Let's Talk Facets of Fantasy

I’ve completed posts on all the heroines who appear in the two Facets books except for Katia and Alyce. They have their own books, so they will be discussed separately in connection to those books. I’d like to devote posts to the male characters as well, and to the role of parents and family in Facets (as well as in all my books.) But I’ll just give a brief rundown of Facets of Fantasy.

This was my second book, published in 2009. It contained 5 novellas that explored varying angles of the speculative genre—everything from epic fantasy to light fairy tale-with-castles work. Two years later I made another volume with all the stories edited and two of them rewritten. At the time I didn’t realize I could just upload those changes into the existing book—so now there are 2 Facets books.

Over the last 6 years, I’ve used the second Facets book as a way to sort the first one. I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with the reaction to Facets of Fantasy—something, though never fully developing into the Wicked Twins of Ranter and Recluse, has always felt shady about reader’s reactions. And no matter what they said, I could never quite figure out which story they really liked; really disliked; really thought was interesting; and really thought was boring; and why they thought any of that. Facets of Fantasy became a bit of a problem. I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

I rewrote Halogen Crossing and The Amulet of Renari for the second book. Nothing. (Except people have always let slip a faintly snotty remark about Renari.) I enlarged The Trouble with Taranui and eventually made it its own book. Nothing. I tried to make the much-acclaimed Jurant a single, but somehow that didn’t work at all. Nothing. I worked Millhaven Castle into a different story, Alyce, and I’ve already posted about the problem that book created. And still nothing. Nothing about why a boring collection of stories seemed a problem in my writing life—something that was a bump, a roadblock, and in a way a big secret.

I’ve now added Victoria into the mix because reactions to it were similar. I’m retiring the first Facets book and carried Jurant and Millhaven Castle (always mentioned together) into the second book, adding Victoria. I’m also going to make at least one of the stories into a single ebook, not sure which one. Whether this will solve the problem, I don’t know. But eventually I will whittle it down and find out why Facets of Fantasy is THE book I need to do something about.

And there will be more updates.