Centernia: Building a Castle

Kaity Cosette by Cathy Razim,  www.RazCat.com “There are three categories of mage…the psychic, the kinetic, and the ethereal. I am psychic, I can touch the mind. Your mother, Kaity and Nico are of the kinetic, they touch the world.  Misa was of the ethereal.  She could touch what exists in between.” - Teren, Return to the Castle There are thousands of variations of mage, but a few types seem to pop up more than others. Polaris Academy officially recognizes three types of mage, Kinetic, Psychic and Ethereal. Many mages also argue there exists two other types, the Cross Mages and the Forbidden. Kinetic Kinetic mages are the most common of all mages.  They can manipulate the world that surrounds them. Some mages have generic skills, others seem to be able to touch only certain particles.  Kinetic mages often need to make a physical gesture to activate their abilities, such as a sweeping hand motion.  With time, they learn greater control and can us...

The current file for The Crimson Mage is labelled "Crimson Mage June 2015." Yes, I've been working on this current draft for a year.  Actually, it's been one year and six months.  I had naively assumed that it would only take me ten months to write the sequel, just as I wrote Return to the Castle.  A wrench was thrown into my plans.  It wasn't a single wrench, but more akin an earthquake in Home Depot. On December 7th I wrote about how I was recovering from post-partum depression, totally back on track with The Crimson Mage.  I was so happy and energetic. A few days after that post my grandfather had a stroke, because the universe has a crappy sense of irony.  The following month was miserable. My daughter's first Christmas was the worst Christmas of my life, only to contend with Christmas 1994 when my mother couldn't walk after a car accident and I figured out Santa Claus was a lie because all of our presents were given to us in stapled grocery store ba...

How old were you when you started writing? When I was in second grade, I wrote and illustrated a story called "Marvin the Marry Mouse".  It was a Christmas tale about a mouse whose older sister told him there was no Santa.  He wrote a letter to Santa and then received bunch of presents.   Character, conflict, resolution. It was drawn on tracing paper in blue pen while I was playing in the back patio of my grandparents' house.  I continued to write from that point forward.  Many of my stories featured cats, horses, and whatever I was obsessed with at the time (stickers, XMen, Littlest Pet Shop, Sailor Moon, Star Wars, etc...).  When I was twelve I began writing original work.   Do you edit as you write?  When I write I start with an idea, but get stuck looking for the correct words. No, I do not try to edit on the first draft. For me, writing is this mad dash to grab everything that is falling out of my brain.  I focus on the dialog ...

Music Feature I write Centernia to an incredibly eclectic mix of music.  Sometimes it's the melody that gets me, the lyrics of the song, or simply the voice of the singer. Today's feature from my playlist: Heart: Alone Album: Bad Animals 1987 I think I prefer the Kim Sozzi candlelight version, but it's not presently available on YouTube. However, this video features Heart in is 80s hair-band glory.  The video is great, the costuming, the mysterious setting, and the fact they throw a white horse in there for fun.

Saving old drafts is an important part of the writing process, as is accepting the fact that sometimes life can take you down the wrong editing path.  I had to learn this hard lesson in the past few months when I hit a few unexpected challenges. My daughter was born in September.  The Centernia sequel, The Crimson Mage was completed in the weeks prior to her arrival.  I was pleased that I was on track to release the book by the end of the year.  I figured I had plenty of time finish editing it, run it by my trusted circle of proofreaders, and then send it to the copyeditor.  It seemed that the book would be out by December. People had cautioned that the baby would send a wrench into my plans, but I generally try to ignore naysayers and steam (or stumble) through life.  In my mind I had a perfect plan to keep working once my girl arrived:  While she napped, I would edit and write.  If sleep deprivation became awful, I would switch to formula an...

September 2nd holds significance to Centernia as it's the day Muse died and the same day first printed proof arrived in the mail.  It truly marks the beginning of Return to the Castle. This has been a whirlwind, and I have learned so much and am so grateful.  We did a pre-order at RocCon in Rochester, NY in mid-September, and followed it with a full launch at New York Comic Con in October.  After which, the book was whisked to Detroit for Youmacon, Genericon in Troy, Anime Boston, Tora Con, Sci-Fi Valley Con. I learned some rough lessons too.  The first edition was edited, but errors still snuck through and I put out an updated edition in February. The hardest lesson I've learned is that writing a sequel is not as easy as I had anticipated.  My husband chides me, reminding me that the core story of Return to the Castle was the story I had written and re-written over a half dozen times before I froze it into its final printed form.  It's natural that t...

Where does the curse blood'ura come from? Writing the curses of Centernia was as enjoyable as creating the creatures and places. Blood'ura is an abbreviation for Blood of Aurora, very similar insult to the Shakespearian zounds, meaning Christ's Wounds. There is a joy in creating insults that are really close to the english in cadence and consonant sounds. I have growing library file where I collect these bad-sounding yet technically completely innocuous words. My favorites? Maggot suckin', bloody shunt, rock sucker, goat screw, tick and jackhole. In the next book, will we learn more about the fallout between Jessica's parents? Yes. There is definitely a lot more story to unearth from the past. The scars run deep. Why did you decide to write Return to the Castle? Where do you get your ideas? I get asked this question a lot. I wrote Return to the Castle because I had to. The characters have a comfortable residence in my mind, and they tell me their stori...