The Little Story that Could

My online writing group used to do these monthly writing challenges (they are now less often and I don't participate anymore). One year for February, the challenge involved using song lyrics to inspire a story. I can't even remember the song anymore but it was a ballad, and with Valentine's around the corner, the stories were mostly romantic in nature.

Except mine.

Oh sure, it had romantic aspects to it, but it was actually the story of a woman who felt like her boyfriend was controlling her in a borderline abusive way and how she dealt with it. The story was about 1300 words long and bore the title Of Course I Try (taken from a key line in of dialogue). It won the challenge and I got a cute little picture thing to add to my signature for the website.

The summer of 2010, I submitted the story for publication. I was informed it was too short and asked if I could make it longer. My answer to that was "Of course." I bumped it up to somewhere over 5000 words, which still made it a short story, but it was now a sellable short story. Reviews were good, but one thing kept popping up. "I wanted more."

Initially my thoughts were along the lines of "but it's a short story, it's supposed to be short." Then... wheels started turning, gears started grinding and smoke leaked out of my ears--I had a way to make more work. For the holidays that year, The Ghost of Vampire Present came out, continuing the story of the heroine from the first short. Basically it's a little bit of A Christmas Carol, combined with a little bit of The Lady or the Tiger, combined with vampires and a modern setting.

Obviously, by the end of that story it was clear it most definitely wasn't the end. In fact, those shorts were only the beginning. When I started pondering more, it wasn't a little more that came to mind, it was this whole world built around the idea that vampires wanted Jocelyn. The hows and whys and whens became far too big for short stories. From the moment I conceived the second story, I knew there'd be more and those shorts would serve as prequels to the bigger story.

On August 28, the first installment of that bigger story will be released. A far cry from the humble beginnings of a 1300 word story, Kiss of Death is a full-length novel (the first of three) that will explore the world of my vampires and their link to Jocelyn (the heroine of those prequels). And, it will introduce my favorite of all my characters to the world. In fact, he'll be taking over the guest blogging duties at several of the stops on my blog tour over the next two weeks. I hope you'll follow along. And for those of you who have been on the journey with me since the first Blood Kissed story hit the internet, thank you for your support. Kiss of Death wouldn't have happened without you.

Start the New Year by Reading and Fighting Cancer

About a year ago, my sister suggested I write a book where the main character had battled cancer. It was the hardest thing for me to say no to her. You see, she herself is a cancer survivor, and I completely understood the desire to see a heroine she could relate to in a romance novel.

If you think about it, even more than ethnic and racial minorities, people with disabilities or who have battled an illness like cancer are severely underrepresented in romance novels. I’m sure part of it is the desire for that whole happily-ever-after thing, and readers have a hard time reconciling that with deadly diseases. Romance novels aren’t supposed to make you ponder your own mortality.

But that has nothing to do with why I said no. Hell, without batting an eye, I could write a romance about a woman who suffers from depression and fights the urge to kill herself.

Because I could do it justice. I know what that feels like. I have a deep-seated understanding of that pain. And I know I could make it a happy book in the end.

I can’t do the story of a cancer-survivor justice. When my sister was going through chemo and radiation, I lived and worked on the other side of the state. I visited when I could, but I wasn’t there. I didn’t live it. As much as I could talk to her about what it was like and research it and do all that, I would still be an outsider.

And I don’t think I could do it, not where it would be worthy of those who have won and lost the fight. At least not until I'm a much better writer.

So, I do what I can. Part of that involved volunteering to be part of Decadent Publishing’s Read for a Cure program. Each month Decadent chooses a book, and for that month all publisher profits go to the American Cancer Society via Relay for Life. This month, the Read for a Cure book is my novella, The Ghost of Vampire Present, and in addition to the publisher profits, I will be adding fifty cents for each copy sold this month to my donation to my sister’s Relay for Life team.

If you received an e-reader for the holidays, if you’ve owned one for year, or if you’re willing to read on your computer, I hope you’ll consider a copy of The Ghost of Vampire Present before December is over.

The Ghost of Vampire Present is available at:

Decadent Publishing

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Smashwords

All Romance eBooks

1 Place for Romance

and other online retailers

The American Cancer Society and I thank you for your support and wish you a joyous and blessed New Year.