Writing Process Blog Tour

This is a post I was tagged for by Caroline Keeth from Three Little Birds. It's a blog tour where you answer four questions about what you're working on and what your writing process is, and then tag one to four other blogger-writers to carry on the tour. Thanks again for tagging me, Caroline, this was a lot of fun!

You can read her Writing Process post here

My answers to the questions:

1. What are you working on?

At the moment, I am working on a new Urban Fantasy series roughly entitled "The Modern Tales of Na Fianna". The first book which is in the editing process at the moment is called Blood Ties which I mentioned in an earlier post with a sneak peak of the first chapter. It's a story about the descendants of the legendary Irish warriors, Na Fianna. The main character is a direct descendent of Fionn Mac Cool and the story is set in my own fantasy version of a modern Ireland where there are still High Kings, not to mention Faeries. The basic plot is that during a turbulent peace between the human kingdoms and the Goblin king, a patrol of Na Fianna is taken captive and Ciran's brother was one of those taken. When his younger brother has a vision that Aeden might still be alive, Ciran forms a company of others who have lost family members in the goblin raid so they can go and rescue them. I enjoyed writing this book so much, it's kind of my baby. It's full of action and brotherly goodness and faeries, of course :-)

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I tried to take a really different approach with this one, that I hope will make it really unique. I personally have not read a book like it, so I hope everyone else will think so too. It's based off the original legends of Na Fianna but with a modern twist that was really fun to write. I have always been a fan of Urban Fantasy, and this is kind of that plus Alternate Universe. It's a universe where our world's history is thrown in with mythology, as in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were actual history and King Arthur and Merlin were real people. There are also no firearms apart from bows. It's not really mentioned, but it's kind of obvious that people only really fight with swords. They definitely have the technology for guns as they have everything else, but they aren't there. I wanted this because it gives a more classy, medieval feel to the whole situation. 

And then there's the fact that my modern sword-wielding warriors wear leather and drive fast, expensive cars, because that's just awesome, right? 

The part that is majorly different from anything else though, are my goblins. I was very adamant in the fact that I did not want my goblins to be typical goblins. They are more along the lines of dark elves than the kind of goblins you would find in Tolkien's stories or even traditional lore. They are "hot goblins" to use the modern term, and wear gothic/biker type clothing and ride motorcycles. They live in their underground palaces but they're classy about it. If it's not apparent, I had an awesome time coming up with them.

3. Why do you write what you write?

I write what I love, first and foremost. That is one of the most important things about writing to me. But I also love to write books that I want to read. So often I can't find enough books of the type that I really want to read, so I add to the few that are there. I love stories about brotherhood, and brothers in general, and so that's what I write. Historical fiction, strange fantasy stories that differ from the norm, things that no one has really touched on, that's what I like to write. Like werewolves in Roman Britain. No one has done that to my knowledge. I also like to try to write books that readers will be able to take something away from. I'm not into the whole 'preach to the reader thing' in fact I'm against that because I don't like it when authors do that, but there are ways to put points in your stories without doing that. A point I usually slide in, if I can even call it a point, is typically the fact that things are so often not actually black and white. Because I write a lot of stories dealing with war, and cultural differences, I like to put in the fact that just because someone isn't on the same side as you doesn't mean they are your enemy. Brotherhood across the lines is always one of my favorite story topics, something I loved so much about Rosemary Sutcliff's books. I remember the books that I took most away from reading as a kid, and even now, and why I took stuff away from them. It was all mostly things to do about friendship and family and that's kind of always been the things that were most important to me, so I guess it's only to be expected that I put the same kinds of things in my own books. I'll take a friendship or family story over a romance any day! My greatest hope as an author is that my books might help the people they come across to make them a little stronger just like my favorite books always have done for me.

4. How does your writing process work?

It really differers with every book I write. I'd love to say it was always the same, but it just isn't. Some books are so stubborn, some even can only seem to be written at certain times of the day or night, but for the most part, it goes something like this:

1: Research the subject

2: Write notes, maybe an outline, figure out the story and see in the preliminaries what will work and what won't

3: Start writing! First draft usually has lots of holes that I go back and fix later

4: Second draft. Fill in the blanks that I left the first time around. Then I give it to my mum to read.

5 Third draft. I re-read it, make more edits, then usually turn to my friends to act as betas.

6: Fourth draft, fix edits, polish it up and re-read again.

7: Final draft. This is when I format it and send it off to Createspace to get a proof copy

8: Re-read proof copy, fix edits.

9: Usually that's when I publish the book!

10: Social media galore.

So those were my answers to the tag! Now I get to tag some people:

Mara from The Reading Hedgehog

Abbie from Yarns and Tales (read her post here)

M. Azell from The Stars Have Fallen

Here are the questions for those tagged! 

1. What are you working on?

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?

3. Why do you write what you write?

4. How does your writing process work?

Once you complete it, tag it back to my post and then tag some other writers!