Off the back burner and into the story oven

I'm super nosy, so I'm always asking folks what they're working on. I'm sure it's super annoying. How fortuitous, though, that this week our SFF Seven topic is "three stories I might have abandoned but would like to work on someday," which is pretty much permission to be as annoyingly nosy as possible, right!? Bliss for Miss Nosypants! So naturally I thought of Chandra Ryan, a writer who used to pen some of the awesomest sci-fi romance around, dropped out of the biz for a while because life, and has just started re-releasing old stuff and starting a brand new series about space dragon shifters (Golden: see pretty cover). She was kind enough to answer my questions, as follows:

----

As an author, I’ve found that one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, “How do you come up with your ideas?” Which is a great question with, unfortunately, a decidedly boring answer, “They just come to me.” Granted, sometimes I hear a song that makes me experience an emotion and I decide I have to write something to capture that emotion (Bond Betrayed), sometimes I’m working through issues I have within my own life and I use the writing process in lieu of therapy (Ink in the Blood), or sometimes we’ve just had a horrible, horrible election that makes me so mad I want to throw a temper tantrum and break things (Golden) but most of the time an idea or character just pops into my head and I run with it.

A question I’ve never been asked, however, is, “What ideas have you had that you haven’t written yet?” At least, that was true until last week when a great friend and amazing author, Vivien Jackson, reached out to me about writing this blog. One simple question had me going through my mental notes. It really got the creative juices going and got me excited about some projects I’d put on the very, very back burner. So thank you!!

So which projects have I been dragging my feet on?

The easiest answer for me to come up with, the one that immediately popped into my head, was the third book in my Community series. I don’t even have a title for it. And that series has been out for, well, forever. Ink in the Blood, the first book in the series, was the first book I ever had published. It was the book that started it all. And I’ve known what the next book in the series should be for years. Isaac’s sister needs to have her story told. She was betrayed, kidnapped, and held hostage in Bond Betrayed, for Pete’s sake. If anybody deserves a happy ending, it’s her. I just haven’t been able to sit down and tell it, however.

The second project I thought of was a retelling of Rapunzel I’d dreamed up about two or three years ago. Only, instead of it being a fantasy setting, it would take place in space. Because everything is better in space. Stay with me here. So Rapunzel is the crown princess of a planet. This planet sees hair length as a social status. The longer your hair is, the more prestige a person has. Being crown princess, Rapunzel has the longest hair. Her tower is a metaphorical one. The walls she’s had to build around herself because she is royalty.

The third project was a horror romance where the heroine buys a book at a second hand store that is cursed. I don’t remember much about the plot, though. It was shortly after my mom gave me our family Bible. Which was weird because I’m not terribly religious, but my sister is. So I asked her why she gave the Bible to me and not my sister. As you’ve probably guessed by now, she said, “Your sister thinks it’s cursed because your father bought it.” So she gave it to me instead. Ummm… Thanks?

So there they are. Three of my projects that I hope to get written someday but haven’t as of yet!! Huge thank yous to The SFF Seven for having me on their blog today and thank you to everybody who stopped by.

If you wanted to check out all the things I’ve actually completed, feel free to stop by my website:  www.ChandraRyan.com 

And to find out about all the things I’m in the process of completing, come hang out with me in my reader’s group: Chandra's Clubhouse

My next projects and some sexy aliens

As Tom Petty said, the future is wide open, and I'm a rebel without a clue.

Yesterday, the final book in my cyberpunk romance series was released, and now I'm free to work on anything I want to. Woohoo! Which of course has had be going back through my "In Process" folder and perusing stories in various states of dishabille. People, there are SO MANY stories in this folder. So. Many. But because you don't want to be reading this blog post for the rest of your day/week/life, I'll pick just three to sum up:

1. Twenty years after they allied heroically to defeat the necromancer, all the kings of Eyath are... gone. Disappeared. Missing. Dead? It falls to the next generation, led by a princess who should not exist and a tree who cannot die, to uncover what happened, repair the damage to their land, and confront the sins that led them all to this doom. (I've never pitched this one, so I don't have a back-cover-copy write-up of the story. This little bit will have to do.)

2. (Did pitch this one -- it didn't pass committee -- so here's the extended version.) Metallurgist Gal Gutierrez takes a job to examine and retrieve samples of a material that even the archaeological dig lead won’t touch. But Gal has no such qualms. She’ll touch it, bag it, bring it to her lab, and science the shit out of it.

Until she gets to the site and, uh, meets it.

Ashim, the Destroyer of Worlds, is a prisoner on this backwater planet Earth, strapped to it by a radiation barrier that protects all these pre-evolved life forms from the dangers of space. And keeps him from anything like stretching. He hasn’t flexed his power in ten thousand revolutions of this ball of iron and tedium, and lo, it begins to wear upon him. He’s paid for his crimes, and his sentence is drawing to a close. There’s just one thing he has left to do: blow this place and get out.

But when the human woman steps into his cavern, touches him, speaks to him, all his plans are whatever and he can think of nothing other than touching her right back. Sifting the aura that surrounds her. Listening to her delicious voice and inhaling her intoxicating scent. No matter that those physical things would require him to reduce himself to human form.

For...love?

O, Great Bang, he is lost.

3. My riff off of Guardians of the Galaxy wherein a secret prince busts out of an orbital prison with help from a tech-smart but whiny teenage rebel, a double-crossing security guard, and whatever Olorin is (a science experiment? a cosmic god?). Anyhow, they steal the exact ship they oughtn't, meet a quantum-entangled chinchilla, and hie across the galaxy with all the law on their tails to save Davon's mom, the queen, from an alien threat that wants to kill her and the planet she rode in on. Good times.

As I mentioned, there are others, but these have the most words done, and I should probably finish them. Now that I've done the self-publishing thing once, I'm less worried about what my agent will find sellable, which frees me up to write whatever crazysauce pops into my brain. And hoo-boy, there are some things.

So, hooray for next projects! I just got to pick one.

#SciFi #Romance Release Day: MORE THAN STARDUST by Vivien Jackson

It's a celebration today as our Wednesday blogger Vivien releases the third book in her sexy Wanted and Wired Sci-Fi Romance series! 

MORE THAN STARDUST
Wanted and Wired, Book 3

Chloe, a self-aware, highly illegal nanorobotic artificial intelligence knows a thing or two about wanting.

The growing Machine Rebellion wants her to become its god.
The technocratic global Consortium wants to cage her, take her apart, and reverse-engineer her.
Her family wants to keep her a secret.
Her best friend Garrett wants her safe.

Chloe is a thing made of wants.
It's time the world knew hers.

BUY IT NOW: Amazon | B&N | Kobo

The Island of Lost Book Projects

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about the things we want to do. We're asking everyone to name three projects we've been planning to work on for a long while and haven't yet touched.

It's kind of like the writer version of the Island of Lost Toys. Ever so sad.

Except that these kinds of lost projects still have hope of being rescued. I keep them in two subsections of my overall tracking workbook (in Excel spreadsheets!) called "Tabled" and "Potential." Really, the tabled projects don't count for this topic, as it specifies they must be untouched. The tabled projects are ones I at least started to write, then back-burnered for various reasons.

In the potential section, however, I have seven projects listed. One is a contemporary romance trilogy that I did start to write up a long time ago - relatively: six years ago - so technically it's a tabled project. Being a purist for these things, I moved it to that subsection.

That leaves four projects in there - one a more or less total surprise because I forgot I was ever going to do it. And really... I'm not going to. It's the third book in my Blood Currency series. See, the deal is, way back in the mists of time, I'd submitted PETALS AND THORNS to several publishers. Loose ID bought it and when I notified Ellora's Cave about the offer, they gave me a weird, disorganized answer. (In retrospect, this was a harbinger of their eventual implosion.) Later, the EC editor contacted me to buy it. I had to disappoint her, but she asked me to her write something else. That became FEEDING THE VAMPIRE. She asked for more and, because EC had this weird thing about there having to be three books in a series before they gave you a series title and something better than their one-size-fits-all reusable covers (and we wonder why they went out of business...), I pitched her a third idea for the series as well. I wrote book two, HUNTING THE SIREN, but by the time it came out the implosion had begun and I never wrote the third book. I don't even remember what the concept was, though I'm sure it's on my laptop somewhere. Anyway, I've bundled the first two books into one volume called BLOOD CURRENCY (the name of the series).

I really doubt I'll write more. Nobody has asked for more, so that says something!

Another project is taking one of my very first fiction stories, PEARL, and working it into a novel. I might still. I took down the story because it has a tragic ending and I figured that was off brand. But I'd love to have that tragic moment be a black moment prequel to a happier outcome. It could still happen.

The other two projects are kind of in the same bucket: anthologies I'd discussed doing with Megan Hart and that we kind of dropped for various reasons. One was an anthology of fairytale retellings and the other was an erotic anthology called SIN CAVE, a followup to THE DEVIL'S DOORBELL. Both titles are a play on misogynistic terms for female genitalia and pleasure. I'm kind of sorry we never got around to doing the followup of SIN CAVE, but I also think that if projects fall apart that way, it's for a reason. They don't have enough energy to carry them through. Also, with SIN CAVE, several of the authors in THE DEVIL'S DOORBELL are no longer writing. Maybe someday with a new cast?

I should caveat, too, for those of you with fingers poised to type outraged comments about the stories you're waiting for in my other worlds - this doesn't include those! Those are absolutely on the stove and simmering.

Visiting a Ship from My STAR CRUISE #SciFi Romance Novels

DepositPhoto

This week’s topic: What place in your own books do you most want to visit and why?

I had to ponder this one a bit because in my books it’s not really about the place, as it is about the planet or the ship…or ancient Egypt, sometimes.

Another cool spaceship from DepositPhoto

I’ll leave ancient Egypt for another post because I decided for today I’d choose my interstellar cruise liner of the far future, the Nebula Zephyr, which  has featured in a number of my science fiction romance novels. She’s run by an AI named Maeve, who’s a bit terrifying. She’s actually a military AI, who used to run a huge Sectors battleship and who would have been terminated when her ship was decommissioned except for Captain Fleming. He was the last captain of Maeve’s battleship and he managed to somehow have her transferred from that ship into the brand new luxury liner he was taking command of upon his own retirement. Maeve does a great job of running the luxury liner of course but remains military at heart and little glimpses of that attitude show through in some of the stories.

The CLC Line is run by veterans,  in part to provide good jobs for veterans, so they’re quite understanding of some of the things my captain and crew do in the course of the books. As Captain Fleming explains in Star Cruise: Stowaway, “I always had Special Forces Teams as key elements of my strategy when I commanded a battleship,” he said as he sat and stirred cinna spice into his drink. “When I agreed to join the CLC Line, I saw no reason not to have a similar capacity on board. As we’ve seen in recent years with the rise in space piracy and other challenges, even a civilian vessel may need a core of well-trained operators at some juncture. Jake Dilon is one of the finest Special Forces officers I ever met, and I back his decisions. Anything he and his team did for you was under my authority. I’m the man in command, and the responsibility is mine.”

 I always admired the Flying Tigers who came home from World War II and set up their own airline, so the CLC Line and its corporate policy was my little tribute to those pilots.

Maybe someday I’ll tell the story of Maeve and the captain, which readers frequently ask me for, but it’s not on my list of upcoming books.

DepositPhoto

I never really define what the Nebula Zephyr looks like from the exterior. Partly that’s so I can use whatever stock photos are available to me for the cover art and not upset anyone too much. I do have a detailed layout of the ship in a notebook that I refer to fairly often. Suffice it to say she’s a huge ship, with twenty decks or levels, which gives me a lot of room to have adventurous plots.

Below the bridge deck, Level A has the huge casino, the observatory (where Maeve can order up any galaxy or star system a passenger might wish to see), restaurants, shops, the theater where the Comettes dance troupe performs, a host of other amusements and entertainments for the passengers and a state of the art sickbay, presided over by Dr. Emily Shane, heroine of Star Cruise: Outbreak.

Nebula Zephyr carries cargo as well as passengers, with two entire levels devoted to the cargo hold, run by Cargo Master Owen Embersson, who took the lead in Star Cruise: Stowaway.  In this respect I adopted the Titanic era model, where the vessel was a luxury liner and a working cargo ship. Captain Fleming is very deferential to the Cargo Master, because transporting interstellar freight is a highly lucrative business and the CLC Line does expect its ships to turn a nice profit.

Level 5 is the beach, with the entire space given over to an ‘ocean’, with special water and sand brought from the resort planet Tahumaroa Two and elaborate holograms projected  by Maeve for the enjoyment of passengers and crew. It’s not a holodeck like the Star Trek concept, where all kinds of adventures can occur, but it’s a great site for parties, volleyball and late night strolls. My characters go there often. The water gets quite deep, there are waves and everyone seems to have a good time there. Mostly.

Movement between levels is via antigrav tubes, although there are some retro stairs for passengers with an aversion to antigrav.

As you might expect the Nebula Zephyr has a five star chef in charge of fine dining and all food operations. I always enjoy working Chef Stephanie and her kitchen into the plot – it gives me a chance to draw upon all those seasons of watching ‘Top Chef’!

There’s a lot more to the Nebula Zephyr (and new features come up regularly in the books) but I think I’d really enjoy my time aboard the ship, mingling with the other passengers, who range from the very rich in First Class -the ‘Generational Billionaires’ and ‘Socialites’ (also very rich but young, heedlessly arrogant and constantly pleasure seeking) to the solid  and sturdy Second Class of your more every day Sectors citizen. (There is no Third Class in the Sectors.) I’d devour Chef Stephanie’s gastronomic delights, take in a lot of shows, gamble at the Casino, get to know the members of the crew I write so much about…maybe even have a romance and HEA of my own with one of the ex-Special Forces Security Officers (Jake Dilon alas is spoken for, being married to Dr. Shane.)… I think I’d probably want to stay aboard forever, maybe as their Writer in Residence, which as yet the ship doesn’t have!

Book Vacation

I have two series and one stand alone book. The stand alone and the UF series are all set in Seattle. Okay. It's a Seattle that has demons and magic swarming the city, but still. I had picked Seattle specifically because I was living there and had long, deep affection for the place. Still do. So while I still love Seattle, if I could visit one of my book locations, it would absolutely be the SFR series I'd pick because SPACE.

I have so many questions and so many things I want to see with my own eyes. Let's be clear - I do not want to experience getting space sick. Don't. So I'm gonna go with being aboard one of the ships that has supplemental gravity. Then I want to go everywhere. I want to know if there's a palpable difference between how a ship navigates interstellar space and interplanetary space. This is where you realize I'm a sailor and I'm mistakenly comparing navigating vacuum to being tossed around on ocean waves. Intellectually, I get that time/space doesn't necessarily work that way, but it is the only frame of reference I have. THIS trip would fix my frame. 

Don't know what it says about me that I ache for an experience I'm not going to have in this life time. I mean, sure, it's theoretically possible that I could suddenly make the money that would buy my way to the International Space Station. But let's be realistic. With that kind of cash, there are a lot of other things I could do that wouldn't end up with me barfing my guts in zero g. Nopitynope. 

So I'll do my vacationing on paper, thanks. 

I want to vacation in Antarctica. No, really.

Here in Texas, it has already topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, and it's only gonna get hotter from here. You know that thing people say about frying an egg on the sidewalk, and then they laugh? Around here, it actually works. (I wouldn't recommend eating anything cooked out on the concrete. Probably tastes gritty. Tea brewed in the sun, however, is lovely.) It's also disgustingly humid right now. You'd need gills to breathe properly, and there's some kind of moist-loving fungus growing in my planter box, right next to the butterfly flowers. Gross, right?

So it should come as no surprise that I dream of getting away from all this oppressive heat. When I was writing my latest book, More Than Stardust, I needed a setting for a secret evil laboratory of villainy. The climate had to be good for electronics (so, cold and dry), and bonus if geopolitical territories and jurisdictions were a bit murky.

 Antarctica was the obvious choice.

I have to tell you, researching the geography and lore of the place was super fun. Conspiracy theories abound, I totally believe that the continent once supported a highly advanced now-lost civilization (there are ancient maps!), and I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens.

Plus, I am old enough to remember when The X-Files found a secret spaceship there, and also recall watching those Jacques Cousteau videos PBS used to run. Good times. With Antarctica associated in my head with a lot of fun theories and vistas and critters, it's exactly where my supervillain needed to situate her hideout.

 As a bonus, it would make for a refreshing change from all this ucky summer sauna weather, so yeah, that's where I'd go if I could pick from all the places I've written about. This is how Garrett sees Antarctica for the first time in the book. Doesn't it just sound like primo vacation land? Incidentally, he's under attack and riding an inflatable dinghy.

Excerpt:

The world was white, white on white, blinding and full of death. He couldn’t tell where the gun emplacements were precisely, but he knew in a general way where the shots were coming from, and that was the direction he needed to head. He aimed the hover-boat-thing, engaged the battery-powered engine, and popped the Armorflate shell, which he’d had the foresight to bleach whiteish.

They’d surfaced in thin ice—it was summer, after all. In winter, this whole bay would be locked up and require breakers, but right now it wasn’t so bad. Still he was glad for the modifications he’d made to the inflatable dinghy. It flew over the ice, eased over the first drifts at the shoreline. Transitioned easy from water/ice to ground, and didn’t lose any of its forward momentum.

Garrett could say the same for himself. It felt like he was breathing adrenaline, pumping it pure in his veins. He thought about the efficiency of machines, like Dan-Dan. That guy wouldn’t slow down because of fear or injury. He’d plow on, do the job. Complete the mission.

Bullets skidded off Garrett's Armorflate, and he knew that his statistical chances of getting hit by at least one bullet were off the chart, off the grid, off the whole damn smartsurface.

Also, this place where he was right now? Ant-freaking-arctica? Redefined cold. Summer, again. He kept telling himself, It’s summer. Hot. Surfing. But none of that worked. The arctic air hit him smack in the visor. He hadn’t thought to construct a windshield like a real hovercraft would have. Stupid.

The suit kept him warm, though. Vallejo had done good.

Maybe if he’d had a few more weeks he could have added impact resistance. Garrett could feel the sharp zing of each bruise as he slammed his shins against the retractable metal decking, or elbows against the reinforced sides. But he only felt the flare of pain for a second, and then his senses were on to the next insult, the next injury, the next defiance of death in all its forms.

The white ahead of him bled orange for a moment, then darkled.

Explosion?

 Releasing 7/9, available now for pre-order at Amazon and everywhere ebooks are sold

Featuring Antarctica and lots of cool weather!

Escaping Summer in My Fantasy World

It's so bright and hot today ~whine~ that the place I'd most like to visit from one of my books is...

Nivurn.

It's a hostile land of unrelenting snow and ice, of perpetual night and warring monsters. (It sucks for my protagonist who is a fire-warrior deathly allergic to cold and wet.) On this icky, sticky summery start of July, I'll take the snow. I'd even take the creatures if I could have the gift of mind control that my protag does. For now, I'll settle for a mango daiquiri. ~dusts off the blender~