Singer in Rhunshan is now in its more or less final form, hovering around 16,000 words/75 pages. Too big for a short story now, but respectable for a novelette. It is a romantic fantasy action/adventure with discreet hints of a male/male/female love triangle (but no actual sex in this part of the story), and a nod to the Orpheus and Eurydice myth (though set on an alien world with no truly human characters.)
Here’s the reworked blurb:
Eridan Singer chose music and the love of a half-breed warrior woman over his duties to his dying race. After the spell holding his wife in human form fails forever, Eridan barters for shape-shifting magic of his own, from a tribe of ancient gods. Even if the price is his safety, his soul, and the other half of his heart.
Oh, look – I have a cover!
I created this image to fit some broad cover conventions of fantasy and science fiction, rather than just romance. The red/blue/purple tones not only fit within the story, but they partly reference the magnificent cover from the Cleis Press anthology Thrones of Desire.
This is important because my story in the Cleis antho, ‘Saints and Heroes’, is set in the same secondary world as the Singer novelette. These are just two in a linked series of short stories, novellas, and novels following the larger arc of my Lonhra Sequence fantasies. The Lonhra books are, in turn, loosely set in the same universe as my debut novel Moro’s Price – but during a much earlier time.
While waiting on notes from initial readers, I’m beginning to line up the promotional blog hops and interviews over the next month or two. I’m setting up a publisher account with AllRomance/OmniLit in the next few days, so when I have the book I’ll be ready to launch it there. I’m brushing up on the magic of SEO and Google keywords. The Draft2Digital folks have been incredibly patient and informative about what I’m going to send them in the next week or so. I’m aiming to have this little book sell for around $2.99 at most vendors, since that seems to be a good sweet spot for pricing.
Am I expecting this to be a massive bestseller? Nope. I’m probably going about this self-publishing thing wrong, in that I’m not blanketing the internet with ‘buy my book!’ spam. Meh. I will be doing everything I can to reach the readers who liked Moro’s Price, ‘Saints and Heroes’, and my completely unrelated fan fiction.
But if I get a few sales of Singer, it will be better than keeping it trunked forever.
Pre-publication, I’ll be posting some short excerpts of the book, just so people can get an idea of how I write non-erotic fantasy – and to thank all of my readers. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do this without knowing you’re out there.
Update 1-10-2015: so, it’s been a year. Around March, two pro editors, a beta reader, and my agent agreed with me: 17K was too small for this story. The agent and one editor convinced me to rewrite it (now twice) with an eye toward commercial publishing. If nothing comes of that in a few months, I’ll have an 85K novel to self-publish.
Update 1-21-2016: publishing can move very, very slowly. In the year since my last update, I expanded the novel to around 91K, pitched it to my agent, who is now pitching it to two NY publishers. If nothing comes of that (which is very possible), then I’ll need to decide self-pub, or have her submit it to smaller imprints. Either way, I’ve redone the older cover image, and I’ll get a pro jacket designer to do some less-80’s feeling fonts. Draft-2-Digital may still be in the future for this thing. I’ve plotted out at least 2 sequels.
A related work (not a direct sequel) is now up for free reads on Wattpad: Bloodshadow, a finished fantasy novel that just lacks the last few chapters to upload. (Singer plotlines changed a few things.)
I’m looking forward to publication. Nice cover: I like the figure’s ambiguous gender, and the shadow of … well, what is that? Nice hint that there’s more to this person than meets the eye.
I see you’re publishing this story as MH Crane, not MC Hana as for Moro’s Price.
Question – which you may or may not feel free to answer here. I keep thinking about your world’s three-way marriages.
I’m female, so I can have both a male spouse and a female spouse. Can my male spouse, who has a female spouse (me) then take a male spouse, so he has the full set of three? Can my female spouse take a male spouse as well as being married to me?
My reading of ‘Saints and Heroes’ seemed to suggest that my male and female spouses didn’t necessarily marry each other, they only married me.
If they can take additional spouses, do I have any legal relationship with those additional spouses?
Or, does being part of a three mean you can’t marry additional people?
I’m curious.
Lorna the Tel Woman
M.C.Hana is my dedicated pen name through Loose Id. Watch for some cool new books under that name next year. M.H. Crane is the pen name for all my other original fantasy, space opera, and romance works, either self-published or through other publishers.
I borrowed the basics of Lonhran marriage from Diane Duane’s ‘Middle Kingdom’ fantasy novels, which I’d recommend as a primer on how to set up a society where group marriages are not uncommon.
The short answer, depending on personal preference, wealth, and social station: marry whomever you want. One mate, two, or more. There wouldn’t be any legal difference between male mates and female mates…or those identifying with something different than birth gender.
But if you were Sirr, and anything other than female-identified, you might want at least one female spouse.*
In ‘Saints and Heroes’, Borsa is not sexually interested in Tari, but they are good friends. In other Consort families, the male and female Consorts were as involved with each other as they were with the shape-shifting Northwarden. In some, the Consorts couldn’t stand each other.
My Sirrithani are primarily matriarchal, but as warlike as any human culture. They also had the disadvantage of inhabiting a profoundly dangerous planet. Early family groups tended to consist of multiple spouses of either gender, plus their various offspring. This meant that if anything happened to one or more parents, there would still be someone to look after the family.
*Females automatically have higher rank in the family group and culture, but only a couple of Sirr cultures keep their females in protected isolation. In most places, females are just as likely to attain civic office, hold military rank, and run a business.
Thanks for explaining that. So it’s more free-form than I’d thought.
cheers, Lorna
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