Tag: D.o.t.A

Prep Work

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Me: I need, like, a book to keep this all in.

Beth: So, you need something like a bible?

Me: Yeah, I need a world bible. Look at all this paperwork I have.

Beth: For two books, you have three sheets of paper. Oh, honey.

Me: Don’t ‘oh, honey’ me, like I’m being cute or something!

Dorian: *drops a book into my lap* That one is Beth’s bible for a world she dabbled in one time.

Beth: my favourite world has three books and multitudes of sheets for every time I jotted down random information. That doesn’t even include maps, since the face of the world changes so much.

Me: You mean, this is a thing?

Beth: Yes, it’s a thing. Dorian said you’re planning a masquerade, I’m guessing that’s for a book, since I didn’t receive an invitation?

Dorian and I went to Beth’s to help her set up her desk  While there I continued doing some work, filling out some odds and ends that I might never use in the story itself, but will probably mention at some point. Kind of need that information available, rather than searching for it in the middle of a scene and forgetting where I was, let alone where to find the information.

I can start writing around 2PM today. Why such an odd time? I don’t know, ask Dorian. That’s also about the time that my office gets finished, so that could have something to do with it.

He has promised me alcohol. Something I’ve not had in several weeks and have been craving all this week. Vacation and birthday are drink occasions.

Except when you get real depressed around your birthday and the last time you drank on the day, you ended up bawling your eyes out and drunk dialling your ex while sitting beside your current boyfriend.

Thankfully I had warned Dorian ahead of time, though he didn’t believe me until he had to take the phone from me and put me in bed.

All last night I was planning a masquerade. I’m getting pretty close to done, which is fantastic. The colour theme is white and gold, with trimmings of silver. I was going to go perverted with the servers, but I’ve decided to dress them all in white with Moretta masks.

A string quartet, canapes for food. White and red wine to drink, though the Alphas won’t necessarily be participating in the wine. There will be drugs and other alcohols available because it is an excess, kind of party thing going on. There’ll also be an after party which will probably degrade into an orgy.

Alphas are very sexualized beings. The way they claim things is to come on them, especially people. Beats urination, and apparently there’s this belief that if it stays still long enough for you to come on it, it must have submitted to your will.

Which gets really… tricky… when the females are born because they can’t exactly claim things like that.

I’ve now got the male and female pronouns written up, and the designations for last names. The Alphas take on a bit of a tradition that I heard the Welsh (maybe?) once used, altered of course. Where their ‘last name’ is their father’s (or mothers in the case of female alphas giving birth) with the designations Ap/Ep, Ad/Ed, Ab/Eb, Ag/Eg depending on their status.

Their companions also have the Ip, Id, Ig, Ib pronouns, but are attached to their alphas. There are even special titles for random alphas, though the only one that’s really still in use widely is ‘Da’ which is an alpha’s way of bowing to a stronger alpha and insinuating the alpha is his father, but not necessarily so. Not using the term is an invitation to a challenge.

And if challenged, one who is supposed to be given the title of Da will… you guessed it, come on the offender.

Fathers and sons never have this problem. If the son stops using Da, the father will put him in his place, but if the son wins typically the father is killed in the process. Sons were once forced out of the home and only returned to claim the territory after their fathers died but in modern times it was altered.

The research going into D.o.t.A is a lot different than what went into Contracted.

For Contracted, I did research some BDSM. Sure I participate, but I’m not an expert and wouldn’t claim that the story is perfectly researched, but I like how it’s turned out. For D.o.t.A. the research has mainly been for masquerade balls. The rest has been set up because this is a whole new world.

It might count as urban fantasy, considering it is in a similar world to ours but different all the same. Contracted was the same world, just about two hundred years in the future. So I could literally write using whatever bits I wanted to and any flaws in the law system, etc, could just be because it’s a new era.

Though, D.o.t.A. is a new era as well.

I ramble about my worlds sometimes. Especially when I can’t write them right at that moment.

When Left Alone

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Dorian had to go out last night to meet up with a friend who was having some troubles. His only comment on leaving me was that I wasn’t allowed to actually write.

I was tempted, I’ll admit—how would he ever know?—but instead ended up researching masquerade balls and as much attachment to that as I could. I now have two pages of notes for D.o.t.A. ranging from mask style choices, to plot notes. I now have a little more of a plan for the later half of the book.

Last night as I was falling asleep, Rachel came to me in the opening scene. I wouldn’t call her the most patient person in the world, she wants to get started now, not tomorrow. I still have to work out a few character bits with her and Morgan.

Rachel is basically an orphan in the opening scene. The plan at the moment is to have her father, the man who raised her, be the brother of the husband of the Master of the area. Yeah, confusing way to label it, but still. She’s not his biological daughter, because she and her sister were born of rape during a time of war between the government and the Alphas. Not “full” rape, but that’s what it’s called because the government impregnated thousands of women against their wills with various Alpha and common genetic material.

The Alpha of her area has taken her mother and older sister, breeding the older sister and breaking them both. He knows there’s something different about the family. For starters, her sister keeps trying to kill him when a broken companion isn’t supposed to be capable of that. The only way to control the one is to threaten the other, but never Rachel. Any mention of Rachel and both mother and sister just shut down and shut him out.

In the nights he hears them whispering to one another, “Rachel’s special, she needs to be whole.”

Now the Alpha is curious, he needs to know what Rachel is like. If her sister and mother bring him such…pleasure, what might the special Rachel bring? He’s trying to force Rachel to bow and do the same so he gets her on stupid charges and registers her as being property, because the laws allow that.

In walks Morgan, a young Alpha with no purpose in life who has never fully served or led in the Alpha world. By his age, he should have done one or the other. He’s the last of the War Brats, a group of child soldiers the Alphas trained and then released on the government forces.

He’s been to the territory before, so it’s possible he saw Rachel and just didn’t quite register her. Or he saw her sister and when the list of names popped up he had a sudden, unexplainable urge to go see what was going on. Morgan’s not just there for giggles, but because Alphas sometimes process information differently than common people and end up doing things that appear coincidental from the outside, but really aren’t.

Morgan’s father is dead, his er… step-father is driven by a need to claim the young Alpha who looks so much like his dead husband, he owes a blood debt to Abraham, is being challenged for Gerrid.

And to top it all off the only living female Alphas in three hundred years have decided to adopt Rachel as their sister. The females used to beat him up all the time because they liked him, but if he crosses a line over someone they’ve decided they like more than him, he won’t survive.

Is it Saturday night yet? Dorian said I could start writing Saturday night.

Vacation

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Tomorrow starts my week off. Dorian is coming back, which is really exciting for me, but the prospect of no writing or work is driving me crazy. What do I do with all my free time? Just stare at the wall?

Do you know how bare my walls are?

The last time I really looked around was a couple of weeks ago, when I started building my office. Once the desk is together, I’ll move the laptop and TV in there. I don’t entertain much, the office is really an extension of my bedroom so… yeah. I keep sitting at the desk and filling out the planner a bit.

Recently I’ve been writing up information for D.o.t.A. Most of the plot is kind of written out already, so I can just refer to that when re-writing.

I feel like Rachel needs to either shut up or change her view a bit. Goddamn it, woman, you grew up in that world. It’s not a surprise!

Today I sat down to try to pound out a couple of possible titles. The ones that are sticking out are actually just the names. Rachel and Morgan.

Which actually kind of explains why the second book doesn’t seem to have Rachel there a whole lot. It’s all about what Morgan is doing, for which Rachel can’t see most of it.

I like the premise of this world built males being the betters and in control, but out of the public eye, the males are trying to bring back the females of their kind because they crave women who can kick their asses.

Enter Rachel, who’s father was in the military and taught all his daughters how to fight. And of course Rachel, who is bitter and cranky, with a bunch of righteous anger directed at the Alphas.

“She hit me. I’m bruised! I almost passed out. Only reason I didn’t was because she’s a leftie and couldn’t get the angle right with how I was holding her.”

“You’re the moron who left yourself wide open to an attack.”

“Only because women never hit us. Now I’m all confused, maybe it was the blow to my head.”

Everything Takes Longer Than Expected

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

When I talked to Dorian about my plan, he went ahead and told Beth that I was looking to set up a home office. Beth researched and did the math. How much it would cost to buy versus the frustration of building.

Apparently she had the same idea as me, probably for a while since she was the one who pointed out the free pallets to me.

We met up at the store Monday night. The lucky bum got a ride from work because she stayed late to help someone. We did kind of rush through the displays, because we both had a budget and the moment we walked in started oh-ing and ah-ing over the setups.

Then went back to my place where I polished off Contract Renewed some more and we both ate pizza. 

I’m not certain I’ll ever be happy with the book. But you should hear Beth go on about her published books never being good enough for any audience. 

I got my delivery early in the morning. Beth shortly after. I know because we texted each other. We get way too excited over new furniture.

The last three times I’ve had deliveries, it’s been the same team of guys. Very respectful, quick, and relatively clean. Just a little dusty because they’re moving dusty packages. 

When I opened the door there was no identifying marks and my first thought was, “shit.” Thankfully it was the delivery, but I whined at Beth about it.

An hour later I got a text, “You didn’t say the older one was drunk!”

Apparently we both had the same delivery guys. We proceeded to get in an argument because the company always calls afterwards to check and I was going to report it to the supervisor. So I ended up not hearing from her until she had put her desk together. It was the least expensive, while not looking like it was cheap, so we both got the same thing.

“How did you connect the desk top to the trestles?” 

“Dunno, just doing it now.”

We can’t figure it out. I contacted Dorian and he sighed and said he’d fix both desks when he got back. Just drilling some holes, but while I’m not great with measurements, if it’s off I’m going to go crazy. So I’ll leave it for the guy with a construction background. 

It took nine hours of work to paint the bookshelves. The paint remains tacky despite drying overnight. The air feels moist though, so that may be it. Even the thin first layer I did on the last piece of the second bookcase felt that way. The first piece of the first bookcase wasn’t tacky by the end of the nine hours so it must have to do with humidity.

Trixie: hopped onto the first piece, leaving paw prints all over it and the floor. Twice. I got non-toxic paint just in case. Surprisingly she let me put her on her back and wash her paws. 

She leapt onto the desk top, sitting on the trestles but not attached, and rolled all over the desktop. Claiming it as hers.

After I built the first bookshelf, she jumped onto it, almost taking it to the floor. It’s now attached to the wall. 

Jumped onto the drying side, leaving permanent kitty prints up it.

Used the trestles as an obstacle course. The trestles which are under a desk top not yet bolted down.

Used the boxes as toys, getting irritable when she couldn’t simply bat them around.

And finally, this morning attacked me when I had my mug in my hand, getting coffee on my new keyboard. 

I have an important meeting today at work. Thankfully the coffee missed me. 

It’s almost built though. Soon, I’ll have more space to work. The coffee mug will be to the side, where it never comes over the keyboard. 

And I’ll be able to get to work.

August 1st I’ll be restarting D.o.t.A. I still don’t have a title for the first one. I wish it were a simple matter. I know the full plot of the first one. I could do Cracked and Broken. As the first arc is at least two books. Or Self Discovery and maybe Self Destruction. 

I’ll have to really think on that. 

Knife Play is a ‘no’

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Yesterday at work I somehow managed to get my little finger caught between a hard place and a sharp object, almost skinning the pad off. It’s the kind of incident that no one expects to happen. 

Which, in my experience, means I’ll be the one to do it to myself.

I’m fine, I should add. 

But afterwards everything got dopey and slow. Having been a part of that lifestyle for a while, I recognized the drop. If I had been playing, it would be called sub drop. Apparently it’s not my reaction to playing itself, but the crash after pain has been caused.

Interesting. Thankfully it was only a little drop.

Because Dorian is out of town until next Sunday. I don’t do well with a big drop and being by myself. Did that with my ex, when I had no idea what was going on. 

When I found out he did know what was going on and ignored me on purpose, I broke up with him. While shouting and throwing things and going on because I was still in the middle of it all.

Anyhow. 

When I got home all I wanted to do was curl up with a stuffie and be petted and kissed and taken care of. Recognizing what was going on, I ordered pizza (with the little brownie bites) gorged like Dorian never lets me (because his rules don’t apply when I’m weepy and on my own) and after two brownies found myself with Contract Renewed open on my laptop.

I got that last chapter done after four hours. It took my mind off the finger until I tried to save. Apparently the left little finger is used exclusively for ctrl+s. 

Also, apparently I went four hours without saving! Thank goodness I didn’t lose progress, or I’d really be in a bad spot.

I didn’t write the entire time either. No, I spent about half the time wrangling Trixie.

Off the laptop, away from the wireless keyboard, away from the mouse. Then away from markers when I took a short break to try to fill out the planner again. And off the planner, then away from the planner,  then to the scratching post because she seemed intent on digging her claws into everything.

I first tried petting and cuddling her, of course. That didn’t work.

So now I have leftover pizza, brownies and pop. I let Dorian know, mainly so that he doesn’t order pizza next week. 

Then only reason he restricts me is that if I’ve dropped and there’s pizza available,  I’ll eat until I’m in a food coma, then feel terribly lazy all the next day.

So, long story short, Contract Renewed is almost ready for the beta reader. I’m planning on starting over on D.o.t.A in August. Taking the last week of July off… 

And I really think Contract Taken could be up on Amazon as early as September. Just have to contact the cover designer.

On Tuesday I’m headed out to get my desk.

… and two bookshelves. I have zero, in my defence. Books are just laying around all over the place. Stuff ends up on the floor because I have nowhere to put it. It’s also hard to argue with that price. 

Oh, and I’m putting the shelves on either side of my mantle to keep Trixie off of it so that I can out the TV up there where she can’t reach it.

My only problem is that everything will be white, to fit in my budget, and I have a strong dislike of all furniture that is white. 

Sounds like I’ll need to spend a day getting crafty, which is fine. Once Contract Renewed is off to the beta, I could probably use a nice day off from all the things.

Front and Back Matter

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I keep thinking about formatting. I haven’t even done the final edit on Contract Taken and I’m obsessing about formatting. 

I like pretty things, so sue me.

Beth showed me the various stages of her ebooks. From just basically tossed up, to no real back matter but still a bit of a layout, all the way to the print version.

Mainly I’m obsessing about my back matter. What do I want to do for excerpts? Or do I want to do the MC talking to the reader? Which ones would I include? Daughters of the Alphas for certain. Maybe the working title Blood Bound as well. I’d like to finish that book or duo, might have a trilogy in it. Then there’s Prototype.

Mm, Prototype. I’d love to explore that world. Sex and magic, what’s not to love? It also goes full on fantasy, which is something that I haven’t got really. 

D.o.t.A is more alternate world so I suppose it might count as urban scifi. I’m not even certain to tell you the truth. I’m writing it, it’s fun. That’s all that matters to me right now.

So, okay, what if I did D.o.t.a, then Blood Bound, and then Prototype? 

All I’d need then is to wrangle Blood Bound’s MC and come up with proper names for Blood Bound’s world and then the first books. Shouldn’t take too long considering each ‘excerpt’ should fit on one page. Nothing more than a snapshot, really. 

Then to figure out hyperlinks in ebooks, which I’m sure there are ten to a thousand tutorials on. Maybe tweak my author’s bio.

Notice I’m ignoring front matter? 

Every ebook I get on my Kindle takes me right to the first page of the story. I don’t know how they do it, but they do! This has been on multiple classics and an ebook. Which I traced back to look at two pages of chapters, the legalese we all need to include, a description of the book (in the front matter? Which no one is apparently seeing anymore unless they go out of their way?) And… no effort put into the title page. 

In school, I was one if those crazy girls who carefully measured a third (or half at teacher’s request) down the page and penciled in perfect lettering before…

Yeah, the title page matters to me. Even if I don’t think others will see it. It’s even already done up!  Usually it’s created in the rough draft. Everytime I open the file, there it is, the first thing I see.

We all have our quirks, that’s one of mine.