Upon the Wings of Greater Things

The creative endeavours of Starla Huchton

Cover Reveal! The Ghost Rebellion by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine

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You guys, this is something pretty awesome. It’s not often that I do cover reveals for other people on this blog, but today I get to share something I’m really excited about!

Last year, I was approached by Tee Morris and Philippa Ballantine asking if I’d be up to the challenge of creating a cover for the next book in The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series. The first four books were all traditionally published, but book 5 was going to be funded by a Kickstarter. It took me all of two seconds to answer with a resounding YES, but I knew going in the bar was set very high. Could I create a cover on par with Big 5 resources? Just little ole me sitting here in my house by myself? Was it a thing I could actually do, and do successfully?

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Wherein I Mess With History

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So, here we are in 2016 already. Last year was a bit of a blur for me, with days flying by as fast as pages being rifled in a book. It went by so quickly, I didn’t get much of a chance to take a breath and plan my release schedule for this year until very recently.

Rather than prattle on about that, however, today I’m writing to let you know that I’ve sneaky-ninja-dropped a brand new book on Amazon! No big fuss this time. I simply finished, edited, and shoved it out the door. Marketing? What’s that? Pfft. :P

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Of Dragons, “Others,” and Creative Brain Fodder

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(Advanced warning: this gets kind of a lot nerdy. I will attempt to come at this as though the people reading it are at ground-zero level of experience in this topic.)

So, if you follow me anywhere on social media, you’re probably aware of the love affair I’ve developed with BioWare’s Dragon Age franchise. Although, maybe this is the first you’re hearing of it, in which case I’ve severely failed to adequately articulate my obsession. I’ll admit a few things off the bat first before I dive into the purpose of this post: [Read more…]

Guest post – Swimming Upstream: Telling the Story that Doesn’t Sell

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I have a guest post for you! I’ve known Tee Morris (and his amazing wife, Philippa Ballantine) for many years, and have been blessed to have their support and wisdom at my fingertips whenever I needed it. So today, I’d like to share the thoughts of the Yodas I’ve had access to since the earliest days of my writing career. I recently posed a question that I think a lot of authors have asked themselves (or been asked by others): What makes you keep writing certain books when you’re made to question whether or not they’ll succeed?

Tee brings up some excellent points to consider here, so if you’re debating whether or not to write the thing you want to write, do keep reading.  -SH

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World Building at ZappCon!

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helpful tips

I had a little adventure this weekend! I had the awesome opportunity to fly out to Fresno, CA for a great little convention called ZappCon. I’m still working through some of the awesome of the trip, but I’m feeling over my jet lag enough to address one of the happenings today.

On Sunday, I had a Q&A session with a small group of folks about world building in fiction. At first, I wasn’t really sure I was overly qualified to speak on such a topic (or anything, really, LOL), but there were some excellent questions raised that maybe others are curious about, in as far as my opinion on them exists.

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It’s Story Time! Ride the Wind is Taking Flight!

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SAHFantasy

So, The Chronicles of ISLE, Book 1: Spark is out in the world now (did I forget to mention that here? Whoops. Author fail.) Not only is it live on Amazon, but it’s absolutely a part of the Kindle Unlimited program for those of you who subscribe to that service:

Get Spark right here!

Note: if you haven’t read the Evolution series, it’s highly recommended you do so before beginning this book. You’ll be able to follow the story fine, but there is so much more to understand about this world that you can only learn in detail from the first trilogy!

Also note: this story is NOT for children. Adult situations and mature language are contained therein. (Hence the S. A. Huchton label.)

But now on to today’s news!

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It’s Super September!

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SAHSF

Okay, so, yes, it’s still technically August, but you know that thing where you’re just really excited and it’s close enough?

It’s close enough.

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Humaning 101 (Or, How to Fake Extroversion)

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helpful tips

Being an author is sort of a strange thing. As a writer, I spend a lot of time by myself, submerged in worlds only I live in. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, when I call myself an introvert. I’m not good with large groups of strangers and, more often than not, I feel like a failure as a human when I’m unable to do what “normal” people seem to do in those situations.

So what happens when it comes time for events when success is riding on coming across as human? Basically, you fake it.

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The Night Bridge: Cover Reveal and Preorder Information

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 SAHSF

Greetings and salutations! It’s been a super busy year for me, and we’re finally past the halfway mark! I hope everyone’s having a great summer and getting a ton of reading done.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been over a year and a half since I started on the road this story led me down. Lots of other projects made their way into the world first, and it sort of got shuffled away in lieu of superheroes and fairy tales. As my last two releases have both been Contemporary, I am happy to report my return to steamy speculative fiction! That said, for those of you under a certain age, or who aren’t keen to read fiction with adult themes, hang tight. I’ll be back in November with another Flipped Fairy Tale, so I hope to see you all then. :)

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Excerpt: SIREN, by Jennifer Melzer

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Greetings, folks! Today, I’d like to share this space with one of my favorite people on the planet. Jennifer Melzer has been my editor for almost a year now, but did you know that she’s an author as well? I was captivated by her writing years ago when I listened to the audiobook podcast of The Goblin Market, and have been following her work ever since then.

As a special treat for you guys, I’d like to share an excerpt of one of her newest book with you. [Read more…]