Book Launch Guest Post ~ SUMMONED by Rainy Kaye

SUMMONED was supposed to remain a dark little secret hidden away on my hard drive. A few years prior, coffee-fueled curiosity found me reading up on genie folklore. There’s a lot more to it than just Aladdin or demons, but I didn’t intend to actually do anything with the information. Just a late night romp around Wikipedia.

A while later, I was bemoaning the fact I had to get out of bed. Probably from staying up too late reading Wikipedia again. Anyway, I conceded that I didn’t actually have to get up. It was just the responsible thing to do if I intended to be productive that day.

But what if someone had to actually go out and do things against their will (besides going to the office)? The thought must have collided with the genie stories still floating around in the brain space.

Over the summer last year, I decided to take a break from writing a series I have been working for longer than I care to admit and try something else. The other series is high-concept, set in a fictional world. I wanted to work on something closer to home, but with a little paranormal twist.

I wrote the first scene with Dimitri kidnapping the nine-year old girl, sent it off to some friends who were curious why I was pre-occupied, and called it a night. They asked for more. I knew that Dimitri’s story was centered on how the genie-bond kept him from having the one thing he wanted in life—Syd—so I added a few more words.

When Syd stepped into the scene, it was on. My beta-readers loved the characters—and so did I. So I wrote a high-level outline, and then went back and created a sixty scene outline. A trip to the store for a case of Mountain Dew, and I was ready to go. I wrote approximately five thousand words a night, despite having to fake being coherent at the day job. The draft was complete in sixteen days.

After I detoxed from consuming more Mountain Dew than any mortal should, I set to work revising and editing. Oddly enough, it didn’t need any major revisions, just a good brushing. Some beta readers had read it twice by then and were telling others about it who also wanted to read it.

So I sent it off for editing. When it reached Rebecca Hamilton, she tweeted her excitement over it, and within a couple of weeks, I had signed with an agent.

Turns out, I was way more productive that day I didn’t want to get out of bed than I had realized. That being said, there’s a long “thank you” page in the beginning of SUMMONED, and for good reason. Even though the process didn’t take that long, an enormous amount of work went into it and all of those people played a significant role in getting it off my hard drive.

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About the Author

Rainy Kaye is an aspiring overlord. In the mean time, she blogs at RainyoftheDark.com  and writes paranormal novels from her lair somewhere in Phoenix, Arizona. When not plotting world domination, she enjoys getting lost around the globe, studying music so she can sing along with symphonic metal bands, and becoming distracted by Twitter @rainyofthedark. She is represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA.