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Born in Blood: A Heart-Pumping Urban Fantasy. Read an Exclusive Excerpt Now!

March 25, 2023 By Rachel Stedman

Born in Blood - an exclusive excerpt of a heart-pumping adventure

 

Exclusive Excerpt – Born in Blood

To celebrate the upcoming release of Rising in Blood, second and final (so far anyway) in the Vampire Queens series, I’ve popped an excerpt from Book No1, Born in Blood, below.

The inspiration for this scene was a very cold day spent wandering the streets of Den Haag (The Hague), Holland. The Hague is home to the International Court of Justice and the fabulous Mauritshuis Art Museum, where you can see amazing art-work, up close and personal.

The tulips as described in this scene were exactly as I saw them, as was the café where the story opens. BUT I never saw any vampires … (that I know of, anyway 🙂 ).

Enjoy!

P.S. You can find Born in Blood on Amazon.


Chapter One – In The Hague

Outside the café, three young men leaned against a concrete wall. From their baggy, poorly made clothes, they looked like day laborers, waiting for their morning hire. Then one of them said something and shifted slightly, and the light caught his darkly delicate features, and I saw them for what they really were. My breath caught just as I was sipping my coffee. By the time I stopped coughing, they had disappeared.

“Those three men?” I asked the server. “The ones that were outside? Do you know them?”

She glanced out the window. “Did they look about twenty? And wearing old clothes?” She had a Spanish accent. When I nodded, she added, “Those men, si. They follow the tourists about, especially the girls. I tell police: ‘those men, they are bad’. But they say I am racist. Me, I am not a racist. I am Spanish. You like more coffee, Señora?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

The white-walled café had wide glass windows, comfortable soft seats, and the coffee was fresh and hot. I might visit again. Except for those men. I glanced out the window. There was no-one outside, and the spring sunlight was bright. Perhaps I’d imagined it, and those men were completely normal. I shouldn’t be so suspicious all the time.

But at the counter, I paused. “Those men? The ones outside? Don’t go near them, okay?” Especially, I thought, at night.

“They are dangerous?” asked the Spanish server, wide-eyed.

But before I could answer, my phone rang. It was Shara, from the Court. “The Judge is ready for you. Can you be here in ten minutes?”

“On my way,” I said, and pushed the door open. The girl nodded a farewell. “Just don’t go near them,” I said again.

Outside, the wind was icy. It was early spring, just before Easter, and around the base of bare-branched trees, pink and yellow tulips were in flower. I huddled into my coat collar, trying to keep warm. If I took a shortcut through the castle, the palace courtyard would shelter me from the wind.

I should explain: the center of the city of The Hague (the Dutch call it Den Haag), is occupied by an ancient castle, surrounded by a moat. (A moat! In the middle of a city! How crazy is that?) The castle, built of dark stone with pennant-topped towers and deep-set windows, looks like something from a fairytale, but it’s grimmer than Disney: this was a castle for a beast, not a beauty. Walking through its gates always gave me a thrill.

I wasn’t here for sightseeing, though. Today, I was bound for the International Court of Justice and in honor of the occasion, I’d worn a pair of dress pants instead of my usual jeans. Boots don’t look great with suit pants, so reluctantly, I’d left my Doc Martins at home and wore black flats of patent leather. No way was Lottie (Lottie is my grandmother aka my boss), getting me into heels. I didn’t want to look any taller than my six feet – it’s hard enough getting a date as it is.

As I crossed the cobblestoned city square, I probably looked like just another professional; a solicitor, perhaps, carrying an over-large tote bag over one shoulder. Although I doubted that a solicitor would have a Glock or carbon-fiber knives in their bag. Most lawyers prefer to pay someone else to do their killing.

There were more tulips near the castle gate, like a false promise of sunny spring, and behind them stood the butter-yellow Mauritshuis art gallery. Once a rich man’s palace, the building now houses a small-but-perfect art collection. I’d always wanted to visit. If my meeting with the Judge finished early, perhaps I could squeeze it in later today.

The water of the moat splashed against the Mauritshuis walls. Swans glided past, like they didn’t feel the cold. Lucky swans. My hands were freezing. I should have brought gloves.

And that’s when I saw the three men from the café, leaning against the castle walls. They had their hoods pulled up, as though hiding their skin from the watery Dutch sunlight. One of them glanced my way. Not unusual – a six-foot woman stands out – but the set of his shoulders, and his look of casual expectation, made me pause. They were waiting for something, or someone. But who?

A troop of Japanese schoolgirls, laughing and talking, came toward me. The girls looked like something from an anime: identically dressed in short navy pleated skirts and carrying Hello Kitty backpacks. I arched, stretching my back – it had been aching all day – as the girls turned through the iron gates of the gallery. Their high-pitched voices faded as they vanished down the ramp that led to the gallery’s underground entrance.

As one, the men peeled themselves from the wall and followed, passing through the gates with fluid grace. I knew that intensity of stance. They were hunting! In daylight! No, that can’t be. I slid behind the side of the building and watched. The men didn’t talk, made no sound, as they disappeared down the ramp. Yes, they were hunting.

I should follow. But I hesitated, because it seemed so unlikely. I mean, who ever heard of a vamp attack in daylight? Besides, I was due at court, and it was never wise to keep a judge waiting. But I couldn’t just let an attack happen. How could I call myself a Hunter if I refused to hunt? So I followed the men down the ramp, into the gallery lobby.

Through windows, high in the wood-paneled wall, I could see the gently lapping waves of the moat. The men were nowhere to be seen, but the girls were clustered around a ticket dispenser and giggling.

I dialed Shara. “I might be late.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. This is important, Shara.”

“But the Judge …”

“He’ll have to wait,” I said. “Shara, this is to do with my work.”

Shara knew about my work: about Ravensfell. She knew something about Lottie and our secret, hidden world. After a pause, she asked, “How long will you be?”

“Not long.” For surely, I was mistaken. Vamps would never normally hunt in public places during daylight hours. Unless they were hungry, perhaps. Then, who knew what they might do?

I turned, trying to locate the men. My back was still aching. It was my tattoo’s fault. Ever since I’d bought tickets to The Hague, it had been waking me at odd hours and keeping me restless in the airplane. I should have taken painkillers, but now it was too late. Hopefully, it wouldn’t slow me down.

The gallery’s entrance hall was almost empty. To the left was a bookstore, just opening for the morning, and to the right, beneath signs to the bathrooms, lay a bank of lockers. The entrance to the art gallery was behind me, up a set of stairs, past ticket turnstiles and a security station. The lobby was quiet, and the guards at the turnstiles looked bored.

“Madison, where are you?” Shara asked.

“An art gallery. You know, the yellow one, the Mauritshuis? Beside the moat.”

Above the turnstiles hung a banner with an image of a blue foaming wave and the iconic shape of Mount Fuji. The banner said: Monsters and Mountains: the Art of Katsushika Hokusai. Perhaps that was why the Japanese schoolgirls were visiting.

Beside the bookstore was a café, with attendants setting out chairs and tables. Surely, those men must be here, somewhere?

“Do you need help?” Shara asked.

“No. I don’t think so.”

The girls retrieved their tickets, stuffed their backpacks into lockers. I walked past them, as if making for the bathroom. And there, half-hidden by a wooden screen, stood the three men. They watched the girls intently, as if inspecting their next meal.

“Madison, I’m sending someone,” said Shara. “Brett O’Hagan. American.”

“Shara!” I hissed. “No!”

The girls shoved the locker doors closed, then, still chattering, headed toward the turnstile. I opened the bathroom door casually, and glanced behind me. The men had left their hiding place, and I hadn’t heard them move. Now they stood at the turnstile, feeding tickets into the slots. They must have bought them earlier. They had planned for this.

Shit!

“Den Haag is my city. My city,” said Shara fiercely. “He’ll be there in ten minutes. I will alert security.”

“Security? No!”

But she had hung up.

I glared at the phone. What did she mean, ‘sending help’? What use would security be against vamps?

I couldn’t wait, either – I had to follow. If they were hunting, they’d be fast and vicious.

But I’d never make it through the metal detector with a sidearm, and I couldn’t afford delay-causing arguments. I hustled back into the bathroom, hid in a stall, and tucked my gun and its holster into my tote. My knives were carbon – we’d long since changed from steel because carbon was easier to pass through scanners – so I left them in their holsters: two at my wrists, one at my waist and one on each ankle. Quickly, I tied my hair back in a ponytail, getting ready for action. Leaving the restroom, I glimpsed my reflection. I could pass for a lawyer, I thought, and wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I pushed the bag into a locker, bought a ticket from the dispenser, and headed up the stairs into the gallery. As I fed my ticket into the turnstile, I wished I was wearing my boots.


 

Want to read more? Check out Born in Blood on Amazon.

P.S. At time of writing this blog post, Born in Blood is also available for FREE via Kindle Unlimited.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Excerpt Tagged With: About my Books, Behind the Scenes, Excerpt, Urban Fantasy

How to Create a Writing Place: The Story of Zeph

November 14, 2019 By Rachel Stedman

Every writer needs a special writing place, where their imagination can soar. This is mine.


Meet Zeph. He’s a 1977 caravan. We bought him about 16 years ago, when our kids were little. Here they are, still small, when Zeph was looking pretty cool.

Zeph the Caravan - My Writing Place

I started writing in Zeph about 10 years ago. The first story I wrote was A Necklace of Souls

The track led steadily downhill towards the cliff. Just when I feared that we would fall over the edge it turned, descending through daisies and yellow bracken towards the sand. Breakers pounded, spray drifting in a white mist. The ocean’s roar blended with the wind, so it seemed the world was all noise.

++++

Then came Inner Fire, set in Devon. We didn’t take Zeph to Devon, it was too far, but I wrote these words inside him, much later:

‘Look.’ Rowan said. ‘See? A stone circle.’

And now I could see it — flat rocks placed upright in the shape of a ring. It was fairly atmospheric, with the mist and the gray sheep and the silence. There were … I counted the stones out loud … twenty stones.

‘Count it again.’ Rowan sounded amused.

So I did, going back the other way. Which was widdershins? And was widdershins good luck or bad? While I was trying to work this out I forgot which number I was up to. ‘Twenty-two,’ I said. ‘I think.’

He counted too. ‘Twenty-one.’

‘You must have left one out.’

‘And how could I do that, with the stones here in front of me?’

‘And how could I do that, with the stones here in front of me?’

Inner Fire

He grabbed me, pinning my arms to my sides. ‘What do they say?’ His face was close to mine.

‘Just … that they can’t count properly.’

He smiled, and kissed me full on the mouth.

Oh. My. God.

(Can you guess what genre Inner Fire is? 🙂 )

++++

Another visit, another story. This time, based in Berlin.

GS 0793-Peralta.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein#/media/File:GS_0793-Peralta.jpg

These are Stolperstein – literally ‘stumbling stones’: small bronze plaques placed in the cobbles outside the houses of those taken by Nazis. They’re speckled throughout Germany, especially Berlin, and we stayed in the Jewish Quarter, so you walked over people’s names and the dates of their forced removal and death every day.

I wrote this story, staring out at the rain-streaked windows of the old caravan:

In Berlin, the sidewalk marks the dead. Small bronze plaques, set into the cobbles, remembered those who’d once lived here. … Fatima took up her violin and laid her empty case, open for stray coins, near the Kessler family. They had been murdered in various camps over 1943, so at first, Fatima had felt guilty for choosing this spot. But it was a good place because the pavement was warmed by the train station underneath, and anyway, the Kesslers didn’t mind. If anything, they seemed to enjoy her music.

Alice
Alice: A Short Story

++++

Over the last few years, Zeph’s been deteriorating. We’ve been using him less and less for camping, and I’ve been writing at home, where it’s been warmer and dry-er.

Zeph - ugly caravan writing place

Last year, we decided it was time to improve Zeph, to take him out of his old paddock and make him pretty. Plus, the kids have just left home, so we needed a project.

We’ve been doing Zeph up over the last year.

++++

It’s been difficult to find the time to write, but I have managed to squeeze one story out – it’s coming out in the ODT this summer.

Petra always finished her run at the Esplanade. Here she’d treat herself to a take-out espresso from the café beside the shark bell, sipping the hot coffee slowly while she watched the surfers dancing with death on the tops of the waves.

She watched for sharks, too, but never saw any. They were out there though, because next to the bell was a memorial to the surfers taken by Great Whites, over forty years ago.

Petra liked to think of the enormous killers, swimming silent through the deep. They were apex predators. No-one messed with sharks.

++++

And – finally …

Here is Zeph, all bright and shiny new. We have just finished! He came home on Thursday night.

Now he’s ready for new stories.

Pretty caravan writing place

Here’s to Zeph, and more stories to come!

P.S. This blog post was first given as a talk at Wild Imaginings Hui, 2019

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, How To, Story Backgrounds Tagged With: A Writer's Life, About my Books, How To

New Year’s Update – Change is the Only Constant

February 15, 2019 By Rachel Stedman

It’s a new year, and changes are afoot. As there is quite a bit happening in my writing calendar this year, I thought easier to share as a one-off blog post rather than little pieces on social media.

history of publishing

Homelife

My youngest son is leaving home 😢 so I’m officially an empty nester. In theory this should leave more time for writing, but actually, no. Because not only have I had a promotion in the Day Job, I’ve also increased my hours.

Now I only have 1.5 days for writing, plus anything I can squeeze into the weekends and evenings. This means my output will probably go down this year. Weirdly, I’m okay with that. I’m lucky, in that I love my job, and unlike writing, it pays well and regularly

The other benefit to a Day Job (as opposed to writing), is that it provides validation. Writers are rarely praised, and when we are we don’t believe it. But at work I get told, on a daily basis!, that I’m doing a GREAT job. I know this makes me seem like a precious snow-flake and I should just get over this ridiculous self-doubt, but I’ve not met a writer yet who’s achieved that nirvana-like state.

WTF

Zeph the Caravan

Other news: my husband and I are renovating our retro caravan. His name is Zeph, short for ‘Zephyr’. He’s definitely NOT a light breeze, (the original meaning of the word and a less apt name I’ve yet to find, because Zeph is a pig to tow) – but he is a 1977 Zephyr 410. We’ve had him since 2001, when the kids were small. And since they’ve now left home, hubby and I have decided to convert him into a Love Shack. 😀

At the moment, Zeph is parked up in our driveway, looking more than a little worse for wear, as we’re sanding the exterior and pulling out the interior. But he’s a work in progress and one day I’m hoping he’ll be beautiful.

Zeph the Caravan

Story Worlds

Ghostly Melodies

Ghostly Melodies is coming out in 1 March, and I am SO EXCITED. This retold fairytale marks a change from my epic fantasies, and I wasn’t sure how I would find setting a story in the present day. Would it be boring?

Ghostly Melodies is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and is based in Beverley Hills. I wasn’t sure how that would go, as I’ve never visited L.A. but thanks to the power of the internet, and especially thanks to Lucifer 🙂 it turned out to be surprisingly easy to set a story there.

Ghostly Melodies

A lot of the story is about a singer-songwriter, and I spent a lot of time watching music docos – and I also wrote my own songs for the story! (The words, not the music.) That was a lot of fun, as was the Ed Sheeren concert I attended ‘for research purposes’! (click here to see my instagram video of the concert!)

DreamScapes

I’m working on an expanding short story collection called DreamScapes. It’s being sent to my email list only at present, with one story for each special time of the year.

The first story (All Hallow’s Eve) marked Hallowe’en. Then we had a surfer who just may have been an angel at Christmas-time (Midsummer Christmas). I’m just working on an novella-length vampire-hunter story (Millicent Metcalfe) for Valentine’s Day and Easter. This one might well stretch to Hallowe’en, too as it’s looking pretty long already. I’ve set part of MM in Holland, as my character visits the Mauritshuis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritshuis) – a fabulous museum I visited a few years ago. Just goes to show, everything’s material to a writer, even a writer who struggles to anchor her stories in reality!

DreamScapes

Pictures in Time

My other, more complex WIP is Pictures in Time. PiT is a retelling of Aladdin, and a sequel to Ghostly Melodies. Early stages, but already PiT is looking darker than the original Arabian Nights tale, because in the original story we never knew anything about Aladdin’s father, except that he was dead.

PiT is tentatively set in the UK, in one of the many antiques and collectibles markets. It won’t be ready until at least 2020, though, so I don’t want to give away too much just yet. But I can already say that there’s definitely going to be a whole lot more to Jasmine and Aladdin (whom I’ve renamed Aaron), than any Disney adventure.

Other life stuff

Hopefully mid-year will see a holiday overseas, as we have a very long, cold winter in Dunedin, and by July sunshine feels like a distant memory.

Plus, I’m also helping to organise a Children’s and Illustrator’s Hui in Dunedin later this year. Again, this is early days, so there’s a lot to work through, but it will sure keep me busy! And there’s the Romance Writer’s of NZ Conference to look forward to, and oh, so many writerly things. So even if I’m working longer hours, I’ll still be heavily engaged in the writing community.

To conclude: It looks like its going to be a busy year!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

Rachel xxx

Old-Fashioned Romance

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Fantasy, Story Backgrounds Tagged With: A Writer's Life, About my Books, Just for Fun

From the Desk – New Year’s Update

January 19, 2018 By Rachel Stedman

New Year’s Update

2018 already! Amazing, right? I normally save updates for my newsletters, on the theory that those who signed up for my emails may at least be interested in what I’m up to. However, this one is kind of special, being the first month of a new year … So here’s a Letter to My Readers, set out a one-of-a-kind blog post. (Note: This update is personal. I’ve totally ignored politics and any major world-impacting news. So if you’re after a political rant, move on. Ain’t nothing to see here…)

writer's notebook


Dear Reader,

Welcome to my review of 2017, the Year-That-Was and 2018; The-Year-That-Is-To-Come…

 

Highlights for 2017

1. Finishing A Memory of Fire.

Writing A Memory of Fire was hard. The final in a trilogy has to feel like a conclusion, so I wanted to amp up the action, both the rise to the climax and the fall to the ending. I wanted the ending to be satisfying, yet I didn’t want to walk away from the story with all loose ends neatly tied, because real life isn’t neat.

To quote Frodo, in Lord of the Rings: “The great tales never end. But the people in them come, and go when their part is ended.”

So, in A Memory of Fire, while I wanted the ending to feel like an ending, I also wanted to leave the potential for a beginning. (That’s partly selfish, of course, because who knows, I might want to explore the SoulNecklace world again.)

Writing Memory was an amazing experience. Being so familiar with the characters, I could slip easily into their heads and so Dana, Will and N’tombe took control of their own stories; I just had to type. At times, I truly felt as though I was channelling. This was both awe-inspiring and terrifying, because I had no idea where the story was going. I had to just trust the process and go with it.

Have you ever ridden a horse at full gallop, and have a foot slide from the stirrup, and then all you can do is hang on and hope? That was how I felt, on writing some of the scenes in A Memory of Fire. You’ll know the scenes when you read them. They’re the ones with the pell-mell, hell-or-nothing vibe, the ones where the language totally changes. That’s because they’re not my words – they’re Dana’s or Will’s. They don’t talk like me, and they sure as hell don’t write like me, either. You can find A Memory of Fire here

A Memory of Fire - 3D

2. Adding bonus extras – A Long, Long Life and a Gratuitous Epilogue.

I had hoped to have an extra novella to give away to early purchasers of Memory, but editing Memory took longer than I’d planned. However, I did write a Gratuitous Epilogue called A Bed-Time Story. It has a shocking cover (I didn’t have time to get a proper cover made) but its content is a pretty fun little addition to the more epic-style of Memory.

If you’d like to read this epilogue, get in touch through the “Contact Me” page.

I also finished a novella! A Long, Long Life is for die-hard fans of the SoulNecklace Stories (all two of them!), because I think, like me, they’re keen to find out a bit more of the backstory. Like, who is Rinpoche? Where did Greg and Reg come from? And how does that weird catch on the necklace actually work? Exploring the background of the world was a lot of fun. You can find A Long, Long Life here

3. Planning a new series

I find planning really, really hard. When I wrote A Necklace of Souls, I just winged it. Writers call this ‘pantsing’ as in: writing by the seat of your pants. Fiction writers tend to be either natural planners or natural pantsers. Unfortunately, I’m a pantser. This makes the writing process fun, but I’ve darted down too many stupid writing plot holes with this approach, so now I’m trying to get a bit more organised and actually PLAN. My plan consists of scribbles on two A3 sheets of paper, along with a roughly drawn map. Sadly, it took me a year to achieve this!


Plans for 2018

1. The Dancing Princesses

Without giving too much away, this new series will  be a (very loose) fairytale adaptation of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. I’ve written a prequel novella, Alice, and I’m currently about one-quarter through the first draft of the first in series, Zoe. I’m aiming for three books, one about each ‘Princess’ (there are only three, not twelve, otherwise I would lose my mind). I hope to have completed Zoe by mid-2018 and the first draft of Belinda ready by year’s end. Alice is being served in instalments to my newsletter list, so if you want to check it out, and you’re not yet on my list, you can join up here.

2. Non-fiction

I’ve been flirting with the idea of writing a guide to self-publishing for teens. Ideally, for use in schools. In 2017 I put a pitch to the local University, in combo with Creative NZ. They were interested, but needed more information. If I’ve got time, I’ll follow this up. (I have some cynicism about how schools may use it, as I have found folk from New Zealand are slow to support their own). I need to explore whether there is truly a desire for such a resource. I do think there’s a need for it, but a need isn’t the same as a want.

3. Other Stuff

I’d like to improve this website – I’m exploring a different theme, with a faster loading time. But redoing a website is HARD! I’d also like to have more sales available through this site, as it’s a lot easier if readers can reach me here, but I’ll need to work out how best to do this with the new theme.

4. Life

Of course, no writer works in a vacuum. Like everyone, life sometimes smacks me in the face, and all I can do is roll with the punches. Right now I’m in the weird position of my oldest leaving home, and my youngest coming to the end of his schooling, so 2018 will be a year of massive transitions. My husband’s taken on a role that requires a whole lot of international travel, so maybe this year might also involve (if I’m lucky) a trip somewhere nice! I have a day job, too. I’ve been doing contract work for the last 5 years, rolling from one year to another – but now, in 2018, I’ve finally got a permanent role, working with the same lovely team I’ve been with for the last few years. So at least in the workspace I should have a little more continuity. Ha! here’s hoping. I’ve got a feeling things might change…

Day Job and Avoiding Poverty
From Debbie Ridpath Ohi

 

And that, dear reader, is the update for 2017 and the plans for 2018, set out in one easy-to-follow blog post. I’ll have a look at this at the end of the year, and see how many of these goals were actually achieved!

All the best to you for the new year, and I hope wherever you are, it will be a happy one. And if not, here’s a joke to make you smile 🙂

Rachel xxx

 

JOKE

Q: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs, trapped in a book?

A: Mark

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Story Backgrounds, Welcome Tagged With: A Writer's Life, About my Books, Just for Fun, The SoulNecklace Stories

The Perils and Pitfalls of Writing a Trilogy

October 17, 2017 By Rachel Stedman

Writing a Trilogy? Here’s What to Do (And What Not To Do)

SoulNecklace Stories (Box Set)

I’ve just published the final book in The SoulNecklace Stories.

This feels like a momentous occasion; it certainly has felt like a lot of work! This series has been nearly eight years in the making, with a fair number of fits and starts along the way.

So this blog post is like a message to my former self – as well as to anyone embarking on a trilogy. Here’s the things I wish I’d done, plus the (few) things I did do that worked well.

Top learnings:

Do

  • Write them! Series are great! They are actually a heck of a lot easier than writing stand-alone novels, because you don’t have to reinvent another world or another set of characters. Writing A Memory of Fire, the last book in my SoulNecklace Stories, felt a little like slipping on a comfy pair of slippers. Once I’d settled on the plot, I could just go.
  • Build your world-rules carefully. When writing fantasy, or indeed any fiction, you create a fictional world. This world has rules: things that are allowed, or not allowed.  Readers are (generally) content to go with these rules, but they do become upset when they spot an inconsistency.

Typically, a writer will have rules that are based around location or appearance (you can’t have a black-haired character suddenly becoming blonde without a reason) but in fantasy the rules are way more extensive and can include magic, technology, religion, geography: in fact, any part of life. This makes writing fantasy fun, but full of pitfalls.

As a writer, it can be hard to remember all your rules, especially once you’re 300,000 words in!

  • Draw maps and pictures. This helps to navigate around castles, houses, villages, countries, whatever. Once I figured this trick out I could get a feeling for distance (how long would it take to travel 40 leagues – and how long is a league anyway?)
  • Plan a little bit, but not too much. I found it helpful to have an idea of the stories ultimate destination (and no, not going to give that spoiler away), but by not being too settled on what would happen too early, interesting characters emerged. Like the Kamaye, the Wayhouses, TeSin and Ma Evans. They all spontaneously arose from my subconscious. I’d not planned for them at all, but weaving their stories into the main narrative added a lot to the overall depth.
  • Write faster! I really wish I’d just knuckled down and put the words on the page. Instead, I became distracted by other projects. This was partly fear – what if the conclusion was awful, what if no-one liked it. So, all in all, it took nearly 8 years to complete the series, but if I’d gotten over my fear issues I could have finished it a lot sooner.

WTF

Don’t

  • Don’t bother too much with the marketing until you’ve finished the series. I really wish I’d figured this out earlier. No point on worrying about Facebook ads or Goodreads giveaways until the series is completed. On a plus side, once a series is completed suddenly readers are very happy, because they can binge-read.
  • Don’t overpromise.  I found that I needed breaks from my imaginary worlds to retain the joy of the process, and this meant I had slow periods. Plus, because writing a series just takes so darn long, life gets in the way. This is part of the writing challenge, but it’s hard to explain to an impatient publisher or reader.
  • Don’t be daunted by the amount of work. Writing a novel is a huge amount of work. Writing a trilogy … oh man! It’s way more! You have to be totally committed before starting, because this world and these characters will be part of your life for a couple of years. It’s a big deal, taking on a two-year project, and not being certain of the outcome. All the time, through your head, a little voice murmurs: What if it’s no good. What if no-one likes it? What if no-one buys it? What if, what if…

And Finally

The most important lesson to anyone embarking on series: ditch the fear. Just do it anyway. You’ll be glad you did.

And, as a bonus, the third book might be so much fun to write that you might be tempted to write another book, or even just a novella, in the same universe.

A Long, Long Life

But that’s another story…

 

You can find The SoulNecklace Stories online or, in hard copy as individual titles on this website, or at your local library.

Filed Under: A Necklace of Souls, A Skillful Warrior, Behind the Scenes, How To, SoulNecklace Stories, Writing tips Tagged With: About my Books, How To, The SoulNecklace Stories, Writing Tips

6 Things You Didn’t Know About My Books

September 19, 2017 By Rachel Stedman

Six Things You Didn’t Know About The SoulNecklace Stories

I’ve been asked these questions about The SoulNecklace Stories:

  • Why do you have Christmas in your worlds?
  • Pockets weren’t invented until the 1700s. Why do your character’s clothes have pockets?
  • How come you don’t have guns but you have fireworks?

 

Great questions! Here’s why:

1. The books of the SoulNecklace Stories (A Necklace of Souls, A Skillful Warrior and A Memory of Fire) are set in a parallel world to ours. The world has similarities, but also a great many differences.  For example, in the world of The SoulNecklace Stories, much of the technology we have, like cars and guns, were never invented. Coal-fired steam boilers are present, and so is hot water. Fashion, though, is similar to that of the 1800s, and hence long skirts, jerkins and … pockets.

2. The events in these stories take place at roughly the same date and time as the present day in our world.

3. In The SoulNecklace Stories some characters have the ability to move between worlds. N’tombe, an enchantress, is one such person. N’tombe actually comes from The Central African Republic (CAR) in our world, where they do have guns. (Actually, she refers to them briefly in A Skillful Warrior.)

4. When writing a fantasy, it’s important to have rules that contain the world-building. Here are my rules for the history of The SoulNecklace Story world:

• Rule One: Worlds split off from other worlds when something significant happens. That is: an event with two possible outcomes occurs – AND each outcome will create a significantly altered future. The separation is called ‘a divergence’. (This rule was created long before the Divergent series!)

• Rule Two: Things in place prior to the divergence event are unchanged. It’s only the future that is altered.

• Rule Three: The reason for the divergence in The SoulNecklace Stories was a comet striking Earth. The comet carried a passenger (or perhaps, the comet is the passenger). This happened on or about AD 75.

5. So, the history of The SoulNecklace Stories is the same as our world up until about AD 75. This means that in The SoulNecklace Stories the Roman Empire existed and, because Jesus was born before the comet strike, Christianity arose (and so did Christ’s Mass, or Christmas). But the Renaissance never happened and in The SoulNecklace Stories, the Chinese Empire is the dominant power. And so we have fireworks, used for celebrations and religious festivals, but not guns.

6. This means that, as you read The SoulNecklace Stories, you may find things that are the same as our world, but you’ll also find things that are different.

SoulNecklace Stories (Box Set)

I hope this clarifies the point for readers who noted apparent errors in fashion, holidays and religious festivals. Well spotted, but No.

Filed Under: A Necklace of Souls, A Skillful Warrior, Behind the Scenes, Fantasy, SoulNecklace Stories Tagged With: About my Books

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