Monster hunters, spaceships and comedy of manners by indie author Mel Dunay
So, here’s what happened on day 2 of the writing vacation:
To those who are not familiar with the movies and tv show being referenced, no explanation is possible. To those who are, no explanation is necessary. To those who whine about how awful the source movies are: I have so little respect for your opinions that I am not even doing you the courtesy of putting these beneath the fold.
This year, I’m participating in AetherCzar’s Based Spring Book Sale.
Steampunk author Hans G. Schantz (aka AetherCzar) has graciously included Shadow Captain in his sale. As usual Hans pulls together dozens of indie and small-press titles, which emphasize fun and escapism over Serious Messages and the grinding concerns of the real world, all on sale or for free. I hope you can find something you like here.
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….
Wolf’s Trail, the first book in Hunter Healer King, my gothic gaslamp fantasy series, is free for all readers until Friday, March 22, 2024!
You may know me from my clean romantic fantasy novels in the Jaiya series and the Ancestors of Jaiya series, or my space operas, the Star Master duology. Wolf’s Trail still combines adventure, mysticism, romance and fun characters, while avoiding harsh language and the more graphic forms of violence and sexuality. This new series is written for fans of steampunk, gaslamp fantasy, lost civilizations, and monster hunters like Van Helsing (the more action hero version of the character, as portrayed by Peter Cushing and Hugh Jackman).
We’ve discussed the origins of the feisty girl/posh guy idea before, and the evolution of the feisty girl in my head into Chloe Fortabat of Wolf’s Trail. The evolution of the posh guy was less dramatic, because for a long time I thought primarily of him as a foil to the heroine. Here are the different phases, numbered to match the entries under Feisty Girl:
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Posh Guy in Wolf’s Trail” →(Note to pedants: I use “girl” here in a colloquial sense, as the counterpart to “guy.” All the female character concepts mentioned below were college age or older when I stopped to think about how old the character ought to be.)
As previously stated, the basics of the feisty girl/posh guy teamup came to me while watching Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games. It was a long road from there to Wolf’s Trail.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl in Wolf’s Trail” →The short version is that I started noodling around with this character dynamic (the Reylo fans would perhaps call it a dyad) when I was first watching Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games. Eventually it would grow into the lead characters from Wolf’s Trail.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl/Posh Guy Dynamic in Wolf’s Trail” →I fell in love with steampunk machinery the same way a lot of people did:
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From: The Hunter Healer King Setting Used in Wolf’s Trail” →I previously discussed (towards the bottom of this post) how I used Google Bard as a tool in working on the blurb for this book. Bard generated 2543 words by my count, of which 16 were usable in a blurb of 172 words.
Here’s what I used as a starting point and fed to Bard. It’s the blurb I wrote when I was serializing the book on Vella:
To claim her inheritance, Chloe must leave her ranch for the Old World, where she mingles with monster hunters. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man. Dr. Maxim os Storm’s mission is to destroy those monsters which feed on human pain. He is drawn to Chloe, but she is being slowly transformed into the type of creatures he hunts. He does not know if he can cure her in time, or what she will do when she learns his secrets…
Note that this is in 3rd person, but the book itself is in first. Here’s the final blurb, with Bard’s contributions bolded:
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….
Below the break, I have the Bard-generated content in full, with the bits I used bolded. First come the “long” versions of Chloe’s and Maxim’s POVs which came to around 1858 words and yielded nothing useful. 1-3 are Chloe’s; 4-6 are Maxim’s. Then come the “short” versions, which are where the useful bits (bolded again) come from. 7-9 are Chloe’s POV, 10-12 are Maxim’s. Bard was useful mostly because I’m a little uncomfortable writing blurbs; I can’t imagine this being an efficient way of writing blurbs for someone who was actually good at them.
Continue reading “Where Did that Come From? The Blurb for Wolf’s Trail” →Now available in Kindle Unlimited
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….
Jaglion Press