Author L. Blankenship is here to talk about Disciple and to share her own insecurities with you

now on sale

Disciple, Part VI

the final installment of the gritty fantasy romance series by

L. Blankenship

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Back cover

Two years ago, Kate was a peasant girl who only wanted to serve the saints of her kingdom as a healer during the war. Her gifts led her to cross paths with the crown prince and a ne’er-do-well knight — they shifted the path of her life and of the entire war.

All three of them paid a steep price for having met.

Kate spent a cold winter alone, re-forging her strength out of a deeply broken heart. She’s ready, as an elect, to stand beside her saints and go to war in ways no peasant girl could have dreamed.  

She needs answers, she needs absolution, and she needs to discover what she’s truly capable of.

New to Disciple?

Download Part I for free!

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or look for the

Disciple Omnibus

collecting all six parts into one handy doorstop!

available in paperback and ebook

on sale no later than March 15, 2015

"Insecurity and Inventory"

I’m glad Michael had a spot on his blog open to let me do a guest post to promote the final installment in my Disciple series: Part VI. I’ve always been a fan of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group though I haven’t been a participant.

Is that because I’m not insecure? Don’t be silly -- all writers are insecure. :) Even after writing dozens of novels/novellas, self-publishing six of them (Disciple) and having one picked up by a small press (Hawks & Rams, at Dreamspinner), I still have my writerly worries and insecurities.

You might wonder: do the insecurities ever go away?

Well, I think you can learn to manage them. And you can learn how to compensate for them. Writing takes time and practice, of course, and once you’ve been doing it a while I think it helps to take an inventory of your writing abilities and rethink your insecurities.

I’ve written a lot of stuff and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback over the years. Seeing the patterns in the feedback has gotten easier… when I was a less experienced writer, I needed to work on everything, essentially. As I improved through practice and found my own voice, then the real pattern of my strengths and weaknesses began to emerge.

What sorts of things do your betas frequently say you do well, that they enjoyed, or were especially effective?

My betas say they like my detail, my dialogue, and they note that my plots can take unexpected turns without seeming artificial. I’ve gotten little “love this”-type comments next to descriptions and imagery. I’ve made people laugh or cry at the places I wanted to, or grossed them out, and gotten readers emotionally invested in my characters.

So there are things that I do well. I can worry less about them and just follow my gut instincts -- which is fun.

What sorts of things are consistent problems?

These turn up a lot: not taking the time to explain. I avoid info-dumps to the point where it becomes a problem. Sometimes my language gets away from me and my readers lose track of what’s going on because I’m assuming they know what I mean. The motivations for my characters can get confusing because I haven’t explained their reasoning or the influences affecting them.

Oh, and my commas tend to be out of control. Constantly. :)

These are things I have trouble with and I’m right to feel insecure about.

So I spend more time on those things. Especially when I’m working on a first draft, I try to find the places where my problems are going to be problems and compensate. When I send a manuscript to a beta reader, I ask about those things.

The stuff in between

There’s also plenty of things that aren’t consistently problems or strengths. Sometimes I forget to set the backdrop of a scene. Sometimes I spend too much time on something and it gets overwhelming. I try to find those and fix them early in the process, but they’re more “oopses” than something to be insecure about.

Have you taken an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses?

Monsters in fiction need to make sense. Wisdom from author L. Blankenship

I am pleased to welcome author L. Blankenship to my blog. I discovered Ms. Blankenship a few months ago. She's a fantastic speculative fiction author, and I have to say that I've been zooming through this offering of hers like a kid through cotton candy. Perhaps next week, I'll have a review for you. Until then, please read what she has to say :).

*****

FROM THE BACK COVER:

The saints favor her, else-wise a peasant girl like Kate Carpenter would never be apprenticed to the kingdom’s master healer. But her patron saint also marks her ready for the duty of tending to a mission that must cross the ice-bound mountains.
Their little kingdom faces invasion by a vast empire and desperately needs allies; across the snow-filled pass, through the deathly thin air, is a country that’s held off the empire and may be willing to lend an army.

Kate knows about frostbite and the everyday injuries of wilderness travel. She can heal those.

She’s not ready for the attentions of a ne’er-do-well knight and the kingdom’s only prince, though.

And she isn’t ready for the monsters that harry them night and day, picking off their archers first, wearing the party to exhaustion, pushing Kate beyond the limits her healing abilities.

She must keep them alive, or her blood will be on the snow too.

SOME THOUGHTS ON MONSTERS:

The monsters that Kate and her companions face are unsettlingly smart and organized. The cover story to keep their mission secret is that they're on a hunting trip to thin these monsters' numbers. Who's thinning whose numbers becomes a going question once the travelers are worn to exhaustion.

They call the monsters lamia. The lamia are wolves who've grown up drinking the magic-laced waters of a fount -- it changes them into something more dangerous. But lamia are still part of the local ecology and however intelligent they are, they still need to "make sense."

Any fantasy world that includes monsters, whether it's dragons or unicorns or invented creatures like my wolf-lamia, ought to take basic ecology into consideration. Even monsters need to eat and raise their young. They need places to sleep and everyday lives to go about.

It's a personal peeve of mine that in so many movies, our hero goes into a forest/jungle/desert and immediately trips over a large predator who has nothing better to do today than chase a random human around. This is usually fatal for the predator, too. It's a senseless and annoying trope IMO.

Author photo of L. Blankenship

I asked myself some basic questions, when I was creating my lamia:

• What do they normally eat? Why are humans on the menu? My answer: they eat deer and elk, normally. But most humans are easy to kill, especially children. It's the ones with bows you have to look out for. 
• What ordinary animal are they filling in for? My answer: wolves, bears, and cougars all at once. An area can only support a limited number of predators, and my lamia fill all those niches.
• What are their motivations for approaching humans? My answer: they are defending their territory, especially the magical fount. They know humans are competition for both the fount and for prey in the stretch of forest the lamia claim.  

What questions would you add to my list?

Find L. Blankenship at the following places:

She keeps a book blog at DISCIPLE OF THE FOUNT

Her writing blog called NOTES FROM THE JOVIAN FRONTIER can be found HERE.

Disciple on AMAZON KINDLE is located HERE.

Disciple on KOBO is located HERE

And you can find her on GOODREADS located HERE.

I noticed Disciple by L. Blankenship

Today I'm participating in the "Did I Notice Your Book" blog fest orchestrated by the Queen and King of Fabulous:

Ciara Knight

Alex J. Cavanaugh

The book that caught my attention today is by science fiction author L. Blankenship. It is called "Disciple" and has some amazing cover art. She says that it will be available on November 1, 2012. But I did a quick search for it, and it's already up on Amazon! I hope she doesn't mind if I spill the beans.

What really got me to notice this book aside from the astounding cover art is her wonderful blog which you can visit HERE.

FROM THE BACK OF THE BOOK

The saints favor her, else-wise a peasant girl like Kate Carpenter would never be apprenticed to the kingdom’s master healer. But her patron saint also marks her ready for the duty of tending to a mission that must cross the ice-bound mountains. Their little kingdom faces invasion by a vast empire and desperately needs allies; across the snow-filled pass, through the deathly thin air, is a country that’s held off the empire and may be willing to lend an army.

Kate knows about frostbite and the everyday injuries of wilderness travel. She can heal those.

She’s not ready for the attentions of a ne’er-do-well knight and the kingdom’s only prince, though.

And she isn’t ready for the monsters that harry them night and day, picking off their archers first, wearing the party to exhaustion, pushing Kate beyond the limits her healing abilities.

She must keep them alive, or her blood will be on the snow too.

Her book could use some love on GOODREADS with a "Want To Read".

And if you want to download it now, it's on Amazon for $4.99. CLICK HERE TO BUY.

I bought my copy yesterday and started reading it.

Thanks to everyone who complimented me on my new blog banner. My skills with Adobe Photoshop are getting better and better AND I just got myself a copy of Adobe CS5.5. Soooo excited to play with FLASH and After Effects.

Have a great Wednesday