Redefining Evil, Writing!

Delightful Movement in a Wonderful Direction

WHOA! Two posts in one day? I believe that is a record for the existence of Dreaming in Color. But don’t worry! I shall not make this one as much of a waste as the last one was. Haha. Although it is getting late and I am rapidly running out of steam and finding sleep to sound more and more appealing.

I’ll skip the fluff, then, and just say.

It’s happened! I’m not sure I believe it – there is definitely a highly surreal aspect to this whole ordeal. But lo! It’s now there online for all to see. Port Yonder Press is publishing my beloved story, Redefining Evil!

I’ll have you know that I just laid on that exclamation point and wrote, like, ten, and then remembered that I’m supposed to be mature and composed and so I went back and cut all of them.

We’ll emphasize this in a more controlled fashion, then.

Redefining Evil is being published!

There.

Given my struggles with creating an OMS design, I realized once this news went live on Facebook that it would be advantageous to dedicate the bulk of OMS to Redefining Evil (and the title, by the way, is tentative…if something better falls into my head, RE will be gracefully set aside in favor of something new). So, in the extra time that I have in the coming week, I’ll be giving OMS a serious face-lift.

I got a little frenetic when the news finally went live (I’ve known for a week…and oh me, oh my, was it a LONG WEEK), and so I have to remind myself that it’s not a race. I don’t need to have a brand new website arranged for RE by TOMORROW. Next week – maybe. Tomorrow…whoa, girl, slow down.

Despite that, I’ve been kicking around designs (they’re now feeling abused) all day. I finally found a thread with some promise and started some sketches in Painter after realizing that it’d be easier to mess with than wasting an entire tree of paper with ten million sketches.
Given that it’s late, I’ve had an evening filled with excitement, and I have been fruitlessly working with image ideas all day…I got a little carried away as I honed in on my ideas. I’d say Micah and Danny and Sotoka got sick of posing for me.


lols
If you can’t make him out by his very distinguished features, Sotoka-Khepri’s that boneless creature between Micah and Danny. My favorite is the middle one.

lolsreal
But this is closer to the design I’ve settled on, which I will continue to work on tomorrow and maybe get the new layout launched over the weekend. My plan is that this image will go on top of a design I’d already started, which should make it easier to put together when I finally get there.

Oh, man. Let me tell you – this whole idea that RE is getting published is…well, it’s been an emotional journey. I’d like to say that all I’ve been feeling is WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FANTASTIC! but then I’d be lying and that would be mean. I am not sure I entirely believe it. It’s definitely surreal. I keep feeling like I’m going to take a closer look at these postings about me and go “…Oh…oops…” and realize I misread something.
At the same time, I think about RE and I’m like “Of course this story needs to be shared,” and I think of the characters and go, “Well, I know people will love them.” Danny and Micah and Sotoka and Julian and Lacy and Ingrid and Andrew are all so very dear to my heart. I’ve noticed with working on Sun-Walking that it’s refreshing to work with characters with whom I’m less familiar. I know the cast of RE inside and out. Most of them, except for Sotoka and Andrew, go all the way back to Nikkei. I’ve literally been working with them since the beginning of my story-writing career.
And since that’s the case, I have this total sense of “What better way to get my foot into the publishing world?” because of how much of my heart and time I’ve invested in the relationships in RE.
I look at it and, yes, part of me cringes because of how rough my writing was in places – and yet at the same time, RE has such a beautiful complexity. I started writing it during high school when I was thus still doing IB English. I keep having to remind myself that things in RE that are obvious to me aren’t to others, because they are there to be analyzed and aren’t necessarily sitting on the surface of the storytelling.
It’s been such a secure process hashing things out with my editor because I have an answer to so many of the technical questions she’s posed. I know RE so well.

And from here on out is where the real work begins.

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