The Space Between :: Susan Rooke

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Home for Christmas

December 20, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

Just a short one today . . .

I want to wish you all the most joyous of holiday seasons, and the hope that your year concludes with many blessings and hearts full of love. I’m going to be kicking back and having fun for the rest of the year, because . . . The Daughter’s home! And The Son-in-Law will be joining us soon!

It’s been seven years since Glen and I have had the chance to spend Christmas with Katie and Wesley. The last time they weren’t married yet. Or even engaged. So we’re taking full advantage of this opportunity. There will be days of delicious food, fabulous cocktails, abounding snarkiness, clever puns and uproarious laughter over raucous games of Cards Against Humanity (“A party game for horrible people”).

The one thing I’ll do during this time that counts as work will be reading The Realm Below. In paperback, because the proof copies arrived Monday!

This is the fifth or sixth time I’ve read it, but it has to be done. And no skimming allowed. I’m on page 150 (out of 453) and I’ve already found two errors that slipped past me before. (This is in addition to two others that one of my wonderful advance readers, author Diana Conces, found.) So, all cocktails aside, I have to be paying attention when I’m reading.

Later this month, most of you will probably receive a brief newsletter from me announcing that print copies of The Realm Below are available for pre-order from Amazon. (Not sure of the date yet for that. If you don’t receive the newsletter, you can subscribe by going to the right sidebar here where it says “Subscribe and Download Chapter One.”)

You can already pre-order the e-books, though, and some of you have done so. Thank you! The release date is only a month away: January 22, 2019.

And to everyone who has taken the time to read The Space Between and tell me how much they enjoyed it (a new person just reached out to me on Facebook as I was writing this!), I’m always, always thrilled and grateful to hear from you. And thank you for your reviews!

Happy Holidays, Dear Readers! See you in 2019!

Blog, Christmas, family, Featured Post, Holidays, Publishing, Reading, The Realm Below, The Space Between

Crunch Time

July 5, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

18 Comments

I’ve been doing a lot of cooking over the past couple of months, as you could probably tell from the crawfish, the ice cream with chocolate shell topping, the vichyssoise and the Caesar Salad of the last four consecutive posts. (And let’s not forget the Sweet Batter Bread!) Sometimes that nesting, nurturing mood strikes me, and when it does, there’s no telling what will come rolling out of the kitchen. The house will smell delicious, there’ll be homemade bread in the toaster and something savory roasting in the oven or bubbling on the stove.

Well, it’s a good thing I got to indulge those kitchen cravings when I did, because now my cooking is on hold. Twelve days ago I broke a bone or two in my left hand while doing the laundry. And the important contributions an uninjured left hand makes to almost everything I do came as an unpleasant surprise to my right-handed self. For instance:

• Making the bed (However, I can still do a better job with one hand than Glen did [once] with two. It was sweet of him, though.)
• Showering, getting dressed and flossing my teeth
• Taking care of our Australian Shepherd Lucy and Queen of All She Surveys Phoebe (Thank heavens The Daughter was here for a visit when I hurt myself. She fed the animals and cleaned Phoebe’s Cat Box of Diabetic Doom for three days before she had to fly back to Colorado. Thank you, Katie!)
• Driving anywhere (Grocery shopping, PO Box checking, appointment-keeping? Cancelled. All of it.)
• Cooking, of course (Thankfully, Glen knows his way around a kitchen, so we’re not going hungry. In fact, we’ve learned that his breakfast tacos are better than the ones I make with both my hands.)
• But here’s the one that feels like the biggest hindrance: typing. Since the laundry accident, typing has become a task I have to perform almost entirely one-handed, although the injury is getting a little better. Slowly.

Glen calls me “Monkey Arms” because I have a history of flailing my limbs about and banging them into things. Years ago I broke my right hand in an inglorious moment during a throw cushion/glass-topped coffee table incident. (Don’t ask.) The result of this current round of gracelessness is that I’m behind on finishing The Realm Below. I’d still like to have it out before January 2019, but this is crunch time now; we’re in the butt end of 2018 already. I have a few thousand words to go, and then comes beta-reading and editing, formatting, etc. It may be doable, but I’m trying not to get overly stressed in case it isn’t. I’ll just have to give it my best shot.

So unless I make tremendous progress on the sequel to The Space Between over the coming two weeks, the July 19th blog post will likely be a rerun of an earlier one. (This one is post # 92, so I have a few to choose from.) Please forgive me, but doing that would give me a much-needed month to focus entirely on finishing the writing of Book 2 (and all that typing!). After that, the rewriting shouldn’t be much of a problem. Fingers crossed. I’ll also be saving time on some household chores. Like the laundry, for example, which I plan never to do again.

Some of you might be wondering, “But how on earth do you break your hand doing the laundry, Monkey Arms?”

In these two easy steps:

1. You remove Glen’s damp blue jeans from the washing machine and, using both hands, begin to vigorously shake the wrinkles out of them before throwing them into the clothes dryer.
2. You’re still shaking them when your left hand loses its grip on the denim, and you watch helplessly as this appendage goes crashing at top speed into a corner of the dryer’s exterior. *crunch*

(There was a third, verbal step, but it isn’t repeatable.)

That’s the method I used, at any rate. And guess what? It worked like a charm!

Blog, family, Featured Post, Publishing, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing

The Story Behind the Story

April 26, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

10 Comments

Hi, Everyone! So here we are after successfully dodging the latest End of the World on April 23rd (henceforth to be known by the acronym EOW, and pronounced YOW!). For many reasons, I’m glad we aren’t all toast (so many cocktails, so little time!), but chiefly because I want to share some exciting news concerning The Space Between. No, not lead-story-on-Entertainment–Tonight news. Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson aren’t in a bidding war for the movie rights. Yet. (She says hubristically.) This news is about an honor I first learned of in January, four months after the book was published September 12, 2017. All the recognized authors were asked to keep quiet about it until the results were released a few days ago. Et voilà. Behold my happy results from the Shelf Unbound book review competition:

I can’t tell you how good this feels. As many of you know, The Space Between (TSB) was over a decade in the making. I typed the first word on September 1st, 2005. Twelve interminable years later, it was finally published. Why so long? Three reasons:

1. I sometimes put the manuscript aside to percolate while I worked on its sequel and on writing poetry. Those were weeks and months well spent. By the time TSB was published last year, dozens of my poems had appeared in dozens of wonderful publications (with three poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net), and the TSB sequel was ¾ complete.
2. I occasionally sought traditional publication, querying several agents and a handful of publishers (two behemoths and a few small independents). Three of the small publishers folded after I queried them. Those were weeks and months completely wasted. While the novel was making the rounds, the lighthouse at Rubjerg Knude could’ve fallen into the North Sea in the time I spent waiting for replies. (The very positive comments I got from two publishers helped keep me going.)
3. But here’s the biggest reason. I wrote the 1st draft—51,000 words—in 30 days. That’s right. I’m a NaNoWriMo veteran.

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a wonderful concept. Founded in 1999 by Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo offers foot-dragging writers one simple premise: Yes, you CAN write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. All you have to do is meet a daily word count goal and muzzle your snide inner critic until it’s time for the revision process. Since I already had four or five unfinished novel manuscripts laying about, one almost 80 pages long, I found the idea hugely appealing. My m.o. was to start writing a novel with enthusiasm, then get bogged down in minutiae and over-editing, unable to advance the plot. NaNoWriMo, I was sure, could push me over the novel-finishing hump.

For some reason, Mr. Baty chose November for the endeavor, but, what with Thanksgiving and all the other obligations of the holiday season, I thought November was a terrible idea. So I chose September. The Daughter’s high school fall term was back in session, and the home coast was clear for the quiet pursuit of novel writing. 1,667 words per day. Glen and I made several day trips that month, but I took pen and paper with me. I never missed a day’s total. And I got it done.

Except . . . I didn’t, really.

Yes, for the first time ever, I had the first draft of a novel on paper. But it was short. More of a long novella, actually. And yes, the story arc was complete. But only to encompass those 51,000 words. Why was that a problem? Because I hadn’t written a slim volume of literary fiction or an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery. I’d written a multi-worldbuilding fantasy, and at 51,000 words, I was still at least one world short.

So I kept going, draft after draft. Over the next eleven years and eleven months, vital characters surfaced from my subconscious, insisting on being included in the book. I wove them in, creating an intricate, twisting plot with several timelines. In doing so, The Space Between grew plumper by 100,000 words. In the final eighteen months before publication, I trimmed it back 25,000 words, and that’s where it stayed.

When I began writing TSB’s sequel, The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis, I knew if I followed the NaNoWriMo method I’d be faced with the same problem at the end of the first draft. So I took a deep breath, and (nervously) embarked on it the old-fashioned way. Happily, my successful NaNoWriMo experience gave me much-needed confidence, and my characters, both old and new, pitched in to help.

Despite the difficulties the process presented, it’s not an overstatement to say that NaNoWriMo changed the course of my life. Without it, The Space Between probably wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t be writing this post today. I wouldn’t have that fancy Notable Indie badge to flash. And most important of all, I wouldn’t have you.

You, dear readers, are the reason The Realm Below will be out by the end of this year instead of, oh, let’s say another twelve years from now. Thank you. I’m blessed to have you in my life.

And honestly, we’re all blessed we didn’t get smacked by the planet Nibiru. Yet. (EOW!)

Blog, Featured Post, Publishing, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing

The Realm Below: A Sample

April 12, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

The sequel to The Space Between is getting closer to completion every day. Well, maybe not today. Glen and I are on vacation today, drinking The Daughter’s sophisticated hand-crafted cocktails, eating The Son-in-Law’s fabulous Eggs Benedict (I wish I’d taken a picture of the plated effect, but I was too busy devouring them to think of it) and enjoying some colder weather. (With April snow! It started as we were leaving a casino in the mountains of Colorado.)

But soon vacation will be over, and I’ll get back to writing The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis. It’s the second book in the Space Between series, and publication is planned for later this year. The closer I get to finishing the manuscript, the more excited I am to share snippets of the book with readers. Starting today, with the prologue. First, a bit of background:

It is the dead of winter. Satan is in hiding in the Space Between, abandoned by his baffled army of followers after his unexpected transformation into a snakelike creature, thanks to the cat Kindle’s act of retribution. Alone and cold, he has sought warmth and refuge in the burning corpse of Fellson, the corrupt Penitent, and wishes desperately for his “pet,” the monster Tanipestis, to come to his aid.

Prologue: Satan Wakes

From dreams of warmth he woke freezing. The pyre of his former lover Fellson’s body had burned down around him, most of it reduced to ash, and now the cold iron of the winter soil chilled his dry, scaly skin. He coiled more tightly around himself, burying his reptilian nose in the flesh sheathing his countless ribs. If only Tanipestis were here! But he had called and called, his mind imploring, hurling thoughts toward the monster’s cavern dwelling place deep in the Realm Below, and Tanipestis could not hear him. How he missed the comforting blue flame! Now he was on his own, lost in the Space Between, without any notion of how he was to return to his kingdom.

He felt terribly exposed. The cold night sky glittered overhead, the midnight blue heavens slowly turning, visible through the cage of Fellson’s charred ribs that arced above him. Fruitlessly he strove to burrow his slim, triangular head down into the earth. As if purposely preventing him from entering, the earth remained a stony, closed door. For Tanipestis the earth would open willingly, he thought, and accept the last Titan to its accustomed home. But such was not the case for Satan, the lord of the Realm Below. No. Foolishly he had left Tanipestis behind, thinking he would have no need of the creature here. Now he was alone and barred from safety. The earth here did not open for him. And he did not dare venture out to slither across the ground. Not even in the night.

In another world entirely, but in other ways quite near, in the way of time, for instance, someone else awoke from dreams. It was the Titan of the Fire in the Earth, and its name was Tanipestis. Neither male nor female, carved not from flesh, but from sharp anthracite, it burned with a low, constant blue flame. Scattered here and there on its flinty body, high and low, front and back, were numerous eyes. Tanipestis saw things with a clarity multiplied many times, for each eye was a faceted diamond that glinted from one of its gleaming black surfaces. Perhaps such clarity of sight negated curiosity, as the creature always saw nearly everything there was to see. Usually that was quite enough. Now it looked about the cavern of its master Satan, and saw that its master still had not returned. Then, into its incurious mind came a thought, as though willed to do so. Tanipestis was certain the thought had originated outside of itself. It begged him, in words something like this:

Come to me, Tanipestis. I need your flame!

The thought persisted over time, often quite forcefully, until Tanipestis grew accustomed to it, never troubling itself to identify the source. The months went on. In the Space Between, a year of seasons passed. Winter gave way to a wet spring, which became a humid summer, and then autumn’s golds and russets painted the land. At last ice again rimed the banks of the fast-running river by the Keep, and snow frosted the heavy limbs of the ancient yew tree—the Tree of Life—in the Garden Field.

In the Realm Below, however, there were no seasons, merely a dull uniformity of days—a brownish haze of perpetually chilly air, a muted light from the feeble disc in the sky. In such timelessness, Tanipestis did not notice when the thought dimmed at last to silence.

**********************************

Thank you, Dear Readers! Back soon . . .

Blog, Featured Post, Publishing, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing

Where (and When) Do You Get Your Ideas?

March 1, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

Most writers of fiction are asked, at some point in their careers, “Where do you get your ideas?” Our responses tend to be vague. Because, really, who can nail that down? Is it the subconscious? Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious”? Do we snatch them, as Willie Nelson has said he’s done with his songs, “out of the air”?

To my readers who write fiction: Can you tell me with certainty where you get your ideas? Sometimes I’ve had a notion strike me out of the blue with such force that it felt as if a being from a vastly superior parallel universe murmured the suggestion in my ear. No, it may not be as reasonable as the other theories (even Willie’s), but ideas have to come from somewhere. And whatever great, bubbling aquifer of creativity they arise from, I’d like to tap into it any time I please.

Any time I please. Is that possible? Maybe for people who diligently practice mindfulness and meditation. Or who smoke a lot of grass. I do neither. (And if you read February 15th’s post “After the Glory Days,” you know I’m telling the truth!) But thinking about it, I realized that ideas do tend to flow more easily at certain times for me. Which makes the “when” of the creative process as important as the “where.” When is it most likely that an especially good idea will break the surface of my conscious mind? Well, there are two times during the day most likely to spark this kind of creativity: Either when I’m exercising, or I’m dreaming.

“Exercise” in this case means some activity that’s repetitive and not too demanding, which allows my mind to wander. In particular, walking. (In nature. I don’t mean from the parking lot into the hair salon.) It works well for those times when I need an unexpected solution to a plot problem, or to dig into a character’s motivation.

Dreams, however, especially the ones that occur in the hour before I wake up, are far more likely to allow those nudges from a parallel universe. This period of time is when my characters become physical, reaching out touch me from whatever land of mist they occupy. They talk to me about themselves, and they tell me their names. Once I’ve awoken, I’ve researched these names, and some of them have surprised me. Here are just three examples (the first is from The Space Between, the other two are from its sequel, The Realm Below):

• Allowyn: He’s Lugo’s son, and is the only member of the Penitent faery tribe who’s born without flaws. As such, Allowyn is meant to marry the “perfect” human female, Mellis, in order to one day get the Penitents back in the Maker’s good graces. His name appears to be a variation (just one of many in several languages) of the Welsh name Alwyn, which means “noble friend,” or “friend.” Allowyn as it’s spelled means “freedom lover.” An interesting insight, since his desire for freedom is something Allowyn decides to explore to the max in Book 2.

• Bryngwyn: She’s a mountanous white sow, a new character in Book 2, and she’s the animal companion of another new character, Pollector (see the 3rd name below). I’d begun writing her into the story without naming her yet, then one morning before dawn I dreamed the word “Bryngwyn.” It sounded Welsh to me, but for all I knew, I’d made it up. When I awoke, I googled it and discovered that it is indeed Welsh, and means “white hill.” The perfect name for her, but it was disconcerting to realize I had no recollection of ever hearing that word in my life.

• Pollector: This character is also known as The Wanderer. He’s a human being who, because of an evil act he committed long before the book begins, is condemned to perpetually travel among the three contiguous worlds of the Space Between, the Realm Below, and the world of humankind. He has a bizarre disfigurement that is meant to serve as a lesson warning everyone who sees him of the punishment for evil deeds. No spoilers here, so I won’t tell you what Pollector looks like. But after a dream in which his name and his bizarre appearance were revealed to me, I woke up thinking about the name. Pollector. And it occurred to me that it was meant to be a composite of two words: “poll,” meaning “head,” and “lector,” meaning “lecturer.” Most appropriate.

So where on earth did these names and characters come from? I’d always leaned toward believing it’s a mix of my own subconscious with a boost from the collective unconscious. But then, just this morning, I dreamed another one. Not a character, but just a word: “Inviction.” I was so excited about it when I woke up. Maybe I’d experienced another nudge from the being in that vastly superior parallel universe! When I looked it up on the Dictionary.com phone app, though, I was crestfallen. There was no definition for “inviction” (my spell-check never heard of it either). And that seemed to be the end of it.

But writing this, I decided to try one more time. So I googled it:

Well, that settles it. I’m going with the parallel universe theory of idea origin.

Blog, Featured Post, Writing

Does This Suit Come in Purple?

November 9, 2017

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

Do you know what shagreen is? Here’s a picture of a wallet in shagreen:

Until I read a magazine article about it some years back, I didn’t know that shagreen is what’s more commonly known as stingray hide. Appreciated for its striking appearance and lasting durability, it’s been in use for hundreds of years, to make items ranging from book covers and sword hilts to lampshades, bracelets, boots . . . even nightstands. And boy, could I use a suit of shagreen to wear right now. Because, not for the first time in my life, I’m going to need a tougher hide.

The Daughter warned me many revisions ago that I’d written a polarizing book. That once it was published, I should be ready for hate mail. I agreed with the thrust of Katie’s argument. With its reimagining of Old Testament themes, The Space Between has the potential to offend people at all points on the spectrum of religious belief. So I was more or less prepared for the woman so affronted by the subject matter of my book that she refused to review it. It controverts her idea of a Supreme Being, evidently. Okay, score one for Katie’s predictive skills. But I wasn’t prepared for the reviews that have materialized. Not because they’ve been bad. The majority have been decent so far and some have been great. (That doesn’t mean five bad ones won’t appear in the next 24 hours, of course.) It’s the fact that people have opinions about the book at all that’s surprising. That’s what I was not prepared for.

Was that naïve of me? Maybe, but my hopes for the book have been fairly modest from the beginning. What I envisioned was that friends and family would buy it, read it or not depending on their literary tastes, and then the whole episode would quietly subside until the sequel came out. Did I expect total strangers to read it? No. Despite all the promotional magic my favorite publicist Danielle performed to try to bring that about—the Facebook ads and the Goodreads giveaway, just for starters—I really didn’t. I sort of wished they would, but after the manuscript spent twelve years mostly hidden away in my computer, it seemed impossible that The Space Between should ever cross any random stranger’s reading radar. But the book has been out almost two months now, and some random strangers are indeed reading. And they’re beginning to express themselves.

Imagine people openly discussing your child or your spouse and not caring if you overheard. They could be lavishing your loved one with admiration and praise, but if you’re anything like me, you’d be anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop, the part where they’d say, “Of course, there’s that really annoying thing he does when he . . .” Or, “She could do so much better if only she would try to be more . . .” So it isn’t just the bad reactions I fear, it’s every reaction. Whether it’s good, bad, or meh, I realize I’m happier not knowing any of it. That fear creates a state of nail-biting anxiety, and living in it makes me yearn for supreme self-confidence and complete indifference, or, failing both of those, a shagreen suit.

I want to be one of those writers who never reads their own reviews, never gives interviews, and just carries on with the job of writing. Occasionally I would emerge from my sanctum to make ice cream or drink cocktails or clean Phoebe’s Catbox of Despond. Unfortunately, that’s all just a pipedream.

Instead, I’ve been asking myself, What on earth have I done? Well, I’ve dropped my literary child out the third-floor window of a burning building and it’s landed headfirst on a cement trampoline, that’s what.

It’s much too late to go back to the way things were. To quote from James Thurber’s charming book, The 13 Clocks: “The fat is in the fire, the die is cast, the jig is up, the goose is cooked, and the cat is out of the bag.” I wished for it. I got it. I’m stuck with it.

Last night while we were watching a segment about Russian oligarchs on the national news, I told Glen I wanted to be an oligarch too. “How does one get to be an oligarch, anyway?” I asked him.

He fixed me with a loving, but uncompromising, gaze. “Sell more books.”

Oh, what the heck. In for a penny, in for a pound. Book 2 should be coming your way later next year. In the meantime, I’ll find some purple shoes to match my shagreen suit.

Blog, Featured Post, Publishing, The Space Between

The Space Between: NOW It’s Done

August 17, 2017

Posted by Susan Rooke

12 Comments

This morning I put on my T-shirt inside out and backwards. Then it took me an hour-and-a-half to notice. Since I’m pretty sure I’m only going to get worse, I need to go on record right now with a disclaimer that should hold up in any court:

From now until the release of The Space Between on September 12th, I cannot be held accountable for my actions, due to diminished capacity.

That sounds legal-ish, doesn’t it?

“I’m sorry, your Honor. Exhilaration made me do it.”

“Understandable, Ms. Rooke. Promise me you’ll stay away from Krispy Kreme in the future and I’ll consider your case dismissed.”

Even in my excitement I’d been managing to keep a lid on myself, but then this came in the mail on Monday:

It’s the proof copy. The one I examine to be certain it’s printed exactly to the specifications. Holding it in my hands (FYI, I don’t have man-hands. Those are Glen’s) just about made me swoon. It took twelve years to bring this baby into the world, and there were many, many days I thought it would never happen.

Needless to say, I’m giddy with delight. Even though I already knew when Glen opened the package that the proof copy was wrong. And it’s all The Daughter’s fault.

A few days before the printed proof copy was shipped, the e-book proof copy was ready. Like the print copy, it also had to be carefully screened for errors. We were pretty confident that typos had been eliminated by that point, but there were persnickety things to screen for, like:

• Text cut off the page or disappearing into the crease
• Images out of place
• Fonts or characters not displaying properly

In other words, every page of the e-book had to be scrutinized to be sure it looked the way it was supposed to.

I had a lot of other things on my plate, so I hired Katie to do the job.

This was the first time she’d read The Space Between since [what I foolishly believed was] its final revision. She loved it. All except for one problem that she couldn’t get past. She believed I had treated cavalierly a character I’d killed off near the end of the book. It distressed her that this character was never mentioned again after I’d snuffed him/her. She wanted me to fix that, believing that the character deserved better, and that it made me look careless and forgetful as the author.

I argued my point with her. I hadn’t forgotten, but the character was so insignificant that I had seen nothing wrong in complete erasure. Besides, I said, it was probably much too late to do anything about it now.

She disagreed with everything I said. The worst part was, I had disappointed her.

I thought it over for all of five seconds before realizing she was right. But what could I do? Quickly I read over the trouble spot, and saw an easy repair. All it would take was the addition of two short lines of dialogue. A total of nine words. The manuscript’s formatting was complete, though. Even adding two lines could make an annoying, troublesome difference, meaning those last ten pages would have to be reformatted.

Enter Danielle.

I’ve told you about Danielle Hartman Acee before. She and Mindy Reed own The Authors’ Assistant. She’s my final copyeditor, as well as my publicist. She’s also responsible for formatting both the e-book and print volume. Here she is:

I fired off a panicky email to Danielle describing the problem and my proposed solution. She responded at once with capable calm. Then, after fiddling with the e-copy for the rest of the afternoon, she fixed it. The two new lines inserted, the reformatting accomplished.

Thank you, Danielle! Katie was hugely relieved and so was I.

Some characters exist only to be killed off: shock value, their sole purpose in a story. This character was so very minor that I had seen nothing wrong in discarding him/her like gnawed chicken bones. Not all characters are created equal. Yes, they can certainly surprise you. Main characters can assume less importance and be sidelined. Minor characters can become the point upon which the story’s climax hinges. But a few characters are there just to up the body count. Even so, they should be treated with respect. I can’t just pretend they never lived at all.

When the kerfuffle broke out, the printed proof copy pictured above was already rolling its way to me. Of course. Therefore, there will be a printed proof copy #2. The final, final revision. In a few days I’ll be opening a new package. The right one.

Thank you, Katie.

Peekaboo, I’ll see you September 12, 2017!

Blog, Featured Post, Publishing, Reading, The Space Between, Writing

The Space Between: From the Tasting Menu

July 27, 2017

Posted by Susan Rooke

8 Comments

Monday was the birthday of the noted English poet and novelist, Robert Graves. He would have been 122 years old. Graves wrote the historical fiction masterpiece I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God (both of which I loved), and many, many other works. But until reading about him on Monday, I didn’t know just how many. Turns out he wrote more than 120 books.

Now see here, Mr. Graves. You and I both know that’s just showing off.

120 books. Pondering this, I slumped a little deeper into the sofa. I’ve written 2. Or, for those who want to quibble, 1.75.

But then a couple of cheering thoughts occurred to me, which I now respectfully submit for your consideration:

1. Robert Graves didn’t blog.
2. Robert Graves didn’t have a Facebook page.
3. Robert Graves sure as hell didn’t tweet.

Therefore, in a happier frame of mind, I present to you an excerpt wherein our heroine, Mellis, meets Lugo, Master of the Penitents’ Keep. From Chapter Two of my—admittedly—first book, The Space Between. In this, my 65th . . . weekly . . . blog post.

Take that, Mr. Graves.

From Chapter Two: Lugo and the Sibyl—

Mellis heard the crowd stirring behind her. Without knowing how it happened, she realized she was no longer staring into the fire. Instead, she was looking down at a highly polished pair of boots, made of thin, supple oxblood leather. Her eyes flew upward. Standing before her on the hearth was a man of medium height dressed in dark clothing, well-fitted to his form. He was trim and long-limbed, good-looking, with gleaming chestnut hair that fell past his collar. Mellis felt her mouth open, but no sound came out.

With studied grace he approached her. She wanted to step back from him, but forced herself to be still. With his hands clasped behind his back, he slowly looked her up and down, from the top of her russet hair down to her scarlet and gold satin slippers. Only his eyes moved as he examined her. His gaze traveled back up to her face and lingered there. Then his dark eyebrows drew together. Mellis stared at his grey eyes, trying to force them to meet hers, but could not. It was as if he looked at an object rather than a person.

He unclasped his hands, and, without speaking, indicated that she should turn for him, by twirling one finger in a circular motion. The gesture was brusque and imperious, and she disliked him instantly for it. Nevertheless, she obeyed, but evidently turned too quickly to suit him, because he had her do it again. This time she turned more slowly, and when she came around to face him once more, she fixed her eyes on the stone hearth under his elegant boots. She felt her face growing warm at his careless humiliation of her. Nothing she had experienced in this place had prepared her for such treatment. No one had been anything but kind to her and Orlando. He must think he’s better than the rest, just because he’s not deformed. How shallow! She stared at his boots, which looked very expensive. They were perfectly molded to his long, slender feet.

Her eyes moved up his frame as she waited for him to finish his appraisal of her. It was then she saw the two thin little legs that dangled from the back of his left hip. They were clothed in dark, fine silk trousers that matched the others he wore. On the small, useless feet were tiny polished duplicates of the oxblood boots. Mellis looked back down at the hearth quickly. His austere, handsome face and his bearing had misled her. He was not set apart from the others by anything other than his evident importance. In affliction he was the same.

Finally, he spoke, but not to her. “Fetters. Feldspar. Come forward.” At the sound of his voice, Mellis looked at him. His tone was casual, as if he’d been ordering people about all his life.

A nervous voice answered. “Yes sir?”

Feldspar’s long fair hair brushed her shoulder as he and Fetters took their places beside her. They looked uncomfortable.

“I believe you’ve succeeded this time—”

“Oh, thank you—” Fetters began, sounding relieved and eager, but the gentleman cut him off.

“—in bringing us a viable possibility.” His voice was smooth. “I hope to know more after we hear what the sibyl has to say.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Mellis saw an apprehensive look pass between them as they melted back into the crowd.

She tensed. What on earth is a sibyl? And I’m a “viable possibility?” For what? Had she been wrong in believing these people meant her no harm?

In the same careless tone he had used on Fetters and Feldspar, the gentleman spoke again. “Deirdre.”

Deirdre came forward, hunched, and looking weary. Her dress was a somber color, and far plainer than the clothing the others wore. Her iron grey hair hung in its heavy braid.

“Deirdre, if you would, please.” The gentleman extended a long hand with thin pale fingers and beckoned. Mellis saw a silver ring set with a smooth dark stone. It gleamed against his skin.

The old woman nodded and turned to someone beside her, a woman who looked very like her—of the same size and shape, but younger. Her face was unlined next to Deirdre’s creased one. She also was clothed plainly, and a faded rose-colored scarf covered her head. Deidre encouraged her forward, speaking to her softly.

The second woman put her hands up to her throat and began with clumsy movements to untie the knot in the scarf. The gentleman leaned forward, as if wishing to hurry her along. At last she was done, her head bared and her hands hanging at her sides. The rose-colored fabric trailed from her fingers to the floor. Her face was blank, as were her unfocused eyes.

When Mellis saw what the woman had uncovered, her knees buckled underneath her and her mind gave way.

Coming September 12, 2017

Blog, Featured Post, The Space Between

The Space Between: A Scene from Chapter Two

July 20, 2017

Posted by Susan Rooke

8 Comments

Katie, aka The Daughter, arrived Tuesday for a two-week visit! She came bearing gifts:

She came with food requests:

1. Lobster for dinner one night
2. Cinnamon Ice Cream
3. La Louisane Dip (which will have a post to itself someday)

She has essential shopping to do:

1. Jeans

She has nonessential shopping to do:

1. Anything in the greater Central Texas area, up to, but not including, jeans

So for the next two weeks there will be cooking. And mother-daughter shopping. And many, many games of Munchkin. All enhanced by the wearing of flashy socks.

As a result, this post and next week’s will feature snippets of my fantasy novel, The Space Between, coming out later this summer! Today we meet Lugo, Master of the Penitents’ Keep, as he speaks with Deirdre about Mellis, the young human woman kidnapped and taken to the Space Between by the Penitent faery tribe.

From Chapter Two: Lugo and the Sibyl—

“You really believe she’ll do?”

“Yes, I think she will.”

“We’ve been wrong before.”

“The last failure was not because we were wrong.” The speaker put a slight emphasis on “we.”

“We’ll have to guard against mistakes this time.”

“Yes. We will,” Deirdre said. Again she stressed the word a touch.

Her companion was a man. The two were in the center of a large, high-ceilinged chamber, lit only by the logs burning in the two fireplaces at opposite ends of the room. Parts of the chamber were quite dim. Shadows clung to the corners.

“Where is she now?” the man asked without much interest.

“She’s in the same room as . . . as the previous choice. Blodgett and Laurel are taking care of her.” Deirdre paused. “And of her dog.”

“Dog? She was allowed to bring a dog?”

“Well, we couldn’t just the leave the poor thing to fend for itself in the woods. Fetters and Feldspar chose to fetch the two of them together, and I think they acted rightly. The creature’s presence seems to reassure her. The befuddlement charm I used helped too, of course, and the Jerusalem roses are very soothing. She appears to be comfortable, all things considered. More so than any of the others were at first.”

“Of course she’s comfortable—how in Heaven’s name could she not be?”

Deirdre regarded him in silence.

He began to pace about the room in an aimless way, pausing at one wall to touch an enormous tapestry, one of many that decorated the room. He looked at it absently as the fingers of his right hand caressed the silk threads. On his next-to-last finger he wore a silver ring set with a smooth, dark stone freckled with rust-colored spots.

Its dull, firelit gleam caught Deirdre’s eye. Bloodstone. The martyr’s stone. She was thoughtful as her companion continued to stroke the tapestry, which depicted a great, pale reptilian beast: a white dragon. It stood rampant on its hind legs, rearing up with translucent wings spread wide, scarlet flames shooting from its yawning jaws.

“Of course. How could she not be comfortable?” Deirdre said at last in a weary voice.

“When will I see her?” He turned from the tapestry to look at Deirdre. She stood with her rough fingers interlaced, her heavy grey braid draped down her bosom.

“When do you wish to see her?”

“Oh, there’s no real hurry, I suppose. We don’t want to be too hasty. More important to be certain she’s the one.” He waved his hand in vague dismissal, brushing the subject away. The dark stone in his ring glinted. “Whenever you think she’s presentable. And ready, of course.” He turned back to the tapestry and then was struck by a thought. “How is Leucaspis, Deirdre? I haven’t heard much news of him recently.”

Deirdre looked at Lugo, Master of the Penitents’ Keep, for a few moments before answering. “About the same, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. I expected as much.” He sounded bored again—as if he’d lost interest in her reply before she had made it.

He moved away from the tapestry and paced restlessly along the wall. He stopped before a tall, rectangular mirror and turned to scrutinize himself in its face. As he did so, the pair of stunted, supernumerary legs that dangled from his left hip swung outward and flopped against his side with a soft thud. The dark silk trousers that encased them whispered as the legs rubbed limply together. Polished, pliant leather boots, the color of oxblood, covered the tiny feet. He paid them no attention, instead leaning in close to the mirror to watch himself pluck a speck of lint from his silk sleeve.

After waiting a few moments to see if Lugo would decide to speak again, Deirdre withdrew from the room.

Coming September 12, 2017

Blog, family, Featured Post, The Space Between

Welcome to the All-New susanrooke.net!

June 8, 2017

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

Happy June 8th, everybody! I see my recent prediction of the arrival of Christmas in 2 weeks is proving true. A couple more haircuts, and—*poof*— it’ll be here. But I’m celebrating now, because my Christmas came 6 months early. Today marks my 58th blog post, and to go with it, I’ve got a great-looking brand new website! And I have the very capable and intuitive Sherry Scott of Resource Connection to credit for it. Thank you, Sherry (and read more about her here)!

There is so much that sets this new site apart from the old one (which launched May of 2016), but the most important is that Sherry built it from the ground up, specifically for me. No longer am I forced to conform to a “theme,” shoehorning my posts and information to fit that theme’s parameters. Here you’ll find all kinds of fun stuff I wasn’t able to offer before. Things like:

1. An eye-catching Home page, with a full menu bar and a slideshow that features a few writing highlights, plus the cover (whee!) of the soon-to-be-published The Space Between, the first book in my fantasy series.
2. A Shutterbugging page with nearly three dozen photos on view.
3. A Blog page that shows excerpts from a number of the most recent posts: easy to click on and find what you’re looking for.

Under the “Works” tab on the Home page menu bar, you’ll find separate pages for Novels, Short Fiction and Poetry. Each of those pages offers, among other things, an audio recording. On Short Fiction, it’s a snippet from one of my flash fiction pieces. On Poetry, there’s a reading of the Dwarf Stars Award-nominated poem “Accident-Prone.” And on the Novels page, you’ll find three brief (but juicy!) audio excerpts from The Space Between.

Overall the new site is easier to navigate, and makes it much easier for readers to subscribe or to leave comments. Leaving your name is optional; you don’t have to do it unless you want to.

But I think my favorite thing of all, one that a handful of you out there have already discovered, is on the Novels page. It’s the form you can use to download Chapter One of The Space Between. The book isn’t due out for about 3 ½ more months, but this will give you a taste of what’s in store. And I thank all of you who are already sampling!

So please, be my guest. Take a look around this new incarnation of susanrooke.net. Spend some time, explore, make yourself at home. Tell me what you think. I’m thrilled to have you here!

Blog, Featured Post