This is not the end. It is a new beginning.

This is not the end. It is a new beginning. 
Though I've spent years, since 2008, writing about the craft and the industry from an author's viewpoint, I feel its time for some fun changes.

My new blog, Electric Dreams Blog, will be more personal where I will be sharing not only my professional life, but also what goes on behind the scenes in the writing life.

From family recipes, research trips, and other fun aspects to putting a book together, I hope you'll find it just as fun and educational as the NiteWriter blog has been for me. I will continue this blog as an archive so that all the writing and publishing posts are still available.

I hope to see all of you over at the new digs! I have so much to share with you guys!

Blessings, Raquel Byrnes

Dreadfully Creepy

There is something so AWESOME about starting a new project. Working through a three book series like the one I just finished is rewarding, sure...I feel happy to have completed Lady Blackburn's story.

However, the excitement of discovery in research, of brainstorming 'what if's,' and the start of weaving together the images in your head into a cohesive plot are some of my favorite things in the world.

This go around I will be writing a Gothic Mystery series entitled The Dreadful Darlings. So...SO happy to finally get to work on this project.

It was my motivation during the last chapters of The Chasm Walkers when my deadline loomed and my eyes drooped while writing at 2 in the morning.

I love the dark and dreary stories. A die-hard Poe and Henry James fan since childhood, I always did enjoy a good ghost story.

So here I am gathering dream journal entries and sifting through my subconscious for what scares me and you know what? I discovered something amazing.

I am not frightened by the dark. I am unnerved by the bright and blaring. The shifting shadows of a scorching sun on barren ground. The far out fringe of the desert dwellers where I live.  

In short...not the English moors or the murky bayou waters. I am afraid of the things that thrive in the light and heat.

This should be an interesting journey....

---

If you like creepy and exciting -- 

Check out my YA Steampunk Thriller, The Tremblers coming soon!

+Raquel Byrnes  

The Tremblers Playlist

Music that inspired the YA Steampunk Thriller, TheTremblers

From what I listened to while writing the aero ship battles to songs that capture the desperate romance in a crumbling world...I hope you enjoy the songs and lyrics that moved me to create this world.

  

+Raquel Byrnes 

As Cmdr. Taggart Says...

I'm in the home stretch now. I can see the final chapters so clearly that I can almost taste them. Okay, I may need to work on my imagery here, but you get the point. The last book in my YA Steampunk series is coming to a close...EVER SO SLOWLY!

Its taken a lot to get here. Many tangents that had to be back-tracked. Too many wrong turns to retrace. Closing out a series is difficult. This I knew, but...this last book is such a struggle for some reason.

Perhaps it is because I pre-wrote the synopses for all three books via the publisher's request and so had a hard time just following the characters as they fleshed out.

Maybe my vision changed the deeper I delved into the story so the pre-imagined story line didn't fit anymore?

I am not sure.  I do know that I will not flesh out an entire series so tightly again. I loved knowing where I was going and maybe wrote some scenes ahead of time. That was helpful. I am a die-hard plotter after all. I live for charts and outlines and note cards.

But I also like the freedom of free writing and creative journeys so I need to find a balance there.  It is funny, this realization, that I might do well with some looser parameters and room to play because my critique partner, who is a dyed-in-the-wool pantser, just went to a conference workshop on plotting and is finally starting to embrace that in her process. The timing is cosmic sarcasm...I'm sure of it.

So as I head towards the climax of the story and the series, I will have to find the will to continue to grapple with this story that I have both loved and hated in turns over the past two years.  It is my favorite creation and the most painful to date to produce.

But as my Galaxy Quest Captain would exhort..."Never Give Up! Never Surrender!"

Look for The Tremblers, Book 1 in The Blackburn Chronicles out this fall.

+Raquel Byrnes