almost famous – Hermit & Star

Evolution

For those of you who have been following along since we began publishing the Parliament of Twilight books in early 2013, you’ve seen quite the evolution of our book covers. You know that I have always designed the covers. And those first covers were drawn by my writing partner Nevi and put into cover templates I “designed”.

They were lovely but the large paintings didn’t translate well to thumbnails and they certainly didn’t appeal to audiences who were willing to throw money at us.

So, I went to work redesigning the covers to meet the expectations of our intended market. And they were….. well…..

They were what they were. Not bad, but desperately trying to cater to a very specific audience in the M/M Romance genre while still making a valiant attempt to keep the horror element that runs through the world was hard. Sort of got it, but not really.

Our long time fans (all three of you) will also recall that the books themselves had a fatal flaw. We were writing stories meant to eventually overlap, but each story line was taking place at three different places on the time line. With overlapping secondary characters. It was getting impossible for us as the authors to keep the stories straight and I don’t even know how the handful of readers we had would have managed if our original plan of 3 or 4 books in each story arc had played out.

We did the only thing we thought we could. We re-branded, changing our label name from Wandering Stars Press (which was also the name of a comic book company anyway and was really messing up our Google search results) to Hermit & Star Books. And we took the stories that we already had, fit them onto a single time line and began writing the missing pieces to thread them together and give more life to the secondary characters who were the backbone of the over all plot.

What came out of this re-do was the ensemble cast that we all know and love today. The stories made sense, the time line was smoothed out, and we were writing at a record pace. But the new books needed new covers. So I put myself through the process of learning a new set of tools. Something more than a photo editor and GIMP.

And they turned out beautifully. With amazing characters on dynamic backgrounds. The response from our readers was awesome. We’re not NYT best-sellers, but we’re regularly in the top 50 for LGBT Horror, so that’s something. And we make a few sales every month, earning enough for a cup of coffee or two.

But there was something off about the Episode 1 cover. Something that made it look out of place next to the other ones.

It was the first. I have learned many, many more tricks to making amazing renders, the program I use (DAZ Studio 3D) has been updated several times. I’ve found hours of tutorials for making my final products amazing.

After dealing with this for almost 3 years (Episode 1 released in late Feb 2015), I finally broke down and did what I swore I wasn’t going to do. I risked the endless cycle of fixing and redoing my past work to take it that elusive place called Perfection. I sat down and redid the cover from scratch. New character design for Jacob. New background. Updating the font and graphics to match the other books.

Then this …

Which wasn’t BAD, but it certainly wasn’t good either. It became something else. Something new and amazing. It became this…..

And I am so much, much happier. I am in love with this cover. So much in love.

And by the end of the weekend, this new amazingness should be posted on every site where our books are sold.

The Questions that Matter #5: What’s on the Shelf?

Today we got our first submission for the Questions that Matter via email! Thanks for the interesting question, Tracey!

I’ve found everything that you wrote, but what do you read? What authors inspire you?

So, I’m only going to answer for myself this time, and guess at what Nevi likes. (But after being together for 17 years, I think I’m pretty much the expert on everything Nevi, so you can trust that my answers are pretty accurate!)

So, Nevi is very much inspired by Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Edgar Allen Poe. She loves horror novels (not so much movies) and high intensity psychological thrillers. Recently, we both fell in love with Neal Shusterman (the Unwind books, to be exact) and she’s looking forward quite a bit to reading all of his catalog. She also reads tons of manga. Just literal tons of it. It’s all over the house and she loves it so much. It combines art with words to tell stories in an amazing way (and was the natural progression from her previous obsession with comic books.)

And as for myself? Well, I have a special love for Anne Rice and Stephen King as well. But my real hero of literature is Laura Antoniou. She’s amazing. Just wow. Her Marketplace books changed everything when I read the Slave back in high school. (And did I mention that Nevi and I have a short story in her upcoming Anthology, No SafeWords 2? *squeal*flail*hyperventilate* Really, it’s true. I’m so stoked for it to come out later this year!!)

Anyway, back to my collection of books. I adore Anne Bishop, Richelle Mead, and was heavily influenced by Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear books. I’ve just finished reading the Steampunk London series (by Bec McMaster) earlier today and I was not disappointed! I’ve had to fight not to tear through it one after another! I like to drag out the series I love for a little longer if I’m able. I get a little sad when I’m done with a good story and have to leave those characters behind. I know, i know. I can re-read them anytime (and this is a series I will come back to time and again) but it’s never as good as the first time.

Starting the Dark Swan series (Richelle Mead) and working my way through the Unwind books (Neal Shusterman). Looking forward to breaking into Cecilia Tan’s Magic University books soon. And after that? Who knows. I have a huge collection of to-be-read books and try not to think too hard about what’s coming up next. It hurts my brain.

So, yeah. I rambled a bit but I hope that you enjoyed my answers! And if anyone else has any questions for this blog series, please don’t be shy about hitting me up on Facebook or via email (hermitstarbooks@outlook.com)

The Questions that Matter, #4: It’s Hard. So Very Hard.

So, here we are with what is now the fourth in our still pretty new Questions that Matter blog series. And if you aren’t aware of where it came from, here’s the quick history (for the last time).

We had a release party on Facebook for our newest book, The Parliament of Twilight Episode 2 and it was lots of fun! We didn’t have many attendees (only 10 brave souls, if I’m being honest) but that was probably because I up and decided on Saturday to host an event on Tuesday. I’d read a marketing article that said events were a great way to reach people with the new Facebook page algorithms making everything all wonky. So, I thought, why not give it a try?

Anyone who is interested can still go and answer the two poll questions that I’ve posted to gather a bit of info about what to do for the next one. Remember, Episode 3 will be here before we know it!

One of the things we did at the party was answer questions from readers. That was so much fun for me! I loved doing it when we did our blog tour back in 2013 (while we were still baby authors!) and it was just as awesome as I hoped talking to people and answering questions about our process and characters.

And now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the last question that came from the release party which is also, ironically, the first question that was asked. It was our #1 fangirl and editing genius Seth. (and as usual, this was copied directly from Facebook.)

First question! From Seth. Do you (either or both) have a character that is the hardest for you to write and why?

Funny thing is, Nevi and I were just talking about this the other day in the car!

I personally find that Julian the hardest to write. There are plenty of characters that I write who are complicated and sometimes just plain unpleasant, but with Julian it’s really different. He scares me a little because I’m never quite sure how he’s going to react to situations. With most of the others, I sort of already know what they will do or say in most situations. But Julian has this dangerous undercurrent to him that keeps me on my toes.

I’ll track down Nevi and get her to answer this too! Thanks for the question, Seth!

I was never able to convince Nev to answer this one, but she’s super shy, so you know.

Did you have some questions that you never got answered? Don’t be shy! You can message me, Dani Hermit, through our Facebook page or via email at hermitstarbooks@outlook.com with the subject “The Questions that Matter submission” and I will post the answers in our blog!

The Questions that Matter, #3: Where do they come from?

I’m sure that you’ve caught on that I’m doing a new series of entries on our blog. Here’s a little background, just in case you haven’t.

This one comes from my sister-in-law, Jamie-lyn. It’s one of those questions that you think authors get all the time, but I can’t remember ever having to answer it. (Note: once again, this answer is copied directly from Facebook.)

Another question! This one is a good one too.

How do you guys come up with the characters?

For me, at least, it isn’t really like I create any of the characters. It’s more like they just show up with all their shit and take it upon themselves to move in.

Generally, the inspiration for characters come from things we watch or read, but more often than not, the character is an amalgamation of several different inspirations before they ever show up in the stories. But once they have been written, they take on a life of their own, growing past the original idea to become entities in their own rights.

For example, it’s well known in our inner circle of friends that Jacob Kruez’s original inspiration came from Zak Baggins of Ghost Adventures. Nevi and I were watching the pilot episode one night and we started talking about how cool it would be to see a story about an exorcist was wasn’t all serious and stuffy. We wanted to have someone who, like Zak and his friends, was sort of a frat boy ghost hunter. That person became Jacob.

But we weren’t done there. We layered in more and more, drawing on so many things that we loved (like anime and reality TV) until we had a 40-ish addict with a serious attitude problem who hated that he was an exorcist and hated the people he worked for even more. Throw in a contrived, totally fake day job as a TV ghost hunter and now, we had Jacob Kruez. In the telling of his story of redemption and falling in love despite his heavily cynical attitude, he’s grown and is becoming something amazing that no longer looks anything like his original inspiration.

Wow, I can really go on! Hope that answered your question!

That’s one of my favorites from the party. I really enjoyed the feeling of being a “real author” answering “real author” questions! It was a surreal feeling of realizing for the first time that I’m all grown up and living the dream I thought was impossible when I was a kid. So very cool!

The Questions that Matter, #2: The Chupacabras

You probably remember me mentioning this last time, but we had a release party on Facebook for our newest book, The Parliament of Twilight Episode 2 and it was lots of fun! We didn’t have many attendees (only 10 brave souls, if I’m being honest) but that was probably because I up and decided on Saturday to host an event on Tuesday. I’d read a marketing article that said events were a great way to reach people with the new Facebook page algorithms making everything all wonky. So, I thought, why not give it a try?

So, here is a fun question that also came from Lee. It’s one of those things that I think everyone who read the original Tales from the Parliament books was wondering. (Note: again, this is copied directly from the Facebook Post)

One last question before we head off to celebrate day one of our new release!

This is another from Lee, and probably the most difficult to explain of all!

What is UP with the chupacabras? Or am I just going to have to wait and see? (Oh, come on, you knew I was gonna ask this one.)

The chupacabras. The fucking chupacabras….

The honest truth is that I have no idea what’s up with the chupacabras. We needed a monster that Siris was terrified of and after running through the old stand-bys — mummies, vampires, werewolves, zombies — we didn’t like any of them. But the day came when we had to write a scene about Siris being terrified by a creature and Nevi wrote “chupacabra”.

We both died laughing and since then it’s been a thing. To this day, I don’t think that either of us are completely sure where the hell she came up with that.

And that lead to an interesting interchange in the comments that now has me thinking that maybe we need a chupacabra to appear in one of the upcoming Episodes!

LEE: I was always wondering what the Hell was so bad about them. Nobody ever seems to like a run-in with one, Siris especially. I think some of the other characters have expressed a kind of disgust toward them. I was just wondering if yours had some kind of twist where they were especially unpleasant, considering your unique take on some other creatures.

ME: We haven’t run into one yet, but who knows? They might be hella hot, vaguely Mexican shifters. Or they might be nasty redneck skeezy shifters. Or they could just be scary and gross. We tend to tackle things like that as we come to them.

What do you think? Should we explore the chupacabra issue? Or do you have other issues you think we need to explore? Don’t be shy! You can message me, Dani Hermit, through our Facebook page or via email at hermitstarbooks@outlook.com with the subject “The Questions that Matter submission” and I will post the answers in our blog!

The Questions that Matter, #1: Why did you do it?

So, we had a release party on Facebook for our newest release, The Parliament of Twilight Episode 2 and it was lots of fun! We didn’t have many attendees (only 10 brave souls, if I’m being honest) but that was probably because I just decided on Saturday to host an event on Tuesday. I’d read a marketing article that said events were a great way to reach people with the new Facebook page algorithms making everything all wonky. So, I thought, why not give it a try?

So, away we go with the first and probably the most revealing question. (note: this is copied verbatim from the Facebook page.)

We got a doozy of a question in from Lee this morning! This is going to take a while to answer, so I hope everyone hangs around for the whole thing!

Here’s her question:
I’ve read your first three books, and was wondering, when did you realize you wanted to write something more episodic? Also, how do you keep your narrative smoothed out so that the story doesn’t just seem like a series of events, but something more cohesive?

WOW. Okay, let’s start with the easy part! Keeping the narrative cohesive. NOTES, lots and lots of notes. We make outlines of the original stories and then we make outlines of the pieces that should have been in between the scenes in those stories. Then we plot out how much we want to include in an Episode. Then we double check that plot. And once the draft is done, we triple check to make sure that we’re still following the timeline.

But as to when and how we realized we needed to change the format of the books? That was something we had to realize over time. The three Tales from the Parliament books were originally written as the first books of their own series. They are set in the same world, but focused primarily on three couples and were in different points of time. We had Ghost House happening first with Jacob & Brodie. Monster next with Julian and Siris and Inertia starting up third with Skye & RT.

What started to happen, because all three stories were part of the same world, was that some of the minor characters began to move between the different stories. And then there were connections between the main characters (Skye is technically the villain at the start of Monster and one of the heroes of Inertia!) It was all getting way too hard to keep the timelines of these secondary characters intact (especially ones like Richard who are alive and well in one and not doing so great in another or the Wolf twins who appeared in Inertia after the planned events of Ghost House 2 & 3 without a proper explanation of what happened to them.)

This was making us completely crazy, but we were writing M/M erotic romances, so we had to put up with it and keep the stories focused on the main couples, right?

But in the process of releasing the second books of Ghost House and Monster, we had a major breakdown/breakthrough with the writing. There was a massive spoiler for Ghost House in the Monster story line. I mean HUGE. Which in the course of the time line, the characters in Monster would know this thing but the readers would be spoiled for a major plot point of Ghost House. What were we going to do?

Well, first we cried. A lot. And swore a bit. Threw things. Then we got our shit together and brainstormed for hours.

What we finally admitted was that we weren’t happy writing in the romance genre. There were too many rules and guidelines (most unwritten, to be honest, but people expect certain things when you call your book a romance of any variety.) We were in love with too many of our characters and wanted to tell all of their stories. And, most important of all, the dark, horrific, amazing world we were building had its own story that loomed over that of the characters. The only way to do justice to the story living inside of us was to change what we were doing.

The final decision was that we would “rebrand” from Wandering Stars Press to Hermit & Star Books, take down the second books, and start from the logical beginning of the Parliament of Twilight story. It’s honestly the best choice that I’ve ever made in regards to my writing. I’m having so much fun telling the pieces that I thought would be forgotten or ignored. I’m enjoying exploring pieces of our world that were going to be left in darkness. And I’m loving being able to let all the characters have a place in the spotlight.

So, yeah. That was quite a question to answer! But there it is. Do you have questions for the authors as well? You can message me, Dani Hermit, through our Facebook page or via email at hermitstarbooks@outlook.com with the subject “The Questions that Matter submission” and I will post the answers to our blog!

NaNoWriMo Day 25: Big News!

So if you have been following my progress this month on my Facebook page, then you know that I inserted writing a short story with Nevi into my NaNoWriMo noveling efforts. Well, that story was a Marketplace fan fiction that we submitted to Laura Antoniou’s newest anthology No Safewords II, which is the follow up collection to No Safewords that she released early in 2013.

After several days of nerve wrecking waiting, we got news about the story. And we were accepted into the anthology!

This is a really big deal for me, personally, because Laura Antoniou is one of my personal heroes. Her book The Slave changed my life. I got my hands on it somehow when I was a young, burgeoning writer and it just blew my mind. The characters, the concepts, the raw power of her writing has been in the back of my mind ever since. I can safely say that she is my leather godmother! I would not be the writer I am today without the Marketplace books.

Being included in her anthology for the Marketplace universe is still very surreal, which is why I haven’t announced it yet. I’ve been digesting the news privately for the last three days.

And as for NaNo, I am still chugging away with only 14K words left to go. I know for a fact that the project I’m working on will be much, much more than the 50K of NaNo. But having that much of it done at the end of the month will make a huge dent in the work of creating the original story out of what was once a fan fiction.

NaNoWriMo Day 4

Well, Day 3 left me with nothing to report, but a frustratingly long night of dealing with crappy customer service. But that was yesterday and this is today.

I’ve kept up my NaNo numbers. Not much ahead of the game at the moment, but I’m hoping that I can fix that in the next couple of days. We have a long block planned for tomorrow that we’re calling our “NaNo PartyTime!” There will be 4 to 6 hours of crazy writing and everyone’s going to get fucked up on fresh brewed tea and Asian chicken with rice! It’ll be a wild time.

And, just to keep the crazy turned up to 11, Nevi and I decided that we needed to write a short story in the middle of NaNo! It’s nearly done now. We’re on the last few paragraphs of the rough draft and then tomorrow, during our crazy party time, I’m going to do the first typing and rough edits.

We’ll see what comes of that. Stay tuned for details!

Getting Back to Normal

Not sure what that means, exactly, but we’re settling back into a pattern now that the crazy of conventions is over for a little while. Nijicon was a lot of fun, even though we didn’t make much in the way of sales. We did met some really great people and discovered new artists and authors. I’m already looking forward to next year. I hope that the lovely ladies who put this together will be able to make it happen!

What we’re working on now is starting the planning for POT: Ep3, getting the editing process into full swing on POT: Ep2 (which we finished writing over the weekend away!), and organizing our products for the Etsy shop. We’ve got the convention bug now, so we are looking at going to 4 or 5 next year and have already started applying to various artist alleys.

Nevi is working hard at planning out the art pieces for POT: Ep2 as well as coloring a few of the black and white pieces from Episode 1 to sell as prints. What you’re going to see in the coming months is LOADS of new art from her that is focused more on our original characters than fan art. Also, for those of you who have seen and loved the characters that she designed for the Yaoicon 2014 mascot contest, Isaac and Maru, they now have a story of their own in development. Look for it in mid to late 2015!

newissacandmaru — Isaac and his merman lover Maru! Story coming in 2015, but they can be purchased as a print in our Etsy shop!

We can’t wait to get to work on this story, which is actually a hefty re-working of an older story that Nevi and I did together AGES ago! This is going to be something we’re working on around our main title of the Parliament of Twilight, so no worries about that series slowing down because of other projects! But with the vast world and demanding cast of characters, it’s going to be years before we see the end of the POT. We decided there was no reason to wait to work on some of these other worlds that Nevi and I are wanting to create.

If you haven’t yet picked up your copy of the Parliament of Twilight: Episode 1, hop over to our shopping page to find your dealer of choice and get yours today! And while you’re looking around, check out the Etsy store where Nevi has several art prints available as well as the paperback!

Up and Coming

Hey all, not much to update today in regards to studio news, but thought I’d share this little thing. I’ve turned on the “Ask me a Question” option on my Goodreads profile! You can ask me anything you want and every morning, I will look over my questions and answer one of them! Right now, all I have to answer are the generic questions that Goodreads gives to you when an author turns that on, but I’m still going to answer them. They’re pretty interesting, and they get the “standard writer questions” out of the way right off. So, if you’re interested in asking a question about writing, the books, me, or just about anything, go here and leave your question!

Other than that, you can check out our Shopping page for places to pick up your copy of POT: Ep 1 or some of Nevi’s art. I’m slowly filling up our Etsy and Storenvy shops with prints, paperbacks, and other odds and ends. There will be a huge dump of merchandise the week after Nijicon (we’ll be back on the 21st, so the dump will start on the 22nd, I expect.) I don’t want to run out of postcards, prints, or posters before we go to the convention, so that’s why I’m going slow with filling up the shops.

That about covers everything. Working on the final chapter of POT: EP 2 right now. Nevi has a few art pieces planned out and will be finishing them at about one per week. We were hoping for a Christmas release, but with the madness of conventions slowing down most of our process, we probably won’t have EP 2 out until mid to late January.

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