Tag Archives: villa encantada

My Theories About Series and Self-Publishing

Happy New Year, one and all! I thought I’d start the New Year talking about what I’m working on at the moment, putting individual stories up on Amazon and Smashwords. Between publications and backlog, I’ve got about 200 to play with, so it’s a pretty big task, given that I’d like to have almost all of them up by the end of the month. But if I consider that some are flash, which I’ll put up individually on QuarterReads and release in a compendium, it becomes less daunting.
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WIP: Reality Storage

Finishing up the final polish of a story today, titled “Reality Storage”. It fits in both the Villa Encantada series as well as the category of “stories inspired by the remodeling and moving process.” Here you go:
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Radio Silence

Upcoming plans and publications for 2014.
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Teaser: Another Excerpt from A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada

Here’s another chunk from “Elections at Villa Encantada,” a darkly humorous story about a very odd condo complex. It’s been fun filling out the complex’s roster a little in this story, and I’m going back to revise one of the unpublished ones with some of these details. Like the talking cacti.
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Teaser: First Excerpt from A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada

I’ve just started roughing out a new story, “A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada”. I’ve written several Villa Encantada stories now, including “Eagle-Haunted Lake Sammammish,” “Events at Villa Encantada,” and “The Threadbare Magician.” In this one I’m trying for dark and funny, and thinking it will end at 4-6k words.

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Plotting and Re-Plotting Stories

Here’s another example of using a Stumbleupon-discovered post to spur a rewrite.The story I just finished, whose working title is “Villa Encantada,” is one whose beginning I wrote over a year ago. I picked it up last summer and added a couple of scenes, but something about it has felt wrong and it’s been just lumpy scenes stuffed full of description of a balcony garden. I was pretty sure it didn’t begin where it was supposed to, and also pretty sure that the best thing to do would be to start it again from scratch, write it, then mine the previous efforts to see what should get folded into it. Continue reading

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Writing Progress and Thinking About Frame Stories

The story’s also dependent on a secondary frame story, which I’m not sure about. There’s pieces from the frame used in the actual story itself, which I think makes it feel less superfluous, but I’m also always wary about devices like that. When they work, they’re beautiful – when they don’t, they’re awkward and distracting. So what makes one frame “work” where the next one doesn’t? Continue reading

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Snippet: Villa Encantada

Excerpt from Villa Encantada (working title), an urban fantasy short story set in Villa Encantada, a condo complex on Lake Sammamish. For those familiar with “Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish” or “Legends of the Gone,” it’s the same complex. Continue reading

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