A Weeeeee Bit of Vanity

I don't want to spoil my books or tell people anything to influence the experience, but sometimes I labor intensely to describe them without giving anything away.  The blurb is often said to be the hardest part-- trying to hook interested readers without giving away the juicy bits.  It seems the richer a story, the harder that gets!  We end up reducing it down to "It's about a person that meets these other people, who have this in common, and they face adversity trying to solve this problem..."

I have to admit, I read my blurbs and I'm never satisfied.

My series is set in a made-up world.  It has cultural influences loosely based on places I know about, either naturally or through research.  At first, I had written the first chapter after playing Final Fantasy XII over a decade ago.  If you played the game and thought it oddly familiar you know why.  Princess Ashelia's kingdom is invaded on her wedding day, her betrothed is killed in the attack.  It was a scene that had a lot of impact on me at the time and it's still powerful.  From there, I broke away from inspiration.

You may be able to see inspirations from Dragon Age as well although I had never played the game until I was partway into the fifth book of my series.  I was blown away by how similar my concept was and was a bit chagrined, thinking the comparison would definitely be noticed.  Only I was still using a more adult-oriented Final Fantasy direction.

My fascination while writing these books was the discrepancies between history and legend.  How often those lines are vastly blurred due to a bias or someone attempting to fill in the missing pieces.  When writing lore, I used a very basic concept of gods and their creations, a concept found in a lot of mythology.  In the second trilogy, I borrow very obviously from a semi-familiar mythology but place a very different spin on it...

I've warned people that these books are not for children because I don't fade to black on sex scenes (if I find relevance in their details) and they are all over the map in terms of what people are comfortable with.  I don't hold your hand and tell you what to enjoy or what not to enjoy.  There is no wrong answer.  It's your experience throughout, not just regarding this.

The problem with the blurb is, well, you could attempt to reduce each of my points into one sentence and you end up with something like this: A story that questions the validity of history and legend, inspired by Final Fantasy and Dragon Age, in yet another made-up world.  Oh, and there's sex in it.

I don't have to tell you what is wrong with that.  

Dress it up however you want, it just doesn't cover the richness that ten years of work and doing everything myself might entail.  Instead, I have to pick a theme that runs the gamut of the book and it's the woman you meet at the beginning attempting to lead others against questionable foes and the relationships that develop between them influencing whether they succeed or fail.  She isn't the main character.  The chapters are set up like short stories from an omnipotent and sometimes intimate viewpoint where each character plays the role in both assuming a hero's role (when they don't particularly feel like one) and the fact that luck and forces out of their control set them there with no guarantees they are needed or wanted for the role.  

One thing you learn about heroes is they rarely ever know it and they usually get embarrassed or shocked the first time they are called one.  I hinted at this in the title even: The Truth about Heroes.

I hesitate to tell you more because I'm not here to influence how you think.  I want to invoke your curiosity on how I do this, what relevance this fantasy has, all on your own.  I was hoping only that you wouldn't see it as fantasy and assume it was skin deep.  When you scratch the surface, you start to see the layers.  I did not write with an intense knowledge of the genre or what sells or what to emulate.  I wrote a story based on a passion for storytelling and the confidence in its value.

Please give it a try! From October 1st-5th, the e-book for the first book is available for free and I encourage people to read it and even visit me at Virtual FantasyCon October 15th-22nd where I can answer your questions or hear your thoughts.

I blog, I write fanfic, but I don't have awards or competitions under my belt, something I am seriously considering if not for any other reason than curiosity.   There are many authors that stayed under the radar before they gathered the courage to put themselves out there.  Wow, did I fly in blind, but I have no less confidence that I have a lot to offer readers.  Barring tastes, it is sound work that will only get better.  I plan to dabble in other genres and ideas, but I do hope to keep a steady center in fantasy.