The Melding Plague

First off: Holy shit I'm over 10,000 views! Thanks so much to everyone that has read, enjoyed, shared and commented on this blog, it means a lot to me. :) I love to blather on and share information, so thank you for supporting my insanity!

Lots of things going on in the Caitlinverse, though one of the most exciting is that VIVID 2 is finally off to external editing! I'm super stoked. I finally managed to finish the ending, which was evading me for so long. I was having a massive internal battle about a few scenes that just didn't seem right, and then everything just clicked into place and I'm really proud of the outcome. Emerald is all over that shit right now, tweaking and fixing and red penning oh my!

Of course that means I've been spending lots of time in photoshop trying to graft the perfect cover. Marissa was kind enough to step into the role of Kharma, and channel her beautifully, and now it's just down to me being OCD about how I want the cover to look. This is the direction I've been heading in:

She's staring into your SOUL, yo!

It's not exactly what I want yet, but I'm heading in the right direction. I want it to be dark, as a contrast to the all white cover of the first one, but I want more hair! Which means I'm going to have to be patient and take a bajillion hours to cut it out better. ^_^' But I'm getting there.

Also, because I can never do anything in a linear or organized fashion, I haven't yet started VIVID 3. It's there, in my head, swirling and percolating and getting ready to be on the page. But it's not quite there yet. I've been burying myself in Alistair Reynolds in the last few weeks, and the dense sci-fi deliciousness has resurfaced an idea I had last year that's been screaming at me to be written.

It started with 50 Shades of Grey. Emerald and I read that drivel of a trilogy (if you're pro-50 Shades, shame on you, please go read this and then come back here and argue with me about it), and then challenged each other to write a realistic modern day romance that empowers women and makes fucking sense. I had a hard time with it, not because I don't know how to think up realistic romance, but because I have a very active imagination and can't help but turn everything into fantasy or sci-fi. Seriously, every idea I had for a present day romance was immediately followed by "and it takes place in a dystopian future where aliens blah blah blah". Or "and then what if the male love interest secretly has supernatural powers that allow him to blah blah blah?". After a few weeks of desperately trying not to have these thoughts, I said 'fuck it' and started formulating a science fiction extravaganza with a romantic subplot, because I realized that that's what I'm interested in and I'd be bored trying to write anything else.

I put that idea in the back of my head to simmer while constantly chewing over VIVID 2, knowing that I needed to focus on one thing at a time otherwise I'd never get anything done. But now that it's spread it's wings to fly free of my scrutiny, I am free to move on to the next project. Which, while being completely immersed in Revelation Space (Alistair Reynolds is one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, if you're into the genre, you owe it to yourself to check him out), caused my simmering story idea to overflow and make a big mess of my brain-oven. Okay, that analogy got a little out of control. I never claimed I was terribly good at metaphors.

The bottom line is, I'm now working on a currently untitled sci-fi epic that I'm super excited about. It's taking a lot of research, but it's terribly fun, and I'm toying with the idea of releasing it a serial novel once it's finished. I'm loving reading The Boss for free online, and as much as it's horrible to have to wait a week between chapters, it's like having a favourite show on tv that you look forward to. The suspense both makes me angry and excited at the same time, and I'd love to give something like that a shot. Self publishing is cool and everything, but I feel like having a free serial novel on the internet would be awesome, something for people to follow and talk about every week. And then once it's finished, if people want a printed copy then I can do that later. In any case, let me know your thoughts, readers!

And for those of you that have been asking about the VIVID series, the first one is currently on the Amazon Kindle store, available in Canada only. If you don't have a Kindle, you can get the free app on your computer or phone and buy a copy of the eBook here for $2.99. If you'd like to wait for the VIVID 2 release, I'm going to be making the first one free, so that anyone new to the VIVID-verse can have a taste of it for no cost. Silent Pictures almost feels like a prologue to me anyway, it's fairly short.

On a completely unrelated note, my hair is like mermaid blue-green-teal-turqoise awesomeness right now and I can't even contain my excitement. I generally suck at taking good selfies, but this has gotta be done!

For 49 cents more, try the supersize, bitches.

That is all.