So it's a fifth Monday...
by
R.F. Gammon
- January 30, 2023
...which means it's time for a newsletter! I'll be sending them every month, but here are signups for this month. Official launch, haha.
...which means it's time for a newsletter! I'll be sending them every month, but here are signups for this month. Official launch, haha.
Once upon a time, a girl sat down and opened her Bible.
She'd read this chapter a few times before--she was familiar with Romans. She knew what the words meant on a grammar level. There were few surprises.
But she hadn't let it sink into her heart. The words were distant, far from her actual soul. And as she read them again, she realized: she was angry. Understanding was not enough--she needed belief.
That was hard to come by when her prayers went unanswered.
She pounded her fists against her Bible. She screamed. She prayed. Her diary became far more faithful a companion than her prayer journal, but then the diary started to veer into a darkness she hadn't expected. Later, talking to her therapist, she'd realize just how awful that moment had been. "I started writing about myself in the third person," she'd said. "Do you think that's relevant?"
Her therapist had chuckled and leaned back. "People tend to do that to distance themselves from traumatic experiences," she said.
The girl stopped writing entirely, and she stopped asking. Her questions weren't for God. They were for her parents, for other people, for the void. God could hear them--that much she knew. But it felt like nothing got to him. There was a fence on the way up, and her questions snagged like balloons in a ceiling net, tapping relentlessly, but unable to go any higher. The questions were corralled, and she could not seem to read past that chapter of Romans.
More. More than conquerors. The words were a mockery. What did it mean to be more than a conqueror when she couldn't even overcome her own questions?
She wrote a list for her mother: questions God can't answer. "The only thing keeping me here is that nothing else has better answers," she explained to her mother. That was really the only thread she had--none of the other possible worldviews made sense even on a molecular level.
One day, during prayer, the reminder came again: more than conquerors. Outside, rain poured down in the middle of a dark spring evening. The girl looked out the window at the rain and sighed. More prayer. More asking God for something that wouldn't happen. More begging for answers.
The prayer ended. The family wandered. The girl's younger sister looked out the window and gasped. "Guys, come look," she said urgently.
The church building where they were praying was empty, but that had no effect on them at that moment. Because there, stretched over the parking lot--a rainbow. It spanned the church building, bright and unmistakable.
You are loved, that rainbow whispered. It was a reminder--a promise. Hope. hope.
The answers were not all right there, but the girl took a deep breath, looking at that rainbow.
That wasn't a direct answer.
But it was a start.
And for the first time, the balloons of her questions were breaking past the net and soaring, free, into the great blue sky.
Hello guys! I know I said second Mondays were going to be flash fiction, but I'm giving myself a brief window of time to prep some stories before I start posting them. As a result, I'm going to switch weeks for January and discuss my current main project, Holding Up the Sky!
This little story has my heart. It's about piano music that keeps the entire world safe. It's about magic carpets, a world where blood is currency, and portals to other worlds. It's very high-concept and very fairy-tale retelling. It has lots of tropes.
And my big news is that I'm going to be querying it!
I've queried once in the past, mostly to small presses, with a very old version of The King's Daughter. I pulled it because a gut feeling said it was the wrong time, and I'm so very thankful I did--I needed that book, and it needed time to become what it's becoming now. But I'm ready to dive back into the querying waters with a much lighter and less personal story.
It's been a LONG time since I've shared anything about this story, so here are the characters!
Daverby//laughter is medicine//I hate emotions//is anyone else suspicious?//gold//insults for self protection//brokenness//exhaustion//all i have is my hair//angel with a shotgun, the cab
Emery//grew up too fast//little pink flowers//beauty to tempt fate//oldest sister//fights for love//no friends, only family//loneliness//journey, natasha blume
Tarek//musician forever//never certain//broken hand, broken boy//strange//flute and piano//just one yesterday, fall out boy
Lissa//music in the soul//lost voice//lost hope//this world is unforgiving//bright eyes//red hair//sadness runs deep//starlight, starset
Malice//the little brother//always alone//uncertain//mom and dad are gone//what happens next//animals love him//always a bright tomorrow//winter of our youth, bastille
Talia//it's hard to be a criminal//wanted//never needed//why fit in when you were born to stand out//found family//protect what's yours//breath of life, florence + the machine
That's the post! I'm so excited to be moving forward with sharing this story with the world, and I hope you enjoyed this peek at it :) Chat with me down below! What are you working on right now on the WIP front?
Hello guys! as it turns out, my blogging in 2021-2022 was so inconsistent that I simply...never shared goals for 2022. Suffice to say, I did not make most of them, so we're going to scrub that all clean and start over with my Hyper Realistic Goals for 2023.
Something that I've realized lately is that if you want to grow, you have to start by bursting out of the ground. For the longest time, I've felt like I was stuck in a bleak hole of depression and sadness. I've taken some important steps toward getting out of the hole, and now I think I might actually be out of the hole and standing on level ground. As a result, maybe I can actually grow.
That's where my goals come in. These aren't crazy ambitious, but they're a start. My hope for this year is that I'll be able to thrive.
I have WAY more goals than I'll be sharing here (some are personal; some are spiritual), but of the ones I'm striving for, here are the most important. A few of them. We be vibing this year.
Hello, everybody! This isn't my traditional Wrapping up 2022, Establishing 2023 post--that will come NEXT week, when I've actually made my New Year's resolutions. The purpose of this post is to talk about some very exciting things I'll be doing in 2023 in hopes of growing my author brand and my writing--as well as growing my relationship with you guys!
There are four of these things, so we'll tick them off real quick (except the last one. Hold onto your hats, because the last one is easily my favorite thing I'll be doing this year mwahaha)
R. F. Gammon (@rfgammonauthor) • Instagram photos and videos
I always say I'm going to do better about blogging, but this year I MEAN IT Y'ALL. We're doing graphic design. We're doing a SCHEDULE. We're doing ALL THE THINGS.
I'll be blogging on Mondays like always, 4 times a month, and my schedule is likely going to be something like:
1st Monday: Writing update or advice
2nd Monday: a short story (EEP)
3rd Monday: something poetic, something about God
4th Monday: Writing update or advice
You may notice that there's no life update type stuff on this list. (Even if you didn't: I'm pointing it out. Hahaha). And that is because OHOHO it's time for the REAL update:
I'm back to working for Havok this year, and I'm hoping to write a good bit for Havok, too. Flash fiction is such a fun way to flex your writing muscles--it's like the bicep curls you do to warm up before you start setting a deadlift PR. (I'm a gym rat these days, if you missed that). I love flash fiction, so I decided to set myself a challenge of writing lots of it this year.
Well. One thing led to another, and now I'm doing Fifty Flash Fictions, one for each week of the year (plus a little wiggle room because I know myself and two weeks off is probably going to be helpful.) I made a database of 65 prompts, of which I'll choose 50 as time goes on. Each month, I'll be posting one of those stories here, on this blog, on the 2nd Monday of each month. The other ones I'll be holding onto. Some I may submit to Havok. Some might be in the newsletter. Others I'll probably hoard like a dragon mwahahaha. But I'm excited by the prospect of that many finished short stories.
Here's where the newsletter and you guys come in! Each month, I'll be picking a prompt, which I will include in my newsletter when I send it out. At that point, I'd invite you to write your own flash fiction with that prompt, and then I'll be sharing mine on the blog. You don't have to participate in all 50 weeks to use the prompts, although if you'd like to, the more the merrier! Kal Tomson is planning to do the challenge with me, and I think Brooke will also be participating in some of the weeks. Just let me know in the comments if you're interested in joining.
So that's the post! I'm really excited for all that 2023 entails, and I can't wait to see where my writing goes. Talk to me down below! I'd love to hear from you all :)
(the way I typed that post heading initially as 2002 wrapup hahahahaha help)
I struggle SO much with wrapping up years at this point--they feel infinite and yet like a matter of seconds. I've aged a lot, and my life no longer wraps up neatly into a nice little bow. But I'm going to share everything anyway, because I miss the days when we all did this.
there is a king. the Lord is come.
Lord on high, help us to remember that you are here
Help us to recall your coming
and not to be apathetic,
because this is not a small thing that has happened
you see only a baby
you smile at the fuzzy christmas card, at the bright and shining star, hanging soft and mellow in a dream-filled night sky
the animals are so happy
the world is so peaceful
but lift up the veil, and remember
remember the war waging on the other side of our reality, the shock of the forces of darkness, the rejoicing of the angels
everyone who saw that king knew something was different
what was it?
no bright star pointed straight down
but they sensed it
and not only did those who loved him rejoice--
those who hated him felt it too
and they felt the cold shudder
so REJOICE, beloved
remember who has come, remember what has been done
Emmanuel--God with us
Sound it out
remind yourselves today, and every day--
God IS with us and he has not left
Jesus Christ, our Savior
Rejoice, Rejoice
Emmanuel shall come
to THEE
HELLO EVERYBODY!!! I am here to share once again about my book from the fall, Knife in the Back, and this time I've got the very exciting update of FINISHING IT. This book has my heart, so I'm super excited to share more about the WRITING PROCESS ACCCKKKK.
Without further ado, let's jump into the Know the Novel tag! This is part three, where we celebrate the end of a writing challenge (NaNoWriMo-ish for me, but I was trying to write 30k...which I did ;))
It was honestly so. Fun.
I don't usually write much during the school year, but prioritizing my books made it go SO much better and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. Absolutely thrilled. This is the most fun I've had writing a book in a LONG time.
Granted, I did have a lot of mental breakdowns over this story--it's the opener to a six-book series, which will be spanning about 10 POV characters and a global conflict. This series has gotten HUGE and I suspect it will only get bigger as I figure out conflicts for my side characters. However, I'm finally on the road to figuring all of that out and I can't WAIT to jump into the next few books and explore my characters' minds more thoroughly.
The outcome of this book was about what I expected--I set the climax up from the beginning and NOTHING could stop it from getting to that point, no matter what my characters tried. However, some things have worked out differently. A pair of characters I thought were absolutely going to end up as a couple have now drifted in opposite directions in life, and I'm...not as mad about it as I would've expected. Just MORE space to develop all of this as the story goes along *mysterious smile*
Additionally, one of my characters needs to get his act together and be at least a LITTLE likable. His fate isn't the smack in the gut I want it to be unless the reader cares about him, and...currently no one cares about him, not even me. Haha. Help.
I LOVE my setting and storyworld, but it needs a LOT more work before it can be an actual story. It's not quite working as well as I was hoping, but I really love it, and I think I know how to fix it all.
My characters, though. While their arcs need some strengthening, I am in LOVE with all six of my POV characters (well, five of them at least), and I am a huge huge fan of their arcs.
Probably never being sure how the arcs were going to end up >.< It's hard to write when you don't know much! And my characters kept shifting their outcomes. But I'm almost as stubborn as they are, and I decided I WAS going to get them there, no matter WHAT it took.
Probably setting. I really want this storyworld to feel like a real place--a city built on a canal, divided into five sectors, each with its own distinctions. I did almost nothing with that this time, and edits need to make that a much stronger distinction.
My favorite is probably Aver. He's my small bean and he just does not want to be here--but he's turned into the secret piece that will propel the entire series forward. He's into the sciences, health, and medicine--and his explorations will, quite literally, spur on the entire rest of the plot. He's my little sarcastic Done wonderboy and I love him with my entire soul.
Least favorite: Annie, at this point, because it's just so hard to nail her POV. Her scenes are probably the closest to correct in terms of what happens in them and where they fall, but I somehow don't think any of them will stay, because I need to get her voice right if I'm going to sell her as a character. She's a strange little thing, but she's also my villain, so I need her to work.
I'm going to let it stew for a little while and then I am going to LAUNCH edits like missiles. Just kidding. But also...this is a book I want to see DONE, and I want it to work. I'm going to be spending a lot of time in 2023 editing, getting this sent to my critique partner, and writing new scenes.
Overall: Writing this whole thing has been really hard, but I'm so excited to figure it out and write it in a smooth, complete way.
Publication! And in a way that allows me to do the series in EXACTLY the way I want it to be ^_^ It's a complex web but if I'm allowed to do it the way I want it to go....ooh BABY it's going to be epic.
Aver shook his head and started up the stairs.
Years ago, he’d graduated from this institution with honors and an invention that could save lives… if he could only prove that it would work. He just hadn’t done it fast enough. Most people didn’t finish until they were twenty-two; he’d finished at nineteen, and he’d done everything he could. The stack in his room of top marks papers haunted his every moment.
All the knowledge in the world lurked in the books kept in this place. All the knowledge in the world, his to consume—but it hadn’t been enough. None of it had been enough. He clutched his notebook closer to distract himself from his thoughts.
The doors were heavy. He jerked it open with his free hand and entered the main hall. No one in the room knew who he really was. He was nothing but a student in here, another face in the crowd. His discoveries weren’t special to anyone but his professors, and he didn’t have many friends in here.
Two perfect worlds. One of perfect anonymity where his accomplishments were honored by only the people he wanted to know. Another world where he was everything and his job was to be the perfect backup to a perfect man. Friends of a certain kind. He’d built up two different families for himself.
Estelle started up the alley. She had to get out of here, to find a way to freedom. Her heart was shattering slowly, another shard flying off with every step she took. Everything hurt, but she dragged her leg after herself. She just had to get out of the city. If she could find a way out, she could reach the coast and create her own life. No more killing. No more fighting. She could be free, blissfully free.She walked toward the street and hooked a sharp left. People were everywhere, ordinary people going from building to building, about their days. It was early enough that the streets were not crowded. Only a few people were roaming as she turned onto another street, away from the shops and into a more residential part of town.Her neck tingled as she walked. So many windows were dark, and curtains were drawn. Fewer and fewer people surrounded her on the street. The cobblestones on the street were loud under her feet: ba-shush. Every step echoed through the empty houses and their dark windows.Estelle cast a glance around. Her hair stood up along her arms, and her power grew stronger in her fingers. What if she was being followed? She had run too far, and she hadn’t been paying attention last night.
“You coming, Whisper?” Tristan’s voice broke the silence. He jumped and looked around. A group of businessmen in tall hats had appeared around the corner. They walked together, talking loudly of the weather and their jobs.Aver coughed and nodded. “Yes, sir. Apologies. I was thinking of mother again.”Tristan walked to his side and clapped a hand against his shoulder. Time was of the utmost, but somehow Lord Darkfire was his friend and was willing to waste time consoling him. This was not something he would ever be willing to take for granted.“Believe me,” Tristan murmured, “I know. And I know it doesn’t help to dwell in the past and the could have beens. We move forward, my friend. We chase the future we want now, because we are young and we have the whole world at our feet. For now, that means conquest of this city, and also finding Estelle. Are you ready?”Aver took in a deep breath. “Yes.” Curse Tristan and his infernal words of encouragement. “Yes. I’m ready.”Tristan smiled and pointed into the city. “My heart tells me we continue straight ahead,” he said. “We’ll find her. I have no doubt of it.”Aver stared upward, at the streets upon streets of houses, all below the height of the castles walls in some sort of misplaced reverence for the king. He took in a deep breath and nodded. So many roofs. So many houses. So many people who didn’t know what it meant to have hope.Maybe it was still out there for him. Doubtful…but maybe.
Hello everybody! Big news today: I finished writing Knife in the Back on November 20th (and it clocked in at a WHOPPING 106k)!
I'm super excited to share this with y'all, and I decided that rather than doing my standard book finishing post, I'm going to do something a little different. That post is coming soon, but it will take a long time for me to write, so instead...in honor of Midnights, let's assign each of the MCs from this book a Taylor Swift song!
(There is no album criteria here. I just picked the song I felt picked each of the leads, haha. There's DEFINITELY room for debate here!)
I'm at 98,000 words as I type this! I'm very very excited--I haven't written a book longer than 80-85k in literal years. Not since 2019. So the fact that I've still, in fact, got it is thrilling.
Getting to delve DEEP into these characters' psyches has been amazing. I'm juggling six POVs from the very get-go this time around, which I don't normally do until the later books of a series (for reference, while the first Pentegreens book initially had 2 main POVs and two secondary POVs, the fourth one had seven). But I'm messing with people of a lot of different kinds, and it's been so fun to work with characters with vast emotional ranges.
I love all of my characters. I think my favorite overall is probably Aver--his character arc is so distinct from everyone else. Aver is a little cinnamon roll boy, who's getting the fantasy equivalent of his Ph.D. and got stuck working in the assassin clans in the meantime. He's an investment and he knows it, but he's happy to just focus on making life easier for his family and friends. And the EMOTIONS. We've got a lot to work with here.
As for the rest of them...Let's just say things are going to get painful now that I really know them all.
Probably mostly in that it's taken on far more of a group ensemble feel than I was originally expecting! I was fully expecting this to center on Estelle, with only some side focus--but I guess having 6 main POVs will do that to you, haha.
Keeping the plotting tight is always a problem for me, but goodness knows that's what editing is for. Sometimes I get carried away in characters' minds and forget to actually do things with them. Gotta work on this.
I'm actually writing in college! This is a major accomplishment--normally I suck at actually getting words down at school. So the fact that I've written 80k in just a few months here at school already...dude. This is magic. This book is actually going to be something.
If I were in my novel...probably...I'd probably be Yelena, one of my side characters, and I would make VERY different decisions. Haha. I love Yelena, but she is not the queen of good decisions.
The first few lines:
If killing were a prize to be won, she’d have the first-place trophy. Both for quality and quantity.
Estelle slipped through the shadows, her hood drawn up over her face to conceal it. The streets were empty this late at night; only a few windows still burned with lights, and those few would soon go out. It was raining, as it almost always did at night; the moisture made her skin feel alive. It would water the earth and give new life to the weeds bursting through the cracks in the cobblestones.
Estelle shook her head, letting raindrops cascade down her back. The darkness was hardy enough of a cover, but she didn’t care anymore. A shiver slid down her spine.
Leaning forward, she considered herself in the mirror. White powder, almost as pale as her face, was the first thing to go on. She brushed it on, then turned to the pink powder that she rubbed into her cheeks. If only they could look like this naturally. She rubbed it onto her skin and sat back to consider. Was this her mother’s face or her father’s?She couldn’t remember. She’d been four the last time she’d seen them, and it wasn’t like she remembered much from that time. Only that she’d terrified the entire town, and the authorities hadn’t liked it. Her parents hadn’t either. That’s why they’d taken her away.Estelle pressed down on her cheeks, scrubbing the pink into her skin. The stain showed up far too dark in the mirror. She sighed. Frustration wasn’t the way to go about putting on her morning makeup. Eye makeup was all she had left, and that wouldn’t take long. She reached for her eye shadow, to paint dark circle onto the top of her eyes that would distract the world from her sleepless ones. They had only gotten worse since the accident.She took a deep breath and paused.
Zayn took in a deep breath. His cape flapped behind him as he walked. A cold, cold wind was sweeping gray clouds over the faint sun. The coast was about fifty miles away, but he’d been there a few times, enough to know that living this far north with this much wind did not create good weather near the sea. The winter was coming. Already it was the tenth month.He did not want to think about what the arrival of winter would do. He needed to get a scarf and a jacket to wear with his cloak. He shivered and pulled his coat tighter around himself. It wasn’t a terribly warm jacket, but it was enough to keep him going.He stalked into the town, and the people parted like a sea to let him pass. Their eyes found him, following him as he went by, like he was some kind of monster. The weight of the stares rested on his shoulders like the world itself sat there. He swallowed hard, but he could not make himself smile. If only he’d been charismatic. If only he could have waved and let the people know he was going forth on an errand that would set them free. But he could not do that.His errand was grim, and until he found the freedom that would come from accomplishing his task, he would be grim.
Well...I thought I knew how this duology ended. I knew what all the characters were doing, what their final positions were going to be, and everything in between. But then I was thinking about it and went... What if I did not do that?
I swear I do this every time.
But here we are, and I'm super super excited about the way this is going now! We're going to THRIVE, y'all. I realized how little I was invested in these characters (because I knew how it was going to end), and I decided that something needed to be done. And now I am FLYING, and I've rarely been so excited about character development as I am with this crew now. Estelle, Tristan, Zayn, and the rest of the crew are my favorite characters ever now. No exaggeration. (And I hope someday y'all love them as much as I do!)
I have to dig time out for this novel from the pit of school, so it usually ends up with me either sitting in my bunk bed or my study cubicle, pounding out words while avoiding eye contact with my physics textbook. I drink lots of water. I blast music in my earbuds, whatever happens to be the vibe of the day, and I go. That's...about it. This hasn't been an aesthetic or cute process--it's been ugly, tired, and sleep-deprive. But the book is BEING WRITTEN. And I am in love with it.
How is your current writing going? Talk to me in the comments! I want to hear about ALL the WIPs!
Hey, everybody! It's the time of year again when some people start writing books. Not me. I don't have time because of College. But I do want to share my current WIP--the one I've been working on for the past few months--because Christine finally released her Know the Novel tag for this year! And I figure that's a perfect time to introduce the new book :)
You can find out more about Know the Novel here. For now, I'm so so excited to introduce my WIP!
At risk of spoilers...the story I'm about to share with you is a light prequel to the Pentegreens series. It comes from a long, long process of trying to humanize the relationship between two characters, a relationship that has done nothing but give me grief. I wanted it to mean something, and to take something from my own soul, something important. It turned into a story of redemption, of dark deeds and impossible saves, of assassins and new hope. It also was lightly or maybe heavily inspired by a Havok flash fiction I wrote (but I won't tell you which one yet...)
The kingdom of Brodie is divided—one king rules the heart of the capital, but the rest of the city is divided between four assassin lords. Or it should be. No one has heard of Lord Nightmare for a generation. The imbalance has created a perfect opportunity for the other lords to take all of the power…if they have the courage to defy a king.
Estelle owes her life to Lord Darkfire, and works for him happily, slaying all his enemies. But when his quest for power causes her to break the one moral rule she had left, she flees into the streets, searching for some form of new life. But war has painted a target on her back, and Darkfire is not the only lord searching for her.
Dancing in a circus by day and seeking the blood of her enemies by night, Annie is ready to return the Nightmare clan to its place of power. Doing that may be harder than she expects, though—Lord Darkfire will not back down. Good thing Annie’s never retreated from a fight.
Zayn is the king’s personal bodyguard—and a Hunter. His own personal vendetta against the assassin lords drives him to search for their identities before they can take away anything else he holds dear. But this search may claim more of his soul than he ever expected to lose.
When worlds collide, war will break out. But the balance has been broken, and now only one lord can be victorious…
This novel takes place largely in the city of Brodie. Brodie is a large city built into the banks of a river, and it's in the North, so it's cold and cloudy all the time. A cold wind from the coast is constantly blasting the inhabitants. The city itself is divided in five districts--the center of the city belongs to the king, and each of the other four districts is the domain of one of the assassin lords.
This is a story I'm trying to weave a lot of history into, and I'm really enjoying that aspect. It's also set in the world of Pentegreens, so each of the characters has their own distinct magical abilities in varying degrees of strength and effectiveness, which is lots of fun to play with. I'm also tightening the rules of the magic system--the assassins wield their powers in very different ways from the cast of Pentegreens.
Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and infuse this story with steampunk elements. Because there's nothing better than steampunk, fantasy university, and that sort of thing.
Annie: hard though I've tried, I cannot picture Annie as anybody but Marilyn. Haha. She's a little bit crazy, but her biggest goal is to conquer, to come out on top, and to finally fill the void in her chest with either love or power. Either way will do.