Visit my Website for all the blurbs, excerpts and news!!

Visit my Website for all the blurbs, excerpts and news!!
Visit my Website for all the blurbs, excerpts and news!!

Friday 30 December 2011

Black Carnival is among us!



Joy to the world, the day has come! Black Carnival is out and about!

Step  into my world at Evernight (with hot excerpt):
Or on Amazon (with hot sample):
Black Carnival in Kindle Store


Please visit and comment on Adonis Devereux blog for an interview with yours truly (bows) and a chance to win a free copy of Black Carnival!
Boundless as the Sea

Sunday 18 December 2011

Release date - and a photo


The Phoenix - K. W. 2011

I thought my Phoenix would add a sufficiently glorious touch to the announcement of Black Carnival's release date, 30th of December.
Stay tuned!



Sunday 4 December 2011

Portrait of Laz'law... almost



"The dark, dark look" - K.W.  2011

There is a curious theory among some watercolourists that true black does not exist in nature and that therefore it is a mistake to use black in painting. While I was never very convinced by this theory (apart from anything else the existence of black pigments seems to me sufficient proof of the existence of the colour!) I was curious to see how dark you could go in watercolour without using true black.

This is my study in darkness, and it turned out a deal darker than I expected (or wished), in every way.

I do feel sometimes that I have only the barest control on my charachters, in writing and painting alike; I am not sure whether that is good or bad. (Laz'law is one of the main charachters in Black Carnival, and my personal favourite)

I am indebted to Flondo for the original photo this was copied from, and even for the edit of the photograph of the painting... what would I do without him?

Friday 2 December 2011

Edits

Just finished the first edits on Black Carnival, and after a few clarifications among all parts involved on how to proceed, it seems to me that all went nice and smooth, not to mention tolerably painless. But then having broken both bones in my right arm without shedding a single tear, I may just have higher pain tolerance than generally supposed.

I realized while editing BC that the big edits, those that affect the structure of the novel, are a lot easier to accept than small things like the removal of a "fancy" speech tag. Maybe it's because the plot is done with the brain but the voice of the charachters in certain scenes is something that very much belongs into the guts and instinct of my writing self. Anyway. Evernight allowed me to save some of my fancy tag, for which I will be forever grateful. When Stacey's ok-mail came I went running through my horse's pasture waving my arms and singing "whispered, whispered, whispered!". The neighbours (and my horse) probably thought that I was insane. My husband, who knows me well, and bears all my rants with stoical fortitude, watched me for a while and then just asked: "Tags?"

Most of chapter 3 went out of the window, unregretted. It will surely reincarnate as a short story. The ending is more clearly happy, although some tears still flow. The heroine whines much less (even when gagged). The hero behaves and makes the necessary promise. Good boy. What days we live in, if it takes an editor to make heros behave!

Curiously enough, while trying to explain his aloof behaviour, a more obvious bond emerged between this book and its sequel, althought the story still stands alone.

In the meantime stories bubble up in my brain, some darker, some less. There are the Prequels to Black Carnival,  a collection of short stories about the main charachters in the book. And of course White Sands, the sequel, which grows a bit, stops, grows a bit more, and stops again (mostly for lack of a convincing villain). There is the growing shadow of a Naughty Fairy Tale. Poems come and go, scattering stardust over all.
I am a slow writer and a hopeless pantser, which means that all these stories are stewing my brain to mush. But at least  I entertain myself cheaply.

I am also doing a very minimal amount of reading. The bad thing about writing is that it makes it nearly impossible to read (at least for me). I am slowly enjoying Adonis Devereaux's Worth his Freedom, and the quite different Bound to be Free, mentioned in my last post. And occasionally I just need to "go home", and then sort out something by O'Brian, or Tolkien.