A Scylla Romance

One of the things I love about writing is how plots and characters tend to come alive after a while and go in exciting new directions and evolve into things I never planned. In Deep Embrace the character of Scylla has done just that. She was meant to be a plot device but from her first scene she came off as sad and tortured. Scylla is a woman who has the lower body of an octopus with six wolf heads ringing her waist. In Deep Embrace her upper body is quite beautiful. I see her as having flawless white skin, black hair that goes down to her feet and green eyes. She was turned into a sea monster after she rejected the advances of a God. Ever since then she has taken to living under the ocean to get away from hordes of angry mortals who want nothing more than to cut her head off because they think she is a monster who eats children.

Scylla does not want to harm anyone but is willing to do anything to defend herself including killing men, women and children, if they attack her first. So, in other words, if you send your battle ship in her direction or dare to enter her cave, man oh man will she kick your butt.

I am seriously considering making my next romantic fantasy book about her. She has a fascinating background and will be so much fun to write with her temper and emotional insecuries. Scylla knows she will have a soul mate one day. He will be a mortal man. She fears he will never accept her or worse that he will be so frightened and disgusted by her appearance that he will try to kill her. The last thing in the world she wants to do is to be forced to kill her own soul mate.

If I do her book it will be a bit like Beauty and the Beast only the beast will be the woman. I guess that makes the man the beauty, huh? Another reason why I want to do her story is I want to explore the character of her sister as well. Her sister is represented as a whirlpool in the myths. I have this idea of her being a victim just like Scylla. She was once a beautiful woman too but got turned into a whirlpool by an angry God after rejecting him. I have this image in my head of Scylla looking down into a whirlpool and seeing the reflection of her sister's face in it.

The story will be quite sad in alot of parts. Obviously, in the end, the curse on Scylla will be broken by her soul mate, I don't know how yet but it will probably involve him going after the God who originally cast it. If the story goes well I will probably go on to do one about Scylla's sister afterwards.

Why am I thinking about doing a story about Scylla? I want to start writing less stand aloen stories. I have really enjoyed writing Deep Embrace and had the idea to write some stories about Perse's sister's to create some sort of series. But then I thought about Scylla and decided she would be more interesting. I thought about connecting Deep Embrace and the Scylla story through the word "Deep" in the titles but after a brain storming session I decided that would be too difficult.

So I am planning on possibly starting a series of romantic fantasties about the Oceanids/Sea Gods and Goddesses. I will still do other stand alones and maybe do series about other types of Gods. At the moment though I think I will stay and prance around in the ocean.

Let me tell you my evil plan

I am reading the latest Stephanie Plum book at the moment and I'm at the point where the bad guy makes his predicted appearance in her flat and explains the reasons why he turned to the dark side of the force and happily describes how he killed so and so and whatshisname for a couple of bucks or something.

It is such a massive cliche. If I was a super villian I would not waste time explaining myself to my nemesis. Oh no. I would just hit them with a broom or whatever else I had handy and let the scuffles begin. I would not be interested in explaining myself. Yes, I suppose, I might want to boast a little, that's understandable...but in reality, really, wouldn't the baddie and the goodie just run at each other and smack each other up without having a nice chat first?

Cliches are a big pet peeve of mine. It is lazy writing. It makes your stories predictable. I knew who the bad guy was in Smokin' Seventeen almost from the beginning. But then again the Stephanie Plum books run on a formula that is very predictable (but hey, it works and people like it) so picking out the baddie was not a hard one for me.

A slight flaw with ebooks...

I started using my ebook reader yesterday for the first time since I got it in May. For a cheap peice of shit it's actually quite good. The screen is bright and very well lit, it has nice colours, its not hard on the eyes, changes the page quickly, saves where I'm at and is no real different than reading a regular book. I've decided to try and stop buying books (with a few exceptions) because I have NO room left for them at home. I have 3 bookcases (one is huge and takes up an entire wall) and I am out of space. Again. I'm going to do a purge sometime soon and dump a shitload of old books on the door step of some Good Sammy shop somewhere maybe. Or palm some off to family I don't know.

I go to the online shop Kobo to buy my ebooks. I spent $20 on one which is not that much cheaper than what I would've been able to get it in the shops. I was happy to get it right away though and have no regrets. It's one less book that I will have to try and find space to squeeze into my many bookcases. I've been googling another book I want to get this morning and have noticed a flaw with the ebook industry.

For some reason the book I want is not available in ebook form. I have come to this conclusion because it is not on any websites. I don't know why. All the others in the series are available. I have a look to see if there are any Australian ebook stores. I found one. ONE. Where the fuck are the Aussie ebook stores? Hello? Anyone out there? Why are all of them in America? And some of the American ones don't even do business with people outside their country! How the hell do people expect ebooks to be able to take off if all the ebook stores are either restricted to one or two countries or even more irritingly restricted to one type of ereader? (I'm looking at you Amazon and Barnes and Noble....)

So here I am, trying to change to ebooks, trying to make less clutter in my house and be more environmentally friendly, and I can't even find the book I want in ebook format or a single Aussie ebook store. If this is what the future is going to be like with online stores restricting the sale of ebooks or even worse region locking them like they do with video games and dvds (most stupid thing ever!!) how in the hell are ebooks going to take over paper books? Jesus. It's like the publishing industry is determined to die, but at the same time, is clinging to life. Either make the change fully to ebooks and make them easily assessible to all or for Christ's sake make paper books less expensive!

I went to some online bookstores and one had the book I want for $41 (they are kidding themselves if they think I would pay that) another had it for $32 (not bad) and one had it for $28 (okay). You know what is going to happen? I'm going to end up getting it off Amazon for $15 and paying about $10 delivery. I'll get it in about a fortnight from America. One Aussie website said to expect delivery in 10 to 15 days. I'm sorry, but if I'm buying something from my own country, it should not take that long to come interstate. If it's coming from overseas, fine, but interstate? I should get it in a week.

And the Australian retail sector wonders why people shop online....