Fantasy Author Jodi Perkins |
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Combining mindless chatter with writing updates since 1982. (That might be a slight hyperbole.) |
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THIS SHAMROCK background is my feeble attempt to be festive for St. Patrick’s Day. And also your friendly reminder to wear pinch-protection on March 17th. Although…will people actually pinch each other during the tail-end of a pandemic? It’s like every holiday comes with a new set of rules. Maybe someone will invent a pinching stick that’s exactly six feet long and it’ll take off on Amazon. (I call dibs!) |
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On a totally unrelated note, I had a dream earlier this month about a story line for a new book. Which is weird because even though I’m a writer, I never “dream up” new books. Stephen King apparently does, but not me. Anyway, this particular dream was incredibly detailed and so fun; I nearly cried when my bladder woke me from the dream because I couldn’t get it back and I was desperate to see how it ended. |
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So I scribbled down everything I could remember, and later turned all of those scribblings into a legitimate outline. I spent the rest of the day writing the first two chapters of the book (it took me until about 2 am). I also wrote what would be considered a back-of-the-book blurb. Here it is! |
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As you can see, it’s some kind of modern-day rom-com fairytale retelling…? I’m so confused because THIS IS NOT A GENRE I WRITE. But now I have to write this book. If not for any reason other than it came to me in a dream. That means something, right? Don’t worry, I’ll for sure finish Spring of Crows first. I’ll get back to working on that right now. Or tonight. Or maybe this weekend…either way, I’m not gonna let some pretty new shiny idea distract me from my main goal here. But once Spring of Crows is published, I'm totally writing this book. It just makes me feel so silly and happy. I was thinking that maybe I’ll try to write The Apathetics and Once Upon a Trailer Park simultaneously. Apathetics is darker, so it might be nice to take a break from heavier prose and switch to something light once in awhile. |
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Not much to report this month, other than the fact that Chasing Echoes has finally been released in Greece. Yay! Click HERE to check out the eBook at Celene Publishing. Good luck reading anything on this page though; it might as well be written in Greek or something. Oh, wait. Spring of Crows is still at 96% completion. I'm a bit stuck on Mr. Aevos's scenes. I'm not used to writing from his point-of-view so capturing his voice is tricky. |
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This Month's Easter Egg The Bazaar |
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In the animal shelter where Taz works, there's a room called the Bazaar that contains animals that aren't dogs or cats--desert tortoises, rabbits, ferrets, and so on. This weird little room didn't exactly come from my imagination. The summer before my senior year of high school I worked for our city's animal control (aka: the pound), filing papers, answering the phone, feeding the animals, and cleaning out kennels. We had a small room containing what we considered to be oddball animals...rabbits, desert tortoises, and yes, even an owl. The scene in Chasing Echoes where Sasha the dog escapes her cage and breaks into the Bazaar was inspired by real events. In real life, a pit bull escaped his cage and sadly ended the life of a rabbit that I was supposed to adopt. Unlike Taz, I never saw evidence of the massacre. The staff cleaned everything up before my shift started (and no one would make eye-contact with me when I showed up to work that day). Also unlike Taz, I never got to go through a time loop and have the whole event erased. As I was writing that chapter, I decided it was important to make sure that Tabitha the rabbit got the happy ending she deserved. On a somewhat related note, Tabitha is modeled after Pumpkin, my Flemish giant rabbit who I owned for over eight years. Pumpkin was an amazing rabbit and died of old age about three years ago. |
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There's an energy when you hold me; when you touch me, it's so powerful. Ellie Goulding This is the pre-chapter quote for chapter seven of Black Lilies. It's not hard to see why. Poor Kade...no one can "feel" him. If he tries to touch any object or person, his fingers slip right through them as if he's nothing more than a hologram. Until he touches Aviva for the first time. The slightest brush of his fingertips sends an electric shock ricocheting through both of them. It's the first time Aviva realizes Kade is truly real. Here's Powerful by Ellie Goulding, the song whose lyrics were quoted above, and a perfect theme song for the moment Aviva and Kade touch each other for the first time. |
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Is there a song that reminds you of a scene from the Chasing Echoes series? Email it to me and I'll feature it in a future newsletter. |
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Hope you enjoyed this month's tidbits. See you again next month! |
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Missed last month's newsletter? Click HERE to catch up and read about MyQuil, the perfect cure for depression with only slightly questionable side-effects. |
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