Category: Lost Angel Chronicles

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What’s in the works…

I had intended to mostly update folks on the couple of editions of things that are in the works, but that seems silly because there’s so much that’s in the works right now.  We’ll just break it down by title and universe and work from there.

The Lost Angel Chronicles / UNSETIC Files

  • When All’s Said and Done (Lost Angel Chronicles) – This is the story of how Kyle, Ridley, and a motley crew including Julia, Kyle’s roommate Reece, FBI Agent Matthew Thatcher, and company try to rescue some of the other “angels” and bring down the Institute.  Will they succeed?  Will Kyle and Ridley end up in the clutches of the organization that once held them captive?  Only time will tell…
    Word Count: 29076 as of this writing (goaled for 85k+)
  • Girl from a Brigadoon (UNSETIC Files) – In 2027, a town that vanished more than ten years ago reappears in the wilds of Alberta, Canada.  Within that lost town is a New York woman who’s been missing for as much time–a woman who might hold the key to why the town vanished and why it reappeared.  New York regional lead for the United Nations Supernatural and Extraterrestrial Investigative Corps, Brigid O’Connell, is starting to realize exactly how much her organization doesn’t know about the “supernatural” angle of their investigations…
    Currently reassessing goaling.
  • Untitled project (UNSETIC Files) – After witnessing a friend’s miraculous healing ability aboard the USS Daedalus, Brigid O’Connell volunteers to join a new, secret division of the United Nations – UNSETIC, dedicated to investigating the unexplained and, in some cases, defending humanity from it.  She’s assigned to work with Timothy McConaway, a figure from her past that’s as much ghost as he is man.  When they’re sent to the Bering Sea to look into reports of a strange creature hassling a research team, O’Connell has to wonder if she’s cut out for the job–and if her partner is as crazy as she fears.
    Word Count: 9,814 as of this writing (Goaled for 35K+)
  • Two additional projects in this universe are in the works, both crossover pieces between the Lost Angel Chronicles and the UNSETIC Files.

Epsilon

  • Epsilon: Redeemer – Lucas Ross has made a promise to an Alliance spy: he’ll find a way to restore Ren Flannery’s memory come hell or high water.  The floodwaters are rising for the Resistance, though, as word of their success at Castion begins to make the Imperium believe that maybe, just maybe, the disorganized rabble they through the Resistance was is more dangerous than they originally believed…
    Word Count: 21,788 as of this writing (goaled for 90K+)
  • Epsilon: Spades over Kings – Working title for a little side project in the universe.
  • Another side project is planned but not in production, dealing with the investigation by Alliance Intelligence of Daniel Taylor’s disappearance when his son was eight years old.

Awakenings

  • War Drums – This is Book Two of the Awakenings series and looks to be on track to finish by Christmas…but we’ll see where the story takes me.
    Word Count: Over 100K as of this writing – another monster, probably longer than its predecessor.
  • Book One – Print edition is currently in final editing (when I pulled it from Word into InDesign and started to fix stylesheets, I lost a lot of italics, so I’m having to go back and make sure that there are italics where I want them).

Legacies of the Lost Earth

  • The Last Colony – This one is actually getting really close to finish; probably only a few more chapters until done.
    Word Count: Over 80K as of this writing (which makes it just about as long as Broken Stars).
  • Ashes to Ashes – Book two of Legacies of the Lost Earth will pick up very soon after the ending of The Last Colony — but when I begin to post it is another question entirely!
  • Untitled third installment – I do intend for Legacies of the Lost Earth to be a trilogy, but that may change depending on where the words take me.

In addition to everything listed above, I have a full-time day job, a boyfriend, and a few projects currently in production that I’m not at liberty to discuss.

Stay tuned for more updates–and excerpts–in the future!

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I am, indeed, still alive…

What few normal visitors I have to this site will be gratified to learn that I am, in fact, still alive despite rumors to the contrary.  It’s been a busy summer so far and it’s not over yet.

Just to recap what’s been going on lately…

  • In April, I quit my job of six years at a major retailer of womens’ clothing sizes 14-28.  It was more than time for a change.
  • At the end of April/beginning of May, I started a new job, one with normal 8-5 hours (or 10-7 hours, but  more on that later), an hour for lunch, and good stuff like that.  One of the best parts about this job?  I don’t work weekends.  One of the worst parts about this job?  I generally get up at 6:30 to be at my desk by ten minutes to eight every morning.  Because I’m getting to be an old fart (stop laughing) it’s become increasingly difficult for me to function on anything less than six (or eight…) hours sleep, but I’m working on it.
  • I ate through my backlogs of both Awakenings and The Last Colony, so that eats up a chunk of writing time four days a week.
  • I’m working on the edits for print editions of Epsilon: Broken Stars and Awakenings Book One.  The unfortunate part of converting the files from Word to InDesign and then attempting to fix all of the errors in stylesheets (have I mentioned that I hate those styles sometimes?) was that I lost massive chunks of italics, so the process is taking longer than it should be.
  • I’ve discovered that I actually like to read again.  In order to wind down at night before I try to sleep, I end up reading for a couple hours.  This understandably cuts into writing time but is probably good for my sanity.
    • None of what I said above is helped by the fact that many of the series that I was waiting on the next books of have been released since May.  There’s one more coming in August (Caitlin Kittredge’s Soul Trade) that I’m eagerly awaiting, then it looks like things might settle down a little bit…unless I discover that the next Lightbringer book is out, or the next Graveyard Queen book.  I think I’m safe on Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices…for now.
  • Got rolling on a second draft of Epsilon: Redeemer.  It will be interesting.  Of course, then I got distracted because….
  • I had to get back to working on the sequel to What Angels Fear.  Especially because my aunt said her “friend” read it and is now demanding that I write a sequel (and wants to know when it’s coming out).  Coincidentally, this is the aunt that said she wasn’t going to read anything before I wrote my memoirs (she’s an English teacher).  So as I got to working on the immediate sequel to What Angels Fear, other things began to rear their fair heads and demand to at least in part be committed to paper.  These include:
    • A currently untitled Lost Angels/UNSETIC crossover involving Hadrian Bridger (Ky Thatcher’s main squeeze and Ridley’s former roommate at the Institute), Ridley, and Commander Brigid O’Connell (UNSETIC universe).
    • A currently untitled stand-alone piece about a girl named Caitlin and a boy named Thaddeus using virtual reality tech developed for an MMO to predict threats to life, limb, and national security.  This is also set in the Lost Angels/UNSETIC universe, like many of my works in the modern/near future.
  • Also continued some work on what may or may not be the first UNSETIC piece released (Girl from a Brigadoon is becoming more complex than I anticipated, but what do you expect from one’s first psuedo-mystery?), which is the story of Brigid O’Connell and Timothy McConaway’s first mission together with UNSETIC.

So, in a word, I’ve been busy.  I am hoping to be less busy at some point, but the date of that remains to be seen.  I’m attempting WebSeWriMo again this year, and I’ve set a somewhat ambtious goal for myself in hoping I can get twenty installments for Awakenings written in the month of August (which is just about one a day, with ten days off to work on other stuff) with secondary goals to finish the edits to Awakenings Book One for print and a tertiary goal of finishing Awakenings Book Two.

It strikes me that Book Two should have an actual title, but titles are hard.  I’ll have to think about that.

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First print release! – What Angels Fear

I’d intended to post about this last week and failed.  As of 17 March 2012, my first print book (novella), What Angels Fear went live on Createspace and Amazon.com.

It was actually not all that hard to put together, but I chose to publish this smaller piece first so I could get used to the formatting demands and the processes of Createspace as a POD service.  My overall experience with Createspace was actually really good and the finished product is very, very nice.  The cover (which is built on one of their stock templates) turned out awesome and the interior looks great in my opinion.

I’m very pleased with the result, which is available for $4.95 (plus shipping) via the links above.  It’s 122 pages and includes a raw preview of my next print release.

The next book I plan to release in print is Awakenings book one, which comprises the first year of postings on the project.  It’s twelve chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue; since I’m going to print the “deluxe” edition rather than the “basic” edition, there will be extra features such as a FAQ and an essay about working on the project.  These are coming together as I edit the raw text of the web serial into (what I hope is) a very readable book format.  As it stands, the trade paperback will be around 370 pages, though that number will shrink and grow as I edit and format the book to my liking.

The cover of Awakenings will be my first fully designed print cover, which I dearly hope will look awesome, and will be my first title distributed beyond Createspace and Amazon.

Kind of scary and exciting, huh?

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Schedule updates – scrapping the schedule

I’m scrapping the schedule–again.  We’ve been without a full time manager at the store, which meant that the other part time and I have been picking up a lot of slack (it’s a lot of store to run on three managers, let me tell you that much).  Instead of a full-on schedule, I have some deadlines roughed out, which now include some print versions of some already-released work.

Currently on tap:

  • Print version of What Angels Fear (including a brief essay on writing the work) – hopefully by the end of March.
  • Finishing up Epsilon: Redeemer, Girl from a Brigadoon, and When All’s Said and Done.
    • Tentative release time frames (all of these are subject to change and are for the ebook release; trade paper/print versions are a little later than the ebook release):
      • April – Girl from a Brigadoon
      • May – Epsilon: Redeemer
      • June – The Last Colony

I’ve got a couple of projects kicking around that will be released under a psuedonym that (for the moment) shall remain unrevealed.

[progpress title=”Epsilon: Redeemer” goal=”80000″ current=”65201″ label=”words”]

[progpress title=”When All’s Said and Done (a Lost Angel Chronicle)” goal=”85000″ current=”20018″ label=”words”]

[progpress title=”UNSETIC Files: Girl from a Brigadoon” goal=”45000″ current=”23642″ lable=”words”]

For anyone following the word count meters, they’ve probably noticed that I’ve been making good progress largely on Girl from a Brigadoon, though this past week I’ve put in some work on When All’s Said and Done and Epsilon: Redeemer.  The latter is probably going to significantly eclipse its word count goal and be longer than Epsilon: Broken Stars.

Speaking of Broken Stars, stay tuned later this week for a post revealing what my sales have looked like the past few months since I started releasing ebooks.  I’m still waiting on some numbers (Kobo, etc.) from some of the Smashwords distribution channels, but I can show off some preliminaries.  They’re not that impressive, but they’re “whole dollars!” as my brother puts it.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

 

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Breaking blocks – Institute Universe / Lost Angel Chronicles

To expand on a recent Twitter post and my last update (in which I complained about how much trouble I was having with What All’s Said and Done), I think I’ve maybe, finally solved a rather tricky quandry that I’d run into.

Here’s an excerpt from me clawing my way out of that quagmire:

            “Ky,” Ridley murmured, fingers tangling in my sleeve and face pale as death as he looked away from the tinted windows of the minivan.  Matthew had borrowed from the FBI pool to transport Ridley and Julia to a safehouse a few blocks away from Damon’s apartment.  I’d tagged along for moral support at their mutual insistence.
            We’d faked their deaths the day before—more to the point, the FBI had faked their deaths.  It had been on the evening news, though they hadn’t released the names of the dead, pending notification of the families.  I didn’t envy the person who’d have to lie to Julia’s parents about their daughter being dead.  I wondered if the person doing the informing would actually know the truth.
            When I didn’t answer him right away—in truth, I hadn’t heard him—Ridley tugged on my sleeve, his tone turning urgent.  “Ky, look out the window.  Look out there, at the coffee shop across the street.  The red-head on the patio.”
            I looked and my heart started to beat faster.  Is that Allyson?
            “What’s wrong?” Julia and Matthew asked in the same voice.
            “You weren’t in contact with anyone, were you?” I asked him.
            He shook his head quickly.  “No, no one.  Laren was the only one after they released me from the facility, and I haven’t talked to her since the motel.”  He shot a glance at Julia, whose gaze bounced between he and I.
            “What’s going on?” she asked, a hint of urgency to her voice.  “The only person I talked to back in Andover was Paul and I haven’t heard from him since.”
            “Ky.”  Matthew didn’t look back at me, but his tone insisted I answer, and quickly.  I tamped down a mixture of annoyance and fear.
            “Ally’s a mimic.  She can do whatever the hell she wants.”  I gave Ridley a long, hard look.  “Did they try to pair you up after what happened?”
            “Who are we talking about?”  Julia asked, sounding desperate now.
            “The girl at the coffee shop,” I said.  “With the red hair.”
            Julia looked and gave a little gasp.  Matthew growled and instead of slowing down, sped up, driving up the block before he swung the van around a corner and parked it on the side of the street.  He twisted in the driver’s seat and glared at all three of us.
            “All right, what the hell is going on back here that no one decided to the guy with the badge and the gun about?”
            Stupid as it might have been, I held up a hand to forestall further comment from him, staring at Ridley and waiting for him to answer me.  Dammit, Ridley!  If they tried to pair you two up, she’s got a link to you that she can use.  She may not have a lot of power in that direction, but it’d be enough for her to track you.
            He stared at me for a few seconds that felt like hours before he nodded, looking away.  “Yeah,” he whispered.  “It took them two months to figure out it wasn’t going to work.”
            “But long enough for her to learn your tricks,” I muttered.  “Damn.”
            Matthew reached back and grabbed my arm, squeezing so hard it hurt.  “In English, Kyle.”
            I jerked my arm out of his grip, rubbing it and glaring at him.  “We think we saw Allyson.”
            “I gathered that much.  What does it mean?  She works for the Institute, doesn’t she?”
            I glanced at Ridley, who winced and whispered, “Yes.”
            Julia stared at him and shook her head.  “No.  I don’t think so.”
            Matthew stared at all three of us for a few seconds, then started to get out of the van.  “One way to find out.”
            “Wait one goddamned second here!”  I got out after him, leaving Ridley and Julia in the van.  “You have no idea what you’re up against.”
            “A teenager or a twenty-something that both you and he knew on the inside, which means she’s got some kind of ability that I may or may not be able to combat.  Sound right?”  Matthew checked the clip on his sidearm and slid it back into its holster, then adjusted his sport coat.
            “What are you going to do?”
            “Get a cup of coffee and watch,” he said, slamming the van door shut.  Julia and Ridley piled out behind me.
            “We’re coming with you,” Ridley said firmly, positioning himself at my shoulder.
            “Absolutely not,” Matthew said.  “Get back in the van and wait for me to come back.”
            I shook my head.  “Somehow, I don’t think that we’re going to do that.  You don’t know Ally.  Ridley and I do.”  Though what would make Julia think that she’s not working for the Institute is something I’d certainly like to know.  I glanced sidelong at Julia, whose hand was wrapped tightly around Ridley’s.  “You said you don’t think she works for the Institute.”
            She shook her head quickly.  “No, I don’t.  I’ve seen her before.”
            Ridley paled again, turning toward her and taking her by the shoulders.  “When?” he asked hoarsely.  “How?”
            Julia reached up, cupping his face in her hands.  My pounding heart began to ache at the tenderness of her gesture; I had to shove the thoughts of Hadrian that swarmed up back down again so I could concentrate.  Soon, Ky.  Soon.
            “I went to have a look at the installation outside of Andover, remember?  That’s when I saw her,” she said softly.  “She told me to go back to town.”  Her gaze flicked momentarily to Matthew.  “And she left me a note to Google him.”
            I was stunned, and from the look on his face that he couldn’t quite smother, so was Matthew.
            “Why would she tell you to do that?” he asked.
            I stared at my sneakers.  “Because she loved Tim and she knows why he was there.”

This is a huge shift and departure from the original universe (Allyson wasn’t featured in the original draft–but then again, neither was Ridley, and Julia didn’t exist).  It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

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Schedule updates

As much as I really, really hate to do it, I’m going to have to make some significant changes to my writing schedule and my overall goaling.  This is largely due to a major uptick in the hours I’ve been working at the store–which are, in fact, incredibly insane hours as well as being very large in quantity.  I’ve gone from the 10-20 hours I was working two months ago, when I started releasing my work in ebook form, to working nearly 40 hours a week (add in an hour at either end to each 7-9 hour shift for transit time as well) and fighting a constant battle to not completely lose my sanity.

This, of course, means that my writing has suffered a bit of a setback.  I’m probably getting more writing done in the amount of time that I have to do it, but the time I’ve got to do it has been slashed severely.  This may change after the holidays, but I’m going to be perfectly honest and say that there’s no way humanly possible to finish the rewrite of When All’s Said and Done by 1/15/12.  I might be able to get the full draft of Epsilon: Redeemer done by then (the first 50K came in November–but since then, the story’s expanded beyond what I anticipated and the timeline itself for the universe has gotten twisted around a bit) and if I push I might even be able to finish the first draft of The Last Colony (more on that in a second) by the end of the month, but beyond that, it’s not going to happen.

I do have good news, however, and with the changes to the schedule comes an announcement.  Book One of Awakenings, which I’ve been releasing as a fiction serial at awakenings.embklitzke.com, is nearing completion.  After a bit of editing, I’ll be releasing it as an ebook through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords as edited copy with a few bonuses.  I haven’t decided what, exactly, those bonuses will be, but it’s entirely possible that they’ll include the original Marin work, The Vision, which would have run on September 13, 2001 in my university’s newspaper…if the events of September 11 had never happened.

So the schedule, prior to this writing, was thus:

November 2011

  • Write Epsilon: Redeemer first draft – 50,000 words (Nanowrimo project) – Deadline November 30
  • Freewriting projects – Awakenings side story (Kira et. al.); UNSETIC Files

December 2011

  • Redraft When All’s Said and Done (Deadline January 15)
  • Freewriting projects – Awakenings side stories; UNSETIC Files
  • Finish first draft of The Last Colony
  • Finish additions to Epsilon: Redeemer draft (50k deadline made)
  • Begin preliminary edits/replot of Princes of the Universe and associated cosm

January 2012

  • Finish redraft of When All’s Said and Done (Deadline January 15)
  • Begin editing of Epsilon: Redeemer
  • Freewriting projects – UNSETIC Files, Epsilon shorts, Lost Angel shorts
  • Begin full draft of Beckett (UNSETIC Files) – On hold pending word regarding another project.
  • Begin full draft of third Epsilon book (Shattered? Sins of the Father?)

February 2012

  • Begin editing of The Last Colony
  • Begin redraft of Epsilon: Redeemer

March 2012

  • Finish first full draft of Beckett (Deadline March 15) – On hold pending word regarding another project.

Revised schedule:

November 2011

  • Write Epsilon: Redeemer first draft – 50,000 words (Nanowrimo project) – Deadline November 30 – Done (at least the first 50k was done)
  • Freewriting projects – Awakenings side story (Kira et. al.); UNSETIC Files

December 2011

  • Freewriting projects – Awakenings side stories; UNSETIC Files
  • Finish first draft of The Last Colony (deadline January 12)
  • Continue Epsilon: Redeemer draft (Goaled at 85k words)
  • Finish Awakenings Book 1, begin book 2
  • Continue draft of When All’s Said and Done (New deadline: February 15)

January 2012

  • Finish redraft of When All’s Said and Done (Deadline February 15)
  • Begin editing of Epsilon: Redeemer (Week of January 23)
  • Freewriting projects – UNSETIC Files, Epsilon shorts, Lost Angel shorts
  • Begin full draft of Beckett (UNSETIC Files) – Still on hold pending word regarding another project.
  • Begin plotting of third Epsilon book (Ren’s PoV)
  • Edit Awakenings Book 1

February 2012

  • Finish full redraft of When All’s Said and Done (Feb. 15)
  • Begin editing of The Last Colony
  • Begin redraft of Epsilon: Redeemer

March 2012

  • Finish first full draft of Beckett (Deadline March 15) – On hold pending word regarding another project.
  • Finish redraft of Epsilon: Redeemer (March 30)
  • Finish editing The Last Colony
  • Begin editing When All’s Said and Done (March 1)

Only time will tell whether or not this is a workable schedule (and it’ll be heavily dependant on my schedule at the store as well–but writing doesn’t pay the bills yet, so I have to keep the PTSL job).

If any readers have managed to wander out here, I welcome comments and whines about what you want to see me working on next!  They do light a bit of a fire under me to keep me working hard at what I love to do, and encourage me to spend brainsweat on projects, despite their ups and downs.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

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New release ramblings

Good news!  What Angels Fear, a Lost Angel Chronicle, is now available on Smashwords, Amazon (UK, DE, FR), and Barnes and Noble.  It is the first installment of the Lost Angel Chronicles, a universe that includes my once-touted When All’s Said and Done.  I had anticipated releasing it after Epsilon: Broken Stars, but that’s tied up in editing this week (the people I tapped couldn’t look at it until this week).  The editing on What Angels Fear was faster–thanks again, Krinny!–and so I was able to start publication on Monday.

The end result was it being fully available on the three front-line venues as of this morning.  It will hopefully be distributed to Kobo Books, the iBookstore, Diesel, and other ebook retailers soon (through Smashwords wonderful Premium catalog, which Falling Stars is already available through).  It’s also already on GoodReads, where I appreciate reviews and shelf-adds.

So what does this mean?  Simply that I’ve gotten a third “world” of my writing established in digital ink.  Anyone who’s read back on this blog a little bit knows exactly how many things I’ve developed over the years and either abandoned or simply shelved for later.  There have been two women in my life (incredibly supportive best friend type women, one mostly during my teenage years and one during my adult life) who have urged me to go back to certain projects over the years, or not to completely abandon something, and occasionally told me to focus down on one thing, finish it, and only move on after that’s done.  As a general approach, that only occasionally works for me.

Of course, sometimes it does work.  This was one of those times.

I finished off What Angels Fear after I wiped out the final of Broken Stars.  I didn’t dare touch it while I was in the final push, largely because the scenes I was working on for Broken Stars were so difficult and because Julia Kinsey and Ridley Thys are very, very different characters from Aaron Taylor, Sam Cooper, Mac Desantis, and Lucas Ross.  Their worlds are also very different.  I’ll admit that at one point I’d considered making it all the same universe, but my conclusion was (and still is) that it just wouldn’t work, due to the number of supernatural elements extant in the Lost Angel universe, elements that don’t exist in the Epsilon universe (or any of my science fiction universes as of this writing).  Turning back to Julia and Ridley’s world, and by extension Ky Monroe, Matthew Thatcher, and Hadrian Bridger’s world, was a welcome shift.  Of course, it was helped by the sudden desire to write something with vampires that seized me.

No, What Angels Fear doesn’t involve vampires.  But they’re in the world, right along with secret agents and people fighting the good fight.  More of that will come up in When All’s Said and Done, which features Angel Kyle Anne Monroe as its narrator.  I anticipate turning to that project in the near future.

Unfortunately, Nanowrimo is looming, and while When All’s Said and Done was my inaugural Nanowrimo project back in 2004 (coincidentally, also my first win), I can’t exactly turn around and redraft it for my project this year.  Instead, I’ll be working on the second book of the Epsilon series, Epsilon: Redeemer.

My retail job looks like it might keep me from traveling this November, so I might just have a shot at getting something done.

Wish me luck.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke
And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke