Snippet Sunday: When All’s Said and Done (work in progress)

This week’s snippet is from the sequel to What Angels Fear, a work in progress entitled When All’s Said and Done.  The story is told from the point of view of Ky Monroe, who escaped the Institute when she was fifteen years old and eventually found her way to Matthew Thatcher, who’s got his own bone to pick with the Institute.

The story of When All’s Said and Done picks up almost precisely where What Angels Fear left off–with an expanded cast and a shift in narrator.

Folks who have read Between Fang and Claw will also notice another familiar face in this snippet below the break.

Continue reading “Snippet Sunday: When All’s Said and Done (work in progress)”

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.

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 

Mid-chapter three rambles

It boggles my mind how Ridley could have had no place in the original draft of this project and suddenly, he’s stepped up big-time.  He’s offered me a major opportunity, however, through his relationship with Julia, to explain the Institute, what they do, how awful they really are.  It also means Ky isn’t trying to sugarcoat things as much as she would if she was simply explaining matters to Reece (or foisting it off on Matthew, which was also a distinct possibility).

Ridley is amazingly protective at this stage, mostly of Julia, but also of himself.  It’ll be interesting to see how he works everything out, and if he works everything out enough to be helpful to Ky in her fight.  I have a feeling he will be, since that’s where it feels like it’s heading.  But we’ll see.  I never know when it comes to these things.

Brandon helped me through a quandry this morning regarding a later issue in the draft.  It was a question of who gets rescued when.  I think we’ve sorted it out.  Either way, Ky’ll be gut-punched.  I decided that gut-punched and functional was preferable to gut-punched and a mess, and that it would probably be better if Matthew was functional for at least a dozen chapters before I snap him in half.

Folks who have read the original draft know exactly what snaps Matthew Thatcher in half.

And now it’s off to work for me.  Six hours of bleh.  My father doesn’t seem to think we’ll be busy on account of the weather.  I think he’s crazy.  Last day for Real Women Dollars = bloody well insane at the store tonight.

The coming April insanity…

The thesis is done, turned in, and will be out for binding next week.  This means I suddenly have quite a bit more free time, and it’s high time I dedicated some of it to fiction once again.  Not just reading fiction, but writing it as well.  Since I’ve never been one for writing scripts, and April is Script Frenzy month from the OLL (the wonderful, crazy people who bring us Nanowrimo every year), I’ve decided it’s high time that I start redrafting my first even Nanowrimo project, When All’s Said and Done.  The characters have been on my mind of late, and it feels like it’s time.

There’s going to be major changes from the original draft to the second, in part due to the ramble I started scribbling last summer, one that’s brought a character that knows what’s going on inside the Institute into direct contact with Ky again, rather unexpectedly.  Because Ridley knows a lot of what’s going on inside, more than Hadrian ever could find out due to the rapid decline of his health, some of the twists in the original draft will need to be reworked.  It’s all Julia’s fault, really.  She brought him to Damon (her cousin who happens to be Matthew’s longtime friend), which means Damon called Matthew and everyone got involved with each other quite a bit faster than in the original draft, though I think that having Damon knee-deep from the start will work better.  He can still be a little annoyed with Matthew, but not nearly as annoyed as he was in the original draft.

Having Ridley there and able to tell Ky and Matthew things, however, does throw into question some plot twists, including the one that involves Tim Thatcher.  I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.  Before I do anything else, I need to decide what’s going to happen with the installation at Andover Commonwealth…whether they abandon it, or believe it’s secure in the wake of Ridley’s escape from the village with Julia’s help.

I imagine Reverend Stonard might pop up in When All’s Said and Done, too.  He seems as if he’d make a good villain.  And Laren, of course, trying to lay low.  The Tina character may disappear completely, since the new version will begin in August rather than November.

A lot to think about, and only a few days before I begin to redraft!  What fun will this be…