Karen S. Wiesner: SURPRISES IN THE COURSE OF LEARNING TO WRITE A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (4 of 15)

 Of Research and Developmental Tool Requirements, Part 1:

Surprise #2: Research Overwhelm 

This is the fourth of fifteen posts dealing with surprising things I learned in the course of writing a science fiction series.

The eye-openers I had while writing my sci-fi series will be presented in two parts. This week we'll deal with the research overwhelm while Part 2, coming next week, will cover my underwhelm with the developmental tools I found available.

The second surprise I had in learning how to write in the science fiction genre was the sheer amount of research required. In advance of writing a word of my Arrow of Time Chronicles, I spent the entire summer of 2018 doing massive amounts of research, some of it the Standard Operative Procedure stuff I mentioned in my post last week. Talk about overload. These items I researched were all things I wanted to mention in the first book of the series as they came up, thus setting down the SOPs in my unique galaxy. Basically, I wanted them to be planted deeply there so I wouldn't need to dwell on any of that in future volumes. I filled five medium binders and one enormous one with everything "foundational" I would need to write the series.

In terms of research, that summer in 2018 was only the beginning of what was required. I call that my advance research stage. During that time, I accomplished only the establishment of the SOP foundational aspects of my series. For each outline that preceding the written draft of what eventually became the four books in the series (originally, I intended it to be a trilogy), enormous amounts of research were a necessity. There were times I worried the research would take over so much I'd never get to the point of actually writing the story itself.

Book 1 started the process of outlining the story scene by scene, and, while I outlined, I also performed all the necessary research each scene required. Let me tell you, it was intense. Seriously, things authors never have to think about to write a book set in modern, uncomplicated times came up all throughout outlining and writing these novels. Here's a taste of some of the countless considerations I had to come up with plausible explanations for--and somehow make talking about them brief:

            How do you take a shower on a space ship, and how often? Is every day allowed or are there limitations because of resources, etc.

            If something's wrong on a space ship, is there a human resources department you can complain to?

            When constructing a space habitation, where do you get the building materials?

            For one of the cultures (which is what I called the alien races), I decided to make the way they measure time a little different, considering the unique orbital and tidal functions of their planet. So this became the standard in all the books:

A revolution is 1 year (i.e., 80 revolutions is 80 years).

A tide cycle is 12 hours, two tide cycles is 24 hours, half a tide cycle is 6 hours.

A spin is also a way to reference one day's time.

An age can refer to an undefined but "long" amount of time.

Believe me, trying to remember to write a "spin" instead of a "day" whenever characters in that culture spoke could have presented quite a consistency issue if I wasn't diligent.

Those are some of the less "major" items I had to come up with plausible, brief explanations for, but if you can imagine nearly scene I outlined had endless little questions like this that needed to be answered before I could continue to tell my tale. These are the things that helped me understand the world I was building into each and every installment (and, don't be surprised, but I filled binders and binders with this stuff I cataloged so they were easy to grab if I needed to look something up while I was working).

In any case, the continuous research I had to do for this series felt utterly bottomless from start to finish. But those little questions I was forced to think about, design a creative solution for, and present in intriguing brevity are the very things that gave the series stories such vibrant flair and color.

In Part 2 of this article coming up next week, we'll talk about my underwhelm with the developmental tools available to write science fiction.

Happy writing!

Based on Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space): 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection by Karen S. Wiesner (release date TBA)

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series, including the romantic science fiction series, ARROW OF TIME CHRONICLES

https://www.writers-exchange.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles.html

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: SURPRISES IN THE COURSE OF LEARNING TO WRITE A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (3 of 15)

 Surprise #1: Of Not Having to Reinvent the Wheel For Everything

This is the third of fifteen posts dealing with surprising things I learned in the course of writing a science fiction series.

In the first part of this series, I mentioned that one of the fundamentals I was told about the "right way" to write science fiction was by adhering to what seemed to be to be the cardinal rule of the genre: That all science fiction stories have to include a concept of legitimate science or technology that can somehow be applied to fictional theories or ideas that could become future realities. Without fail, every single writing manual and article I read about how to write science fiction included this regulation. This is in the same vein as "write what you know" but of course is it really necessary or even ideal for a writer to limit himself in such a way? [Read Margaret L. Carter's February 10, 2022 post about just this if you want a unique look at this theory: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2022/02/most-writers-are-writers.html]

I don't dispute that scientific and technologic realism are important so much as I wonder how much it can be bent. We are writing fiction, after all. In his Biographia Literaria, William Coleridge coined the phrase "suspension of disbelief". In this "poetic faith" state of mind, readers voluntarily ignore obvious untruths and fantastic elements in order to enjoy the story unfolding before them. So, if an author can legitimately make readers believe something that's impossible in the real world is actually happening in the fictional story, anything goes, right?

When an author goes into writing science fiction, there are a lot of "Standard Operating Procedure" facts that have to be established and explained about this time period and their unique world or universe--in a way that readers are able to suspend belief and just go with it, regardless of how implausible in our current world and time. For example, if your characters travel through space on a regular basis, you usually have to explain how they're doing it.

Luckily, many amazing authors have already written about fascinating concepts based on scientific principles and existing and experimental technology, such as using wormholes, folds in the fabric of space, or some other creative explanation that provides the means of skipping, folding or warping space to allow jumps across great distances--all that do factor in the theory of relativity, time dilation, and interstellar travel. I call these "established knowns", and they provided one of the first surprises I received when I started writing science fiction. Namely that I could use these "established knowns" because they're basically plausible explanations that are already accepted by the majority of science fiction readers who devour extremely popular science fiction books, movies, and television series like Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, and The Expanse. Cool! I needed to hear the good news that there can be some shortcuts in this complicated undertaking. But keep in mind that most writers don't want to and shouldn't use them verbatim. That would be copying and could lead to all kinds of moral and legal issues. However, simply basing your tech and world principles on established knowns is allowed. You have to find a way to creatively adapt established knowns to make them unique to your story and series.

Since my series was set in the not-to-distant future, I really did have to have an explanation for how Humans got their technology to travel through space. I creatively used some established knowns to explain their space travel and communications, as well as coming up with realistic, futuristic orbital habitations, credible revelations about dark energy and matter, and legitimate reasons for what might force Humans to leave Earth to explore and find homes in space or on other planets. All of these were treated as Standard Operating Procedures for my series. Rather than reinventing the wheel for all of these things, I laid down my foundations as simply and believably as I could based on creatively adapted established knowns.

The surprise that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel for every single scientific and technical aspect was certainly one of the most welcome I had. It saves so much time and energy to utilize the concept of established knowns. I realized almost from the start that forcing myself to come up with brand new, exciting and extra creative ideas to explain the "SOP" of my series would have been overwhelming not only for me as the author (having to figure all this out when I'm most definitely not a scientist of any kind in the real world!), but also overwhelming for the readers who would have to hear endless and overly complex and potentially boring explanations about how everything worked from A-Z here in my particular galaxy. I've found over the years that the science fiction stories I like following the **least** are the ones that spend way too much time trying to explain to me the Standard Operating Procedures for their universe. I don't think I'm that different from other sci-fi readers: In a fiction book or series, I want to be impressed by the creativeness of the story, not scientific theories.

In Arrow of Time, the space travel and communication SOPs weren't exactly the same as for any other series, and I think that's important because, to me, just saying my characters have warp drive, like in Star Trek, felt like cheating. What I did was figure out what's been done already and what's plausible, and, from there, I played around with the concepts until they fit my series and made sense in it. Creatively utilizing established knowns, I could put my SOPs in place as briefly and intriguingly as possible and then I could roll out my story.

Another reason for not reinventing the wheel for every little aspect of your science fiction story is that these things you labor to create can easily become focal points. If that's what you intended, great. But if it's not, you went to a lot of elaborate trouble to develop and explain them yet they're not factoring greatly into the storyline somehow. That doesn't make sense and could be frustrating for readers. In my series, those SOP aspects weren't majorly important. I wanted them to be legitimate and credible, but I didn't want them to call more attention to themselves than was necessary. All I wanted was for the "poetic belief" to kick in for readers so I could move forward with the storytelling.

Over the course of the next two weeks, we'll talk about research and developmental tools in writing science fiction.

Happy writing!

Based on Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space): 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection by Karen S. Wiesner (release date TBA)

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series, including the romantic science fiction series, ARROW OF TIME CHRONICLES

https://www.writers-exchange.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles.html

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: SURPRISES IN THE COURSE OF LEARNING TO WRITE A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (2 of 15)

 Of the Overarching Series and Its Connection to Speculative Fiction

This is the second of fifteen posts dealing with surprising things I learned in the course of writing a science fiction series.

 A timeless universal truth:

No simple solutions, no easy answers, and nothing is ever free…

In last week's post, we talked about why science fiction, especially those in a series, is debatably the most difficult genre to write in. Another reason this type of series is so complicated is because it's part of a rare breed of series that I'm calling the Overarching Series that requires complex and multifaceted character- and world-building as well as necessitating series arc sequel hook endings in all but the final installment. Overarching Series dominate speculative fiction more so than any other category of fiction, though it is possible for one to be in other genres as well.

In the Overarching type of series, none of the books can truly be standalones because the series arc that's introduced in the first book in the series will run through every installment in that series, expanding and intensifying as it goes, only concluding in the final volume of the series. In other words, it's unlikely that the individual titles of the series (except perhaps the first) can be fully understood without the others in that series. Nearly always, they need to be read as a set, in the proper order, to make sense. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't enjoy the stories separately. You'll just miss a lot doing so and ultimately you might end up with a fair amount of confusion.

To be clear about this, a cliffhanger ending is most always referring to when a book ends in the middle of an unbearably intense or emotional bit of danger. Instead of concluding at the place where the scene would reach a natural end, the action is truncated prematurely, leaving the reader hanging when it comes to resolution. Readers have no way of knowing what actually happened unless or until a sequel to address this dangling thread is released and addresses the previous situation satisfactorily (and sometimes the explanation for how the danger was actually averted can be less than gratifying). Frequently, readers consider employing this technique as outright cheating because they've been purposely deprived of the unspoken promise of a proper resolution.

Kind of a downgraded definition of a cliffhanger ending is any thread left dangling. In the case of series arc thread, writers generally provide story arc resolutions within the individual volumes of the series while holding off on resolving series arcs until the final volume. For the purposes of my upcoming writing manual, Writing the Overarching Series, I'm calling these not-quite-a-cliffhanger endings "series arc sequel hooks". While readers maybe shout "But what happened to--?!" upon reaching the end of any series installment, the place each particular volume ends should feel natural and not an affront or trickery employed to avoid genuine resolution. 

The story arcs that are specific to individual titles in an Overarching Series will resolve within their particular book, providing the necessary satisfaction when completing the story, while the series arc almost always produces a less upsetting form of cliffhanger ending called series arc sequel hooks in all volumes other than the final book of that kind of series, where it's finally resolved. The reason for that may be obvious but I'll state it anyway: The series arc can't be resolved until the last book of the series. While authors do need to find a natural, logical place to leave the series arc from one volume to the next so the "to be continued" aspect won't infuriate readers so much as build anticipation for what's to come, keep in mind that each volume needs to be assigned its own piece of the series arc to tell in an Overarching Series. Some well-known Overarching Series book series, TV series, and movies are The Lord of the Rings, Divergent Series, Harry Potter Series, Twilight Series, Supernatural, Grimm, and Star Wars.

Another interesting thing about Overarching Series is that an Overarching miniseries (or more than one) can exist within an existing series of stories that could otherwise be considered series standalones. In literary terms, a miniseries is most accurately referring to a finite set of stories told within an existing series. Both the Star Wars and Star Trek series have quite a few Overarching miniseries along with standalone stories. Star Wars original miniseries included three stories in a trilogy: Star Wars (sometimes also called A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Rogue One and Solo are individual stories within the series. Star Trek has a host of miniseries within the Overarching Series, including but not limited to The Next Generation, Voyager, and Discovery. In my Woodcutter's Grim Series (fantasy/paranormal/mild horror), I have two miniseries that qualify as Overarching Series within the overall series. One of the Overarching Series is untitled and deals with the Shaussegeny Curse (Books 4-7). Another is called Bridge of Fire, Book 10, which has three separate novel parts. Books 1-3, 8, 9 and The Final Chapter could be considered standalone titles within the series.

Perhaps the most defining factor of an Overarching Series is that the individual volumes could easily and maybe even should be ideally packaged as a single work if cost and reader acceptability weren't factors.

You might have noticed something very specific about all the Overarching Series titles I mentioned above: They could all be included under the Speculative Fiction umbrella. Speculative fiction is particularly well-suited to the Overarching Series structure. While it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that an Overarching Series could fit in other genres of fiction, they do crop up most often in speculative fiction. All the techniques and strategies I employed in the process of completing my Arrow of Time Chronicles are actually ones that could work just as well for any fiction genre as well as for any type of series.

Let's talk more about the speculative fiction before we get into why these particular genres work so well for an Overarching Series.

There are a lot of different definitions for speculative fiction (or "spec fic" as it's sometimes called). Basically, the definition I'm using here is the one that's most likely to come up if you put the words "speculative fiction" into any search engine: "A genre of fiction that encompasses works in which the setting is other than the real world, involving supernatural, futuristic, or other imagined elements." The spec fic umbrella would cover (but isn't limited to) science fiction, fantasy, superhero fiction, science fantasy, horror, utopian and dystopian fiction, supernatural and futuristic or any combination of these along with other potential offshoots too numerous to mention. The point is, spec fic almost always has enormous requirements when it comes to:

            1) World building. You might need to come up with a variety of environments either all in one location, like a planet, or sprawled across great distances--maybe an entire universe--that you have to figure out how to traverse. Most if not all of these locations have to be unique and complex enough to be believable while still retaining some semblance of realism capable of luring current readers.

            2) Character building. In these genres, not all your characters will be human. In fact, a good portion might be from an alien culture or some kind of supernatural creatures that the author has to construct from the ground up. You're not just describing and personalizing living and breathing, sentient beings. You're figuring out who and what they are, where they came from (their history, present day situation, and the future are yours to formulate!). You'll be required to explain how their family life, culture, government, religions, monetary systems, and countless other structures work in their very individual worlds.

Overarching Series are frequently utilized in genres under the speculative fiction umbrella. However, not all speculative fiction series are Overarching Series. The reason for that is because you can easily have standalone series titles in a speculative fiction series. Trust me, we'll figure this all out in the next few months and it'll make perfect sense when we're done. We'll also talk more in-depth about story and series arcs, types of series, and standalones, and cliffhangers in later posts.

Next week we'll talk about my very first big surprise in writing a science fiction series.

Happy writing!

Based on Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space): 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection: by Karen S. Wiesner (release date TBA)

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series, including the romantic science fiction series, ARROW OF TIME CHRONICLES

https://www.writers-exchange.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles.html

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: SURPRISES IN THE COURSE OF LEARNING TO WRITE A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (1 of 15)

 Introduction: In Which an Old Dog Learns a New Trick

This is the first of fifteen posts dealing with surprising things I learned in the course of writing a science fiction series.

I write (and I'm published) in nearly every genre of fiction you can imagine. Science fiction horror is my favorite genre to read, and I'd always wanted to write in that genre. Though I'd written mild horror and many speculative fiction titles, science fiction was new for me before I decided to embark on what felt like an epic quest when I started the Arrow of Time Chronicles. At that time, I'd been published author for more than 20 years, and this old dog was about to learn quite a few new tricks.

 

 A timeless universal truth:

A timeless universal truth: No simple solutions, no easy answers, and nothing is ever free…

Long before I actually had any specific ideas about potential science fiction plotlines, I was talking to my son and husband about wanting to write something like Star Trek and having my Clumsy Girl Zoë Rossdale (of Clumsy Girl's Guide to Falling in Love and Clumsy Girl's Guide to Having a Baby) onboard the spaceship. My son, especially, thought it was brilliant and encouraged me to make it happen.

Fast-forward a few years and finally I'm getting ideas for a science fiction series. The premise I started with was a sci-fi saga set not too far in the future when mankind has finally begun traveling the stars, mainly in desperate and dire need of finding new homes for the population stranded on Earth following the Great Catastrophe (basically, Climate Change reaching the critical point). What if Humans built orbital habitations for their people not only in their own planet and moon's lagrange points (you can do a search for what these are if you need to) but also in the L-points of other planets and moons all over the galaxy? In the course of constructing these space dwellings suitable for Humans, what if one of the moons and planets they build above is in a nuclear winter and there are actually survivors down on the planet below? What if there are others originally from the planet who'd achieved space travel before the war that destroyed their planet and these hostile Napoleonic aliens return to their homeworld to find Humans "squatting" in their territory?

That catalyst is what led me to writing this series, but another thing that compelled me was the idea of having cultures (what I call the alien races populating my series) spread across the galaxy that, genetically, are so similar, it begs a billion scientific, cosmological, and theological questions.

The horror angle I wanted to develop in this series turned much milder than I intended in the form of phantom energy--an unconscious force of dark energy--dominating and "expanding" like a space-eating tumor throughout the universe. Eventually, its rapid destruction spreads everywhere and threatens all life in the galaxy.

In case you're wondering, yes, my Clumsy Girl Zoë's descendant, Astoria "Tori", is on board the Aero spaceship, klutzing it up in the most endearing way!

Before I started writing my Arrow of Time Chronicles, I believed science fiction had to be the most complicated genre imaginable. Not only do you as an author have to create all types of characters, but most of the time they're part of an alien race that hails from a different part of the galaxy altogether. World building becomes *universe* building. Gulp! And technology…wow, where do I even start? It's no wonder a lot of sci-fi authors are scientists (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Fred Hoyle) 'cause, frankly, who else can really understand all these things? Intimidation galore!

Of all genres, I think science fiction also has the most opinionated authors. I tease a bit here, but seriously I don't believe in placing too many regulations on writers. If an author can get something to work in a story, then who cares about some long-standing rule that says no, you cannot do that here? How many other genres are you told from the get-go that, as a writer, you absolutely should not dare to change something that's been as established the cardinal rule? Additionally, you're also told that all your science and tech better be legit…despite that…{clearing throat here} you're writing **fiction**.

While I was writing my Arrow of Time Chronicles over about 2, 2 1/2 years, I found out in the process of learning everything I could and in some ways teaching myself how to go about the process of understanding the mechanics of writing in this genre that science fiction was definitely the most complicated genre imaginable. There was so much to absorb, so much to construct, so many ways to go wrong and have it all fall apart.

After I was done writing my sci-fi series, I felt a whole kaleidoscope of emotions about writing science fiction: Triumph, relief, awe, sorrow, complete and utter exhaustion. And, my conclusion was, yeah, science fiction is the most complicated genre imaginable--hands down! There is simply no comparison. Even mysteries, police procedurals, and action-adventures were a walk in the park compared to this genre. I learned so much in the course of writing my sci-fi series. Before I ever started writing Arrow of Time Chronicles, I read every book I could get my hands on about how to write in this genre. Yet I was left with quite a few curve balls that I couldn't have foreseen. I knew I had to overcome these things if I had any hope of accomplishing this epic undertaking that promised to bring about my magnum opus.

The posts in this long series coming to Alien Romances blog are the basis for my writer's manual titled Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space), which will be included in my 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection. In the posts that follow in this series over the next three months, I'll go over the surprises I had in the course of writing my first science fiction series, including the following topics:

·         Of the Overarching Series and Its' Connection to Speculative Fiction

• ·        Surprise #1: Of Not Having to Reinvent the Wheel For Everything

·         Of Research and Developmental Tool Requirements, Part 1: Surprise #2: Research Overwhelm

·         Of Research and Developmental Tool Requirements, Part 2: Surprise #3: Development Tool Underwhelm

·         Surprise #4: Of Deliberately Limiting Story Potential Development

·         Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 1: Story Arcs

·         Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 2: Series Arcs

·         Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 3: Establishing a Series Arc Early in the Writing Process

·         Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 4: Establishing Story Arcs Early in the Writing Process

·         Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 5: Surprise #5--Why Standalone Series Stories May Be Impossible in the Sci-Fi Genre

·         Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 6: Cliffhangers and Conclusions

·         Of Lessons Learned 

·         Of Rewards Earned

·         In Which a Clumsy Girl Goes into Outer Space

Happy writing!

 Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space): 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection by Karen S. Wiesner (release date TBA)

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series, including the romantic science fiction series, ARROW OF TIME CHRONICLES

https://www.writers-exchange.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles.html

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 4

I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 4

by Karen Wiesner

"Believe in your dreams. They were given to you for a reason." ~Katrina Mayer

As a writer, the question I get most often is where my ideas come from a lot. While I can honestly say everywhere, more often than not, dreams play a huge role of my fiction writing. Something about that twilight between sleep and dreams is a veritable playground for imagination! Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is one of my series, in particular, in which many of the stories within it stemmed from a fragment of a dream that I was able to develop into a story. In a series of posts, I've revealed how these nightmarish gifts from the ether came to me. 

This is the final of four posts focusing on my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series and the vivid nightmares or ideas that inspired the titles.

Karen Wiesner's Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series

** Nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is a small, secluded town called Bloodmoon Cove with volatile weather, suspicious folk…and newly awakened ghosts.

Don’t close your eyes… **

What's coming up next in the series:

One of the things I love the most as I'm developing this series is that the characters from previous books make solid (i.e. not simply "glimpses" from one book to the next) appearances in later books. Considering how small Bloodmoon Cove is and how involved they are in each other's lives, it makes sense that the developing characters would be seen all through subsequent stories. I can hardly wait to write each one of these books in order to expand the world I'm creating with them. I hope readers will also be just as excited in seeing more from this series as I am.

BONE OF MY BONE, Book 7 

(release date estimate: April 2022)

** When Bennet was eight, he fell for Ice despite how she concealed who she was and where she came from. When they were 19, she disappeared. Still grieving a year later, he's floored at her return. Her comment about "how to bury what won't stay dead" compels him to solve her mysteries. But how does a mortal fight creation's first murderer when the entity bears an immortal seal and made a pact with the devil? **

I've outlined and I'm currently writing this novel. This is a newer idea I had for the series. At the end of 2020, I couldn’t stop coming up with notes for after a very vivid dream I had of the first “scene” in the story. I already had the title and had some very loose ideas about the story before I had the dream. At that point, I was sure that, with this much material, I could move right into outlining it. Past experience has taught me that, if I can complete an outline, I always know I can write the story. If I can't outline it, I'll either take it off my list of Works in Progress or simply reschedule the release date and work on it at a later time, when hopefully I'm more inspired after a great deal of time trying to brainstorm new ideas for it.

LOST AND FOUND, A Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series 2-in-1 including "Lost", Book 8, and "Found", Book 9 

** "Lost": Damaris remembers nothing of the past 48 hours. A retired couple found her in their woods. Their remodeling efforts uncover a hidden enclosure that cages what they don't dare set free.

"Found": What does a lifelong bachelor do when the woman of his dreams steps into his sanctuary and he finds all he's been missing…but revealing the truth behind their meeting could tear them apart for all time? ** 

The main characters in both books (I'm unsure whether they'll be novellas or novels at this point) will work for the library, so LOST AND FOUND was a great title that played on that. The idea for "Lost" came from a nightmare I'd had about a woman whose car broke down on the edge of the woods and she woke up in a cabin deep in the woods owned by an older couple without technology who are digging up something in the basement of their home. The idea for "Found" came about when my sister was talking about a story she wanted to write about a ghost in a library. 

HELL HATH NO FURY, Book 10

(release date estimate: April 2023)

** Eager to get a cake decorating business up and running, Isabelle inherits an old house in Bloodmoon Cove that seems like a boon…until she pieces together the tragic story of a poor immigrant who lived in this house and the woman he scorned. When Kesara committed suicide over his rejection, her heart-broken mother plotted revenge. Newly awakened to the legacy Isabelle has inherited, two ghosts plan to finish what they started a hundred years before. **

This story came from another dream I had about a young immigrant who came over to America because of lack of opportunity in his own country and fell in love with the daughter of the man who employed him. The bakery angle with the man's ancestor being willed the house the immigrant and his wife lived in wove itself into the story, given my love for TV shows focused on baking.

 

HAUNTED LEGACY, Book 11

(release date estimate: October 2023)

** After a teenage pregnancy, Danielle and Andy unsuccessfully made a go of marriage. After the split, Andy started a business while Dani’s art career took off with the help of Douglas Marx, whose reputation is spoken of in the same hushed tones as black magic. When Doug invites her to join him in Bloodmoon Cove, Dani notices a painting that haunts her as the figure in the painting becomes familiar—more and more like her own… **

The idea for this story has been with me for many, many years, titled for most of that time GILDED PROMISES and a contemporary romance without any supernatural aspects. I had the idea to make the story a suspense with Dani’s art agent being a villain. A little later, the painting I had in the outline I'd started (though never finished) made me wonder how I could make this a supernatural kind of story. I love Susan Hills THE MAN IN THE PICTURE, and who isn't deeply disturbed by Oscar Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY? I wanted to put a paranormal spin on my original idea, and merging it into my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series seemed natural. The title changed, stemming from the concept that not only would Dani’s agent be a villain but he would have a supernatural aid in his villainy—a painting handed down from father to son for generations that “captures” and drains the life from a victim, thereby transferring it to this creature.

ELDRITCH JUSTICE, Book 12

(release date estimate: January 2024)

** Rafe Yager (of CROOKED HOUSE, Book 3) has settled in Bloodmoon Cove with his wife Corinne. Given his former ghost hunting, he can't put aside his paranormal past as easily as he'd like to. He's been following the trail of a law firm that caters to the dead with unfinished business. His quest leads to the sinister Thoth, scribe of the underworld and Ma'at, justice personified …and the weighing of his own heart on the scale against the feather of truth. **

Rafe and Cori's story started in CROOKED HOUSE, but I wasn't ready to let go of them when I was finished with that tale, nor of an intriguing plot thread that actually started earlier in the series about a lawyer that caters to the dead with unfinished legal business (RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR, Book 4).

GHOSTLY TALES FROM ERIE COUNTY including "Bad Blood", "Dead Man's Road", "The Haunting of Desolation Cottage", "Keeper of Grimoire", "Cappy's Cupid", and "The Ancient One"

(release date estimate: October 2024)

** Short, haunted stories set in Bloodmoon Cove and Grimoire, Erie County, Wisconsin. **

I knew as soon as I conceived of Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series that I'd want to do a collection of ghost short stories with the volume covering some of the early years of the town as well as following up on the previous novels. The characters--main and secondary--introduced in all that came before will make appearances in the shorts.

Dreaming fragments of a story has happened to me so many times now that I've taken to having a tablet and pen in my nightstand so I can write down everything I remember immediately after waking up. The longer I wait, the more chance I'll forget something that will drift back into the twilight, never to be grasped again. I never know when these pieces might become full-fledged stories. Sometimes it feels a lot like I'm making lemons into lemonade with these gifts from the ether, but isn't that the essence of what being a writer is?

Do you have a pen and paper by your bedside just in case you wake from a compelling dream and need to write it down fast, before it floats away? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Find out more about Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series here:

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBJ7XP

Happy reading!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 3

I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 3

by Karen Wiesner

"Believe in your dreams. They were given to you for a reason." ~Katrina Mayer

As a writer, the question I get most often is where my ideas come from a lot. While I can honestly say everywhere, more often than not, dreams play a huge role of my fiction writing. Something about that twilight between sleep and dreams is a veritable playground for imagination! Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is one of my series, in particular, in which many of the stories within it stemmed from a fragment of a dream that I was able to develop into a story. In the course of the next several posts, I'll be going over how these these nightmarish gifts from the ether came to me.

This is the third of four posts focusing on my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series and the vivid nightmares or ideas that inspired the titles.

Karen Wiesner's Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series

** Nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is a small, secluded town called Bloodmoon Cove with volatile weather, suspicious folk…and newly awakened ghosts.

Don’t close your eyes… **

RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR, Book 4 {sequel to THE BLOODMOON CURSE, Book 2}

** Back into the mouth of hell… Daniel and Hannah are newly married with their first child on the way when Hannah is bequeathed Bloodmoon Manor. After a lifetime of poverty, the wealth associated with that house appeals to her despite that she’d barely escaped it last time with her life. Daniel’s worst fears are justified. They’ve been lured here deliberately, and the horrors that haunt the manor aren’t willing to let Hannah leave ever again… **

Late into the night, I was revising THE BLOODMOON COVE for reissue as Book 2 of my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, and I had some pretty disturbing dreams. When I woke up, I knew I had to write the story of the secondary characters, Hannah and Daniel, from that book. The sequel, RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR, was born. I always adore stories where the characters are trapped in a location that lends itself to horror and fright.

Reviews and Honors for RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

5 star review from Huntress Reviews

5 star review from Readers Favorite

5 star review from author Barbara Raffin

REUNITED, Book 5

** Twyla has spent the last three years suffering under the hands of her husband Dominic. His death gives her a new lease on life: Freedom and the chance to fall in love with her old friend Gray, now the Erie County sheriff. But her happiness isn't meant to be. Dominic's vengeful ghost followed her home and he's determined to reunite them in death and the afterlife so she never again forgets who she belongs to… **

The idea of having an abused wife whose husband comes back from the dead to haunt her came to me first. After kicking the idea around inside my head for a few days, I got a lightbulb about how to blend this into the Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series. In Book 1 of the series, BOUND SPIRITS, the hero John Kotter has a cousin he hung out with in Bloodmoon Park (which belonged to his family). Then I wondered who would best help his cousin Twyla deal with her vengeful, dead husband. I’d already written a sheriff into BOUND SPIRITS and I decided to develop Graham "Gray" Mecham into the hero of this book. When I wrote the first draft, all these things were in place, setting up for REUNITED.

When it came time to write, the story took a turn for the very disturbing, but it works in this story so well. The dark content involved an aspect of life I hope to never be truly familiar with. Honestly, while researching and outlining this book, I didn't want to do too much research. I only did what was absolutely necessary and those few items didn't take me to places I could never erase from my own mind. This is my only book that actually has a content warning on it: Contains mature content that may not be suitable for sensitive audiences. 

Reviews and Honors for REUNITED:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

5 star review from Readers Favorite

4 star review from Huntress Reviews

HIDDEN, Book 6

** What you don't know can hurt you…

Sybilla marries her much older entrepreneur partner Tobias. Their publishing house produces a book series focused on unusual homes. After suffering memory loss about his past, Tobias inherits an isolated estate at the top of a mountain. Uncovering its mysteries becomes their next project.

The voice of a ghost urges, Find me, leading Syl to hidden rooms and the skeletons of a family desperate to escape its demons… **

HIDDEN is based on a scary dream I had over and over in the course of years, since I was a teenager. Kind of like the Vermeer's painting within a painting, in my dream the heroine has a recurring nightmare over the course of years about moving into a house where there are hidden rooms in which horrors have taken place. In this case, the house she's moving into is Howling Halls, which has been mentioned a few times in previous books in the series. It's one of the only two estates built on Bloodmoon Mountain. (The other was Bloodmoon Manor, featured in Books 1 and 4.)

In the dreams I'd had myself, we were moving into a brand new house, and as I'm unpacking, I realize that the house has so many more rooms than I remembered from when we were touring it in anticipation of buying the house. There's also a terrifying feeling of something evil in some of the new rooms. I also had some dreams about a ghostly child throwing temper tantrums and her grandmother trying to soothe her that I incorporated into this book.

I admit I was wary about writing this story. It’s the first one that I scared the crap out of myself while outlining it. I barely got any sleep those two weeks. It’s a horror, so it makes sense, but when I told my son this, he wanted to document how often horror writers actually scare themselves, lol. I figure, how can you scare anyone else if you can’t scare yourself? But in truth everyone has different levels of what scares them.

Review for HIDDEN:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

Have you ever a recurring dream? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Find out more about Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series here:

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBJ7XP

Happy reading!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner