Hey folks!

Yes, I’ve been quiet. Again. If there’s one great big thing getting Devotion ready for publication has taught me, it’s that you always want to make sure you schedule ample time for each step along the way.

In my previous post, I mentioned how soul-sucking and evil formatting is. To better convey this fact, it took me until Sunday to get my files just right and approved by CreateSpace for my proof to be sent to me. It should be here Wednesday (I promise there will be a post when that happens) and my fingers are firmly crossed that I won’t have to fix anything. If the proof shows Devotion’s paperback is good to go, it will be released on April 1st alongside the ebook.

Ebook formatting was a trip, as well. I was assured that it was so much easier than paperback, but even with the help of two professional level formatters and a government agency (long story), I couldn’t make one single page behave when viewing the preview of the file. I ended up needing to do some minor rearranging, but everything should be shiny and good to go on that front!

What I’m taking a whole lot of words (204, according to WordPress) to say is that writing was the easy part. I’ve had to take the past couple days off to decompress and in that time, figured it’d be well worth my while and the responsible thing to do to schedule out the final phases of Tale of the Fallen: Book II, Deception. Here is the goal I’m boldly declaring to all you lovely readers:

I will have Deception’s revision done by the end of this week (March 25th).

Per my usual procedure, I’m going to let it sit for two weeks to let all of the events settle in my mind.

Starting April 8th, I will edit, and I’m aiming to have it in the hands of my betas and my cover artist by mid May at the latest. This will allow me to have it back toward the end of June, then on to my editor sometime in early July. My hope is to have it back by the first week in August so I can put on the last polish and finalize my formatting.

I am not willing to make anything preorder official quiet yet, but I have my sights set on a September 1st, 2016 release date for Deception.

Stating it publicly makes things feel so much more official!

Thank you, all of you, for your patience with me. Keep faith in the journey!

So… I seemed to have fallen off the face of the Earth for a bit. Sorry about that.

After a slew of real life happenings and the tension that went with putting the final bit of polish on Devotion, my blog unfortunately took a temporary back seat. What have I been up to the past couple days, you ask?

I’ve been formatting!

Want Kat’s Quick Guide to Formatting Your Novel?

Here goes…

Open your document, all starry eyed and excited. Enter your title and name and copyright information… sort out your heartfelt dedications and acknowledgements… then (trust me on this one) cry. A little. Or a lot. I can’t judge. Cry to your friends. Cry to your colleagues. Cry to the lady at the grocery store. Formatting, if it’s your first time doing it (heck, it may be the same every time… I haven’t made it that far yet!), is terribly frustrating. And you can’t get your quotation marks right. And your tabs are inconsistent. And your margins aren’t right.

Pretty much, my best formatting advice if you’ve never formatted before: Get yourself a template and practice with it well before you have a deadline to meet. Get to know how things work and what you’ll likely have to fix along the way. I’ve got no doubt it’ll all work out in the end but my goodness! Reaching that end is a feat!

The good news is, cover art is done. A portion of my promo art is done. Edits are all applied and I’ve carefully vetted a select sneak peak of Deception, book two of the Tale of the Fallen series. The ebook of Devotion is still on schedule for an April 1st release and if the paperback is not released at the same time, it will be soon after.

Keep faith in the journey, my friends! I’ve been needing to tell myself that a lot these past few days!

-Kat

Self-doubt is a terrible beast that plagues a lot of writers. Every writer probably has their unique spin on it, but it seems to usually boil down to not being “good enough.”

First of all, that’s just silly. Of course you’re good enough. If you weren’t, the story wouldn’t have chosen you to tell it.

Writing takes a huge amount of trust in aspects of life that aren’t tangible. You have to trust that you’ll convey the story in the way it wants to be told (here’s a hint: you can and you will). You have to trust that if the story does begin to go astray, it can and will be caught further down the line. It may end up being stronger from the jaunt. You need to trust that vision that started you down this road to begin with. You need to trust that it won’t lead you astray, no matter what.

Trust is a hard thing to hand out, but out of all the things in life you can choose to trust, yourself and your dreams ought to feel the safest. Embrace it and it will love you right back.

I talk to a lot of folks new to or struggling in the writing world, and they almost all want to know how I get past writer’s block or find my way out of corners or fill in plot holes. The only advice I can give – and it seems like something that is hard to accept until it clicks – is to trust that the story and your characters know where to go, and to let them. Don’t worry about being “good enough” or “doing the story justice.” Not in the phase where you’re worrying about writer’s block or corners or plot holes, at least. The spit shining comes well down the road. For now, just write.

The moment you can turn off the self-doubt (and unfortunately, it’s something you’ll probably have to do more than once, so it’s best to get used to doing it as soon as you can), beautiful things will happen. You will always tell your story better than anyone else can, so let yourself write it and keep faith in the journey.

-Kat

So, yesterday, I’d posted about Mathias and Etha’s relationship, the Divine Battle, and a tiny bit about how Abaeloth’s magical properties revolve around divine energy. When I went back to read what I’d written so I could gear up and give my thorough post about how Abaeloth’s demons came to be, I realized I was dropping spoilers left and right. If I continued to stay the course, it would get even worse.

I have no idea how many readers I have at this point, so I have no way of knowing how many eyes read what went up yesterday but, in an effort to not spoil future works for anyone out there, I chose to take down yesterday’s post (booo!!) and refrain from posting the one I’d planned for today (hissssss!!)

Besides that, I think we’d all be a little more comfortable if I’d get on with the real purpose of this blog and discuss writing and reading as it pertains to all of us. Next week, I’ll be jumping in to my absolute favorite part of writing – character creation!

In the mean time, everyone should really go check out Amy Hopkins’s Dream Stalker! (click her name to get to her website, click the title to go buy it!) Dream Stalker’s a super charming urban fantasy following a plucky tea shop owner, her boggart assistant, and two entertaining brothers as they hunt down what’s been killing people through their dreams. Give it a read, give it some love, and as always, keep faith in the journey!

-Kat

This week should wrap up my little tale of how I discovered Abaeloth, and then we’ll discuss more broad topics concerning writing. I do hope that describing a little bit of my journey has and will continue to get the gears turning in your head.

No matter how much we love our characters, there’s got to be plot to keep them going, and in my case, I needed plot to get Nes and Mathias on the same island.

To be fair, around this time I also began exploring Abaeloth’s history as a whole. Developing Elidae was a direct result of developing the world’s governing bodies (more on that tomorrow), and so I ran two stories of sorts side by side while discovering both the story at hand and the bigger picture. When I sat down with Mathias to ask him how he reached Elidae, he introduced me properly to Etha, who took me on this bigger journey. I currently have this specific story outlined for release on Wattpad, but more on that at a later date.

Anyway, what Mathias ultimately gave me was that he was a demon hunter and, obviously, demons were attacking Elidae. With Nessix essentially all by herself, he went to her rescue. And honestly, that was as deep as the plot was for quite some time. The demons had no real motive and Mathias never questioned them, and I just started writing.

I should add here that I only outlined in the very broadest sense of the word and it was the first time since I began writing in fourth grade that I found my story shifting off the outline on its own accord. I was still discovering my writing style and methods and chose to allow these wandering thoughts to come out, but at the end of each chapter, I tried to pull things back on course.

Ten years down the road, I realize that I would have been better served to let the plot trail down the road it wanted to take and it would have saved me some massive headaches during revisions. Remember what I said last week about trusting yourself? I’m not saying you need to completely abort your original plan, and some people do swimmingly with outlines. But do at least entertain the idea that the story may know better than you do where it needs to go.

During this phase, I was still getting to know Etha and Abaeloth, and it wasn’t until I surrendered to the fact that my deities were full-fledged characters in their own rights that the world and my plot began to come to life. In the whirlwind of new characters, new places, needing to develop a magic system and cultures, I discovered just how important it was to surrender control to my creativity. Being a perfectionist and terrified of being out of control, it was a big step for me, but it led me to the mantra that I will tell you every single day. Keep faith in the journey.

-Kat

The beauty of writing (and any art) is that it’s unique to each individual. It’s about exploring what evokes emotion in us and our audience. It’s a place to discover a sense of freedom we may otherwise never get to reach in our day to day world.

Simply stated, writing is beautiful. Creating is beautiful.

But odds are good I don’t have to tell you any of that. Instead, let me tell you this.

You cannot do “creative” wrong.

The (inconvenient) truth about writers is that we’re all insecure on some level. We have to be, if we hope to tap in to what makes our characters real enough for readers to care about. And as insecure artists, sometimes it can be painfully easy to feel the effects of others’ judgment –

Folks telling us that we “can’t” use certain words. People who say the story would work better written in their voice. Those who simply don’t understand that to some writers, story crafting is far more than a business or something we quest after solely for the end product.

Despite all of the rules taught to us in High School English and in books by Big Name Authors, there is no right or wrong when it comes to creativity. All that matters is that you stay true to your vision, your story, your characters. Your ideas and your voice, those are the things that nobody can say you’re doing wrong because they are exclusively yours.

We are writers. We are artists. We get judged by people who think it’s their place in life to do so. But what it boils down to is that your story needs you as much as you need it. Your creativity is yours and it’s perfect and it’s beautiful. Keep faith in the journey!

-Kat

On Wednesday, I shared how I went about meeting Nessix, only knowing that she had to meet Mathias, and how we all found the continent of Elidae together. At the time, that was exciting enough on its own, but then came a problem…

Remember how I said writers ask a lot of questions?

I had to ask the most basic one that a character-driven author can ask. Who are your friends?

It wasn’t enough to just say all she needed was Mathias, because she did have a past that didn’t involve him. So, what had that past been?

I’d known from the start that she was the stereotypical Fantasy hero(ine) that had no living parents, so who did she have? Even through her faults, one of Nes’s distinguishing traits has always been her love of others, and she had to have had it fostered from somewhere. She couldn’t have a brother, as he’d have taken the role of General from her, and so Nessix suggested she had a protective cousin named Brant. The problem with Brant was that he had a similar – possibly more extreme – stubborn streak than Nes, so I asked who was there to keep her out of trouble.

This is where En, her patient and wise grandfather came from. After him, I met Sulik, Nes’s second commander and a character I didn’t initially know how else he fit in. Running off the whole “trust what your brain gives you” technique I mentioned before, I ran with it. I didn’t know why we needed Sulik, but Nessix did, and that was what was important at this stage.

So, now Nessix had her delightful supporting cast! What next?

There is conflict in life. Always. Nessix had already told me her mother died in childbirth and a heart attack had claimed her father, but that wasn’t plot enough. What forces had she been fighting against?

The search for plot led me to – you guessed it! – another character, Veed. I met him independently of Nes, so got his take on the story first hand, and I’ll just say… I have a (twisted) soft spot for characters like him. He’d been the best friend of Nes’s father and abandoned her shortly after the old general died. I knew there was delicious back story here, but I would wait on that. I had Nes’s conflict, and next Tuesday, I’ll explain the rabbit hole I took to figure out the plot that led Mathias to Elidae – and, consequently, the plot of my Tale of the Fallen series – in the first place.

With the weekend just around the corner, I hope all of you have something good to read (for me, it’s The Way of Kings) or write (Tale of the Fallen’s Book Two, Deception)! I’d love to hear what literary activities you’ve got planned! As always, keep faith in the journey.

-Kat

I took an informal poll among my fans and colleagues to see where they thought I ought to begin my blog, and I got a pretty resounding response that people wanted to know about my personal process. Now, there will be a whole string of series down the road of the writing process in general, but I was asked specifically about where I start, so I’ll do my best to explain my ways.

This is going to be a bit of an exercise for me for two reasons. First, because I believe that every writer needs to develop their own methods that work for them, regardless to what works for anyone else. My most sincere hope is that anyone who’s interested in my process plays around with the ideas and tailors the parts they like to fit their specific needs. My other concern with explaining my process is that most of the world and character building I do is sort of instinctual to me and I’ve never tried to put words to how it’s done. So, this will be an adventure for both of us!

The first task any writer needs to complete is to come up with an idea – I call them story germs. They can sprout from pretty much anywhere. Traditional places people catch story germs seem to be dreams or prompts, sometimes they come from random chance events or asking “What if?”. For the story that launched into The Afflicted Saga, it started as a great big accident.

I was challenged to create an RP character to interact with a character my husband had made with only one rule: I had to figure out how they met. That was my story germ. And possibly how this grew so out of control. With no other specifics, I had no real boundaries.

Now, I may start with a glimmer of plot, but it’s ultimately the characters that I figure out first. Since a story is ultimately the tale of someone else’s life, I feel that’s the most appropriate place to start.

I thought over what I already knew of the character that would one day become Mathias Sagewind. I knew that he was an immortal officer that had fought demons and vampires, and that he served some obscure high deity. I knew my character – whoever she was – would have to be an authority figure in order to have the opportunity to build a history with Mathias and that she couldn’t be from his stomping grounds since she was nowhere in his existing history. Taking these very basic guidelines, I closed my eyes.

This is how character creation always goes for me. I envision a general physical appearance, just enough that I can shake a character’s hands and ask them to tell me about themselves. Who they are. Where they’re going. What their mission is. And I ask them if I can chase them with my pen and come along for the ride.

The young woman I met called herself Nessix (her surname came years later) and told me she was the general of a remote island nation. I asked her more questions in order to build her homeland.

This is my key to writing stories. Asking questions is such an important part of writing and will follow you through pretty much every stage. Be willing to question everything and learn how to trust the answers you get (even if they don’t make sense at the time). Your brain is an amazing beast; it will take you in the right direction if you can stay out of its way. Besides, the worst thing that happens is you have to tweak something in rewrites.

Pursuing the questions I asked led me to discover just how small Elidae is (no larger than an average state here in the US), how the role of “General” was synonymous with “King”, that they worshipped a god not followed anywhere else in the world. These questions explained how people reached the island to begin with, what sorts of enemies were already there to merit needing an army in the first place. By asking questions and continuously doing so, I not only learned every aspect of Nes’s life, I also began laying down the foundation of an epic series currently covering 13 volumes.

I unwittingly completely ruined the chance of RPing with Nessix by unearthing her entire life’s story and kidnapped the paladin-that-would-become Mathias (more on his abduction in following posts), but it was too late to turn back. I’d caught my story germ in the form of a character who intrigued me and I couldn’t abandon her.

This first step is often the most hectic, the most uncertain, but trust the story to take you where you need to go. Keep faith in the journey!

-Kat

Now that I’ve explained a bit about myself, I’d like to give you a breakdown of what to expect from my blog and my social media pages. Links to these other locations can be found below, in the sidebar to your right, as well as on my Contact page.

The primary purpose of the blog here on my official site is to inspire, encourage, and educate both readers and writers on the art of story crafting. While most posts will be presented in a manner that seems directed solely to writers, there is a lot that readers can learn from them, as well. I feel all readers can benefit from learning more about the writing world, and discovering the reasons and methods behind composing stories will only help deepen the value of the tales you read.

Since my site and blog are both in their infancy, my posting schedule is currently limited to weekdays. Mondays are reserved for motivational posts to encourage and inspire. I hope the messages included in these posts can be applied in aspects of life above and beyond writing. Tuesday through Thursday will each cover one part of the week’s mini series, where I’ll investigate different aspects of the writing life or techniques. Fridays are where I’ll post updates of my current works, as well as any shenanigans tied to my writing life. My aim is to keep all posts concise and informative and, as always, I’d love to interact with my readers in the comments.

If you’re wanting a more direct and casual way to communicate with me or receive (sometimes) daily updates on my series, you can find me on my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter.

My characters and I are also active on Pinterest.

For a blog experience that’s more laid back and geared toward the progress and musings that go along with writing The Afflicted Saga, you can also check out my Tumblr. Many of my Friday posts will likely be cross posted from the goings on over there.

Plans are currently in the works for a YouTube channel, as well as a Wattpad story, both of which I will keep you posted about.

Anyway! That’s a brief run down of my current modes of communication. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions, and keep faith in the journey.

-Kat

Hey guys! Welcome to my blog.

Some of you found your way here because you know me, others are meeting me for the first time. With that said, I figured I should start my blog explaining a bit about myself, since I’m sure more than a few of you are asking things like: Who the heck are you? Why do you consider yourself an authority on writing? How in the world does the internet need another writing blog?

To start out: Who am I? I’m Katika Schneider, author of The (up-and-coming) Afflicted Saga. I’ve got a couple short story competition wins from high school under my belt but really, I’m just an average girl who loves her characters madly and wants to share them with the world. I believe that everyone has a story in them, a story that deserves to be told, and a story that they alone are able to tell.

What makes me an authority on writing? Well really, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to consider myself such, but I’m equally unsure if anyone can. Writing, like any other art form, is a journey and half the beauty there is the endless supply of new avenues to explore and play with. What I am is a devoted and diligent writer, and have been for more than two thirds of my life. I used to write as a form of therapy and relaxation, but now I primarily write for my characters, aiming to faithfully transcribe their adventures. I write as an art and have put years of time, effort, and classwork into its development.

How does the internet need another writing blog? I believe every artist has something unique to offer the world and their peers. I don’t know it all. I do, however, have a whole heap of experience as far as picking my way around developing personal style and few things intrigue me more than talking to other writers about their methods. I hope to present myself to you, not as a definitive authority, but in a way which encourages you to explore avenues that work for me that you have not yet explored. I hope for you to share with me your experiences and insights, as well, so we can learn from each other. Shouldn’t that be what art is about?

No matter if you’re here as a fellow writer or a treasured reader, I hope that you find your visit to my slice of internet pleasant and that you always keep faith in the journey.

-Kat