interesting stuff happens off screen. The writing is good, but when I read his Foundation series, there was no connection, no investment in the characters or what was going on. It was dry and boring.

There's still a plan to put up some prose, but in the mean time, back to banging out some words.

Fire and Frost Rewrite

I promised a bit of fiction from a previous NaNo attempt. It'll still happen, but I've been busy and haven't had a chance to review the prose and decide if I like it.

Today was spent pushing through the rewrite of the novella that I wrote about 18 months ago. 3k words were cut to eliminate scenes that were only appropriate to the original call, then began the line by line scan to make it fit with the new concept. This has been an ongoing process for the last six weeks. The main character went from one origin to a totally different origin, which made the action scenes totally obsolete and the way he works magic wrong. Two additional scenes were added in, one to cover a deleted scene and the second to give a better background on character relationships. Along with my rewrites, I pushed the word count up by 2500, which tips it over the 25k mark.

Now, I'm going to let it sit and stew, then go back at it later tomorrow. In the mean time, it's off to look at calls, see if I can place any of my rejected works out there, and plot the origin story for the characters in Fire and Frost. Also, not sure on the title of the story, seems a bit cliche, but that's another point to stew over.

Rewrite Ahoy!

Back in December I wrote a handful of short stories that got sent out to various publishers. All of them were rejected for the anthologies. It was a disappointment, but not entirely unexpected, the odds are that most of your work will not get published right out of the gate. So, I have a handful of stories that are looking for homes.

Moving on from that, my current project was suppose to be an edit to a novella I did back in 2011. With the change to the main character, it's become more of a rewrite than a quick edit. I'm finding myself rewriting huge swathes of the story and focusing more on the character interaction and less on the action. The love interest has gotten a larger part in the story and I'm thinking about adding a couple more scenes with her and the MC. This is for an urban fantasy call, but I'm tempted to toss it at a romance call just to see the result if it doesn't work out on the current submission target.

This month's goals are to finish up novella, get a peer review going, and submit it before Radcon. I'll be going to Radcon in mid-February, where I've volunteered to sit on a couple of panels and do a reading of fiction on Sunday morning. I was there in 2010 and had a blast attending panels, listening to other authors talk about their experiences, and picking up tips on writing. I've got a lead on a couple of submissions, including one that's due before Radcon, so there's a bit of urgency going on for that one.

Next post is going to be a bit of fiction that I did for NaNoWriMo a couple of years back. It's been looked at a couple of times, but by no means done.

    And we're back for the new year. Last month I put out three short stories to various horror anthologies. Got a polite [and very brief] rejection yesterday on one, still waiting to hear on the other two. The rewrite for my superhero, now urban fantasy, novella is coming along. Changing the character background and concept has made the rewrite trickier than I had expected. There's a few contradictions that need to be cleared up and the MC isn't as powerful now. It's still a good story [imo] and looking forward to sending it off.

    Back in December, my friend tagged me with a 10 questions post. Her post is here: http://sabledrake.livejournal.com/689876.html. Mine is below.

1. What is the working title of your next book?
    **Tentatively, it's Fire and Frost. Not 100% happy with it, but it's a working title.
   
   
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
   **It was a call for a superhero romance novella. I took a character concept that had been floating around and built from there. Looking back, it might have been a bit of cliché, but going forward I've done a concept change and started pushing outside of my normal boundaries of writing.

3. What genre does your book fall under?
   **Urban Fantasy is the best fit. It's no longer dealing with superheroes, as the main characters background has changed quite extensively. There's still a romantic angle to the story, as the MC is in theory off to save the girl.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
   **The MC, Theo, would be played by Ryan Gosling. He has the look and attitude, though he's a bit taller than the MC would be. The love interest, Alexia, could be played by Noomi Rapace or Angelina Jolie. Alexia's father would be a perfect for Michael Gambon, while Tom Hiddleson could do wonders as the main villain.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
   **Love is a loophole.
   
   
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
   **Not self-published, but I don't have an agent at the moment. A bit of advice that was given to me, is to get an offer on the book, then find an agent to work out the details. Seemed a bit backwards advice, but the person telling me this had a few published novels to back him up.
   
   
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
   **It happened over the course of a month during the evenings and weekends. The original draft is a novella and I'm looking to expand upon it.
   
   
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
   **Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Jim Butcher's Dresdan Files and Seanan McGuire's Incryptid series. That's some big company to shoot at, but all are writers that have turned out some really good stuff.
   
   
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
   **It was a test of my ability to write a full story with a complete ending. Each year I write during National Novel Writing Month and haven't completed a story with a satisfying ending except for once. The call was for superheroes and I've been a reader of comics since I was a kid.
   
   
10. What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
    **I've tried to focus on fantasy elements that I don't see alot of in current fiction. There's a strong connection to fae, seelie, unseelie, and faeries courts. No demons, werewolves, vampires, or zombies. One of the secondary characters is a necromancer, but retired from the business.