The Valkyrie Initiative & What's Next

 

Tis the season of anthologies for this writer! I've got another short story coming out in September in The Valkyries Initiative (available on Amazon).

Mostly, my protagonists have the same kind of vibes, which is great news if you like my main characters (and hopefully you do!). They are women who are learning to depend on themselves in various situations for the first time. Jade is no different.

She has just graduated from college with a degree in art history and is mere days away from starting her dream job. Sound fabulous, right?

It wouldn't be fiction if we left it there. Well, at least it wouldn't be an exciting piece of fiction if we did.

Jade gets all dressed up to attend her graduation ceremony, but when everyone tosses their caps into the air and she catches someone else's, everything she's worked so hard for is suddenly threatened because she sees something she's not supposed to. She sees a vision of a woman being murdered.

Could it be that she's going crazy like her Grandma Jane?

I suppose you'll just have to find out :) Especially if you like tough women who don't follow boring tropes.

Like I said earlier, this seems to be the season of anthologies for me, and I'm not complaining. If you remember from my previous posts, I love to genre jump and this is a great way for me to do just that. Previously, I wrote a paranormal romance, this time it's an urban fantasy thriller, and later this year I'll be back with the third installment of a dystopian survival story.

If you love writing short stories, and I totally do, anthologies are a fantastic way to get your stories out there. I love having a deadline (it's more of a love-hate relationship seeing as I'm notorious for saying yes to way too many projects) as well as getting to know more writers. It's so fun to go to a convention and meet a new writing friend only to realize you've been in the same anthology.

Either way, I hope that you'll keep telling the stories you'd want to read. 

Until next month, happy writing!

New Paranormal Romance Anthology

It's officially the dog days of summer down here in South Carolina, where our highs are regularly in the triple digits. This means we're eating our weight in watermelon and catching up on our TBR stack that's been diligently growing since winter break because it's too hot to do much else. 

I've got a good mix of literary fiction, fantasy, and young adult fiction to keep me busy reading through this heat wave, whether that be inside where the AC is running full blast or at a hot, sandy beach on the weekend. But one that I'm particularly excited to read is Gateways to the Paranormal.

You'll see my name if you scan the contributing author's list, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what my fellow writer friends came up with. I love a good romance story, and what could be better than having 14 of them in one book? Given the state of the world, I'll take any and all happy endings I can get even if they are fictional.

Every anthology I've participated in has resulted in a slightly different approach (mainly because they've been completely different genres), so I'll tell you a bit about how I worked on this particular story.

I'm obsessed with mythology. I love seeing what types of stories and creatures have ruled the common folk's beliefs all over the world. I've done retellings of Irish folktales (in my debut novel, The Curse Breaker), Japanese and Middle Eastern folktales (Malfunction Junction), and a few more short stories/novellas that you'll see in the coming months if you follow my author page on Amazon. But for this anthology, I wanted to mix mythology.

When I first accepted the invitation to write for this project, I immediately wanted to write about a vampire. I know there have been a million vampire stories, but there's something in that mythology that keeps me coming back. Perhaps it's the versatile nature of these creatures, but either way, I knew right from the start that my vampire, Soren, was benevolent. 

From there, given that this is a romance story, he needed a love interest. So Lavender Collymore was born. Lavender is an over-achiever to the max, but she's not quite human either. Now with these two main characters in mind, as well as a word limit to honor, the pair needed some kind of problem to solve. 

I'm not opposed to bad vampires. In fact, they often add a lovely amount of tension to a storyline. In modern literature, we spend a lot of time reading Romanian vampire lore spin-offs, but they aren't the only type that exists in the world. In fact, there are many different kinds of blood-suckers, and Australia has some of the coolest monsters I've ever read about.

In their mythology exists a creature called the Yara-ma-yha-who. I'll let you google the full lore (you're in for a treat), but for the sake of this post, I'll tell you that these little guys feed on one victim again and again until they've fully converted their prey into another Yara-ma-yha-who.

Soren and Lavender obviously have to stop this guy from eating up their fellow townspeople. If you want to see if they were successful, preorders are up now (the official publication date is 6/17/2022). You can follow this link if you're interested.

Either way, I wish you the loveliest of summers. Stay cool and happy writing.

What it's Like Being in an Anthology (or two!)

 Happy December! 

2021 was the year of anthologies for me as a writer. I had stories come out in two different anthologies (and another two are on their way come 2022!). This month I'll be comparing and contrasting my experiences with both for you. 

In Standing Fast: Stories in the Last Brigade, I have a dystopian survival story. While I read a ton of young adult fiction, I find that as a writer I end up writing in all kinds of genres. Nonetheless, this genre was one that I hadn't tried before. But when a long-time writer friend asked me to join the ranks of his anthology, I readily agreed. 

He set all the parameters including the word count and genre. Because these stories take place in a world that he was already built, I had to do a bit of research to make sure that my story could fit into a previously established setting. Then, a different writer friend gave me the title idea, and from there a story of a girl trying to survive her colorless world emerged. I had a couple of months to work on the draft before the final version was due. 

The contract for this project came from my previous publisher, so there wasn't too much to go over in that department as it was very similar to the one I signed for my debut novel, The Curse Breaker. I got my author copy in a pdf form a bit before the anthology came out in book form, and it was a lot of fun to see what the other writers (many of who I didn't know before) came up within this universe.

Participating in anthologies like these are a great way to meet new writing styles and names, as well as challenge yourself to fit into a certain theme/setting.

Malfunction Junction was a completely different experience. Partly because I'm in it as a writer as well as an editor, and partly because I was much closer to the overall construction of the anthology. As a group, we came up with the idea of doing an anthology and were just about to publish it when Covid hit. We decided to take a break for a bit before resuming the project. 

We used a much looser theme to tie these stories together. All of the stories have something to do with Memphis, Tennessee (which is where we all have lived/currently live). In this case, our love of a singular place (with its quirks) is what brought this project to fruition. 

Both of my stories in this project take place in the modern world with elements of fantasy. Many of the stories have some hints of fantasy, but a couple of them do not. The writing time for this project was much longer, but we spent time giving each other feedback on the submitted stories. 

Working on anthologies like these are great if you have a group of writer friends and you want to learn more about the overall process of putting something like this together. It will also give you a great excuse to put on an author's night at your local book shop. 

If you have more questions about the process, I'd love to answer them. Comment below.

Until next time. Happy writing!

Bumps In The Road ~ #LynnCrain #amwriting #LifeBumps

Hi everyone!

I know I haven’t been around last month and this month’s post is late as well. I apologize but life has decided to give me a few bumps...

Life has changed drastically for me and I am now just coming to grips to what’s transpired. Now, first, I need to explain that this isn’t a call for sympathy or anything like that but rather how to deal with those life bumps we all get. Second, things happen totally outside our control, a lot, and as writers we need to know how we’re going to overcome these challenges.

In the beginning of January, my husband of 31 years had a routine colonoscopy. He’d been having some gastric issues since he’d been diagnosed with giardia over two years ago but we just put it down to errant gut flora. Low and behold, we got a major wake up call when the doctor told us flat out he had colon cancer.

After a very stunned few days, I knew we had to get a handle on this. We saw doctors, we went to tests and did various other things to insure he received the best care possible. The worst news we received was that it was Stage IV, while the best news was it’s 100% curable with time, chemo and surgery.

I breathed a sigh of relief and immediately went back to writing and formatting a book for the print version of an anthology I was in that was set to release on February 28. Some friends of ours couldn’t believe that I wasn’t more worried and could still think about doing ‘my job’ because I’m a full time writer. Why wasn’t I catering to my dear husband’s every need? My thought was…how do you know I’m not?

For me, life is one of the things that happen no matter what your job is. It’s how you approach each and every life bump that shapes you and your career. Having been in nursing years ago and having a father-in-law who is a retired surgeon plus one of the best medical teams available, I knew my husband would be getting the best care possible. Now, I could do everything on someone else’s time table and not write but I’d be a miserable person. At that point, I would probably be useless to the one who needed me most…my husband…and that wouldn’t do.

Writing is part of the fabric of my being. I can’t survive without it. I sometimes live, breath and eat my stories because I’m so in tune with what I do. My husband knows this and because of my intimate relationship to my work, we discussed my writing and the things I had planned for this year. So far, I have three book signings and one conference lined up. Knowing just how important these things are to me, we decided that as long as they don’t interfere with his treatment, they are a go. Matter of fact, by the time you actually read this, I’ve already done the conference since it was the weekend of the 18^th. We basically made it a family trip for visiting the clan in Nevada.

Sure, there are going to be some tough times with surgery and side effects to chemo but those are things necessary to get him well. So far, he’s had two chemo treatments and I’ve gone with a writing tablet to do some work. One week, I did some class work for a Southwest Studies class and the next week I worked on blurbs, loglines and what I’d be doing for my marketing plan with the anthology I’m in. It was definitely time needed at the hospital but unwasted on both of our parts. The DH sat there and answered work email. I took a picture of him because both of us are happiest when we’re doing work or learning something new.

While we wanted to zip, life wanted us to zag. We allowed ourselves time to get used to the new dichotomy then moved on with what we needed to do to make life happy as we moved from point a to point b. It was a little different than planned and knocked us out of align for about six weeks but now we’re back better than before.

And I’m writing with a little different view on life. Please join me next month as I negotiate through life and writing!

Lynn

Check out my latest non-paranormal book, Decades of Love, on pre-order today for only $0.99. Get it quick the price will go up by March 15!

The Best Review I've Ever Had

The New York Journal of Books said of Morgan D'Arcy: A Vampyre Rhapsody:

"Author Nightingale’s writing has a lyrical quality, darkly poetic in some aspects but always descriptive and entertaining. She has a way with words bordering on the style of Oscar Wilde, teetering on the epigram, bon mots with a deeply sensual attitude.

Though her other novels were delights to read, Morgan D’Arcy: A Vampyre Rhapsody is the best to date, a tour de force of luscious description and elegant passages. Her own particular take on the vampire genre is an original idea embellished by descriptive prose.

Lovers of paranormal romance will enjoy this book as much for the subject matter as for the lush imagery the writing evokes."

I wouldn't normally begin a post on Paranormal Romantics with something entirely about me, but I was thrilled.

Now, to the subject matter of the actual post, what is your opinion of how much reviews affect book sales?

One book promotion site that has a great name in the industry is BookBub. Everyone with whom I've spoken says they make back the rather expensive advertising fee. Rumor has it that BookBub will not consider a book with less than a rather high number of reviews. I was told that wasn't true, but they do reject as many books as they take (again hearsay).

If an author receives a bad review, will that influence a reader's buying potential? What is your opinion? Personally, I discount reviews when choosing a movie or a book.

The number of reviews, good and bad, I guess, does speak to the book's or movie's worth. Often, I've selected one that had been panned by critics (readers for a book) and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'd be very interested in what you think.