Monthly Archives: May 2012

Special Announcement – YA Steampunk Incoming!!!

  By Arial Burnz | May 30, 2012 - 12:48 pm |
Leave a comment

Steampunk & Young Adult – HOT Topics Today!

The Steampunk sub-genre and Young Adult books are HOT on the shelves these days. I’ve been saving this news for when we were further along…and some of you who are close to my husband and I already know…but at the RT Convention in Chicago this past April, I pitched a Young Adult Steampunk series to both Melissa Frain of Tor Books (our dream publisher) and fabulous literary agent Eric Ruben. They both wanted to see a synopsis and the first three chapters of the first book in the series. Needless to say, DeWayne and I were just ecstatic…and still are!! However, we were also really nervous because I pitched a series we hadn’t even begun writing.

Well, that’s not true. I actually wrote what is now book 2 of the series way back in high school. The story was called Dragon’s Claw and I’ve had the premise of the series idea up on my web site for quite some time. However, pitching the story to both Mr. Ruben and Ms. Frain and them showing interest put a blow torch under my tushie, so DeWayne and I really had to get cracking on the flushing the entire series out. For the record, I do NOT recommend pitching a story, let alone a series, until it’s been written. LOTS of pressure and LOTS of work crammed into a short period of time.

The Keystone Chronicles – 9 Books

Though the publisher usually has control over titles, we’ve named the series The Keystone Chronicles and Book 1 is Havencrest: The Awakening. DeWayne and I are writing this together and we’ll be using a combination of our real names for the pen name C.G. Henderson (C = Charles, G = Gina, and Henderson is our last name). For those of you who don’t know, my husband’s full name is Charles DeWayne, but we all call him DeWayne. It’s a southern thang.

Though we’ve been under a lot of pressure, it’s been a LOT of fun and the good news is DeWayne and I just finished outlining the entire series as of last night. I’m now crafting the synopsis for all nine books. I’ve already done the 3-page synopsis for the first book and I’ve written just under 5,000 words of the first novel in the series. Holy cow, have we created a detailed world! Every story in the series is different, even though each young person in the story is tasked with unlocking a magical stone. We have mystery, suspense, action, adventure, puzzles to solve, bad guys to conquer and all within the diverse world we call Evanterra – a planet about the size of Mars
with seven continents of various cultures. Steampunk gadgets, airships, technology and atmosphere will season all the books, but this is a mixture of some high fantasy as well. Dragons, unicorns, faeries, elves, wizards and centaurs are crawling out of hibernation after 3,000 years and these young people with their own magical creatures will be the key to saving their planet. Whew!

Almost Ready to Deliver

 

The deadline to have a synopsis for the series, a synopsis for the 1st book and the 1st three chapters of the 1st book is due at the end of the month. Yes, that means no later than tomorrow! I’d better get crackin’! I will keep you posted as to what Eric says and whether or not we’ll seduce his representation for our series. Wish us luck!! In the meantime, I will dream of bidding wars, movies made, merchandising gone wild and popularity that surpasses Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games! I can dream, right?

That’s my two pence…

Arial

a.k.a. C.G. Henderson ;)

Arial Burnz – Editor at The Wild Rose Press

  By Arial Burnz | May 8, 2012 - 11:52 am | ,
2 Comments

I’m happy to announce that I am now an editor at The Wild Rose Press, which is the same company I do book covers for. Woot!! It’s good to be a Rose Pruner in the Garden. Rhonda Penders and RJ Morris have been such wonderful people to work with, along with everyone else in the Garden, and I’m glad to be a part of the team in this new capacity. The Wild Rose Press publishes ROMANCE and they also have a more risque line of books at their Wilder Roses catalogue where they publish erotic romance. Considering my experience, I may be starting out there.

I was formerly an editor at Ellora’s Cave Publishing and provided content editing for historical, paranormal and fantasy, as well as contemporary stories – from erotica and BDSM to erotic romance and even sweetheart stories in their Blush line, so my experience runs the gambit. I’m happy I can offer my experience to such a wonderful team of editors and writers at TWRP. I will be editing under my author and artistic name Arial Burnz. The Garden already knows me under that name, so I’m happy to stick with it.

I tell ya…the publishing industry loves aliases, but it’s given me an identity crisis. Since I include erotic sex in my paranormal and fantasy stories for adults, I can’t have the same name for my Young Adult stories. I write those with my husband, and we’re using the name C.G. Henderson. But since those will have some sensual elements to them, I have to use a different name for my children’s books: Christine Davies. Then EC wanted me to edit under a different name, so I chose Kahli Reid (Kahli is the name of my main characters for the MMORPGs I play – Everquest 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic – and since I was already answering to that name, I thought it was a good choice). It doesn’t really bother me until someone asks the dreaded question: “What do you want me to call you?” I think I’m going to start giving a standard answer: “As long as you aren’t using 4-letter words, you can call me whatever you want.” Although, Sarah Grimm calls me Arial, her Sexy Graphics Bitch, and I’m rather fond of that title. ;)

If you’re an author looking for a publisher, don’t be afraid to drop me a line at the Garden: arial (at) thewildrosepress (dot) com. Be sure to follow The Wild Rose Press Submission Guidelines before submitting to me. You can send the query to the e-mail address they have on the guidelines page and cc me if you’d like or send directly to me. I’ll inform the submissions department of the direct submission. We respond within 30 days – request for more or rejection.