May 18, 2014
I’ve been procrastinating a terribly urgent work project–don’t judge!–and I’ve found myself starting a flow chart for naming male fictional characters:
p.s., I’m thinking criminal evil and corporate evil may also be sexy evil while banal evil may not.
May 17, 2014
Reached 7,000 words in my new, yet-to-be-titled project. (43,000 words to go!)
In other news, my 2-year old daughter has extended her experiments in gravity by dropping toys behind our very heavy couch. To discourage her, I warned that hungry monsters lived behind the couch and like to eat toys. (I know, bad Mommy!) Unfortunately, this backfired. My daughter began dropping even more toys behind the couch to “feed monsters.” I suppose she’s imagining cute, fluffy monsters like this image from www.fourlittlemonsters.com:
May 16, 2014
When I was researching MORTAL LOVE: AFTER THE FALL (now available free), I wondered what would happen to gasoline after, say, 30 years. Well, a quick Google search gave me a definitive answer. Gas will indeed oxidize (e.g., fancy term for “going bad”) after 12 to 15 months. Here’s a link to a brief article on the topic.
May 16, 2014
Decided to offer MORTAL LOVE: AFTER THE FALL for free, since it’s really more of a fun, quirky project that I immensely enjoyed than something with terribly broad commercial appeal. (I’ve heard this a few times now, so I’m going to believe it!) Of course, I will be still be running the giveaway on June 20 and participating in launch week promos as scheduled.
You can download the complete book here. Enjoy…as long as you are 18+, since it does contain explicit sex and potentially disturbing content centered around a VERY dysfunctional relationship.
May 14, 2014
This cool flowchart from overthinkingit.com provides a taxonomy of female character archetypes from pop culture. IMO it also applies to novels! (Click here to link to the full-sized graphic and related blog post.)
May 13, 2014
It occurs to me that naming fictional characters is like naming babies but with none of the responsibility. I’m thinking of naming one of my characters Lulu, short for Eluethera, which roughly means “freedom” in Greek and is also the name of a lovely island in the Bahamas.
Here’s a picture of the island, which does make me think seriously about taking a vacation!
May 12, 2014
Just released another variation on the trailer for MORTAL LOVE: AFTER THE FALL. This one makes it a bit clearer that this novel is, indeed, an erotic romance. In fact, the first few seconds could be borderline NSFW, depending on whether you see a shadow or a tiny sliver of nipple. Wish I had bit more of a promotional budget and real experience with video editing–creating book trailers is fun! I’ll share more about what I’ve learned later this week.
Mortal Love: After the Fall book trailer…with a dash of spice from E.J. Swenson on Vimeo.
May 10, 2014
Entered the modern age and transitioned to a touchscreen phone…and immediately experienced the joys of auto correct. “Bad jokes” somehow became “tadpoles.” Oh well, must climb the learning curve quickly to stay ahead of my two-year-old!
May 9, 2014
Since I’ve begun my new novel (alas, still Untitled), my progress has been what might be charitably called uneven. As I do so often in my day job, I have now just set a measurable goal. In this case, I’m going to write 1,000 words a day until it is finished. Peter Drucker says “what gets measured gets managed.” I say “what gets measured is magically imbued with the power to shame.”
In other news, I’m working on a 3rd version of the book trailer for MORTAL LOVE: AFTER THE FALL. This one will focus on the steamy romance more than the Dystopian and suspenseful elements.
May 8, 2014
As an experiment, I swapped out the audio track for the official book trailer for MORTAL LOVE: AFTER THE FALL, going from a quiet, haunting ambient track to something a bit frenzied and insane. It’s amazing how the new audio transforms the mood of the video. It really plays up the suspenseful aspects of the storyline while minimizing the romance.
Not sure I LIKE it, but it’s definitely a big change!
E.J. Swenson 