Tag: The Rose and Honey Soul

News

Dual Tech: Combining forces with Eric Smith of P.S. Literary Agency

By Aidan Moher on July 20th, 2020

2020 ain’t all bad news, y’all.

I’m pleased to announce that I’m now represented by agent extraordinaire Eric Smith of the P.S. Literary Agency. I’ll be joining Eric’s impressive list of clients with both fiction and non-fiction projects.

Collaborating with Eric is a dream come true as I’ve long admired his work, ultra-positive personality, and all around geekery. As someone writing professionally in both fiction and non-fiction, his experience representing authors of both disciplines provides great opportunity for both aspects of my career. I strive to write ultimately positive and colourful stories, and I can’t imagine a better fit to bring those stories to market than Eric. And he’s just an all around cool dude.

Plus, P.S. Literary is Canadian, which is just icing on the cake for me.

My first project is a multi-volume novelization of the classic Japanese RPG, Chrono Trigger. Besides the time travel, this book will also incorporate the game’s silent protagonist mechanic, making it one of the most challenging projects of my career.

Just kidding.

(Or am I? If Eric can sell that book, I will write it!)

I won’t say too much about our first actual project right now, but it’s very exciting, and shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed me on Twitter over the past couple of years. In the meantime—work continues on The Thousand Shattered Gods, which is about half-complete, and I’m looking forward to doors opening for my completed book, The Rose and Honey Soul. More on those projects here.

I’m thrilled to collaborate with Eric on many future projects.

P.S. Squuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeee!

News

Work-in-Progress Update: Fly, little bird. Fly.

By Aidan Moher on May 10th, 2019

Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash
Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash

Last November, I posted about the completion of the first draft of The Rose and Honey Soul, my gothic-post apocalyptic-funguspunk-fantasy set in an eternally dark world. It was the culmination of over two years of work, and I was really proud of the draft—but also recognized that it needed a lot of work. But, I also needed some space—so, I set aside some time to break ground on my novel, The Thousand Shattered Gods. That went swimmingly, and I quickly fell in love with the world and characters I was meeting. Once I had a good foundation of work for the novel, I returned to The Rose and Honey Soul at the beginning of the new year, and started work on what turned out to be an extensive revision.

And, now, I’m done.

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News

Work-in-Progress Update: “The Rose and Honey Soul” first draft is complete!

By Aidan Moher on November 14th, 2018

“The Rose and Honey Soul” is done!

A little over two-and-a-half years ago, I started work on a short story inspired by Dark Souls. It was a dark, baroque, and dense story about a an Asher adrift in a world drenched in eternal dark following her partner and lover’s disappearance. I wrote about 5,000 words, and loved the world and characters, but came to the realization that something wasn’t quite right.

I set it aside, as I often do with projects that aren’t working, and moved onto a few other things (like “On the Phone with Goblins,” my novelette about two geriatric wizards solving crime from their retirement hone, which is quite unlike “The Rose and Honey Soul,” and “The Dinosaur Graveyard,” which is short, bright, and hopeful.) Fast forward to June of this year when I opened up my work on “The Rose and Honey Soul” and realized very quickly what was wrong with the story as I’d been telling it: it wasn’t a short story.

So, I opened Scrivener, bounced around between outlining it as a novella and a novel (turns out, in the end, it fell right smack in the middle, natch), and quickly filled out all the holes and came out with a multi-chapter outline that not only seemed to work, but excited me in a way that the original draft hadn’t.

So, I got working.

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On Writing

When to start querying your novel

By Aidan Moher on October 18th, 2018

I’ve recently been talking a lot about my two WIPs—a novella called “The Rose and Honey Soul,” which is nearly complete, and a novel called The Thousand Shattered Gods. The process for writing both of these has been fraught with all the perils that come with working on long-form projects as an unsigned/unpublished writer—including the ever-wavering certainty that you’re balancing on the knife’s edge of brilliance and existential irrelevance. Fun times.

Of course, there’s all the great stuff about writing, too: excitement, possibility, craft, research, discovering your world and characters are so much more than you ever expected or hoped they would be. It’s heady, and I’m constantly reminded why I pursue my writing goals.

Over the years, I’ve written a lot of short fiction, and sold/published a fair bit of it. You can find those stories here. I’ve learned a lot, and though I’m still on a neverending journey of improving my craft and becoming a better storyteller, I feel like I have a good handle on the business side of short fiction. I know when I’ve reached the point where a short story is as good as it’s going to get—when it’ll either sell or it won’t, and further tinkering won’t change that. For me, this is roughly the fourth draft (first draft is the bones of the story, drafts two and three focus on structural/thematic/character issues, draft four focuses on cleaning up language, tightening, copyedit, etc.) I know what to do with my short stories once they’re ready. (Hint: The Submission Grinder is an invaluable tool.) I know how to send a short story out into the world, whether that’s through a publication that’s purchased the rights, or by self-publishing.

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News

Work-in-Progress Update: The Thousand Shattered Gods & “The Rose and Honey Soul”

By Aidan Moher on August 13th, 2018

The Thousand Shattered Gods

My WIP novel finally has a name: The Thousand Shattered Gods.

I don’t want to say too much at this point about the plot, etc., but I will say that it’s set in the same universe as “The Red-rimmed Eyes of Tou Ma,” my novelette that was originally released in Unfettered II, and shares a principal protagonist: Farid Sulayk. My plan has always been to have a series of novels with intersecting short fiction, and this is the start of that.

You may have seen my Twitter conversation last week about epic fantasy. It began with me searching for book recommendations, but an off-hand comment about how, in my heart-of-hearts, what I *really* want to be writing is big, adventurous ’90s-style epic fantasy, but that I was under the impression that it was a hard sell. Thanks to encouraging feedback from Brit E. B. Hvide and Hannah Bowman, two people with loads of experience in the publishing industry, however, I returned to my outline for a novel I started working on a couple of years ago. It didn’t have a name, and I’d stalled on writing it after about 20k words because something just wasn’t quite right.

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