witter (ˈwɪtə)
vb – (often foll by: on) to chatter or babble pointlessly or at unnecessary length
n – pointless chat; chatterCOLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY – COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, 12TH EDITION 2014 © HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
Welcome back to WWW! We had a bit of a hiatus, as some of y’all may have noticed…or not. I won’t pretend that the world begins and ends here. I’m sure most of you, like me, spent the past few weeks living life. And if you are, indeed, like me, you’ve been picking yourself back up by your bootstraps, dusting off those laptops and writing again.
Let me backtrack by saying this was one hellish summer for me. I spent the first few months utterly stressed and emotionally drained. For my fellow artists, you can attest this doesn’t breed creativity. It’s so easy for creatives to fall into a proverbial black hole (hopefully not literally ;)) This season I’ve tried my best to not fall into the pits of despair. Instead, I found reasons to keep going. I finally finished re-reading Pride & Prejudice. I read a lot of Psalms from the Bible, and I played far too much Dragon Age: Inquisition. I won’t apologize for the last one, either. Sometimes we need to decompress. And since I don’t currently have an art room or giant mural to paint out my frustrations, I took it out on the legions of dark spawn instead.
Finally, there came a day when the weight was gone and I could breathe again. And let this be a roundabout lesson for you, fellow artists. Only after I had let go of the toxic in my life, could I finally write again.
Some of you may be unaware I published another book during all this. Well…a short episode in a larger serialized novel. So let’s call it a novella. The technical book is called Angel Blue and I’m still in the process of publishing Episodes 2 & 3. Did I have to publish three episodes? Not necessarily. But I’ve always wanted to try serialized novels, and this seemed like the perfect story to try an episodic format. After all the hard work I put into Silver Hollow 2018 earlier this year, I wanted to publish something fun and easy to write/read. I’ve been posting teasers here and there you can check out. Or you can just hit up my Angel Blue tab to learn more and see the fun graphics I made 🙂
While publishing Episode 1 of Angel Blue, I realized it was high time to turn my attention back to the next mammoth project in my queue: BOUND BEAUTY. Did you like the All Caps there? I thought it would help impart the weight this book will end up having. Each book in my Wylder Tales series has grown in size (sans Wolfsbane’s Daughter of course). So I have a feeling Bound will be a wee bit of a doorstopper. I definitely have a lot of story to tell, either way. Between bringing Vynasha into her full potential and finally confronting Grendall and the curse. Not to mention her complicated relationships between the village (Baalor, ahem…) and her brother, our girl has a lot to work through.
I was so nervous about starting Bound again. Probably because last year I spent months working on what I thought was Bound, only to end up adding it to the end of an Extended Edition of Scarred Beauty. I’m not complaining of course. I knew Scarred needed a bit more to tidy up that story and character arc. But last winter, as I returned to the drawing board, I had no clue how to bring my characters from Point A to Point B. And while I wrote chapters and found breadcrumbs of inspiration, something felt off.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your story is to take a step back and let yourself grow. Read more, live a little and write other books. I rewrote and expanded Silver Hollow and Angel Blue. In the process, I worked with two new editors and several beta readers. I read a lot of books in my quest for the almighty 100. And I watched shows with brilliant storytelling.
I published the first episode of Angel Blue and then froze in terror at the prospect of Bound.
Who’s to say I’ll know what to do with this, any more than I did last year? the voice in my head whispered.
Then one day, I sat down at my keyboard and started writing. The story flowed out of me so fast and so easily it startled me. Where was the struggle I had been expecting? Well, you’ll recall I spent months sitting on this concept. I spent the past couple of weeks re-reading a lot of passages from Wylder Tales and diving back into these characters and the world. And since this series is a prequel to Silver Hollow, I knew what I wanted to convey. Which lead me to Vynasha’s motive and suddenly I was right there with her in the Forgotten Village with the Iceveins family.
I’ve got about fifty pages written so far. Once the last episode of Angel Blue is published, I’ll begin sharing teasers for Bound with you. But one day at a time, as my dad says. Speaking of, I’d better go write while my kid is asleep. Time for Earl Grey, the Game of Thrones soundtracks and more dark and twisty adventures through the Wylder Mountains. See you soon!
Jennifer Silverwood 