The birth of a creepy monster

-

I came to a spot in book 3 from the Monsters and Demons series. There is supposed to be a monster in this one arc which will last a few chapters, but compared to a different arc happening at the same time, the monster was lackluster. This was bad, because the lackluster monster was terrorizing the main character.


I put the whole book on hold for a couple of weeks while I racked my brain for something suitable. At first I didn't even know the monster was the problem. I thought I'd hit a wall in the story and I wasn't sure how to proceed. I cut the scene where I wasn't sure what to do, but when that happened, the arc became disjointed.


One night, while I was staring at the ceiling and trying to fall asleep, this ugly face appeared in my head. It wasn't just an ugly face, but it had a body and certain kind of clothes. It even had a hat. It was grinning at me from some place. I was so creeped out, I shoved it out of my head and forced myself to go to sleep.

When I was in a brainstorming session, struggling to rip a good scene from my sleepy brain, I realized the monster was the problem. Then I remembered the face. And then I realized, "That's my monster!"


It's a different sort of monster from all the others in the story. It's reasons for being are very different from all of them. It has a fairly simple motivation, but a gruesome one nonetheless. What's most important is that my heart started beating again with the joys of creativity, because it had felt quite dead and none of the ideas I'd come up with could bring it back to life.

While I wrote this, I realized where the creature had been standing in the image in my head: The setting where the arc is taking place. Now I'm plotting out that arc. It's freakishly fun.

Now remember, Monsters and Demons: Nri Kryne is available for pickup over at Amazon world wide.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I left Twitter. Now I'm free!

-
Image
Twitter. Yuck. Bleah. The place has become a toxic mire. In 2012, I joined Twitter, because I was told it was a good place to promote myself. I gained over 10,000 followers and was heading for 11,000. The rules when I signed up said, "Always be kind and courteous." So I was. In the last few years, there have been droves of people being absolute trolls, jerks, and taking offense at every tiny thing, to the point that everyone had to mince their words. Twitter didn't kick these scumbags off. I began to realize that after every session on Twitter, I came off upset and frustrated. There is a writing community there who lauds itself as extremely supportive. It's filled with self-proclaimed authors who laugh at procrastinating their writing. They have memes stating, "If you're a writer, you're on Twitter right now and thinking you should be writing." Another one was, "If you SAY you're a writer, then you're a writer."
Read more

One Star Reviews Usually Reflect The Reader

-
Image
One star reviews suck, but they reflect the reader more than anything else. One I got from a woman who said she would post her review on Amazon if she gave it a three or higher. She also promised to buy the book, too, after she picked out the books she wanted to read. She picked mine, but a few months later, she asked if I could send it to her for free. I should have listened to the red flag that went up, but I didn't. The woman was already untrustworthy. I sent her a PDF file. She went onto her YouTube and complained about my book in the most condescending way. After I got over the stings enough to think clearly, I began to realize she complained about things that weren't true. She said there weren't enough explanations for this or that. Guess what, those things had ample explanations. I realized she didn't even read the book, but skimmed over it. Some of what she said were outright lies. Luckily her YouTube views could be counted on one hand. The other review was most
Read more

Working with KDP vs Author Central on salvaging reviews

-
Image
All right, so yesterday, I had contacted both KDP Customer Support and Author Central about salvaging book reviews. Author Central answered me first and said I could save my reviews even with a different author name and different cover with a different title. I spoke to Author Central twice before KDP even answered me. I sent the old and new ISBN numbers to Author Central. My old reviews from "Pariahs" were saved and are now on "Nri Kryne's" sales page. All this was done before KDP answered me back with a "you can't save your reviews because they're different products even if the content is the same." If you want to salvage your reviews, DO NOT go through KDP Customer Support. Work with Author Central. If you really want anything done, go through Author Central. They're the ones who put my book on more categories than the two you have to pick on publishing your book.
Read more