Revisiting Forged by Fate, and Show vs. Tell

I'm revising FORGED BY FATE right now, for... well... reasons, and this book--there is so much of this book that I still love desperately, but in coming back to it twenty years after I started writing it, I've noticed some things that my baby authorself was doing, thinking it was THE RIGHT WAY TO WRITE that, well. Were kind of the opposite of helpful in getting my points across.

Let's talk about Show vs. Tell.

As a baby author, I was clearly determined to show everything! Instead of telling people how a character was feeling, I used physical responses. He hesitated. She closed her eyes. He tightened his jaw. She shifted away.

Listen. These kinds of small physical movements are all well and good--but there's a problem with relying on them as the sole means by which you communicate emotion. And that problem is this: By themselves they don't actually communicate the underlying emotion at all.

In Chapter Eight of FORGED BY FATE, there's a moment when Eve is still new and still struggling to understand the world and the people around her. She's with Adam in a cave where he and the other residents of the Garden have taken shelter, and he is--well, imposing himself on her, really.

 Eve shivered at his touch, and that seemed to please him. He raised his hand to her face, cupping her cheek and drawing his thumb along her cheekbone. She forced herself not to look away. Not to move. But everything inside her twisted. She wanted to crawl away into the darkness, but there were no shadows now to hide her. His face was so close she could feel his breath on her lips.

“Lord Adam!” She jumped, though the voice was familiar. Reu.

Adam closed his eyes for a moment, then turned his head slowly. “What is it?”

Now, Eve is new, so there's a certain amount of grace I need to give myself here, because trying to write someone who literally was only just created and is still in the process of understanding literally everything around her is AN UNREAL CHALLENGE to start with. But. Read that last line again:

Adam closed his eyes for a moment, then turned his head slowly. 

What is it actually telling us about Adam's response, emotionally? I mean, we might guess, as readers, what past me was trying to convey. Maybe he's tired. Maybe he's annoyed by the interruption. Maybe he's actually angry. Maybe he's just power-tripping, making Reu wait on principle. You, the reader, cannot actually know. BUT. Eve does. And the reason she knows is that he's touching her, and we know already from the text that when Adam is touching her, whether he realizes it or not, his feelings and thoughts bleed through the contact.

So why was baby author me holding back? 

Because of the age old mantra: Show, don't tell, a rule I was foolishly trying to live by to my detriment.

But showing, by itself, is IMPRECISE. I'm not communicating effectively what's happening, I'm leaving my readers to guess. And while there's nothing wrong with that, in the right circumstances--when the point of view character is guessing too, for instance--in this one, I was letting a mantra get in the way of clarity.

Eve shivered at his touch, and that seemed to please him. He raised his hand to her face, cupping her cheek and drawing his thumb along her cheekbone. She forced herself not to look away. Not to move. But everything inside her twisted. She wanted to crawl away into the darkness, but there were no shadows now to hide her. 

His face was so close she could feel his breath on her lips.

“Lord Adam!” She startled, though the voice was familiar. Reu.

Adam closed his eyes for a moment, then turned his head slowly, his body stiff with impatience. “What is it?”

Impatience. Now you, the reader, know precisely what emotion is motivating Adam's physical response, just like Eve. His patience is reaching a limit. Time for her is running out. Am I telling, by including that word? A little bit. But in telling, in giving that word to the reader, I'm making the passage STRONGER. My writing is clearer and more effective and Eve's response afterward, is given more support.

(And yeah, I changed Eve's jump response, too, because she didn't jump. Her response was small, a start of surprise. But baby author me hated the word startle and bent over backward to avoid its usage--again, to the detriment of clarity.)

Show, don't tell is a valuable piece of advice for writers. ALL TELLING is boring as heck! We all know that! But it isn't a hard and fast rule that we need to contort ourselves to accommodate. Let it be a MODERATOR, sure, but when it gets in your way, like almost every other "Rule" of writing--it's okay to throw it out.

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Glad Yule, friends!

Tune in next year for some fun announcements regarding what's coming down the pipe--or join me over on Patreon, and for as little as a dollar a month, you'll find out before the year is up :)

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Forged by Fate is FREE!

It's that time again!

FORGED BY FATE is now FREE in digital wide release--Nook, Kobo, Apple, Scribd, Kindle, go! I'm working on getting it price matched on the zon's international sites but for whatever reason, and despite the email telling me they've done it, the free pricing hasn't gone through yet, so--Fingers Crossed, I suppose?

And don't forget that:

1) FORGED BY FATE technically ends at Christmas so it COULD be a legit holiday read if you subscribe to the "anything that has a Christmas adjacent timeline is a Christmas story" school of holiday reading.

But!

2) I ALSO have an EXPLICITLY holiday themed historical fantasy romance installment in the Fate of the Gods series--the novella, TAMING FATE!

TAMING FATE primarily takes place during the ACTUAL twelve days of Christmas, as celebrated in 15thC France, and you can grab it either on its own, for kindle, or as part of the FACETS OF FATE collection also for kindle, AND in wide release everywhere else (plus paperback!) 

Honestly, I recommend just grabbing it as part of FACETS OF FATE because I still haven't spun out the bonus BEYOND FATE epilogue novella, FINDING FATE, that is exclusively available in that collection, so you're get 3 novellas, plus some short stories, all for the price of 2 if you bought them as independent titles, and it's nice to just have so many of the extra stories and novellas all collected that way, if you ask me--which I realize you didn't. 

With the new cover art, FACETS would also make a great paperback gift for the FATE OF THE GODS enthusiast in your life! (Though I'd order RIGHT NOW, if you want it to arrive in time for Christmas!)

And uh, as with any good Fate of the Gods post going forward, here's an obligatory link to the reading order for your reference.

If you've already caught up on all the Fate of the Gods content I've put out--you're fantastic and my hero--it might interest you to know that I am poking at a Roman Gaul Thor and Evaline House of Lions novella probably which would take place during the events of FATE FORGOTTEN, and yes, there still is a third of a book from Ra and Athena's PoV in a folder on my hard drive which I would like to continue writing when the time is right. 

I've shared tastes of both over on Patreon, I believe, which you can read for as little as a dollar a month, along with the entirety of SON OF ZEUS, Pirithous's modern day adventure, and the in-progress COST OF LIVING--my very first novel, brought back to life as a serial billionaire romance exclusively available to my Patreon patrons! (Long time readers of the blog will perhaps remember--this is Thairon and Setta's book which has aged very strangely as the genesis for a lot of other stories I went on to write, but was still delightful to me to revisit!)

Chapters 1 and 2 of COST OF LIVING are free to read, in case you need a little bit more encouragement to sign on as a patron! They were pretty long, so I broke each one up into two pieces--so it's four posts of free reading for you to get a sense of the characters and the story! I hope you'll come read along!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, I have been dropping some extremely scandalous 🔥🔥🔥 teasers from my Amalia Theresa Playing to Win holiday special, WINTER GAMES over on instagram if that is your jam, so feel free to pop over and check those out! I had such a blast designing the stepback covers to save my family from the searing hot sexiness of it all. (The final one will drop tomorrrroooowwwww!)

And with that, I wish you a VERY GLAD YULE (which starts tomorrow for me!) and good health and happiness to you and yours in the new year!

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A Note about the "Present Day" Timeline of Fate of the Gods

It occurred to me while writing Concealing Fate (Pre-Order Now!) that I probably needed to clarify the when of Eve and Garrit's courtship a little bit more precisely. Things have changed so much, so quickly--the way we meet one another, the means by which we communicate. Even five or ten years makes a huuuuuuuuge difference to a story set in the now. And the now of when I wrote something and the now that is NOW, when it is released into the world are--well. Always going to be different. A lag of between a few months and several years, at least.

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I started writing Forged by Fate in MY present day of 2002/2003. Garrit and Eve would have been a handful of years older than me, then, because they'd both graduated from college and were living their Adult/New Adult lives. That was when I STARTED it. But when I FINISHED it, finally figuring out how all the pieces should fit together into a whole novel, and then a whole trilogy, it was 2009.

There is a lot of difference between those two sets of years, technologically, socially, maybe even culturally. The biggest one being that I'd caught up to Eve and Garrit, age-wise. And since they were my contemporaries then, I just went with it, and kept the book in what was ostensibly a present-day setting--contemporary to me.

Of course Forged by Fate didn't release until 2013, several MORE years after that. I fudged some of it with Eve being, by nature, more of a traditionalist. When you've lived however many thousands of years, adapting to technological change probably gets a little exhausting--and both she and Adam show a preference for the physical over the ethereal of the digital in a way that's not so different from the gods who cling to the trappings of the times and periods when their power was at its height. (But now I digress.)

Fast forward to the year 2019, and I'm writing Concealing Fate, a prequel to the "Present-Day" timeline of Forged by Fate, which probably actually begins in 2009, four years prior to its publication. This is the story of Garrit and Eve in college together--at University, in Paris--and, if Forged by Fate starts somewhere around 2009, that means Concealing Fate begins at least two years earlier, in 2006/2007 or so.

More than a decade ago.

I don't know about you, but by that time in my life I'd gotten a cell phone finally, but only just, and after fighting with my parents about the need for one--to put behind me the endless gifts (and purchases) of phone cards for long-distance calls to avoid having to worry about paying for long-distance service in my dorm room (I can't tell you how many times I would call one of my siblings and after they answered, we'd hang up, and they'd call me back on THEIR long-distance service to save me the minutes) and then to avoid having to have a landline in the apartment I shared with my roommate, who had embraced the cell phone life years prior. I was late to that game, and Eve is slightly later, still--too poor in Paris to afford a cell phone even if she'd wanted one.

(Remember when we paid for long-distance calls by the minute? Now it's all bundled into your service unless you go out of your way to refuse it, even on a landline.)

There's no texting in Concealing Fate. No Facebooking--though there could have been, I suppose, since Facebook opened to anyone in late 2006 (it isn't clear that French Universities were included before then from my research), but if you're Garrit DeLeon, you probably went out of your way to NOT be on it, regardless, and Eve being Eve... I think it's fair to say she probably wasn't an early adopter.

In Concealing Fate, the question of identity--and revealing one's self to a romantic partner--is pretty central to the story. Could Garrit have attempted to Google Eve as Abby Watson in 2006? Looked her up in some student directory? Sure. And probably he did, giving into temptation at some point--off-page.

If the events of Concealing Fate had happened TODAY, it wouldn't even be a question. The history of their lives would have been all over the internet to be found by one another. They'd both have cell phones, almost certainly, and texting would probably be a foundational pillar of their communication and engagement with one another--or at least Garrit would make the attempt even if Eve wasn't entirely all in on responding. They'd be connecting on Instagram and Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. And that's the difference more than ten years makes. The reason why I needed to write this post to clarify--

In Concealing Fate, the "Present Day" isn't now.

It hasn't been for a long time.

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A Taste of Concealing Fate

(Cross-posted from Facebook)

We're not that far out from Enduring Fate's release, I know, but I'm editing Concealing Fate (available for pre-order!) right now, my next Fate of the Gods Novel(la) and just falling completely in love all over again with Garrit and Eve.

Patreon Patrons have already gotten a sneak peek of this one, which tells the story of how Garrit and Eve met BEFORE the events of Forged by Fate, but it's time to give you all a taste, too, I think! So how about a #WiPpet?

The wine arrived, and her breath caught at the lion’s head on the label. She barely held herself back from tearing it from the waiter’s hands, forcing herself to wait until he had poured them each a glass and Garrit had placed their order. Until they were alone again, and she reached out, only allowing herself to trace her fingers over the golden embossing. The mark of the House of Lions.

“You’re familiar with the label?” Garrit asked, pleased again—just as he had been when she’d approved of his wine choice at the café, before. She could well imagine that her taste in wine might influence his opinion of her, all things considered.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, deflecting. She would have to lie, otherwise, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “A lion’s head on a cross.”

“It was meant to look like one, certainly,” he said. “But the story goes that the DeLeons were pagans of a sort, disinterested in the Christian faith that had spread. But of course, after France became Catholic and their lands annexed, they could not defy the Church so openly without courting trouble, and their hammers, placed four together, formed crosses instead.”

She laughed, not only at the cleverness of the design, but at the absurdity of the conversation. That she might be sitting across from a man who thought he knew more about her family than she did. Perhaps he did know more—of how they were seen by their neighbors, at least, if nothing else. “I almost forgot you’re from that same part of France.”

“Quite near,” he agreed.

“Do you know the family?” she asked, unable to help herself. “One vintner to another?”

He made a soft sound, not quite an agreement or a denial, and raised his glass instead. “À ta santé.”

“À la tienne,” she replied, lifting her own glass and meeting his eyes.

He grinned, taking a drink, and she had no choice at all but to do the same, or risk offending him. The wine—her eyes fell closed, the familiarity, the complexity of flavors and aromas just as she remembered. How much of this wine had she drunk in her last life? How much five hundred years before? She would never lose the taste of it, never fail to recognize its character. No matter how it changed, season to season, good year or bad, she knew these grapes. Had brushed her fingers along every vine.

“I knew you’d like it,” he said quietly, and not without a certain amount of pride. “You have a taste, I think, for good wine, for all you cannot have had much of it before coming to France.”

She snorted at that, opening her eyes. He was watching her with naked delight, as if he’d shared some portion of her pleasure in the tasting just by seeing it on her face. “Because there’s no such thing as good wine in London?”

He lifted a shoulder, dismissive. “It isn’t the same, drinking it abroad. Some wines travel well across the channel, but the DeLeon wines are best enjoyed here, in France.”

“Are you sure that isn’t just clever marketing?” she asked, laughing. “In my experience, there are very few wines that don’t travel perfectly well, regardless of where they’re made and with what grapes.”

“Ah, but you do not have access to their best pressing,” he said, smiling now with just a hint of teasing condescension. “Those wines do not leave the country, bought up too quickly by our own countrymen—which of course drives up demand for the lesser table wines that do. Clever marketing and truth, both, for the finest DeLeon wines do not travel across the channel at all.”

Cover Reveal and Pre-Order link are coming soon! I can't wait to share this Forged by Fate prequel with all of you!!

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Enduring Fate Release Day!

Happy Release Day for Enduring Fate!
(And Happy Thor's Day, also!)

Grab your copy from Amazon for just 2.99, or read it for FREE if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, along with the rest of the Fate of the Gods trilogy and novellas! And just in case you need it-- let me lay out a reading order for those of you who might be coming to the series belatedly :)

1) Forged by Fate
↪Tempting Fate
↪ Bride Price (collected with Tempting Fate & Taming Fate in FACETS OF FATE)
2) Fate Forgotten
↪ Taming Fate
↪ Enduring Fate
3) Beyond Fate
↪ Finding Fate (collected with Tempting Fate & Taming Fate in FACETS OF FATE)

And keep an eye out for a Forged by Fate prequel novella, coming soon!

I'm also excited to let you know that FAVOR OF GOD, my Samson and Delilah short story/retelling is now available for purchase-- just 1.99 for kindle.

Last but not least, Patreon Patrons are getting another Amalia Dillin short story this month--The Rule of Fate--which is not at all related to my Fate of the Gods series despite the use of that word in the title. This one, like Refuge, is likely going to stay Patreon Exclusive for a goodly while, so if you want to collect 'em all, Patreon is where you want to be!

That's all for now! Happy reading, friends!!!

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