Wrapping TAMER OF HORSES

Theseus and Centaur (photo by Yair Haklai
[CC BY-SA 3.0  or GFDL], via Wiki Commons)

In January, I finally finished TAMER OF HORSES, a historical novel about Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, and the war with the Centaurs that followed. I started writing TAMER in 2012 -- prompted by an anthology call for ancient Greek themed romances. At the time I thought that turning a tragedy into a romance was just a question of picking the right end point in the story. There was no way I was going to turn the war with the centaurs into a happily ever after, if I included it in the novella. There was just too much death, too much destruction, and too much STORY to pack into anything with a 40,000 word limit.

So I wrote the romance novella and submitted it. Lucky for me (no, really!), I got the big R. Finally, I had the time and the words to turn that novella into a full length novel and cover the WHOLE story. And I am so stoked that I did. The more I wrote, the more I loved writing it. Hippodamia didn't have to be a typical Greek -- she'd been raised by Centaurs, after all. And with Pirithous came Theseus, and even better, his Amazon wife, Antiope. There is nothing not awesome about getting to write the four of these characters, particularly after I'd written HELEN OF SPARTA. I got to explore what Pirithous and Theseus were like in their glory days, and meet the women who had the strength not only to match them, but even to exceed them. Together, the daughter of the centaurs and the daughter of Ares make a very formidable team!

It was a stop and start struggle to figure out the path of the book and pull all the threads together. When I started during the summer of 2012, I never expected that it would be a two year journey. But I'm pretty proud of the nearly 110,000 words I ended up with! Hopefully my early readers will feel the same way, and after that... well, publishing is unpredictable at the best of times, but whether or not Hippodamia's story sells, I'll never regret having written it!

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Writerly Goals for 2015

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So I know I'm two weeks behind on posting about this -- and I don't normally post about this stuff anyway, but this year is going to be busy for me. SUPER busy. I've got HELEN OF SPARTA's release April 1st, and I've lined myself up to attend two conferences already: The Historical Novel Society's conference in Denver, and the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs.

And that's not all! On top of the travel, and the book releasing, I've got books to write, and I thought you might be interested to know what's on my docket for 2015 -- and not just because it might help me to stay on task if I make it public, though I'd be lying if I said that wasn't PART of why I was writing this post.

Let's do this in list form!

New Words, New Manuscripts:

• Another Bronze Age historical (which I will leave vague for the moment though I do know exactly what I'm writing and I'm looking forward to diving in!)
• Orc Saga 3
• Finish my PNR novella featuring Ullr, Thor's stepson (it's about 2/3rds done)
• Finish my Fate of the Gods novella featuring Ra and Athena (it's about... 1/4th done. maybe.)
• Finish Marcus's story, whatever that turns out to be (another Fate of the Gods potential novella)
• And if I can finish all that, then I'll work on the next Bronze Age historical, which may or may not have to do with Theseus and Antiope. We'll see!

Editing/Revising/Releasing:

• Orc Saga 2 needs a round of revisions -- though the cover art is well on its way, and I am super stoked to share it.
• Hippodamia and Pirithous aka TAMER OF HORSES, the bronze age historical I wrapped up in 2014 as part of NaNoWriMo will need some revisions, too.
• And of course, HELEN OF SPARTA is hitting shelves!
• I'm tentatively hoping to release BLOOD OF THE QUEEN (Orc Saga: Book Two) in the fall/winter!
• And an Audiobook of FORGED BY FATE is coming!

Yeah. Basically I've got my hands full and if I can manage to finish all of this before 2016 blows through town, I'll be shocked and amazed, but I might as well dream big! As long as I get one of the Fate of the Gods novellas done along with my two full length novels, I think I'll be pretty pleased with myself, and any progress made in the others will put me ahead next year.

And I have a fun FICTION interlude for you blog readers coming up next, before I get back into the bronze age/myths/Helen/Theseus business again for Helen's release -- it's called Imaginary Friends, and Part I posts on Thursday!

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