IWSG May Blog Hop – Inspiration

Where does my inspiration come from? Here’s a few places:

  1. Music.

Music is by far my biggest muse. It’s so influential to me it gets a mention in my author bio. When I say I obsess over out of control playlists, I’m not kidding. I even have a scale of measurement for how strong, long, or writable a story is based on playlist length. Short playlist = no idea. About 50 songs = decent idea! 100 or more = we have a novel buds! Then there’s epic playlists exceeding that number, like my moth novellas, my Alice in Wonderland retelling, Masks series, and Pyotr book, the latter of which is, no joke, over 500 songs. This is incredibly appropriate to be the longest playlist by far, and I anticipate Pyotr to be a duology with both books exceeding 90k words.

  1. Media.

Other books, TV, movies, anime, video games. Sometimes a tiny thread of inspiration begins from something very small, a what if, an interesting line, a favorite character. I’m one to draw parallels to the media I’m consuming at the time I’m working on a WIP. Some of my biggest inspirational media have been: Persona 5, The Ancient Magus’ Bride, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and Twilight. I’m big on retellings, and have several retellings drafted or on the WIP docket, so classic books are also a big inspiration, as well as an easy source of ideas for Easter eggs and other tidbits to include in the story.

  1. Research on hyperfixations.

Research informs and inspires a great deal of my writing and world building. For example, I love moths and cryptids, so when I’m researching potential stories, everything from animal habits and environment to cryptids traits and lore can influence the traits and character names and settings of my stories. The first bits of inspiration for my Contemporary Cryptids series came from the idea that there are different types of moths, therefore there could be different types of mothpeople. From there, looking into the mating habits of moths inspired the idea of a moth mating festival/rave/party.

There are so many little Easter eggs I doubt any one person could point out every single one!

I think this is one of my favorite things about writing, how it all comes together from little bits to make its own unique thing full of dimension!

What are your sources of inspiration? Anything different from me? I’d love to know! Drop a comment or come interact with me on social media, @AmaraJLynn.

Check out the rest of the participants in the blog hop here!

Rom & Yuli release day and what’s next?

It’s been a little while!

My website is up to date so I thought I’d do a new blog post for it, as well as to commemorate Rom & Yuli’s release day, 7/27!

I (for the second time oops) apparently didn’t have the right file uploaded. It’s still the book but the formatting is a little wonky, so sorry about that! As soon as the updated version is up, I’ll post on Twitter! I’ll get the full hang of this stuff eventually haha. You can, however, get it on Gumroad as the correct format immediately! You get it in all formats, and I get more of the money!

Check Rom & Yuli out now!

Gumroad

Amazon

And now, as for what’s next…

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me talking about #PirateMermanWIP. While that’s its Twitter hashtag code name, the story’s actual title is Into the Deep! It’s a light-hearted pirate fantasy adventure with a sweet and steamy m/m romance, and it’s a story that’s been with me for 10 years! My goal is to have it ready for release on September 19th!

I’m super excited for this one!

 

Patreon Launch, #LGBTQwrimo Camp edition!

This month, I have a few things on my agenda!
If you’re here, you probably know me from the Twitterverse and know about #LGBTQwrimo. Originally started by me November 2018 for NaNoWriMo as a way to connect more queer writers together during that month, #LGBTQwrimo is back for another round, this time for Camp NaNoWriMo! Even if you aren’t participating in camp, I hope you’ll join in the hashtag! Feel free to answer as few, as many, or all the question, pop in and out, whatever works for you. Be sure to check out #LGBTQwrimo over on Twitter! We’re also doing a mini Instagram version!

 

In addition to hosting #LGBTQwrimo, I’m of course participating in Camp NaNo, and while at first I contemplated starting a new project, I’ve decided to pick back up my #PirateMermanWIP that I’ve been working on what I hope will be the final rewrite of. This story is very important to me. It’s ten years old this year, and has gone through many renditions and had numerous sources of inspiration over the years. I want this to be the year this story sees the light of day, and so, that’s why I decided I need to get back to working on it!

My other goals for this month include releasing a cozy solarpunk short, and Raven aka MASKS book two! I’d originally wanted to do a March release, but ended up putting that off. I’m really hoping I can make it happen this month!

Patreon launch! So, I’m hopping on the Patreon bandwagon like many, after the news of their changes. Even though I just have one tier right now, I thought why not share it? For $1 per month, you will receive a special post of yours truly rambling about how my month went, as well as exclusive snips from my WIPs! As I start to grow this platform, I will try to add more tiers. Check out my Patreon now!