Time just flies by. Four years have gone by since I released How to Stop Wildfire. It was rocky and wild at first. I knew so little and then learned so much. Four years of writing and change.
Today is April 22nd, 2018. It is the third anniversary of the release of How to Stop Wildfire. It’s also my birthday, which is no coincidence, but I don’t care for making a fuss over birthdays. Anniversaries, specifically related to How to Stop Wildfire, specifically for third ones, however, are something I tend to think about more. These three years... How to Stop Wildfire was published April 22nd, 2015. Little less than five months later, Harmonic Waves was released September 9th, 2015. About half a year later, Threads that Bind the Tempest was released in March 27th, 2016. Five months later than that, Of Fractured Edges was released August 31st, 2016, the close of the first four books of the Adventures of the Trinity and the One. Approximately nine months later, Expansion Expression, the start of the next set of four, came out ~May 31st, 2017. To close the year,...
And now I'm currently all caught up with forewords/afterwords. Here's the foreword/preface for Expansion Expression, which sort of kicks off the vibe for the novel and the series moving forward. It's definitely lighter than the other ones. As always, I enjoyed writing and recording it.
The last of the first four afterwords/forewords—the one for Of Fractured Edges. This...this one might be the most intense of them, emotionally. Longest as well for sure. Most spoilerific too, so beware.
Here we are again. This time with the afterword-thing for Threads that Bind the Tempest. This is probably the most disjointed one of the lot, but it makes sense given what Threads that Bind the Tempest is. I could have put this before or after the book, but I put it after. I don't know. It made sense there. Of course, I recorded myself reading it.
Here I am again with the recordings! This is the second of my additions to the novels. How to Stop Wildfire it felt natural to have a preface to explain the journey to it and explain it. With Harmonic Waves, my thoughts lingered on the content and what it meant rather than the journey so I chose to do a retrospection that is at the end of the novel. There are some spoilers within which is all the more reason it needs to be read following the book itself. Read...or listened to. Yep. I recorded myself again. Enjoy!
The story starts like this: I write a story. It takes me many years to get to a point where it is passable. It takes a few more to make me proud of it. It will take less than one afterwards to realize how far I've come since it. But we're not there yet. I wrote a story and I thought I wanted to share that story. So I shoved into onto sub-par medium (Amazon Kindle) because I hoped everyone would see my care for it. I hoped and hoped and then it never really came, but I didn't stop writing and growing. It hurt a little to not get the attention, but my writing didn't need anyone else's attention on it because it had my own. So I kept going on until I really asked: Why? I should stop now. I'm rehashing. I've gotten over that hurdle. I'm on...
I've been radio silent lately on most things related to fiction writing. I've been the occasional review on food and whatever movie and TV show I happened to have words about, but as far as fiction goes, I've been dead. That has primarily to do with pulling in as far as publishing for the public and instead focusing inward. So what that means to say is that I haven't stopped writing completely. Editing has been slow on Expansion Expression, but my focus really hasn't been attuned to it. It's been on the formatting of the other books and on a massive personal project I've always wanted to do. That project has been creating a cohesive internal wiki of notes and information. I have an excellent memory so I don't need to write down much of anything, but having a few notes and wiki allows me to keep track of canon...
So what happened in 2016? More than can be iterated here, certainly, but this is mainly a focus on what transpired in my writing career and how The Adventures of the Trinity and the One developed. Which isn't short list, to be sure, but it is definitely more focused. So where to begin? Well, let's start with the novels. 27/3/2016 - Threads that Bind the Tempest was released. 31/8/2016 - Of Fractured Edges was released. Two novels were published! Half the current series was released in 2016 and the other half in 2015. That feels consistent. But I wasn't just content with publishing novels–I did my fair share of other writing, too. 15/4/2016 - Writing and Stories, based on a prompt 2/5/2016 - Spellbinder Character Interview 25/7/2016 - Going, a short story on Dialona 21/11/2016 - Dissecting criticism 19/12/2016 - Farrco Character Interview Among all the other blog posts I...
The good days are when I: Can spin a phrase without even trying. Put together dialogue seamlessly. Make only minor mistakes. Plow through a chapter in a sitting. Feel my blood spark with inspiration. Start planning out the future, smiling as I do. Flow through the story and words like I am swimming. Can focus for hours on end. Know exactly where I am going. Create a structure and order that is instantly pleasing. Find the word and phrases to say what I want. Turn my imagination into beautiful prose. Create a product I am proud of. The bad days are when I: Can't find the words. Butcher a phrase so that it looses all meaning. Lost in what is happening. Have no drive or passion. Can't look back or forward. Am conflicted on what to do and where to go. Have neither ideas nor solutions. Spend a few minutes...
Well, it's been a crazy ride. It has been one full year since How to Stop Wildfire was originally published. This is the one year anniversary of How to Stop Wildfire. One whole year. Wow. It doesn't feel that long at all. So much has happened and the time blew by pretty quickly. What exactly happened? Well, I'm going to list off what I can remember. I think it is good to do retrospectives sometimes to see how far we've come and all that jazz. So that's what's going to happen. So April 22, 2015, I released How to Stop Wildfire as my first published work. The cover was originally this crap:
How did you discover you were a writer? Discover? Do you mean discover like how Columbus ‘discovered’ the new world? Because he really did not. The Americas were always there. There were people that lived in the world that he ‘found;’ they certainly knew it existed. It had always been there for them as long as they had been. No discovery needed. In that same way of knowing, I knew that I was a writer and storyteller. It was a simple knowing. A fact of being that was clear as the color of the sky. I always had stories to tell. Writing is another shape of storytelling, another representation for the same concept. I wrote my first stories in Legos and scrawled drawings, fueled by pure imagination and thought. Then they took the form of fiction tales written for school assignments and personal pleasure, with the same passionate fire as...
Welcome to 2016! 2015 has been great. I hope 2016 fares just as good. I wrote a retrospective piece on Medium about my 2015 and my plans for 2016. I encourage others to do the same. I'm getting excited for the new year. Books to be written and edited. Very optimistic. Anyway. Onward to 2016 and beyond!
So as part of Support Indie Author's Night of the Living Book Blast event, I was able to do a mini-interview, so here it is! What is your name? Sarah Sunday What is/are the name(s) and genre(s) of the book(s) you are offering? How to Stop Wildfire, an offbeat space opera/epic fantasy hybrid. Who will enjoy the book(s) you are offering, spooky fiends or fraidy cats? Fraidy cats, probably. How to Stop Wildfire is more humorous than terrifying. Tell us about your favorite, worst, most unique, or most embarrassing Halloween costume. Got a picture you can share with us? There was this one Halloween in elementary school when I dressed up as Death at a funeral. I wore all black and put on a top hat. It was pretty pathetic. Life is like a bag of Halloween candy. Which seasonal treat are you? Caramel Apples. Where can readers find out...