Why the blog title change?

I decided this morning that I was going to dump the phrase the Chronicles of the Gods for the books I am writing. The reason is because even though my books share similiar plot elements, I am not really writing a proper series, my books may all exist in the same fictional universe, but each one can be read on its own. Plus I am always looking for larger, more impressive publishers, to try my luck at and if I continue to call my books a series no publisher is going to want to publish the next one if the previous two have already been published by different publishers. I also want my blog to share the same title as my new website.

I finished another scene in Deep Embrace last night. It's now over 26,000 words long and I'm half way through. It's going to be bigger than Echoes in the Wind which is great! I'm really hoping that after editing it will be over 30,000 words long. It'd be amazing it could reach 40,000 words! I'm crossing my fingers I'll be able to finish it this year, maybe before June, which would mean that I was able to get it done in less than twelve months!! It'd be awesome if I could have it edited and doing the subimssion rounds at publishing houses before my wedding in november.

www.marisaquinn.com coming soon!!

I have changed so much as a writer since 2008. I was just having a look at some of the short stories I wrote back then and for some reason the size of the fonts I was using was huge and in one document I had a space between each two lines. I have no idea why I did this and all I can do is scratch my head now and go "Wa?" I can't believe how many short stories I managed to churn out in 2008. I think I did around five or something and then I spent a year and a half working on Echoes in the Wind which was a novella. I'm going to go back and rewrite all my 2008 shorts. I'm thinking about having a crack at entering writing contests. I've never done it before and I'm seriously thinking about trying my luck with FOREVER IN YOUR ARMS because its short and is a violent, with a sad ending, but might be good for a content instead of a magazine. I'm probably definately going to rewrite TEARS OF A GODDESS as a novella around 40k or longer and I might have a crack at doing GODDESS AWAKENING again. I've started making my website! I'm using the CSS skills I learnt last semister in class. I feel real proud of myself. It looks so much nicer than the website I did for my class assingment. It looks so professional and I made it all myself. I still feel a bit weird about having a website. I keep wondering to myself "Am I real writer? Am I doing this too soon?" I feel like I should wait until I have finished another novella and gotten it published. But Jay tells me I am a real writer and I should have a website so I'm going ahead with it. I'm going to purchase my own domain name as well.

Should I start a proper website?

I never started a proper website or a facebook fan page when Whispers in the Dark came out in 2009. Whispers was an experiment, a happy accident. I never thought it would be super successful and part of me thought the idea of super promoting such a teeny, teeny ebook was a little bit silly. I felt a bit like a little girl shuffling around in my mum's heels and wearing a large, floppy hat and over sized gloves pretending to be something I was not. I mean, I was published, but Whispers was so small I felt like I could not take it seriously, which is what drove me to write the longer Echoes in the Wind and the even longer Deep Embrace. I feel like I am slowly building up to being able to write 40k project in less than a year which is almost as big as a novel. I'm not a very fast writer. I do a couple of hundred words a day, sometimes even half a page if I'm lucky, I learnt a long time ago not to force myself to be creative because it usually resulted in me stalking away from my computer and chewing my fingernails and sulking. The harder I try to write the more difficult it becomes for me. I don't know how some writers can churn out 80k in a month or even 5k in a day. Maybe one day I'll be able to do it. Its certainly a goal. I think I am a good writer though. I was glossing over the fight scene in Echoes yesterday and was quite pleased with how it read. Its an awesome fight scene. One of my best. The result of hundreds and hundreds of hours of too much science fiction and fantasy television! ;-)


So, back to a website, I did a course on web site building last semister at university. I know how to do it. Maybe I should do it now, while I can still remember the coding, before I forget how to do it. After all, I'm a real author now aren't I? I've written a little novella I can truly be proud of. I've been thinking about switching back to novels for a while. I think I am going to write the last few novellas that are still rattling around in my head first. After Deep Embrace I am going to do IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS a story about a man that visits Hades and pleads for the soul of his dead wife to be released from Hell. Its going to be a sad story but I'm going to have fun creating Tartarous. Oooohhh....the possabilities....

Echoes in the Wind is getting published!!

I wrote Echoes in the Wind during one of the most difficult periods of my life. It took me over a year and was one of the toughest, hardest things I've ever worked on. I spent weeks sometimes on a single paragraph! and now it is getting published!! I am so thrilled. I am getting published through Champagne Books. Their front covers look amazing and their contract was awesome, no shifty fees, or clauses that made me raise an eyebrow. I am so proud of myself. I feel like a real author this time. Whispers in the Dark, while a sweet little story, was an accident. I wrote it intending for it to get published in a magazine. I sent it to Eternal Press on a whim and could not have been more shocked when it got accepted. I never considered Whispers a real book though, it wasn't even thirty pages long, yet everyone called it one. "My daughter has a book published!" my parents would tell people. I would think to myself "It's not really a book...its a short story..." People assumed that I had written some 500 page tome that was on sell in Dymocks. The truth was it was teeny ebook that made a couple of bucks. I knew I wasn't going to make much money from Whispers though. Getting Whispers in the Dark made me determined to write something much, much longer, that would go on sale for a decent price. Echoes in the Wind was the first story I wrote after Atlantis Reborn that I told myself to make it as long as possible. It ended up being 27,000 words long which I thought was pretty cool at the time. Now it looks like Deep Embrace will top that well and good!


Echoes in the Wind is coming out in march 2012. I'll be sure to post the front cover here once it has been released. I'm so excited about seeing Echo and Narcissus come to life on a front cover!! They are my most beautiful exotic couple ever. They are going to look gorgeous!!


Hopefully Deep Embrace will be the next to get published!!

Old Drafts

I had a look at the old draft of Deep Embrace from 2007/2008 yesterday. The beginning is terrible, it begins so cliche, with Perse tossing and turning in bed and then waking up to describe her room in detail. She runs to her parents and tearfully tells them about Helios and how she has to go to him and they give her some magical doohicky that will aide her in her quest. I had a look at the ending though and it was not that bad. I saw some good writing in there and it made me feel good about myself. I am even thinking about ripping out the ending and tweeking it a little to fit it into the new version.

I've been thinking about my next project as well. I'm torn between doing a novel and possibly rewriting Tears of a Goddess. I held back on the original Tears and kept it shorter when it probably should've been at least over 30,000 words long. I think if I went back and full on reworked it I could make it totally epic. It might even be large enough to be a novel. I always liked that story. I wanted to do a big fight scene in it but I held back because I was too exhausted to try and write it.


Deep Embrace is now over 25,000 words long and should hopefully crack 30,000. It doesn't matter if it doesn't because its a nice little length for most ebook publishers and I have already selected a few publishers I am excited about submitting it too. I really don't know what to do about the Seven Virtue series. I've been tossing up the idea of changing it into one novel but I have the feeling if I do that it might explode to a huge length because of the 7 bad guys in it.

It really is a seven book series at its core. Now I'm stuck with the question do I go ahead and plan for them all and write the first? Or do I rewrite Tears of a Goddess into a novel? I seem to be writing larger and larger works in quicker time periods lately. I know 25,000 words in six months is not that much to alot of writers who write at super human speeds, but coming from a girl that used to spend years on a single novel, its pretty damn good for me.

I am certain I am going to finish DE this year and will be shopping it around before the end of the year. I'm probably going to continue with the smaller novellas circuling around my head for a while. I'm going to try and make them as large as possible and maybe sometime soon I'll be able to write a 50,000 word novel in less than a year. Now that's a good goal!!