Julie Elise Landry
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Why I Love My Sadist Villain

1/26/2017

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​To start, some context. I believe records of the written and spoken word often lack context, prompting misunderstanding and misinformation. Context is the difference between (1) cursing out the vile, malicious, reprehensible degenerate who cut you off in traffic, and (2) ignoring your uncharacteristic mistake when you cut off the next car—because you’re late for a job interview, you need rent money, and you’re still shaken up about that horrendous monster who nearly merged into you.
 
For this reason, I begin my post not where it begins, but with a few contextualizing statements.
 
This post will focus on the villain-figure in my dark fantasy novel Bless the Skies. The character's traits and characteristics will be discussed in detail, independently of the story, without mentioning or spoiling the plot.


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No One Writes Alone.

9/11/2016

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​As I finished Bless the Skies, I faced a decision: to seek publication traditionally or to publish the book myself.
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So many factors warred and balanced in my mind, but two ideas floated above the battle—untouched and uncontested.

  • After constructing this story mentally for over a decade, I needed to be in complete control of the final product.

  • I anticipated that traditional publication for future stories might become more feasible if I’d already worked to prove my value and attracted an audience through self-publication.

Those were the reasons I actively decided to self-publish. However, it would be an obscene lie to say I did it all myself. Many, many people helped me, and I’d caution any writer attempting to accomplish publication "alone."

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Multiple Opinions on Multiple Viewpoints

6/12/2016

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​My debut fantasy novel (more will come, I swear) unfolds through six different points of view. Six radically different, first-person voices weave a tale of toxic relationships, hostility, and violence.
 
I love all my characters—even the rotten ones. (That’s a blog post for another time.)
 
But each character has been called boring, a waste of text, infuriating. Each character has been labeled the weak point of the novel. And each character has been lauded as a reader’s absolute, bar-none favorite. (Yes, even the rotten ones.)
 
In the editing stage, this proved a source of frustration among my beta readers and myself. Weighing the wildly varied responses and searching for truth in the stack of reactions nearly drove me to delete the entire project.

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How I drove myself crazy trying NOT to publish

11/1/2015

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I awoke before dawn after a quiet but restless Halloween night.

My stomach churned with acid and I fed it coffee, shutting out the self-destructive whispers encouraging me to abandon this pursuit. But as I turned the corner into my office, I saw the message scribbled on my tiny chalkboard: Publish or Perish.

In that moment, I wanted to perish.

But I sank to the ground, positioning myself in front of the plastic tub that holds my laptop--the makeshift desk I fashioned when I moved back to New Orleans a year ago. My old desk didn't survive the trip out of my old office, much less the trip from northern Louisiana.

For hours, I fought with various uploading systems and formatting requirements, making all the final arrangements to let people read the book I wrote, if only in electronic form.

And then, I stalled.

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The Touch—the Feel—of Paper

10/30/2015

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I had a difficult week.

Every day, I fought with the CreateSpace file review system over the cover for my paperback of Bless the Skies. Though CreateSpace repeatedly approved my cover, the digital proofing system showed me terrible-quality renderings of the artwork, with pixelated white lines stitching up all the seams between graphic elements.

I continually harassed my poor cover artist Andy Tripp, demanding file after file for CreateSpace's 10–24 hour review process. By the time we'd gone five rounds, I'd long terminated any remaining emotional connections to this novel.
"It was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope & despair which I could not longer have endured without the total loss of reason." -- Edgar Allan Poe
As it turns out, those white stitches were a pixel-only problem, not an ink problem. They never would have transferred to print.

And last night, a copy of my book landed in my hands.

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    Julie Elise Landry: 
    n. (1) Author of dark fantasy novel Bless the Skies. (2) A New Orleans native. (3) One who adores musicals and violent horror movies. 
    v. (1) to overthink

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