I can't believe I'm here right now. For the first few chapters of Dirty Lying Faeries I was my only reader, and over the wild journey of the past couple years I've met some of the best commenters, readers, authors, question askers, and book consumers I've ever encountered. You've made me laugh, cry, and push myself. So first and foremost, let me say THANK YOU. I really, really wouldn't be here without you guys.

A couple of you gave me some ideas on what I can post that might be interesting as a present for all you readers and I'm going to try some of those ideas now.

Writing process

What is my writing process? Hmm, that's a hard question but I'm going to try my best to answer. So first I'd say that I'm not so much a pantser or a planner but I'm somewhere in the middle. (A pantser is someone who writes by the seat of their pants, aka someone with no or little plot in mind. A planner is... well someone who plans it all out first!) 

I'm a believer that most writers are actually somewhere in the middle, though I do know many who are very much one or the other. 

For me, I can't begin a story and not know where I'm going, so I write myself a list of events that will happen and the order in which they will occur. Those are events that I want to happen but it doesn't necessarily mean they are giant plot points, they can be anything really. Here is my list for Dirty Lying Faeries of events that I wanted to happen:

*SPOILER WARNING*

DLF

-start with a party and a mysterious stranger

-MC gets weirded out by fae and ends up turning into one??

-antlers are hard to deal with

-mystery letters

-Why do they need changelings? Dead babies? :(

-SPECIFICALLY CONSENSUAL sex scene. Complete bond?

-mystery letters person is crazy but maybe useful somehow?

-Candace goes wild in new court but is still a crafty bitch. Be sneaky?

-Thea can find out bad guy is A near end but gets kidnapped!

-a war or something? mystery letters vs A

As you can see, it isn't exactly a list of important things that happened in the book haha. So I have my list, then what? Well, after I've decided on some key characters I will need, I then just start writing. I start at event one and sort of stumble my way around like a pantser, knowing that I'll need to head roughly in the direction of event number two.

CHARACTERS

How do I make a character? I love making characters, there are just so many aspects of the human experience to pick from. So how do I do mine? Well... have you ever taken a personality quiz or sorted yourself into a HP house or 'which d&d class are you' and all those dumb quizzes we love to do so much? Yeah I do those. I might start with an idea like "this person will have to be a pretty strong person" or smart, or bubbly, or whatever other thing I might need from them. I might even go in knowing other details like "well they need ice powers I think" or whatever other things I might have a gut feeling about. Then I'll do things like sort them into ravenclaw or decide 'heck yeah they would be a druid if they played d&d'.

That helps me get a start, a rough feel for their nature. After I have that I fill out these questions I have for myself that I need to know before writing.

Appearance:

Likes:

Dislikes:

Rules to live by:

Here is an example one-

Jerod Chang - Jerod works very hard to be the smartest one in the room. He has a problem with authority figures and with Jerod respect is earned, not automatic. Very versed in warlock magic, Jerod would be in the 9th circle, the highest of their order, if only he would stop causing trouble.

Appearance: Likes a neat appearance with button down shirts and tailored pants. Neat black hair, a lopsided smile, brown eyes.

Likes: Sweets, clever people, a good party, attention, and above all else a good challenge.

Dislikes: Being dirty, being cold, stupid people, pointless rules, authority figures

Rules to live by:

-if it was difficult or impressive to do, show it off

-alcohol won't solve your problems, but neither will milk

-never start trouble without a contingency plan

-Amusement is hard to come by, never turn away a chance at possible amusement

Q&A

Interview with...? 

If I did an interview with a character who would you like it to be?

And what do you want to ask them?

And the answer to a question for me that has come up recently:

Will Dirty Lying Dragons be joining the Wattpad Next beta anytime soon?

My answer? Probably, but NOT UNTIL it has been published as 'completed' with at least a week for all you guys to get through it first. (but probably more than a week honestly, I'm just making sure there will be at least one.)

Some interest has been expressed in just putting the whole series into the program. Honestly, I've received an overwhelming, and I mean really overwhelming, amount of support from being in Next. I think I'm going to have to go for it. I'll be applying for DLD to be added after it's done and then I'll be asking Wattpad about what it means for the series going forward. The experience has grown me as a person and as a writer and it came at a perfect time in my life. In fact, do you want to see what I bought with my first supported payment?

This is my son. He's all of two years old and in this picture he's in the hospital cafeteria enjoying yogurt for breakfast after an early morning outpatient surgery. He managed to fall and bust up his mouth pretty good, infection was starting in and he had to have a tooth removed too (luckily in a few years he will get his adult tooth in there to replace it). I'm overjoyed that he is okay now, but I sigh that my first payment ever as an author/writer was a hospital bill. Well, at least it will be very memorable, right?

I will leave you with one final thing: I will never stop putting free content on this website. Just because some things are paid doesn't mean I want everything behind a paywall. That paywall is an option for readers who want to support me to have a chance to do it, but not all of my readers can do that so I will be continuing to put out new content for those readers to enjoy too! Once DLD wraps up, I'll be completing my two novellas (Charming Heathra and A Murder Most Dapper). At that point I'm just down to Half Magic and with all that other stuff off my plate, I'll be able to plan something new.

Well, I think this wraps up everything for now. Remember to comment if you have questions or characters for the Q&A interview which I will do next month.

Thank you all for reading!

-Sabrina