New cover art and other such things

So, a rather productive day today, only not with Het Eiland in de Mist. I decided to FINALLY lulu-fy (new word!) Plain Flowers, as chances are small that I will be doing much revising on that book anyway. 

I also decided to finally order a new copy of In Licht en Schaduw, because I have no clue where my old one is, and I really don't want my first book ever to be only a digital file. Luckily for me, the whole package was still stored on my Lulu.com account - and I promptly hated the cover art I had created for it back then. So, not bothering to edit anything of the actual story or chapter layout, I went and painted a new cover art. It was only two hours of work, and still rather rough around the edges, but in general I would say it is an improvement. The backflap text was also made of nonsense, so I blotted down a few different lines about the story altogether.

Als de vijftienjarige Mare een ontmoeting heeft met de mysterieuze Steffan, raakt haar leven in een stroomversnelling.  Herinneringen aan een ander leven steken de kop op, en al snel wordt ze meegezogen in een avontuur dat haar ver van huis brengt. Langzaam ontdekt ze een oude familiegeschiedenis en de donkere geheimen die daarbij horen. Wie is de gemaskerde Vorst, die haar opjaagt? En wat kan zij doen om te voorkomen dat een bloedige oorlog weer opnieuw oplaait?

 (When the fifteen-year old Mara encounters the mysterious Steffan, her life rapidly changes. Memories of a different life begin to pop up, and soon she is pulled into an adventure that takes her far from home. Slowly she discovers an old family history and its dark secrets. Who is this masked Sovereign that is chasing her?  And is there something she can do to prevent a bloody war from rising up once again?)

It sounds so much cooler than it actually is, of course. I'm almost tempted to rewrite the entire book. Almost...XD

Plain Flowers just looks the way I had intended, though I admit I was never eniterly satisfied with the cover art. And yet, I could never be bothered to really work on it, so whatever, haha. And look! I made a logo: Shinyverse Press <3

There are many tales about mysterious travellers.
Many stories of a young hero rising to the throne.
Hundreds of legends about prophesies.
Don't believe a word they say. My name is Daffodil. I'm here to tell the truth.

My theme in storytelling

I’ve been thinking about themes a while ago. All stories have one or two themes and they are especially present in the young adult literature. Working on Het Eiland in de Mist has made me wonder occasionally what the theme for that story is. The more I wondered, the more I felt lost. What’s the message I really want to convey? I kept asking myself. It was something I had to figure out,  if I were going to really get a grip on that novel, but it was turning out to be harder than I’d thought.

By the way, I distinguish theme from story and plot. This was a bit confusing for me in the beginning, but Regina Brooks’ Writing Great Books For Young Adults helped me to understand the differences. The story is what’s going on in a linear direction, the plot is what the story comes down to and the theme is what has been silently going on all along: the core truth of the novel.

Getting back to Het Eiland in de Mist. I knew a few things that I wanted in there; environmental awareness, for example. Something to do with, uh, we have to be good for the earth or else we’ll ruin it for ourselves? That was really as close as I could get before I went blank. Since writing a novel is so much easier if you know what you want to be talking about, I decided to sit down and figure it out real and proper before writing another sentence.

And then I had a small epiphany.

You see, it wasn’t about environmental awareness and it wasn’t about finding out who you really are. Sure, both things are in there like the walls of a house, but they aren’t the house. I realized that my theme is in every story I write. What it boils down to is this: decision-making. Making your own choices. Becoming strong in your own mind – becoming free in your mind. For some reason, I always pick out (young) girls to explore this. I could argue that girls are simply easier to write, myself being a female. But that’s not entirely the whole truth, because I have had male main characters, and enjoyed writing them. So why, then? Has it something to do with feminism? Could it even be something spiritual? Maybe, maybe even both. And that is funny, because I have never actually considered myself to be a feminist. I wouldn’t even oppose much to a fairly more traditional male/female relationship, if I had the chance. But I’m hitting the essential part right away: I wouldn’t oppose, suggesting at once that I have a choice in the matter. And knowing your own mind and acting on it, well, that seems to me one of the scariest challenges in life. Because it is all too easy to behave in conformation of society. It’s easier to go with the flow, and live in a machinery structure that the generations before you have set up – school, study, then a job, hobbies and probably some family life; all rooted in a certain quality of living, because that’s what our western society provides. It’s nice, mostly.

And yet sometimes I feel that this whole pattern makes things fake – as though it’s hard to see and feel what real life, real living, is about, because I’m so embedded in a well-oiled machine that is the western civilization. It makes me wonder: who am I? Am I real, am I strong? Could I lead or follow? I don’t mean in a business-like structure. I sometimes have dreams where I am tested to the full limits of my human abilities. Could I lead and follow when lives depended on it? Have I lost the resourcefulness that made human kind what it is now? They are very primal things that I sometimes feel we  have lost.

And here is where writing comes into it again. Because I need to explore such things and when I’m writing, I can. Call it escapism if you want, and maybe it is – but telling stories is my one way of discovering everything I have inside of me…My hidden fears, my inner strengths, my bad and redeeming qualities.

Obviously, I never really write about me. I do not want to create characters that have too much in common with myself, because where would the excitement be in that? But I have discovered a certain pattern in my characters…things that are about me, essentially – about who I am and who I’d like to be.

  

I think Jia (from Jia and the Cat Riders/ Jia en de Kattenrijders) is one of the earliest characters with such a specific growing arc. Jia en de Kattenrijders was primarily a coming-of-age story. (As James Marsters once put it when he was being interviewed about Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “All the vampires and demons are just the window dressing”. I feel this is true about most fantasy stories). Coming of age, the graduation from “childish” fears and apprehensions, is something that happens to us all in very many shapes. Jia discovered something about responsibility and social engagement. To be more precise: it was me who discovered this, along the way. When I started writing the book, I had no intentions of removing her from her parallel world. After all, in the world of Lynesse she was much braver, more successful; altogether a better version of herself. Given the chance, I probably would have swapped places with her at that time in my life. So why did I end the novel with her never going back? Because towards the ending of the story, I had started to realize that Jia had to face up to her own life, which is probably a parallel to my own coming-of-agey stuff. I mean, I was 17 or 18 at the time and I had to make some choices in life myself, while I had much rather hidden somewhere in a closet. So I made Jia do the responsible thing. I’m not even sure if I would have made that same decision, but I made her decide this because I knew that it was the Right Thing To Do. So in the end, my character Jia found that she was strong enough to make her own choices.

Another character of mine is not from any novel or short story, but from this roleplay that I used to enjoy with one of my friends. Jana was a second character that allowed me to explore what I might call it the “inner strength of girls”. Girl power! So perhaps this is about feminism after all? There certainly is a reason why I enjoy Juliet Marillier’s books so much, and why I’m such a big fan of the Buffy the Vampire series.

Jana was so sure of herself all along. She probably would have killed somebody if she had to, she was that kind of girl – yet on the other hand, she was so domestic. I always felt that she had this sense to always be correct, to be proper. She was incredibly pragmatic at times, and often even plain rigid. I realized that it was my own strictness there. I would almost say I’ve never had a character that I’ve liked so much as I like Jana – but then there are Briallen and Essylt, two characters from a current roleplaying game (rpg). I realize that they are pretty minor in terms of importance; especially since they’re not part of the novel that this blog should be about. I mention them because the theme of making your own choices is important with them. They are so different, but I can never make up my mind about which one I like best. Perhaps I might even go as far as suggest that both represent a different part of myself. Briallen is mature, earthy and very aware of herself. She embraces her responsibilities and she is, most of all, a little bit regal and proud. Not vain, just proud. Essylt, on the other hand, is far more insecure, much younger in behavior and probably more spoiled (I accidentally wrote spoilt there – that’d be just the exact opposite of the pristine girl that she is, haha). She wants the male protagonist for the way he makes her feel, but never musters enough bravery to take the leap of getting into an actual relationship with him. She’s been protected her whole life, she’s been lived her entire life, and only now has to face up to it on her own. Who will she become? Because with all that fairy power running through her body, making an actual decision will be vital. Deciding her own fate will matter. And she is scared to death.

But, as with all my characters, she is getting there. Because making your own decisions matters. It matters so much that I cannot stop writing about it. When you really make a choice based on your own mind, in absence of fear, is that not the moment where you become free? Isn’t that what freedom comes down to, in the end?

Not all my characters are in doubt of what they want. 

This girl sees, wants, and takes .(from my fairytale, 

The Wooden Heart)

Knowing what you want is a pretty daunting task. It means you’ll have to figure out who you actually are, on the inside of your existence. And that’s what I want Nimue to explore in Het Eiland in the Mist and the following two volumes; who she is, what her values are, how strong she can be in the face of danger and which decisions she is going to make when it comes to morally grey areas. This is not about my own psychology, though I can never shut myself out completely. Nimue isn’t even like me. But if I manage to get this theme running beneath the story that I have set out for her, I’m in for a very exciting adventure. 

 Next post might be about the stories in my head that will never come out. I like writing about writing and storytelling. But it does feel a bit like stalling from the actual work of getting that manuscript out of my brain and into the empty pages of word.

Now I'm going to end this very long post with an appropriate quote from my current favourite show Buffy, brought to you by Spike: 

"The day you suss out what you do want, there’ll probably be a parade. Seventy-six bloody trombones."

An introduction and wee history of myself

Hello.

Introductions can be kind of awkward.

What you should probably know about me:

I’m a girl.

I’m a student.

I have two cats

I have recently started a course in herbal medicine.

I drink a lot of tea but never drink coffee.

I want to write young adult novels.

So why a blog?

I’ve been writing for a long time, but last November marked the beginning of my most ambitious project to date – a story that spans three novels. Knowing, of course, that finishing even one novel is one hell of a job. I’m working on the manuscript for the first book, called Het Eiland in de Mist (The Island in the Mist). And I have been struggling! At the same time I realized just how much I love this – writing, the craft, the plotting and squeezing your brain for inspiration, for the right words.

 I want to be published. I really want to walk into a bookshop one day, and see my own book on the shelves. So, I said to myself, why not try to keep a diary of your process? See where this takes you. Who knows, maybe I will actually make it to that publisher.

A brief history of my writery stuff

I can’t honestly tell when I first started to write stories. There’s one memory I have of me sitting in the back of the car with my sister. She was writing on a small note block, I was dictating the words because I couldn’t read or write yet.

But I guess my first real attempt at writing something like a book began when I was 14 years old. I had the whole story in my head; it was, in fact, some kind of bedtime story that I told myself every night before I went to sleep. I wrote it in first person, like a diary, but all that stagnated after a couple of short chapters.

One year later, I decided that I would write a book. A proper one- one to be published. I took the diary fragments and reworked them into a novel initially called The Light of the Shadow (Het licht van de schaduw in Dutch). The story follows a normal girl who one night is awakened by Steffan. Turns out she was a princess in another dimension in her past life. Once she gets her memories back, she's dragged into a rather dangerous adventure, including a magical pendant, an evil cousin and some dark family history.  I worked on this story for maybe four years and then rewrote most of it when it was finished (and I was a bit older and saner). The title then changed into In light and Shadow (In licht and schaduw).

Remeber, princes: when taking your princess on your first romantic horse-back riding stroll, DO NOT let the lady slip off into a nearby stream!  Lucia and Steffan, an early illustration.

Chandra after her first fall from grace.
Also an illustration from my earlier days.

By then I had given up on the idea that this would ever be fit for publishing, and happily moved on the my next project. I should mention that by then I had discovered the wonderful event that is NaNoWriMo. My first attempt to participate stagnated around 7 pages in word, but by the time I was ready to let go of In Light and Shadow, I had grown significantly. My second novel would be a prequel to In Light and Shadow, and it would be completely different. I finished the 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo (or Nano, for short) easily and felt really good about the whole thing. 

Moon Daughter, as it was called, takes place some thousands of years before the first book. Main character is Chandra, an orphan girl raised by priestesses in the great city of Damáris. As it turns out, the moon goddess has a nasty kind of surprise for her. And then there's Raven, with whom Chandra falls desperately in love. Unfortunately, I never finished the novel. It’s too long ago and entirely not my taste anymore, otherwise I still would. The important thing is that I learned a lot about planning a story.

An illustration for chapter 10 of
  Jia en de Kattenrijders.

So, not at all discouraged, I was ready to rock another novel by the time November came rolling about once more. This time, the story was tight-knitted, my characters were fleshed out, I knew where I wanted to head and what themes I wanted to cover. Jia, the main character, was a fresh and feisty girl whom I could relate to, but she wasn’t ME. For a long time I have considered Jia and the Cat Riders (Jia en de Kattenrijders) to be my best work. Jia can travel to and from a land called Lynesse. She joins the Cat Riders Guard, a special unit for the protection of the young and insecure reiks (sort of a prince). This leads her to get involved in the affairs of the country –a country plunged into war by a 
very dangerous opponent.

School life prevented me from joining Nano for another year, but a little while after I had edited Jia and the Cat Riders, I wanted something less fantasy. The next novel was a sort of post-apocalyptic/dystopian thing set in the near future. It was called Till Human Voices Wake Us (Tot mensenstemmen ons weer wekken) which actually sounds better in English, because it was named after the final line of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. By that time I had gained some popularity with Jia and the Cat Riders on my favorite writing site, and people were even more enthusiastic about Till human voices wake us. Suddenly I found myself struggling with every other sentence. I had raised the bar too high for myself, and the whole thing just came to a screeching halt.  This is what happens when you try too hard.

Daffodil. Our hero, much against
her wish.

Millie: a girl with a quest to
become a princess.

Needing some lighter material to work with, and never able to resist the temptations of NaNoWriMo, I wrote a novel called Plain Flowers – in English, because what the heck, it felt like an English Kind Of Novel. Plain Flowers began, and mostly finished, as a sort of parody on the classical coming-of-age fantasy book wherein a young hero(ine) tumbles into another (wannabe-medieval) world and there discovers his or her grand destiny to free the land of evil…things. My story was about the sidekick Daffodil; just a modest shepherd living in the hamlet Low-of-the-Road. She has never heard of a place called America, nor does she particularly believe in its existence – or, for that matter, in the prophecy that this strange girl Millie is supposed to become their princess and defeat the evil tyrant princess Merope. The Nano of 2009 was used to actually finish the book, focusing on fairy folklore and Daffodil’s own weird heritage – which was quite the ordeal for poor Daffodil, since she insisted on not believing in fairies at all.

In the months following, I sometimes wrote a short story and finished two novellas. And finally, then, we arrive at the November of 2010, where I felt I needed to challenge myself. I wanted to write something better, more adventurous and dramatic, more solid and darker than ever before. It is the reason for setting up this blog.

Nimue.

This is the story of Nimue, who loses everything except her younger brother Arthur when a tidal wave erases her home and village. With nothing left to lose and strange powers following them, brother and sister start a journey to find their long lost mother. And that is, as they say, only the beginning.

Dun dun dun.