Tag Archives: #amwriting

Spring Flight – A Poem

(Note: I also posted this on Substack, and then it occurred to me I could post it here… so now I’ve posted this in both places.)

I don’t fancy myself a poet. Usually if I’m writing poetry, it’s something of a song or ballad for one of my fantasy stories (or sometimes, in the case of The Singing Coil, sci-fi). But every once in a while the inspiration strikes.

In this case, I blame/thank reading “Zen: In the Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury.

So today I have a poem I wanted to share, drafted somewhat in the spur of the moment, but collected from little moments on walks and memories. A little bit revised, but maybe I’ll return later to do more revisions.

“Flight of Spring”

by Stephanie Flint

Let go, she said
Let go into the wind
Hold bright

Summer days, Autumn Nights
lead into dark, and then to the white
of all covered in snow where night is gray and sky is dusk
an ever light reflection.

Hold Hold
Hold to the faint whisper
rattling a single leaf
clinging to bare limbs

Will not let go.

Until there, brief, a stirring
gossamer dress

Now leaves scratch concrete as they bounce along
in the lion’s roar of winds
approaching in her fury
of being suppressed
so long

She is back!

Tolerates the ice floes, the sculptured piles of sand and ice,
once fluffs of delicate snowflakes made jaded and weary

But they say
she is coming.

She is here!

Let her go, dancing and whirling into summer
she will return.

* * *

Happy reading and writing! 📚

Leave a comment

Filed under Writing

Thoughts on Writing – Outlining Results (Cyberpunk Snow White) and New Release

Last year, I wrote a post on outlining a novel with the goal of reaching between 50,000-60,000 words in 12 days (a condensed version of NaNoWriMo). This was for a cyberpunk Snow White retelling.

The goal was met, I did a bit of editing on that project, handed it off to a beta-reader, and then sat it on the proverbial back burner.

Though I was busy with other projects, I occasionally thought back to that cyberpunk fairy tale but didn’t do much with it until several months later, when (in classic fairy tale-style fashion), I had a dream that I was busy editing the cyberpunk story.

Later that same day, the beta-reader who’d read it contacted me to ask if I had a cover for it yet or if I had made progress.

I took that as the “go-time” flag to get back to work on that project.

(I’m not kidding. I really did have a dream about editing the story before getting contacted out of the blue on the same day by my beta-reader. Coincidence? Probably. But still a great story to tell about the writing process of a fairy tale retelling).

Anyway, I proceeded to make revisions, sent it out to another round of readers, polished it, did a read-aloud for errors, and then proof-read.

The book… now dubbed “Huntress” (and the first in a series), released on Sunday. 😀

*Happy-dance*

If you’d like to see how it turned out, grab a copy!

Amazon (US) | Amazon (UK)

From now until Sunday, December 9th, you can grab it for 99 cents (or read it for free with Kindle Unlimited).

And, of course, you can get an idea of what the original outline looked like (and what changed) by reading the original post here).

Without further ado…

Huntress

A YA Cyberpunk / Dystopian Retelling of Snow White

SBibb - Huntress Book Cover

Her touch is poison.

Verdi is a huntress for Koenigin Corp. She’s augmented. Perfect.

Determined to earn her dear president’s favor and finally have her voice heard, Verdi agrees to target Maria Snow, the favored candidate of the Society for Natural Progression, in an acid attack.

After all, once Maria is no longer so lovely, surely she’ll accept the nanite-based technology that can remove her scar—thus branding her as a traitor to her cause.

But when Maria Snow refuses treatment and Verdi catches her secretly meeting with an enhanced, sapient bird, she realizes Snow might be the one woman who can forge an alliance between the technology-loving corporations and the nature-oriented Progressionists.

Forced to choose between loyalty to the corporation who raised her, and falling in love with the woman who could finally unite the two factions, Verdi’s decision will change the face of the city.

Buy Huntress today!

Amazon (US) | Amazon (UK)

I hope you enjoy the book! 😀

*

(Note… I don’t plan to keep Huntress in Kindle Unlimited forever. The first three months are a test run, and then, depending on how it does, I plan to eventually release it wide across other retailers.)

*

In the meantime, I wrote the rough draft of the sequel for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I used a similar process, creating an outline (though I diverged more from it), and writing 50,000 words in ten days instead of twelve.

Now it needs editing, but the start of the story is there. 🙂

1 Comment

Filed under Business Ventures, Writing