The Shape of Stars Unknown by Sybille Le Pyrmont

Stop in to learn about Sybil Le Pyrmont’s new urban fantasy novel ‘The Shapes of Stars Unknown’ from her Aldarfall Saga series. While you’re hear, check out Sybil’s guest post and enter the giveaway for the chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card! Courtesy of Xpresso Book Tours.

Title: The Shape of Stars Unknown
Series: The Aldarfall Saga, #1
Author:Sybil Le Pyrmont
Genre:Adult, Urban Fantasy
Release Date:October 15th 2020

About The Book:

World domination is the least of their problems.

A STRANDED DEMIGOD. Lau of the House of Feofar, troubled and headstrong, screwed up. Royally. Now he lives out his days in exile on Earth – the very planet he once tried to exterminate.

A RUDDERLESS MORTAL WOMAN. Silver Laing leads the ordinary life of a white-collar worker. Lonely and desperately in search of purpose and new horizons, she gets more than she bargained for when she is offered a mysterious job.

A CATACLYSMIC PLAN BILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING. When a deadly visitor from Lau’s shrouded past threatens to lay the world in ashes, Silver and Lau must form an unlikely alliance against ancient and far superior forces.

An alliance with the potential to shake the very foundation of the Universe.

Shimmering new worlds?
Sizzling tension?
Secrets as old as time?
Splashes of humour?

If your answer to all of the above is ‘Hell, yeah!’ then The Shape of Stars Unknown is your guy. This first book in Sybil Le Pyrmont’s new urban fantasy adventure series, The Aldarfall Saga, will take you from Germany to Tibet, from Japan to Iceland and all the way to the other end of the Universe.

Purchase: Amazon

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT BECOMING A PUBLISHED AUTHOR – LE PYRMONT STYLE

1) TIME: My journey from writing the first word (which, at the time, was “justice”, now to be found somewhere around page 279) to hitting the publish button on Amazon lasted roughly eight years. Am I seeing widening eyes and a grimace there? Yep, trust me, I get it. It was an inordinately long process. In my defence: the writing per se was completed fairly quickly, but since The Shape of Stars Unknown was my first book, I had to learn how to do effective self-revisions, incorporate the feedback from my professional editors – and, the hardest one – find the right moment to let go. In all honesty … I could have gone on editing for another ten years. Or twenty.

2) DAY JOB: As much as I would have it otherwise, my writing income barely covers more than a couple of McDonald’s takeouts; it’s my day job that pays the bills. When not on Covid-induced furlough – I work for an airline, go figure – I have a travel-heavy job with long hours, which allows for limited writing time. The first draft of TSOSU came to life between meetings, at airport waiting areas, during lunch breaks, on aeroplanes. There’s nothing like writing a full-on sex scene right before a customer meeting, I tell you!

3) WORDS: Neil Gaiman said it best: “The process of writing can be magical. Mostly it’s a process of putting one word after another.” Every so often, those words elude me. Whether it’s a plot hole the size of a moon crater, a piece of dialogue that sounds suspiciously like an awkward relative during a birthday speech, or a character acting like a whiny douchebag when he is supposed to be badass – sometimes the search for the right word(s) feels less like magic and more like a root canal. But those magical moments, when the words cascade out of me and plot hole solutions present itself amid trumpets of glory, are worth every root canal!

4) FOCUS: Whenever I hit a roadblock in my writing, I take a break to do some research. This particular kind of “research” is commonly known as the internet spiral: I start by looking up the Wikipedia entry for the Antipodes Islands (relevant for the book) and somehow, hours later, end up bingeing through the entire Watchmojo playlist of the most cringeworthy celebrity moments (relevance for the book debatable). Over time, this internet spiral became so much of an issue that I had to resort to an app that completely blocks my internet access for a set period. Now I work in chunks of 30 minutes and take a five-minute break after each session, which has radically improved my focus and productivity.

5) TEARS: Oh boy, I cried. Over the course of the writing and publishing process, I cried more tears than have ever been shed over Titanic and The Notebook combined. When I received the notes from my developmental editor, I bawled like a toddler at the supermarket. When the revision course demanded a full arc for pretty much every character with a speaking role – and TSOSU has a lot of those – I called my Mum and yammered for an hour about all that was wrong with the world. The one thing I didn’t allow myself to do though, no matter how many times I felt like throwing up on my keyboard, was to quit. Never quit, guys. If a whiner like me can get it done, so can you!

6) SUPPORT SYSTEM: One of the perks of writing is becoming God. Where his story is concerned, the author is in complete control each step of the way, and that’s a sweet feeling! Publishing a professional-looking book, however, is almost impossible without helping hands. TSOSU and I had several midwives: a developmental editor, a copyeditor/proofreader, a book cover and interior designer and a website designer. And I can’t even begin to praise the help of all those wonderful family members and friends who have accompanied and supported me on my journey – I wouldn’t be here without them.

7) REVIEWS: Let’s face it: reviews are to a writer what thunderous applause is to a stage performer. It’s hard to live without it once you have experienced the thrill of applause, aka a positive review. Yes, of course, reviews are meant for readers, not authors, but they are still coveted and sought after enough to warrant an array of articles, videos and books on how to procure them. This is an especially daunting task for unknown writers without an established audience, but it’s the best of moments when a review does come in. My old fan fictions garnered a total of over 2,000 reviews, and each one gave me the same first-crush feeling of giddiness; it may not be better than sex, but it comes close enough.

8) MARKETING: This is my least favoured part of the publishing process. I know that many writers out there don’t share my view and downright enjoy the marketing and business side of things. It just makes me uncomfortable to basically point at myself and scream at the top of my lungs, ‘Look at me, everybody! I wrote a book! Now buy it! Love it! Spread the word!’ Marketing a book is a time-consuming endeavour, especially for newbies like me, who still have to learn the ropes. There are so many choices: blog tours, social media marketing, ads, pitching bloggers to review the book, post on one’s own website, book promotion services … It certainly is nice to see the name of my book out there, and I find it exciting to discover what works best for TSOSU, but deep down, I burn to get back to writing.

9) MY PROCESS: This is just a tiny portion of my notes and research for TSOSU. I’ll let the picture speak for itself.

10) WRITING ADVICE: Sometimes, it feels like there is more writing advice than porn on the internet. Everyone who has ever written a coherent sentence shares his or her writing tips with the world, and that’s a beautiful thing. Most writers act out of a genuine desire to support and help others avoid mistakes. My hat’s off to them all! But here’s the challenge for a newbie: how does one distil the advice that furthers one’s own writing? If your favourite author talks about how he gets up at 4 am to cram in three hours of writing before his day starts, this may not be what works for you if your creative juices flow best in the evening. Next, you hear all those oh-so-successful writers in your Facebook group droning on about how real writers write every single day and cough out at least five books a year. Don’t use adverbs on pain of death! You’re allowed only one adjective every ten pages! Throw out your Thesaurus – if you have to look up the word, it’s wrong! If your book doesn’t have some underlying sociocritical theme, you can just as well quit writing! If readers want books about werewolves on cruise vacations, write them; if, a year later, readers have moved on to stories about boarding schools for goats, write those!

Well, here is my take: the only thing that works for a new writer is trial and error. Use the advice that feels right for you. Get your butt in the chair and write what you want to write the way you want to write it. There will always be people who hate your story, characters, prose, premise … so enjoy that freedom and do things your way.

Thank you so much for taking the time to (virtually) meet me and The Shape of Stars Unknown. We all have many worries right now – health, family, friends, jobs – which makes me all the more grateful for your time!

About The Author:

Sybil Le Pyrmont was born in Germany and was raised on the Canary Islands (that Gallic name is a pseudonym – her actual name has as much flair as a tax return). Although she now resides in Frankfurt, Germany, her heart has been beating for Tokyo ever since she spent a year in that city and discovered her epic love for all things Japan. That includes, to her acute embarrassment, the Shinagawa train station jingle she has installed as her ringtone. When Sybil isn’t writing, or dreaming of the anonymous donor who will some day gift her a house in Japan, she splits her time between her airline day job and long rants about the sunshine and the always-too-hot weather.

Sybil writes urban fantasy adventure to whisk her readers away to realms of imagination that have a distinct possibility of existing somewhere in the depths of the Universe.