Call Stories - Adina West

Please welcome Adina West as she opens a new facet of the DSDU Pack... The Call Story!

*  *  *

Dark Child is my debut novel, a paranormal fantasy initially published by Pan Macmillan’s digital-only imprint Momentum as a serialized novel in five parts starting 1 Feb 2013. With one episode released each month, it has gained a growing following, and on 1^st May, Dark Child: Episode 4 debuted at #1 on the Apple iBookstore charts in Australia and New Zealand, and #4 on the iBookstore charts in the UK.

The concluding part, Dark Child: Episode 5, will be released 1 June together with the Omnibus Edition which combines all five parts in one novel as I originally wrote it.

Dark Child: Episode 1, the novella length introduction to this series, is available for free on promotion. Download it here.


My road to publication, and the story of the day I got ‘The Call” (or email!)

"You never answer your mobile phone," my sister always complains. "It's really annoying." She's right though - I often have my phone muted so it doesn't disturb me when I'm putting my son to sleep...and then I forget to turn the sound back on. So my call was actually a missed call.

But I'll start a bit further back, with the story of how this book came about.

I've been jotting down story ideas since I was a child, but it wasn't 'til I had my first child in 2007 that I started taking what I was doing seriously. I had less free time than I'd ever had before, but I knew I wanted to write.

I'd worked on dozens of ideas over the years, usually not getting more than a few chapters in (or less!) before abandoning them. One manuscript - for a historical romance - I'd spent about six years on, and it was almost complete at 75,000 words. But I was deeply unhappy with it, and not sure why. Looking back, it was because it was riddled with rookie errors - but at the time, I couldn't put my finger on the problem.
Anyway, I'd told myself that I wouldn't start another project until my historical was finished - but I was well and truly blocked. Meanwhile, I'd been reading some paranormal romance by various authors, and then Twilight fever hit...

Late in 2008, I found myself writing something - just a disjointed fragment - in a real-world setting but with paranormal elements. Over the coming months, I kept thinking about the story surrounding that one scene, and early in 2009 I started to write in earnest. By September, I had a complete first draft, and I revised and polished, and then got feedback from a group of wonderful beta readers. By the beginning of 2010, I'd incorporated their suggestions and revised some more, and then I started querying agents. Many months - and many rejections - later, I signed with my agent. She requested further revisions, and I completed them late in 2010.

Unfortunately the GFC hit then, and selling anything to publishers was harder than ever, so it wasn’t until early in 2012 that my agent sent the first part of Dark Child to Momentum, Pan Macmillan Australia's new digital-only division. Then a month or so later, in February 2012, she emailed to say that they'd requested the full. Still, after playing the waiting game for the previous year, I didn't let myself get my hopes up. On a Tuesday morning at the beginning of April, I was at playgroup with my kids, surrounded by screaming children, and somehow, I heard the beep of my phone as a text message came through. It was from my agent, asking me to call her! And then I checked my email (gotta love these smart phones) and there was one from her, again asking me to call her. Getting not one, but two messages was enough to have me in a mild state of shock, because my agent is more the email type. Until then, I don't think she'd ever rung me before. So I called her straight back - and she gave me the news that Joel Naoum, the publisher at Momentum, loved Dark Child! And he'd made an offer for world e-book rights.

Honestly, I think I was in shock when I first heard - and rather than scaring all the playgroup kids by jumping up and down and squealing, I limited myself to telling all the other mums and contacting my entire family (and my beta gals, my wonderful cheer squad) to let them know the good news! It’s taken plenty of work to get Dark Child edited and polished and ready for the world, but now it’s out there and I couldn’t be prouder. Hearing from readers who’ve enjoyed Kat’s story makes all the hard work worthwhile! And now, of course, I’m working on the sequel…

My short bio:

Adina West grew up on a remote property on Australia’s east coast, in country New South Wales. She spent most of her childhood curled up with a book, and her first teenage job was shelving books at the local library, where she was cautioned more than once for reading them instead of putting them away.
Her first stories were laboriously typed up with two fingers on her parents’ old typewriter. Her dream of one day being a published writer progressed much faster after she learned to touch type and switched to a computer.

Adina lives in Sydney’s leafy north-west with her IT guru husband, two children, and a couple of unwelcome possums who really don’t know how to take a hint. You can visit her online at www.adinawest.com.

Author links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Enchanted Orb... The Inspiration of Adina West

Adina West looks at the role of inspiration in a commercial world, as she shares the story behind Dark Child, her first novel, which is being released by Pan Macmillan’s Momentum as a serialized e-book starting 1^st February, 2013.

                                                            * * *

For me, when inspiration strikes, the characters always come first. Sometimes characters in a particular scenario. And then, I’m left with the question: how did they end up here? What events led them to this? When I get an idea, (and in common with most writers, I honestly have no idea where they come from) I jot down a few notes to remind me of the key elements. I have a special folder for these on my computer. Many of these jottings may never end up going anywhere, but writing them down means I can put them aside, so they’ll stop niggling at me.

Today though, I’d like to concentrate on the chain of events that inspired Dark Child, as it’s my first published book. The first book I followed through on, from initial idea to finished article. And perhaps it’s no surprise that there was something a little bit different about the inspiration for this book than all the other stories I’d started and abandoned.

The idea that ended up leading me to Dark Child was one I consciously went looking for. I’d been writing romance for years, with one particular project that I’d labored over for ages, had almost finished and then put aside in frustration. There was something wrong with it, but I wasn’t sure what. And besides, I’d written it just for myself. While it was a romance, it didn’t fall neatly into a particular romance sub-genre, and I knew that would make it harder to sell, but I told myself that as I wasn’t seeking publication it didn’t matter.

This time, though, I decided to try something completely different. Well, not completely different – I wanted to keep the romance, but write something with paranormal elements. My sister had introduced me to PNR authors like JR Ward and Nalini Singh. Twilight was also really big around that time. And I’d decided I really did want to write seriously. Write with a view to ultimately being published.

Write what you know, I remembered hearing. Write what you like to read. I loved reading paranormal, and without quite realizing it, I’d watched pretty much every vampire movie and TV series made in the last twenty years. I also knew paranormal was selling well, around the world. So I thought if I liked the genre anyway, it made sense to try something that was commercial. No more dilly-dallying around. Why not intentionally set out to write something that would have a good chance of getting published?

When you’re unpublished, it doesn’t seem so outlandish to aim for the moon. So why not plan to write a series from the outset? In for a penny, in for a pound, right? I bent my mind to thinking of a concept that could hold together a series of paranormal romance novels. A common character that travelled through all the books perhaps? I thought vaguely about a paranormal detective, solving crimes, one per book. I jotted down ideas, scenarios, and characters as they came to me. And without realizing it, I was building my world. In my notes, in the ways characters interacted, I’d already started to formulate my version of what a world with vampiric beings and shape shifters might look like.

Anyway, I wrote a scene, based around one of the many scenarios that I’d written down in summary form. Then I wrote a little bit more. It was about a human girl – an unusual human girl, who moved into an apartment building with a secret. An apartment building warded with magical runes, so she shouldn’t have been able to see it, let alone walk through the front door. I sent it off to my sister, my PNR ‘expert’ for comment. Was it a piece of god awful tripe, or did she think I had something worth pursuing?

Well, her first comment, funnily enough, was about the lack of a hero. A paranormal romance is, by definition, the story of how two people find love, find their ‘Happily ever after’. “If it’s going to be a paranormal romance,” my sister said, “we really should meet the hero near the beginning of the book. Where is he?”

 

“Oh,” I said, “I forgot to mention, this isn’t a paranormal romance novel.” (It wasn’t a detective novel either, though that had been my starting point. I kept the detective, but as a minor character.)

“Okay,” my sister said. I could hear the furrowed brow down the telephone line. “What is it then?”

The project had changed, in my mind, into something else. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what. So much for my initial plan of writing something commercial, that would fall neatly into a known genre and be easy to sell. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending which way you look at it) that resolve had gone out the window as soon as my inspiration had been fired-up and I’d started embroidering the initial concept. I might as well admit now that I’m pretty much a seat-of-the-pants writer, and when you’re writing without an outline, or with only a very loose outline, it’s all too easy to find yourself going in a completely different direction from the one you’d envisaged. For better or worse.

Anyway, armed with my sister’s cautiously positive feedback, I put aside the few scenes I’d written, and let them percolate away in the back of my mind for a few months. Then I started to write again. I filled in what had come before that first scene I wrote. What had brought my heroine to this apartment building? Who was she? And I wrote about what happened next. The story of a unique young woman caught out in the wrong place, at very much the wrong time.

When I finally finished, I had the first book of what I thought could be a series, and it was a crazy mish mash of genres - closer to urban fantasy than anything else, but not quite fitting the mold. It had romance, and touches of epic fantasy, and suspense. It wasn’t YA, but it wasn’t purely adult either.

The important part, though, was that despite the fact that Dark Child ended up (despite my best intentions) being a cross-genre beast, it was my beast. My creation. A combination of all the elements I loved, in a somewhat unholy alliance. It was the product of letting inspiration run free. While the initial inspiration came from something I thought could have ‘commercial’ appeal, I ended with something that I’d poured my heart into. Something that I loved.

I think there must be a lesson in that.

A Bite of... Dark Child

This fortnight's "A Bite Of", features our wonderful Adina West and a snippet of her novel Dark Child.

Can you, in less than five words describe your book Dark Child?

Tarot, destiny, foreboding, Machiavellian…you did say less than five, right? But of course that means I have to leave out my brooding heroes, and magical runes, and lots of other fun stuff.

What inspired you to write it?

 Dark Child started as an experiment. After years of writing contemporary and historical romance, with little success, I wanted to try my hand at paranormal. I’d watched every vampire movie and TV series ever made, and evidently it had all been percolating away in the back of my mind.

I started by writing a single scene about a girl living in a building with a dangerous secret, a building she should have walked right past without seeing, like everyone else did. That scene grew into a full length novel. And that original scene, pretty much unchanged, is still in the final book, in Dark Child Episode 2.

Without further delay, here's the snippet!

Excerpt from Dark Child Episode 1

***

Kat turned her head to see what he was looking at, and saw another man – a very tall, very well-dressed man – filling the doorway.

And he was looking right at her.

Director Norris took a step in his direction, and faltered. “Sir, is . . . is something the matter? I understood you’d be waiting in the car.”

The man didn’t immediately acknowledge him.

Norris held out the sample shipper. “I have the sample right here.”

Finally, the man broke his unblinking focus on Kat, and glanced at Norris. “I’ll take over now.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, as if shooing away an annoying fly. “Take that to the car.”

“Yes, sir.” Director Norris scurried away down the corridor carrying the shipper.

Kat looked back up at the man in the doorway. “Country club material,” her grandmother would have said. A perfect match for the limousine outside. Even without his height, he was the sort of man who commanded instant attention, with all the confidence of bearing, the charisma, of one used to leading others. But who was he? And why had just seeing him been enough to make Director Norris jump to do his bidding – behaving more like a junior associate than the director of an entire research division?

“I am Ionescu,” the man said, somehow knowing to answer the question she hadn’t asked. His dark eyes glittered. “Director Norris reports to me.” He took a step towards them.

“Your name isn’t familiar, Mr Ionescu,” Paul said, looking baffled. “Do you work in our corporate head office?”

Ionescu turned to face him with an expression of mild surprise, as if he’d only just noticed him standing there. “Indeed,” he murmured. “Would you excuse us?”

Kat saw the strangest expression cross Paul’s face. Shock, then an odd blankness, then bewilderment. “Of course,” he said, and walked out of his own office without another word.

Kat swallowed, and felt a flutter of nerves as Ionescu again turned toward her with those darkly fascinating eyes.

“Ms Chanter,” Ionescu said, with a caressing smile. His voice was cultured, the vocal rhythm strangely soothing. If she’d thought otherwise when Paul had first mentioned it to her, the attention Ionescu was paying her showed that this part of the meeting was most definitely not an afterthought.

Then a sudden chill ran up her spine. Ionescu hadn’t been in the room when Paul had done the introductions.

So how do you know my name?

“I saw your photograph in the foyer,” Ionescu continued smoothly. “Last year’s employee of the year. Quite remarkable.”

Again, it was as if he’d anticipated her question and answered it before she could ask it.

“Oh,” she said, her anxiety dispelled. “Thank you.”

Ionescu crossed the room to stand in front of her, and she automatically held out her hand, expecting to shake with him.

“Meeting you is a most . . . unexpected pleasure,” Ionescu murmured. She caught a flash of dark eyes as he bent over her hand with a brief inclination of the head – a remnant of what perhaps would have been a gentlemanly bow in years gone past. It seemed perfectly in keeping with the rest of him, somehow.

“P-pleased to meet you,” Kat said in return, finding herself surprisingly tongue-tied.

Was that because of his old-fashioned courtliness? Or because he was still holding her hand? She had no idea of the etiquette on this. Most people she knew just shook hands and then let go. Should she . . . pull away?

Finally, he smiled and released her hand. Again, he made that half-bowing motion in her direction. “As I am sure Norris has communicated, we would be privileged to have an employee of your caliber join us.”

Kat smoothed her palms down the sides of her thighs. “The platelet study does sound very interesting, though I only know the little I’ve read about it in the research bulletin.”

“It certainly is . . . interesting.” Was there a glimmer of humour in his eyes? “And our research is cutting edge. Research subjects with blood matching this platelet profile are quite unique, with a fascinating list of correlating attributes.”

“What attributes do the subjects share?” Kat said. She couldn’t resist asking the question. Tread carefully, Kat, an inner voice warned.

“Certain dietary sensitivities and accelerated healing, among other things.” Ionescu’s mouth curled slowly into a smile. “I’m afraid I can’t disclose any more details in general discussion. The subjects in this study value their privacy, and we request all employees to sign a non-disclosure agreement when they join us.” He paused, and his eyes, thoughtful and assessing, briefly met hers. “Perhaps I should also mention that this position would attract a significant salary increase.”

“Oh!” Extra money would be nice, particularly if she had to pay for accommodation in a big city

“I hope I can count on you accepting our offer?” Ionescu’s voice was smooth as silk.

Kat blinked. It was a little too early to be asking for a commitment, surely? She wasn’t sure why he was being so pushy. “As I was saying to Director Norris when you arrived, I’ll need a few days to think it over. But I’m very grateful to be offered the opportunity.”

For the merest instant, Kat thought she saw discomfiture on Ionescu’s face, as if he’d actually expected her to agree immediately, to give her acceptance on the spot. But then that momentary lapse was cleanly erased, and his expression became benign once more, so she almost thought she’d imagined it.

“Of course.” Another charming smile. “Anything involving relocation requires some thought. But I hope you will not take too long to make your decision.”

Sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing Adina.

If you want to find out more about Adina West and her writing, check out the links below...

iBookstore - https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dark-child-episode-1/id581438907?mt=11

Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ABSR39C

Amazon UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ABSR39C.

http://www.adinawest.com

http://www.adinawest.com/adinawest/wp/blog/

https://twitter.com/Adina_West

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6860745.Adina_West