Embracing the Improbable
Embracing the Improbable
It shouldn’t exist. I never intended it to exist, yet, there it is.
What am I babbling about now? My next release – Angels of Mercy – Phoenix in the Fire (due March 2016).
The book ostensibly is a work of fiction in and of itself. Its evolution was predicated on a mistake. I’ve blogged a bit about it before. But here it is, in all it’s behemoth glory:
Clocking in at roughly 639 pages, and 218K words it’s an opus of a book that shouldn’t exist. But you know what? I’m rather pleased with it.
As I’ve stated many times before and on the podcast, I’m all about the headspace and how perceptions rule our world but we seldom give them credence and understand the prominence they have in our lives. Phoenix doest that, and I think it does it very well.
Angels, at it’s core, is really about dealing with the physical and emotional fallout from a heinous act of homophobic proportions and how the victim in it decides not to fold but rather rise from the ashes of that terrible beatdown. But in his evolving and climbing out from that hell hole the boys who beat him put him in, there are voices in his head that do their level best to protect him and try and guide him. He is comforted by that inner-gayboy voice that has always been there for him – warning him, throwing up red flags and cautionary flares whenever that inner-gayboy perceived a threat in Elliot’s world. It had served him well for most of his young gayboy life, but ultimately that voice failed him when he most needed it. Something had to change for him to evolve.
Elliot makes mistakes as he emerges, in this he learns to find a steely core in himself (personified by a new internal voice he calls Bitchboi). I use these competing voices (gayboy and Bitchboi) to demonstrate that evolution. What Elliot learns is that it isn’t just one voice over the other, but rather a learned and intentional concert of those two voices that enable Elliot to truly soar above his beatdown.
Elliot also surprised me as a character. I mean, I know his arc, I know what he’s made of – he is my invention after all – but he still found ways to take me on a journey as his creator. In that way, he came to life even more than I ever dreamed he would. I loved his new levels of vulnerability and how he learned to turn those feelings of inadequacy into defensive mechanisms that helped him cope with not only his rising from his attack, but how to turn the tables on those who became new threats to his already fragile world.
Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco AVAILABLE NOW!
This book truly lives up to its name – it has risen in my estimation and in my love for the work. A simple mistake of my husband nudging me (erroneously) to redo Volume 2 in Elliot’s voice (instead of the planned POV of his boyfriend, Marco) and I have been completely been blown away by what came out of that. It was a book that, when I realized the mistake of writing it in Elliot’s voice, was doomed for the digital fire as a scrapped piece of prose. It was my husband who saved it – ironic, isn’t it? He said:
Why don’t you just release it as a companion book to Marco’s?
At first I didn’t see the brilliance or the possibilities that it would present. But now I do. Now I couldn’t be happier with this mistake of a novel. I only hope my readers do.
It isn’t a proper Angels novel. It isn’t a planned part of the Angels canon but it WORKS!
I couldn’t be happier.
Here’s hoping my readers agree with that assessment.
Until next time …
– SA C
Poking and the Art of Evolution
Poking and the Art of Evolution
I’m a poker. Have been most of my life – probably since childhood. It starts because something catches my interest. I’m like a crow in that way. I bumble along completely thinking of something else or another and then – WHAM! – something catches my eye. Like that crow, I stop everything and become consumed with …
“Oooh, look! It’s shiny!”
I can’t help it. It is what it is. I know this about myself so I’ve learned to adapt, to roll with it. It’s just how I, er, roll … (rolling eyes at that one).
So what’s caught my eye this time? One of my book covers for Angels of Mercy. And here’s the thing: everyone gets all goose pimply on social media (and by everyone, I mean authors, book cover artists and yes, even the readers) and they lose their shit over a cover reveal.
I’m just not getting that. Yeah, it’s cool to see what the cover looks like. I get that. But I am not one to sit in total anticipation for the big shiny (crow-like) reveal of some book. You can tell me a year before the book’s release and my reaction would be the same. I’d marvel at it and move on. It would either intrigue me to read the blurb or not.
Insert shrugging shoulders here.
But as a content creator, I think of them as two wholly exclusive things. One doesn’t negate the other’s importance. And they don’t have to go hand-in-hand. Maybe I’m not seeing it correctly.
But as a cover artist (of which I used to do promotional work for the performing arts community for many years), I have to be inspired to create, do the creating and then toss it out there and see what happens. In that, it is just like my writings – I am doing it for the art of creation. If others find it of interest, cool beans. But that’s not why I am doing it to begin with. Not even close.
I suppose it has to do with my background in live theater (musicals, operettas, operas, etc). That is probably why I think about them the way I do. They may not be interchangeable to others – exclusive of one another but oddly related – but it’s just how my brain works, so I go with it – applying art and craft and allowing it to evolve, whatever it may be.
So what am I babbling about this time?
Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco AVAILABLE NOW!
The cover to my next release: Angels of Mercy – Phoenix In The Fire (I’ll walk through it below). It’s gone through some strange permutations over the months. For starters, it’s for a book that shouldn’t exist. I never planned to write it. That was my husband’s doing. I was just about to get cracking on the final edits of Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco (as shown above), and as I was leaving for my Clark Kent day gig, my husband murmurs to me from the bed (he gets to have a sleep in as he’s retired now – but no rest for the weary me) and said:
“Why don’t you have Volume Two told by Elliot instead of Marco? I think it would make for a better point of view for the next part of the series. You are writing Marco’s backstory, so why not keep Angels proper in Elliot’s voice?”
It was a worthy comment. It stopped everything I did. I drove to work gutted that my 750+ page second volume would now be shelved. He didn’t tell me to shelve it, but the implication was: I don’t think Marco is serving the greater arc here.
So in late August (of 2015) – weeks away from it’s promoted release, I shelved Marco and completely re-wrote the work in Elliot’s POV. I got 3/4 of the way through Elliot’s take in the intervening weeks and realized WHY Marco had to tell this part of the story. So I went back to the hubster and informed him that Marco’s v2 was back on track and that we needed to get it out the door.
On November 30th, with long editing sessions over the Thanksgiving day holiday, it was finally released. The cover of which you see above. I am very happy with it. Those that have read it thus far all seem to think it’s a great addition to the Angels stable of books. I always sort of knew Marco’s book was going to be the biggest part of the Angels series. He just has the most to tell. It was always going to be that way.
So then, after it’s release, my husband said –
“Why don’t you release Elliot’s book anyway as a companion book?”
There was some merit to it. These books are perception plays. They are character studies in what is their perceived truth and how do they move through their world with that truth – only to discover that they may not have it right and have to struggle with that new information. The books serve and explore a specific purpose. That’s why they are not romance reads even though at it’s core they have a very strong romance threaded through them.
So what to do with Elliot’s POV work of the same timeline as V2? I polled my betas and they seem to like the idea that knowing what Elliot has going on in his noggin might be an interesting take in relation to what his boyfriend (Marco) might be thinking during Elliot’s recuperation from the homophobic beatdown at the hands of Marco’s football teammates.
Okay, that was big spoiler from V1 – sorry.
So here’s where the poking comes in and reason for this blog entry. I had to create a cover for it. But it’s not a proper Angels book. It’s a companion book to the second volume. So from a design perspective, I thought I could deviate from the football theme I’ve had running in the main series of the books. Thematically, they are about the effects of homophobia in competitive sports – in this case, American high school football – thus, the footballer on most of the works. But for Phoenix I needed something that was wholly Elliot (even V1 has an image of Marco on the cover though it’s told from Elliot’s POV). I had to do something different to make the companion book stand out.
So here was the first stab at it:
The title and the image comes from a passage in the book where Marco commissioned a piece of art from his boyfriend’s favorite artist to create an original work that featured Elliot in it. He said he wanted it to represent Elliot’s being a Phoenix In The Fire (apologies to Troye Sivan – as I borrowed a line from his song “Bite” for it). I wanted it to evoke a mystical element to it, playing on Angels and the Phoenix mythos. It received mixed comments. It wasn’t wholly right for what I wanted either. But it was something.
As I was writing Elliot’s Phoenix I came up with another burst of creativity and decided to try something else. How about a more painterly fairy fable look? Sidebar: the book has none of this in it so this one was doomed from the start. But I was in a poking, creative mood so off I went on this artistic tangent. It happens – part crow, remember?
And I ended up with this:
It was fun to create, but I knew it wasn’t right. I polled friends on Facebook and they were fairly clear that it didn’t work for the work at hand. I thought so too, but I had fun creating it. As a rule I never throw ANYTHING creative away.
But the next attempt was closer to where it needed to go – though it still wasn’t quite right either.
I wanted fire to be a strong element in the cover art. So I played around with a great Photoshop action to solve this dilemma. It seemed to work. My betas all said it was a better take on it. So it has lingered since mid-December in this form – until this past weekend.
When the twitch of my artistic finger became too much to ignore and I became inspired to poke at it again.
Now I think I have it. This is what I had roiling around in my head back then (admittedly, it’s a bit over the top, but it does evoke the climb out of the physical hell Elliot’s beatdown put him in). Fire is ever present this time around. Which is exactly what I want to convey. Plus, I think the cover will stand out amongst all the bare torsoed men that are plastered all over M/M books. Insert SERIOUSLY rolling eyes on that topic alone.
So here’s the final, FINAL, version of Angels of Mercy – Phoenix In The Fire (to be released Mid-to-Late-February of this year):
Oooh, look … it’s shiny!
I’m good with that.
Until next time …
-SA C
Five Star Review – and GIVEAWAY for Angels of Mercy Vol 2!
FIVE STAR review of ANGELS OF MERCY – VOLUME 2: MARCO.
The Print Edition of Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco
Thanks to Paul Gay Berry from GayMediaReviews for the lovely words and the opportunity to share it with the readership out there! #Humbled #DoingTheHappyDance !!
BIG GIVEAWAY WITH THIS ONE – There’s an opportunity to win the entire series (all 6 books when completed) and a $25 Amazon GC! GO check it out!
BOOK RELEASE – Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco (The Fall of the Sforzas)
BOOK RELEASE – Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco
(The Fall of the Sforzas)
Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco AVAILABLE NOW!
Hey all!
I know it’s been a helluva long time since I’ve posted. It hasn’t been for not wanting to. I’ve had LOTS to say on stuff. Some of which I did on other blogs or via the podcast. But I’ve also been massively busy trying to get the next book in my series out the door. Well, it’s done. And he’s a WHOPPER of a tale!
Clocking in at just over 265K words (approx 741 pages), it is finally put to rest and is out in the universe now. I always knew Marco’s part of the tale was going to be this big. There were no two ways about it (as he’d say).
For those who haven’t been following along, suffice to say this series is a set of character studies that deep dive into the mindsets of three men’s lives over the course of a violent hate crime born out of homophobia that is still rampant within competitive sports (in this case, the fictional high school varsity football team – The Mercy High Avenging Angels).
The first volume dealt with two boys who during the summer between their junior and senior high school years come together. Two boys who couldn’t be more opposite if they tried. The first volume is told from the shy, and sticking to the shadows, Elliot Donahey. An artsy geeky boy consumed with doing everything he can not to be noticed in a world that keeps saying to him that he doesn’t belong. Only his plans for obscurity in his senior year are completely blown off the rails by the highest profile jock on campus, Mercy High’s star quarterback, Marco Sforza. Elliot’s take brings the reader along on their burgeoning heady romance filled with all the drama a coupling like that can bring. They just do everything they can to remain rooted in one another, holding each other close and whispering how their love will last through the ages. This, despite how many people are circling around them at school that are hell bent on keeping them apart.
Volume Two picks up where the climatic cliff hanger of volume one leaves off.
Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco, picks up the same day as the climax of Volume One, only told from Marco Sforza’s (Elliot’s boyfriend) point of view. This is a character study series where each man in the tale takes the reader on an introspective journey of coming to grips with the horrors of homophobia in competitive sports and the consequences when those scenarios become violent. Part two of a three part series.
“Elliot Donahey is the love of my life.”
Those words become a lightning rod for Marco Sforza, the man who seemed to have it all – looks, intelligence, charm, money, a certain degree of local fame as the star quarterback of Mercy High. But when his teammates beat his boyfriend to the brink of death, Marco will have to learn what “standing by your man” truly means.
How will these boys cope with Elliot’s recuperation as well as find a way to bring justice for the heinous crime committed against him? Deception, lies and intrigue begin to thread their way into the boys’ lives as they struggle to just hold onto one another. All is not quite what it seems as we reach yet another climatic ending that will turn their whole world upside-down. The hate crime Elliot suffered was just the beginning of their woes. Is Marco and Elliot’s love for one another strong enough to see them through?
Read Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco to find out.
Available now from the following locations:
The SA COLLINS ESTORE – where you can even buy a PERSONALIZED autograph ebook edition (sample graphic available from the e-store site)
Please check out them out!
Also, a BIG thanks to my musical muses for Angels – Jay Brannan, Steve Grand and Adam Ray! These amazing musicians are worth seeking out. I am so happy that they give me the added inspiration as I write these massive books of the series!
Until next time (which I promise won’t be so far off) – Baz
Words and Errata – The Vocal Edition Ep 003
Words and Errata – The Vocal Edition Ep 003
So yeah, I know I haven’t written on the blog much lately. I’ve been busy trying to keep all of this podcasting stuff sorted. It’s a slight learning curve to get things recorded, edited and posted to SoundCloud and iTunes.
Say nothing of actually writing anything in my novels either. Though I did spend the majority of the day yesterday concentrating on one of my books that has lingered for far too long on the back burner – The Cove Chronicles.
So yeah, I am finally getting into the game of writing on all fronts again. Finally! Whilst you wait for my next written missive here on the blog – give a listen to my random thoughts and musings after recording Brandon Witt’s interview and podcast recording. I found him to be a lovely and very thought provoking man to engage and discover his perspective on his works and the creative process he goes through in creating the worlds he has published though Dreamspinner.
So enjoy my little ramble until I can get around to WRITING one! HA!
Until next time …
SA C