Dezmond's September Bookshelf

This month was a busy month! Sorry not sorry for the massive wall of updates!

I've made significant steps towards getting The Raven and the Wolf ready for publication. A huge chunk of writing done on Shape of Us. Two new stories have been started. Three experimental pieces were written and completed, including one rant about the state of the writing community and critics of it. And one rant about the state of polyamory in the romance genre after I got in a fight with someone on Reddit.

And I'm not even going to try to count how many new ideas were dumped onto my "potential projects" document I keep. (I have more ideas for things to write than I'll ever get to.)

Active Stories

The Raven and the Wolf

A farmer's son and a duke's heir fell in love as children. Now, king and family demand they marry someone else.

Lots to say about my novel this month!

First:

My cover artist, Sofía Sanz, spent the last two weeks working on the cover for my novel and I couldn't be happier. There was a bit of miscommunication in the middle, but it all came together in the end. This is gorgeous, and I'm so excited to see it on a paperback novel!

Second:

I've set a tentative release date for my novel for early January, with plans for an ARC release in November. To that end, I've decided to give my subscribers exclusive access to the first eight chapters (plus two introduction chapters) of the novel. I'll be releasing them two at a time over the next two months, in both my main newsletter here, and in a special mid-month newsletter dedicated to the release.

​The first two introduction chapters are already on my subscriber website.

​Now, Chapters 1 and 2 are also available.​

Third:

Book Inspiration: Stableshoes by Jo Morgan Sloan ​Read the full review here.​ This isn't a generic recommendation. This is the book that directly inspired me to write The Raven and the Wolf. Stableshoes is an MM romance retelling of Cinderella. An orphan is brought to work in the stables of a prince's manor. The prince and the boy get a childhood crush on each other, but before anything can come of it, the prince is sent away for training until he is an adult. I reached out to Jo to thank them for inspiring me, and we've formed something of a friendly writer's relationship. I've written a post about what this book means to me, along with some comments from Jo about what inspired them to write the story. ​The book is available on Amazon.​

On to other story updates!

Shape of Us

Sometimes known as Kimberly, sometimes known as Nate, they've fallen for three completely different people and have no idea how to make it work. But they're trying.

I got a significant amount of writing done on Shape of Us. I added a new short chapter in the early part of the story to fill a little plot hole that I noticed, and wrote another three chapters, getting through the Fireworks Date. This gives my main story over 10,200 more words, for a running total of 101,300. Plus, I got started on the solo side-story I mentioned Ryan and Andrew were looking to have, and it's up to 4400 words at present. They haven't told me how it's going to end yet, but Ryan is telling me things about himself that I hadn't expected.

Side Projects

The Hunted House on the Hill

I had a silly idea to write a CYOA as an experiment to see if I could write a story with a branching narrative, as a challenge to the "simulation discovery" writing I do, but didn't know how to plan it out. Then I heard about Twine, a program specifically made to write CYOAs. And I was hooked.

So far, the first choice you have is which one of three LI you want to explore a haunted house with (a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a partner), with each having a different motivation and personality. Each path past that has three decision points, for eight possible endings per LI, and a total of 24 endings in the book. But each chapter comes with a solid 1000 or more words of story, making it more of a literary story with a few key decisions, rather than a usual CYOA.

I'm in for a heck of a story that could potentially end up somewhere over 50k total words. This experiment might end up being a legit full novel.

My Lipogram Addiction

A lipogram is a type of writing that omits a letter in the text.

The No-O Challenge

You've heard about the book written without using the letter E? Well, I have a keyboard with a missing O button and I thought, hey, you know what would be a fun challenge? Write a book without the letter O. Use my broken keyboard so I can't cheat.

Oh. My. God. E may be the most common letter in the alphabet, but I would argue O is the most important. Because literally 75% of prepositions use O, a large portion of common verbs, and nearly every word for a person (including beauties such as across, around, about, along, also, down, for, from, of, on, or, onto, our, over, off, out, to, would, should, could, person, people, someone, anyone, everyone, you, your, our, folk).

And yet, I've already written over 3600 words this way by taking The Raven and the Wolf and translating it into no-O format. I have a 54,000 word story ripe for experimentation with.

I've decided to post this particular experiment on a new Substack page I created, so if you're interested in following the development of this project, you can find it at dezmondmoon.substack.com.

The No-E and No-R Challenge

Because I'm a masochist, I also wrote the first introductory chapter without both letters E and R. It came out to 1200 words and took 5 hours to write. I'm not publishing it anywhere because I'm hoping to submit it to a literary magazine eventually.

The No-E Rhyming Sestina

What can I say, I discovered lipograms and now I'm addicted to them. I was curious about rhyming patterns, heard about these literary poems called sestinas that use repeating words at the end of lines in a certain order, and wondered if they could be rhyming poems. Looked up sestinas, got pissed when people were using joint/it, thing/anything, and pig/Pygmalion as "the same word", got more pissed when they said rhyming sestina are harder to make but considered less skillful, and wrote my own sestina in under two hours that calls out the writing community across the board for holding hypocritical expectations and standards. This is another one I'm not going to publish publicly because I'm looking at a literary submission for it, too.

Short-form Writing Pieces

Experimental Writing: Melodrama

One of my biggest weaknesses in my writing is description. I don't know how to weave in descriptions of places and people in a way I'm satisfied with, that don't bog down the story with unnecessary information. So I challenged myself to write something as close to purple prose as I could get, without actually falling into it. What I ended up with was the most melodramatic narrator and a neighbor who calls him out on his shit. This is also on my substack.

​Read the short story here.​

Parody Writing: Writer's Eclipse of the Heart

Because what's better than a melodramatic breakup song? A melodramatic accounting of what it's like to be a writer who comes up with at least three new writing ideas a week and in no universe will ever get to writing them all.

​Writer's Eclipse of the Heart​

Every now and then I get another new story

that I need to write down

Turn Around

Every now and then, I read a really bad book

that inspires me to write it better

Turn Around...

Dezmond's Ranting Corner

This is new this month, but I just need to say this because I'm going to explode if I don't.

​The Problem with Polyamory in Romance​

I am sick and tired of people giving suggestions for poly stories that are either all erotica, why choose, harem, or unicorns. Is it so much to ask for that a poly relationship be given the same effort as monogamous relationships?...

Book Group Promos

Clicking through helps me a ton!

Heart, Heat, and Humor is one I'm running, because there is a distinct lack of queer romance promos.

In Conclusion

I never got to the black unicorn story. Looks like that idea has been shelved for a little longer while I work on Shape of Us, a CYOA, and a writing challenge I wouldn't suggest to anyone (unless you want to pull your hair out every time you try to talk about people).

Let me know if you're interested in reading my No-O story without joining a new substack mailing list. I can post a couple chapters on my website as well if there's interest!

Also, if there's any specific kind of book promo you'd be interested in browsing that also fits my portfolio, let me know and I'll see about joining or starting one of those.

– Dezmond
(They/He)
​Author Website | Subscriber Website​

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