Author Spotlight – Renee Scattergood

By M.J. Moores on October 25, 2014 • ( 4 )

Renee is an entrepreneurial writer who has decided to release her young adult/high-fantasy story Shadow Stalker as a web series in e-book format. Each novella-length episode contains several chapters and while each one is part of the over-ridding story they are self-contained stand alone reads. As Renee prepares to release her third episode Shadows’ Betrayal, her first episode The Hidden Truth is currently available for free.

After seeing the monster she will become, Auren swears not to leave the Dark Isle. Despite that, the elders are conspiring against her. To escape their scheming, she and Kado decide to explore the Dark Isle. But worse things await them in the forests.

My Story Creation Process

By Renee Scattergood

When I come up with an idea for a story, it almost always starts with a character. Sometimes I’ll have a dream that really sticks with me and the character will come from that. Other times I have had a character pop into my head when reading other stories or just daydreaming. For instance, the character, Kado, in my Shadow Stalker series came to mind when I read The Celestine Prophecy.

Once I have an idea for a character, I give them a name and start working on their personal story. This person doesn’t necessarily become the main character, though, like with Kado. While I was developing Kado’s personality, I decided that he would be better in the “teacher/guide” role for the main character. So I then had to decide who would be my main character.

As with Shadow Stalker, this process of developing a main character went through a lot of changes. At first, the main character was a man in his mid-twenties with a family of his own. He wasn’t even a full shadow stalker. His mother was normal human and rather than being raised by Kado, he was raised by his grandparents. Then it changed to a female in her mid-twenties, but then I decided I wanted Kado to be the one to raise her, and to have it make sense that she’d still be living with him, she had to be younger. So I decided to have her just finishing secondary school.

While I’m developing the main character’s story, other characters usually start making an appearance. Originally Auren had four other friends who were going to go on the camping trip with her, but since only two of them were going to make appearances later in the story, I decided to cut the other two out. Other characters will come into the story as I start writing as well.

By the time the main character starts feeling like a real person, a story starts coming together in my mind. The main plot of the story almost always writes itself. That’s about the time that I really start planning out the story. As a first with Shadow Stalker, to prevent myself from straying from the main plot, I have written a paragraph summary of the first 12 episodes. Then I have been going through and writing a paragraph summary for each chapter in the individual episodes.

I have found that planning the stories out this way makes writing the first draft so much easier. Sometimes things will happen naturally in the story that make me change what I’m writing, but it’s easy to rewrite the outline so that I can stay on track. After the first draft is done, the editing starts. Of course, the final draft often looks nothing like the first, but following this process has always made it a lot simpler to get to that point.

Oh, and often while I’m writing I will come up with ideas for other stories. So this process could be going on simultaneously and at different stages with other stories. At the moment I’m developing three other stories while I’m busy writing Shadow Stalker. So it’s a never ending process. Not that I ever want it to end!

Shadow Stalker – Shadow’s Betrayal

Buy it HERE

The Council of Elders on the Dark Isle, the home of the shadow stalkers, have refused to allow their people to help the Coalition in the war against the Galvadi Empire. Now the Coalition is in danger of falling to their enemy. If this happens, the shadow stalkers will have no ally against the empire.

After seeing Kado’s vision and learning what she will become, Auren is terrified of leaving the Dark Isle. It seems the Council of Elders may be plotting against her, despite her willingness to remain on the island.

To escape the tensions being placed on them by the council, Kado and Auren leave their village to explore the Dark Isle, but there are worse things lurking in the islands forests than the power hungry council.

Follow Renee’s Blog Tour HERE

Renee Scattergood, author of the high fantasy series, Shadow Stalker, lives in Australia with her husband and daughter. Aside from writing, she loves reading (Fantasy, of course), watching movies with her family, and doing crafts and science experiments with her daughter.