Just in time for a peak summer read, Megan Cutler is back on the blog tour circuit to share information about her novel Island of Lost Forevers and its journey to print. Once again, I had the pleasure of working with her in creating wraparound covers for the paperback edition of the books, though just the base artwork, this time! One staple inclusion of each cover was the island itself. Keep reading, and Megan will give you a glimpse at the island and what makes it so important…

Megan:

One characteristic of epic fantasy is the scale of its setting. Epic tales take place in vast worlds, full of interesting cities, cultures and landmarks. Somehow, the characters become aware of these details throughout their adventure and it becomes clear that the world is active even when the characters aren’t present.

Building any world, no matter how small, takes a great deal of time and effort. There are a lot of considerations, from the physical makeup of the landscape, to the customs of the people who populate it. James and I were lucky that we only needed to create a chunk of a world, a remnant, and that allowed us to focus our efforts on a small geographic area. The primary landmarks of the island are its tall mountain, its majestic waterfall and its tropical climate. But the heart of the island is the bathhouse, carved out of the slope of the mountain at the base of the waterfall.

The bathhouse was our first creation and we built the island around it. All together, they form a cosmic five-star resort. It needed breath-taking views, stunning beaches, and a fancy dining room. But we wanted to preserve the soul of the bathhouse concept. We carefully drew attention to the zen-like aspects of the building; the public bathing rooms, the hot springs, and the extensive garden. From there we grew outward, developing the people associated with the bathhouse. Of course the workers had to come from somewhere, and thus was born the village which shares the renown bathhouse’s island.

Though the island has obvious Asian (and thus Earthly) overtones, we also wanted it to possess an otherworldly feel. While the island ruler and most of his subjects may have easily come from Earth, the bulk of the bathhouse’s guests obviously come from other worlds. One of the most entertaining aspects of writing the book was coming up with fantastic characters to make cameo appearances. And while these encounters are delightfully exciting for our protagonists, they’re mundane occurrences for the people who live and work on our island.

From the beginning, the island played an important role in our story. Its appearance is the catalyst for our adventure. As our two protagonists search for the secrets the island brought with it, they paint a tapestry of the island’s characteristics. Is it sinister? Is it sentient? As the characters search for the answers to these questions, we were able to take the concept of setting as a character one step further. It’s obvious the island possesses some kind of awareness. It influences the people who inhabit it. As time goes on, it even seems to form opinions about the characters and their actions.

The way various characters interact with the island becomes central to the plot. At first they want to explore it, but eventually they want to escape it. Overall, it was fun to allow our setting to grow a mind of its own. It added extra emotional and philosophical levels to the plot, all while keeping us on our toes. We tried to give the island a prominent place in the story, to make it clear from the beginning our setting also served the role of character. To that end, we re-wrote the beginning to give the island pride of place. After all, what better way to start an epic adventure than with the appearance of a mysterious island out of nowhere?

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Is the island paradise or does a nightmare lurk beneath the surface?

When a mysterious island appears off the coast of San Francisco, two intrepid academics risk everything to discover its secrets. Catilen Taylor has struggled all her life with the ability to sense others’ emotions. Damian Cooke studies an ancient art he calls ‘magic.’

The island boasts an idyllic retreat, ruled by the enigmatic Sentomoru, who invites them to share the wonders of his bathhouse. But as the travelers strive to unravel the island’s secrets, Catilen senses danger stalking their steps.

Neither Catilen nor Damian know how long the island will remain on Earth. If they can’t solve its riddles quickly, they may be trapped wherever it goes when it vanishes.

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Megan grew up in a small town in central Pennsylvania where books offered an easy escape from the mundane life of a rural highway town. In 2003 she married the love of her life and moved to Canada. Megan started writing full-time in 2011 and has since published four novels and several short stories, including the Mystical Island Trilogy. Her characters keep her up late and wake her up early, but she loves them anyway. Learn more at megancutler.net, or connect to Megan via Facebook and Twitter.

Back in February, my husband showed me a meme. It said, simply, “Describe me as an author would.”

Well, I guess that’s me. I’m kind of an author, so I should be an expert on things like this. I thought about it for a few minutes, then gave it a try, sending him back several paragraphs that I felt described him. He laughed and said it felt awkward. I laughed, too. Then I forgot about it until last week, when I found the notepad file where I’d jotted it down. I asked him if I should share it here, so here it is. To me, this is Joe.

* * *

Prestige. That was what he had.
He carried himself with pride and authority, betraying the leadership qualities the military had instilled in him that he’d never managed to leave behind.
The stern set of his mouth and brows painted a harsh picture; a man with little patience for fools, who wouldn’t spare anyone’s feelings if he thought the label fit. From the aggressive glint in his narrow eyes, one might get the impression the label fit everyone.

He was tall, with a frame that suited his pride. Broad-shouldered and athletic, with caramel-kissed skin and coarse black hair that glinted with gold highlights in the sun. High cheekbones called back to proud ancestors, softened by his gentle, rounded jawline and typically Spanish nose. His face might have been considered gentle as a whole, if not for the effect being offset by his unshaven jaw and thick goatee, paired with the hard expression he always wore.

No matter how angry he seemed, his face always softened when he looked at his daughter. His smile was broad and filled with perfect white teeth, and the deep crinkles at the corners of his eyes paired with the way he tossed his head back made that smile infectious.

His voice was like everything else about him; rich and authoritative, a low baritone that ranged from typically gruff to tenderly soothing and smooth depending on his mood–and who he happened to be speaking to. But it shifted when he spoke his mother tongue; it grew warmer, happier, and crept toward the higher end of his natural speaking range. It was telling, since he only used that language with his family. It was a language of passion, loyalty and love.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t finish on time.
There was one tiny little detail I forgot about when planning my project timeline, and it messed me up badly. I always try to put my project deadlines on a weekend so I can do a bunch of last-minute work if it’s necessary. It generally works well. But generally, I don’t accidentally forget a major holiday.

So while I enjoyed the Easter festivities, I didn’t do much writing. I wrapped up the project today with the last 1,880 words the novella needed. Which means it ended up going way over my revised estimate, closer to the original 10k words I thought I’d need to finish the story. Go figure!

Either way, it feels good to have the project completed. I’ll be sending it off to early readers this week; I expect to publish it sometime this summer, so editing will be quick to follow. The cover art is underway, and it’s a custom illustration, so I’m excited to share it after it’s complete.

I’ll be doing a write-up about my experience using Pacemaker to track the project soon. In general, I have good things to say. It’s nice to see a visual representation of my plans, if only because it offers one more piece of evidence that I’m moving forward with a story.

This one’s my first completed project of the year, so I’m hoping that momentum keeps me rolling forward as I start my next project–two days behind. The good news is the next project–codenamed KF–is shorter than this one, and I’ve given myself a whole month to try to write it.

Final word count for Of Blood and Rain: 19,887.

Yesterday’s word count crept in at 519, which is pretty good for the 20 minutes I spent writing, but still a bit short of what I actually needed to squeeze in. Though I took a notebook, I wasn’t able to get any work done. Turns out my ability to work at the park isn’t so much dependent on my kid, and more dependent on other kids and how many times they make yours cry.

Oh, to reach the point where you judge other parents by their kid’s behavior on the playground! No amount of me encouraging my girl to be assertive and independent is going to help if you won’t take two seconds to look up from your cell phone and tell your child to quit bullying the smaller children. Obviously, other parents telling them to stop isn’t working. But I digress.

I’ll be starting the last chapter tonight. I haven’t kept a very steady pace, so I’ll be in crunch mode tonight and tomorrow after all, trying to get the story wrapped up. If tomorrow weren’t a Saturday, I wouldn’t be able to get this done on time.

Hopefully, my next project will go a little smoother. Stuff in a modern Earth setting is always less demanding for me to write because I don’t have to create the world. It’s already there, I just have to fill in the blanks on what’s happening in it. I’ve enjoyed having a daily brain dump on what I’m tackling each day, but I don’t know if it’s worth blogging through the next project since I’m not sure I’ve provided anything actually useful during this blogging session.

What do you think? Should I continue blogging through my next short project?

Yesterday’s word count ended at a paltry 168. I wasn’t feeling up to writing, so I opted to spend my time going back and fixing problems earlier in the draft instead. I write best in a linear fashion, so if I have problems behind me, sometimes I benefit most from doubling back to fix them before I push onward. Megan reminded me of this yesterday, which I appreciated; I feel like the time I did spend working was much more productive than the small word count implies.

I’m sure I actually wrote more than that; I was just rewriting things instead of writing things, so the manuscript length didn’t grow by much. However, I did iron out some particularly problematic areas, and I’m going to double back to fix a bit more today if the opportunity presents itself. I also want to keep pushing forward, though, so I hope I can do a bit of both. I’m planning an afternoon trip to the fenced playground at church for me and my little assistant. If we’re the only ones there, I might be able to do a bit of writing while she plays. They have a great setup, with picnic tables right up against the play equipment, so I can stay close and be present and involved with her playtime while making progress of my own. At least, that’s the idea.

I have just a little more to add to the current chapter, then it’s on to the ending. The whole story is a little briefer than I expected it would be when I set out to write it, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means it meanders less than originally anticipated.

It’s been interesting to watch my progress tracker yo-yo during the course of this project. It’s sort of fallen into a pattern. Fall behind, catch up in one big chunk, do okay for a day or two, then repeat. It’ll certainly be interesting to see what my next project looks like.

Yesterday was a pretty smooth and easy trek to 575 words. The only real catch was that I didn’t get started until right before bed. Despite my best efforts and best intentions, I still can’t manage to get writing sprints into my day.

As I near the end of the project, it gets a little easier to write. The downhill roll of getting to the ending is always encouraging, so I usually find the last chapter a breeze to get through. I’m hoping that stays the case since I’m just 4 days from the deadline–3, if I don’t count today.

I would have written more yesterday, but I also took a small slice of time before bed to write some things down in my notebook full of plans. The weird side effect of writing a story is that it always spawns ideas for other stories (or entire series of stories) that I’d much rather be writing. For a long time, I gave in to the siren call of these other, funner projects, jumping from my incomplete projects to the grand new idea. It usually went well for a couple chapters, then the shiny newness wore off and I ended up back in the same place. Something else calling for my attention, the previous project never getting done.

Obviously, I eventually curbed it; part of it was just learning to write the ideas down and put them away until I had time for them. Or could make time for them, I suppose; it’s easier to fit things in now, though, with my epic fantasy series complete and put aside for the moment while I figure out what to do with it.

I’ve had several shiny new ideas dangle themselves in front of me during this project, so I’m hoping I can make something of it later on. I just have to figure out where to fit them in, first.

It’s always easier to write when you’re doing it regularly. Getting back into the swing of sitting down every night to write something is tough after a few months away, but it’s getting easier to do it now, even if my word count yields aren’t always high. Or remarkable. Or anywhere near where they need to be.

Yesterday was a little more fruitful, yielding 1,008 words between two writing sessions. I didn’t track how long I wrote the first time; I was there for almost an hour, but the majority of that time was spent skimming over everything I’ve written and checking it against my outline. Then I made adjustments to the remaining parts of the outline, moving information that had been overlooked or forgotten to somewhere I can work it back into the story, then smoothing everything out for the last chapter and a half there is to write. The second writing session was about 20 minutes.

If I can pull around 600 words a day, I’ll finish on time without any last-minute crunch this Saturday. That word count should be easy to achieve if I can just get myself in gear to do multiple sprints through the day; three 15-minute sprints scattered through the afternoon would knock it out.

Working in sprints is one of the things I don’t like about Pacemaker. It’s nice for tracking, but it only allows one word count input per day, so I have to write everything down and tally it up elsewhere. I’m not sure if it’s a dealbreaker for me or not; I suggested that as a new feature, but I don’t know if it’ll be considered. It’s nice to have the below widget to share my continual progress with friends and readers, but I’m glad I decided to continue to log my word counts in my planner as well.

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