Sara King

Okay, so I’ve been chugging away at this new Fantasy and I got this email from a new Millennium Potion reader:

“I loved Millennium Potion! I had to force myself to stop reading when it was 2am so I could get some rest before work in the morning and then reading it was the first thing I did when I got home.

I like the futuristic twist put on the fountain of youth thing, which was immediately what came to my mind once I got the gist of what was going on. And I was so tired of stories where good-guys were good and bad-guys were bad, though I am always a sucker for good vs bad stories, I tend to settle for what I can get. So I very much enjoyed your characters and the good-guys who were technically bad-guys doing the job of good-guys while helping the good-guys who were treated like bad-guys by society, and the bad-guys who didn’t know they were bad-guys, and the ones who were forced to be bad-guys, and then the nutjobs who were definately bad-guys, and then the all-important uber-bad-guy who you don’t actually get to meet in the story but you get to hear plenty about. Okay, that sentence gave me a bit of a headache, lol, and I was told once by a school-teacher once that if you can say a sentence with one breath then it qualifies as a sentence on paper and I can say that sentence with only one breath without being winded or tongue-tied, rofl.

I love your writing style, you give just enough description that I can get the image in my head but not too much that my imagination has no work to do, I’ve always believed ever since i was little that reading is like having a tv in your head and I really enjoyed the show you put on in my head… if that sentence makes any sense. You portrayed your characters’ individuality very well without detracting from the storyline and I think Stuart is my favourite character out of them all, his personality is just so darned adorable.

And I admire your lack of cussing, not having swears did not lessen the dialogue or the tale in any way. I can now do my I-told-you-so dance to anyone who disagrees with me ^_^.

I can say with 100% surity that if that could be bought in a book store I would definately buy it so I could take it with me anywhere and read it repeatedly, if I had money to spend on frivolities. Stupid economy. And I desperately would like to know what happens next.

So all-in-all it was very good I like liked it a lot a lot a lot and I have just started reading Outer Bounds and it’s very interesting. I love reading anything with made up words and termanologies that I have to learn and remember in order to keep up with the tale. And I can only wish I could write something as exciting as that, I’ve been writing since I was nine (got the quill award when I graduated from elementary school, they’d tell us to write three pages, I’d write thirty, lol) and I still can’t seem to slap on a personally satisfying ending to anything. So I admire anyone who can write so incredibaly.” 

…Uh.  Wow.  Emails can’t get much better than that.

(On second thought, they probably can.  For instance, if I were to get an email from my agent that said something to the effect of, “Sara, we’ve got eight different major publishers in a bidding war over three of your series and the agency’s been fielding calls from six different Hollywood movie studios clamoring for the rights to your last eight novels…”  Yeah.  I’d probably pee myself.)

In the fantasy department, I’m slowly building the world from the ground up.  This one’s gonna be complicated, folks—-think the After Earth series.  12k into it and I’ve already got about twenty-five named species, sub-species, races, and political castes.  Granted, they’re not all in there just yet, but they will be, and more.  I’m taking the complexity I had with After Earth and giving it epic fantasy’s length to experiment.  Should be fun   If you’re interested in getting on this particular bandwagon, give me a shout at kingnovel@gmail.com.  I’ll sign you up for installments a la Outer Bounds, back when I was still writing the first book.

Also, on the Outer Bounds subject, the original novel was named in the first ten minutes of writing, when I was staring at a mostly-blank screen and had to save my Word doc under SOMETHING or risk losing it in a hard-drive crash.  (Yeah, you know those screen-freeze-up-and-everything-implodes-while-your-computer-eats-your-work thingies that you have all the time?  I have them too…  It sucks.)  Finding yourself having to create that working title out of the Void, with two hours of work hovering in the ether, and only a rudimentary idea of the details of the novel to come, will always be the most mind-numbingly painful blank screens you’ll ever have to look at.

Sooo…  Because Outer Bounds has proven itself to be the first in a series, I’m going to have to rename it.  First, Outer Bounds never really jived with the theme of the book.  Second, it’s hard to match it to a series, since it’s more of a stand-alone title.  With that in mind, the SERIES of the Outer Bounds world is now named the Lords of Fortune.  The first book (formerly Outer Bounds) is now tentatively titled Coalition Sky.  Book 2, formerly called Lords of Fortune, (and I know I’m getting confusing, but bear with me) will now be called Silent Revolt.  Still working on ideas for the others, and I’m sure I’ll change it again as time goes on.  (If you’ve got title ideas, please dear GOD tell me…)  But for now, those are the working titles.  Book 1, Lords of Fortune: Coalition Sky and Book 2, Lords of Fortune: Silent Revolt.

The other bit of news is that no, I haven’t forgotten about the Lords of Fortune series, nor did I forget about the Millennium Potion series.  I will write them ASAP, but I’m kind of taking a break from the sci-fi long enough to write a goodly-sized fantasy.  How long it will take generally depends on how long it takes me to fall into a groove.  Once I’ve got my little writing buddy solidly on my shoulder again, it should only take a month or so to produce a rough draft.  Then, once I’ve got that under my belt, I’ll probably flip a coin to see whether it’ll be M.P. or Lords of Fortune next.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08

Quick news: 

Still working on the fantasy.  Have scrapped the first scene approximately 10 times now.  Total wasted wordcount?  About 40k.  Yay.  Sooner or later I’ll hit a groove or die trying.  In fact, I think I had an epiphany of sorts today.  I’m going to start the novel using a different POV angle and see where that goes.  Basically, I think the problem was that the M.C. was being set up to be an all-powerful little goddess…and who wants to read about all-powerful goddesses?  No, they’d rather read about the poor, starving servant who ends up picking the clods of dead skin out between the goddess’s gnarly feet as the goddess reclines and eats grapes.  So, if you want to read about a goddess’s gnarly feet (or something similar), go ahead and email me at kingnovel@gmail.com and ask to be put on the fantasy novel mailing list.  It’ll be a lot like the Outer Bounds list, but hopefully this one won’t make my world implode every time I look at it. 

In other news, I’ll be updating my website over the next few days.  Uh.  Hopefully.  My archaic computer is still deciding whether or not it wants to cooperate with this particular endeavor, so we’ll see.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08

Well, it seems that my distraction came to visit me in Alaska.  Not only that, but then he forgot to leave. 

This is actually good news for those of you who ever want to see me write again.  1) It means that I won’t be spending massive amounts of my time (read: all) drooling over my keyboard on Messenger as I wait for my distraction to wake up and exercise his slow-ass typing skills.  Instead, my distraction is now sitting at my side, hounding me for more stories to read as I drool on him in person.  2) It also means that I now have a Size 12 combat boot to be planted firmly up my ass every time I even think about dropping the writing gig. 

The thought of which, between the agonizing blocks on Outer Bounds, the nine years of constant effort without novel sales, and the deeply depressing personal problems I was having at the start of this year, has been a fairly frequent visitor to the dark and creepy corridors of my brain.

(Hopefully my distraction isn’t reading this.  That last would definitely qualify for a Size 12 Attitude Adjustment.)

My point is this:  It’s been about 9 months since the urge to write simply dumped me off to wander the side of the road like a lost crack addict.  In those 9 months, I wrote 40k on the 4th segment of Outer Bounds in June.  That’s it.  Let me type that again.  40k.  That’s it.

For those of you who don’t know me, 40k in nine months is akin to putting 300 co-ed bunnies in a lawn, spraying them down with pheremones, and having them hop around aimlessly for 9 months, eating grass, and getting a grand total of 302 bunnies at the end of 9 months, mainly because two wild rabbits decided to wander in and see what the others were eating.

Now for the good news:  I’m working on another novel.  Writing is still a painful endeavor for me, and I’ve been doing my damndest to procrastinate, but that Size 12 has been following me around for about two months, now, and one can only take that magnitude of ass-kicking for so long before one capitulates, if only to observe the most rudimentary measures for basic colon safety.

So, yes.  New novel is in the works.  If you wish to be a test subject, shoot me an email at kingnovel@gmail.com.  It’s going to be a light-hearted fantasy with dragons, magic, and a kickass female protag.  And it will have plot.  Dammit.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08

So, not for the first time in my life, I’ve been distracted from the writing front.

I’ve been so distracted that I’m not sure how long I’ve been distracted.  At least three weeks, maybe a month. 

So what is so distracting, you ask?  Erm, well, let’s just put it this way…  The girl who, not a couple months before, swore off the relationship thing for good, has spent the last three weeks falling head-over-heels for a fellow writer in Washington.  Totally did not see THAT one coming.  It hit me completely by surprise and has literally been a whirlwind ever since.  Fiction-wise, I haven’t written a single word since I got hit by that particular freight train.

Not that this will be a trend.  Sooner or later, I completely intend to surface, re-orient myself, and blaze through another writing spree.  Lords of Fortune will have to wait awhile, as my agent has put her foot down and said that Outer Bounds needs quite a bit of work on plot, and working on Book 1 is going to be my primary priority until I’ve got it in a saleable condition.  But fear not…  The work will continue.  For all of you who are looking forward to Book 2, I foresee serious work on it beginning in September or October.

So yeah…  Thanks again for your patience with your friendly neighborhood–and hopelessly in-love–writer-gal.

-Sara King

http://www.kingfiction.com/

Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08

Well, I haven’t shot my dog yet.

Granted, she’s a perfectly good dog that deserves my love and attention, but she also has a darker side.  Every time she hears a motor start, she becomes a crazed-eyed, mouth-foaming, rabid-barking cretin that intentionally throws herself under the tires or tracks of whatever happens to be running.  She’s been run over twice, now.  Has it taught her anything?  Nooooooooooooo.  (Well, probably that’s not true.  It has probably taught her that changing the pitch of her barking from sheer brainlessness to one of pain and terror will make the 4-wheeler get off of her.)  She continues to hurl herself under the tires at every opportunity.

Unfortunately, she’s not managed to do it to a bulldozer yet.  Or a lawn-mower.

Anyway, so I’m sitting in my writing chair today, wondering why my annoying dog hasn’t become a bear snack yet, when I see this shadow on the wall, coming through the window behind me.  I turn and look.  A big black dog, looking through my window, silhouetted by the sun coming under the porch.  My first thought?  “My damn dog is digging under the porch again.  Damn it.”  When I get up to open the window and yell at her, I realize that my damned dog is, in fact, laying at my feet.

Enter a moment of puzzlement.

We live in the Alaska Bush.  The closest neighbors, a whole mile away, have a itty-bitty Husky.  In fact, as I stand there, pondering this big block dog silhouetted in my window, I realize that the only black dog for 15 miles up and down the river is the one that is, in fact, laying at my feet.

It’s then that I start to notice the ears are a little too round, the head a little too chubby, the body a bit too fat.

…the Hell??  I move up close to the window and peer back at the thing peering in at me. 

Houston, we have a problem. 

Apparently, bears like writers, too.

I hurtled out of my room like my ass was on fire, babbling something about bears coming in my window, and Grandpa was up from his nap and had his big hunting gun out from upstairs in about 2 seconds flat.  Meanwhile, I roused my grandmother from the computer room and I went and showed her the bear peering into my room.  She got this bug-eyed look and slammed my door shut. 

3 seconds later, I was back upstairs, watching as my grandpa made his way out onto the deck like a Marine in a combat zone.  I followed him out and we started sneaking around on the porch, patiently waiting for the little bugger to come out.  Minutes go by.

Nada.

So my grandfather, brave soul that he is, got off the porch and got up close to the fencing, peering in underneath.

“Sara,” he said, “I ain’t seein’ no bear.”

And, indeed, neither was I.  (I, too, had climbed off the porch to peer into the darkness underneath.)

Now imagine this:  The lodge is positioned on a vast, well-maintained lawn.  There is no way to get to or from that porch without crossing at least a hundred feet of open lawn.  For a large black predator to do so, in broad daylight, was simply impossible.  The porch had been under observation at all times.  There was no way it could have gotten away unseen.  Just no way.

Yet that’s exactly what he did.

We found out later from my grandmother, who had watched the scene unfold from a basement room under the porch, that while we were on one side of the porch, sneaking around like stealth ninjas, the bear hightailed it out of there on the other, unseen, unheard, a big black blob crossing a pretty green lawn in broad daylight while we snickered and peered through the cracks trying to get a glimpse of the poor doomed S.O.B. beneath us.

Bear: 1

Two Humans with a collective IQ of something around 320: 0

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08

It is 2:00 in the morning and, after the last three weeks tinkering with it and 8 months of languishing before that, I finally sent Part 4 of Outer Bounds to the mailing list.  If you did not receive it, but wanted to, please email me, as my mailing list routine is not the most sophisticated and it is possible the email was marked as spam by your email provider.  Let me know you got stiffed and I will find a way to get it to you. 

Thanks again for your patience, and when you read it, let me know what you think!

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08