Welcome

Welcome to my awesome-possum cave of kickass speculative fiction. I'm Zellie Blake, the author of this domain.  I like rappelling into cenotes, video games, bellydancing, and I spend more time writing than breathing.

In addition to the second volume of LIGHTNING SPLICED, I'm currently working on THE DEEP WITHIN, an urban fantasy set in the future and a how-to guide for starting a grooming business.

Scroll down for my blog of writing tips and globe-trotting adventures.

Check out the Store for links to stories that inspire me.

You're welcome to contact me via facebook or email:  zellieblake-at-gmail.com (-at- really means "@"  It's my ghetto spamblocker)

Enjoy your visit!

Lightning Spliced: LIVE…kinda

With minimal advertising, I've managed 67 subscribers to the audio version of Lightning Spliced even with the caveat that it's a sample while I work to query agents.  

I've been into acting since kindergarden–I remember waiting to go on stage dressed as a flower in Little Red Riding Hood.  Despite how cold it was, how my socks scraped the sidewalk and rocks scraped my feet, I remember thinking, This is it.  This is what I want to do.  Acting is not very lucrative so I turned to (haha) writing.  My other issue with acting was that plays are BORING.  Have you read Our Town?  WTF is that.  No, just NO.  

As much as I miss the rush of being on stage where every mistake counts, I have a lot more fun with audio projects I've voiced online.  There is no length limit so I can explore hours of character depth, there's no mainstream genre to cow to so I can chant out some magic powers.  Lightning Spliced is a blast to voice.  When I wrote it, I would always act out the dialog in my head.  The first draft was jammed with italics, bold, and underlining because I knew the exact inflections I wanted the characters to use and I was determined to force those on my readers.  Way easier to do that via the podcast ;)  I really hope I can work with an agent and publisher who will let me voice my own audiobooks.

Enough gushing, chapter 2 just went live!  Enjoy ^_^ and if you DO enjoy, please spread the link and promos around so we can conquer the world.  um.  I mean.  Get a bazillion subscribers.  And then….we shall have cake.

My love/hate relationship with twitter

Twitter irritates me.  I want the depth of thought a meandering blog entry exudes, not the equivalent of half a Snickers.  I want to skim through an organized thread of responses, not click five different screennames and scroll for ten minutes to try to connect pieces of conversation.

And yet, the 150 character limit forces my every post to be a pitch.  

The @ function allows me to talk about a famous author………..and for them to "overhear" me, even respond.

The hash tag keeps me up to date and connected with people talking about subjects that interest me.

It's popularity as a marketing tool means I can find the to-the-second news and be one of the first to enter a contest, learn about a book release, or send a query to an agent who would again close her inbox within just five minutes.

It allows me to reach people across platforms in seconds–instrumental in gathering listeners for my sample chapters as they are podcast.

I can even find out why that crazy guy tried to hide under my apartment and why the cops were chasing him!

A book on the shelf is not a guarantee nor is rejection the end

The news that 7th Son:  Deceit won't be in book stores hit me hard.  I've spent years of writing and hard revision on Lightning Spliced.  I know many authors don't get their first book published, or even their second.  I've come to accept that challenge–feed off it, even.  But the thought of being a published author with two books under my belt, with the name recognition that comes from articles in the NY Times and Publisher's weekly….then being denied anyway?  That has me staring at Mt. Everest with broken gear.

I understand the financial rationale and that  makes me all the more grateful for e-books and podcasting.  7th Son: Descent was more set up than anything, the story takes off with Deceit.  I'm thankful that this story was not buried under the bed, that I got to enjoy it and so did thousands of other people.  

I'm the kind of person that hopes for the best but prepares for the worst.  Of course, I'm determined to find an agent and then publisher for Lightning Spliced.  I'm confident that it's a marketable novel that avoids the mistakes of Heroes' later convoluted seasons.  But I know there's a possibility that industry professionals won't agree.  I will refuse that death knell.  I've worked too hard to accept that.  One way or another, my novel will find its audience.  

Podcast fiction: higher monetary or marketing value?

I think it's sad that so much high-quality writing has been rejected by the publishing industry.  Authors turn to podcasting so their work can see the light of day but just because Harper or Tor or whoever didn't put it in a shelf (yet) doesn't mean the work has no monetary value.  

When that much quality content has been overlooked and becomes available for free……. why would someone bother to pay?  They can go elsewhere.

If I added up the time it took me to write, revise, record, edit, and upload the first audio chapter of Lightning Spliced it would be 40 hours or more. People pay 89 cents for a taco but expect the writing to be free?

When I was in college, I downloaded a lot of music and anime.  I had no money–I wasn't going to buy it anyway but that gave me the opportunity to fall in love with bands.  Now that I have a job, I can buy every album.  Even better, we have itunes.   I live in a tiny apartment so I have no room for CDs plus ripping them to mp3 form for my player is a pain.  itunes offers a huge library of music at $1-2 per song.  It's absolutely worth the dollar just to avoid the pain in the ass that downloading can be ^_~

But podcasting is easy, too easy.  Maybe people wouldn't pay.  I would.  I do want an author to respect my taste enough to give me maybe three chapters as a sample before I start paying.  After that, I would jump at the chance to pay per episode.  When I was listening to 7th Son, I would get annoyed at the author's generosity.  Damnit, I wanted to pay him for his work but he didn't have a Paypal donation button, and when shirts based on the story went on sale he refused to take his commission on them so the money went strictly to manufacturing costs.  Now that the book is in print, no one can find it in Savannah because I bought all the copies.  SO THERE.  TAKE THE MONEY, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!

.25 cents for a chapter is nothing yet it adds into $10 for a 40 chapter book and an author doesn't necessarily need a go-between taking a cut of that.  Hell, I'd pay $1 a chapter… that's half an hour of content compared with two minutes for a song.  Authors could offer the whole with some bonus content for a discounted price.  I love the idea of installments because I'm poor.  I end up with decisions like…should I buy chicken or should I buy a book?  An installment plan would allow me to get what  I can afford when I can afford it and if I get to the middle and find out the book sucks, I can stop paying!  It irritates me to no end when I buy a book based on the pitch then find out the plot goes nowhere or the writing is garbled or I just plain don't like it.

Maybe if more writers would stand up for the value of their work, people wouldn't be tempted to look elsewhere for free stories.  There's a lot of free music from unknown bands out there……and a lot of it is crappy :P  I'd rather pay for quality than get crap for free.   

But I'm a writer…. I understand the value of creativity and the ass-load of time it takes to write and podcast a book.  Not everyone has that mentality.  If 10% of people are content creators and 90% are consumers…maybe very few people have that view.

Whether the writing has immediate monetary value is not necessarily the point here.  Of course it does, that should be obvious.

The bigger question in this — is it worth it?

Is it better for the author to be paid in money or in listeners?

When authors charge for their work, they'll lose listeners.  They lose that word-of-mouth advertising which could gain an exponential amount of new consumers.  These can then be translated into revenue upon a book release.  But how many listeners, once they've heard the book, will decide not to buy it because they don't need to read a story they already know?

I have no answers, only questions.  I think a statistical study would be fascinating and incredibly useful.  Sure hope someone with better math skills than me is working on it (:

Transmedia storytelling: Do you want blood with that battlescene?

I geek out over stories that cross the boundary between fiction and reality.  It's one thing for words to make you see a piece of artwork, a step further to actually see it.  I had an unintentional moment like this with CHAINFIRE by Terry Goodkind.  When my plane got stuck on the runway for two hours in the snowstorm, I had plenty of time to get deep into this book.  So I'm visualizing Nicci as she sobs to Richard that she failed him, it's all her fault…. "I don't want to live anymore.  It hurts too much.  Please, use your knife and end it."  Out of the corner of my eye, I see red-brown blood pour down.  My heart stopped, then I realized….it wasn't blood.  It was dirt washing down the windows as attendants de-iced the plane.

But that feeling stayed with me and I wonder about the future of books given technology like the Kindle, Wii, and iphone.  Right now, we can pull a finger across the screen to turn a page but that just scratches the surface of the tactile opportunities available.  What if you turn a page of a mystery, a the killer takes another victim, and blood pours over the pages?  A fantasy novel that sets the tone of a chapter with an interactive image?  What about a puzzle in a thriller that allows you to press the screen like a minigame to find the answer?  

Children's books utilize the medium more than adult books do.  I've got a graphic novel draft of a supernatural murder mystery told exclusively through primary evidence.  I'd love for the pages to have the texture of post-its, photographs, and plastic, as appropriate.  At the scene of the crime, I want copper imbedded in the page like a scratch-n-sniff so it smells like blood. 

It's an ambitious project and I realize that publishers might be hesitant to invest in it because it would be more expensive to produce.  So I keep on the lookout for the limitations and opportunities arising with multimedia and new technology by absorbing everything that is J.C. Hutchins.  He recently got the opportunity to interview two members of the publishing industry about the possibilities of deepening the reader's experience.

When Tension’s on a Bagel…!

Tension in the morning
tension in the evening
tension at suppertime
when tension's in your novel
you will make scenes rock every time

Words pour from my fingers when I escalate that delicious conflict :D  When my brain clogs up, it's usually because I haven't devised enough natural tension so I'm either writing boring scenes or forcing friction on unmotivated characters.  That's what dancing is for!  

Yes, I actually like writer's block. It makes me exercise!
 

Dream: Dolphin babies and optical psychosis

I swam so that I faced the sunbeams pouring down from the ocean’s surface.  Above me, a school of bug-eyed baby dolphins (looked more like one-foot seals) pressed against a few snorkelers.  I stroked up to them and the dolphins fluttered around us like tadpoles before heading on their way.  The snorkelers and I continued along with the current as the sun set a rainbow of colors. 

The grey outlines of tiny jellyfish floated around us.  As the sky darkened, we saw more and larger jellyfish with ruffled tentacles in orange, pink, and blue.  I kept close to the group, nervous we would run into a man-o-war or irukanji ;_; 
When we reached the end of the current, the water became shallow.  I walked out into a hallway and saw that the jellyfish were safe to be around because they weren’t real.  They were just species charts on the wall that were so beautiful it was hard to distinguish the art from reality. 
 

I headed to work but found a note there with a prescription for contacts so I went to the optometrist instead.  The doctor had left for the day so the office was converted to a shoe store.  The manager told me that I was given the wrong prescription from my last optometrist and that it had given me 647 counts of psychosis over the past year.  I didn’t remember any of them but the manager paced around, telling me I was in danger of losing what was left of my mind unless I could get the correct prescription.
 

The X-Factor - Find your High Concept

Novels don't require a Big Idea in order to be good but an idea that boils into a unique pitch is more marketable to the agent, publisher, and those readers skimming the back of books.  Far from selling out, this technique seduces readers into the book and isn't that the point of writing?  Sharing that world?

Top 5 villains who haunt my nightmares

Writing books tell me I'm supposed to like the three-dimensional antagonist who is just a reflection of myself, who is justified, blah, blah, blah.  And I do enjoy the depth of those like Zach's father in Personal Effects:  Dark Art.

But my very favorite villains are psychos all the way!  I love quirky bad guys with a method to their madness that makes sense to them if not to anyone else.  I want them to be passionately motivated \with varying levels of emotion.  I like a villain with sense of humor, that bit of humanity wrapped in evil chills me.

Sylar - from Heroes.  omg this guy puts a face to the bogeyman under my bed.  All he wants to do is figure out how things work….an innocent enough pursuit for a nice enough guy.  Until he graduates from dissecting watches to dissecting brains.  Aside from ripping abilities out of people's minds, he has no interest in hurting anyone.  It's just an unfortunate side effect of the process.  Unless they get in his way, which of course they do, and then he has no choice.  I like this idea of a villain 'forced' into his villainous actions.

Dread - from Otherland by Tad Williams.  This guy constantly has a song in his head, usually classical music.  There's something very disturbing about a man who kills not out of anger, but with serenity.  He's specific about his violence, not one of those bad guys who tries to make it into the Guinness Book of Law-Breaking.  He has zero interest in being a sexual deviant, finds it disgusting.

The Joker - primarily the incarnation from The Dark Knight.  He's dedicated to the challenge of anarchy.  He's gleeful about destruction and his stories about his past contradict each other so you don't really know why he is the way he is…maybe there's a hint of truth in all of them, or maybe he had a perfectly well-adjusted childhood and is just rationalising why he is how he is.  One of the most interesting moments with him is when he says that he would never want to kill Batman, despite how much he seems to try.  Batman is his companion in freakdom and the challenge that keeps him stimulated.

The Dark Man - from Personal Effects:  Dark Art.  I've never been terrified by an elusive 'dark presense' before but wow.  I love the hints of madness and how the protag fails to maintain his sanity in the face of the abnormal.  

Zcythe - from Lightning Spliced.  Okay, okay, she's my own villain but I had to get a female up here.  This girl loves killing people because she thinks it's fashionable from her custom knives to the skull clips in her pigtails. She's so happy-go-lucky I can't help but want to hang out with her.

One thing these villains all have in common is that they are far stronger than the protags that fight them.  Just when the protag thinks they've got the antag cornered (Joker's in jail), all hell breaks loose.  The antags push the protags to the edge–off it–buildings explode, people die, drama ensues!

Was it worth sitting on the runway for two hours?

…in a plane so small I hit my head on the ceiling?

…yes.